Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="Thunderfoot" data-source="post: 2712946" data-attributes="member: 34175">In creating a recent campaign world I had an epiphany: humanoids have been done to death and the various lizard races are too disparate to make a showing.&nbsp; So I started tweaking the lizard races and came up with a whole subculture of lizards.&nbsp; Humans and demi-humans have your standard 5 (or six): human, dwarf, elf, gnome, halfling (and sometimes orc) along with the two semi human varieties (half-elf and half-orc).&nbsp;&nbsp; Using this principal I constructed a hierarchy of lizard races and threw a smattering of &quot;flash&quot; in to round them out.Lizardfolk (obviously) are the &quot;core&quot; race with the poison sting and black lizardfolk being variants (gnomes and giants as it were).&nbsp; Kobolds became halflings and troglodytes dwarves.&nbsp; The yaun-ti races mimic the elves and their variants.&nbsp; Minor tweaking to each - a color there, a mannerism here and I had a viable &quot;anti-human&quot; racial structure to fight the forces of man.&nbsp; Now the alignment issue may seem a problem, but since they are &quot;mimicking&quot; the social structure of humans, the racial alignments take a back seat and the whole gamut of aligns become available.&nbsp; When the &quot;norm&quot; of the lizardbred is evil, the surprise LG kobold NPC becomes even more of an anomaly, or when the BBEG turns out to be a Lizardman blackguard instead of a ranger or even a kobold wizard specialist.&nbsp; Its not that any of this was hard or even a leap of faith as it were, but it has always amazed me that the solenoid and other &quot;racially aligned&quot; races, rarely actually cooperate with one another.&nbsp; Of course the solenoid &quot;bullying&quot; was drawn mostly from Tolkien, but why must every other race &quot;bully&quot; those of its ilk? The most intriguing thing however, is pitting a mixed group of lizardbred against a humanoid party.&nbsp; Suddenly instead of a group of monsters, the party is facing an opposingly evil, yet equally balanced adventuring party.&nbsp; No more evil NPC humans (not that I don't use them) but a group of determined lizard NPCs with fighting, healing, and magical might on their side as well.&nbsp;&nbsp; At first it was simply, see monster, kill evil, but as the party has played they are starting to see the &quot;community&quot; inside the lizardbred.&nbsp; Evil (mostly) but organized and bent on survival.&nbsp; Even the paladins are having moral issues of Detect Evil; hack, maim, kill; claim victory in the name of justice - when lizard children are encountered, is it a matter of nature or nurture?&nbsp; Suddenly nurture becomes the standard answer so each decision must be weighed carefully.&nbsp; The dynamic of the campaign has changed and each of the players are starting to &quot;grow&quot; in the decision making process - hack and slay are no longer the first action, but in most cases a reaction to such thinking from their &quot;enemies&quot;.&nbsp; I have come to realize that a thinking, living, feeling enemy is much more of a threat and a much more effective &quot;monster&quot; than the standard ugly thing with multiple heads.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Thunderfoot, post: 2712946, member: 34175"] In creating a recent campaign world I had an epiphany: humanoids have been done to death and the various lizard races are too disparate to make a showing. So I started tweaking the lizard races and came up with a whole subculture of lizards. Humans and demi-humans have your standard 5 (or six): human, dwarf, elf, gnome, halfling (and sometimes orc) along with the two semi human varieties (half-elf and half-orc). Using this principal I constructed a hierarchy of lizard races and threw a smattering of "flash" in to round them out. Lizardfolk (obviously) are the "core" race with the poison sting and black lizardfolk being variants (gnomes and giants as it were). Kobolds became halflings and troglodytes dwarves. The yaun-ti races mimic the elves and their variants. Minor tweaking to each - a color there, a mannerism here and I had a viable "anti-human" racial structure to fight the forces of man. Now the alignment issue may seem a problem, but since they are "mimicking" the social structure of humans, the racial alignments take a back seat and the whole gamut of aligns become available. When the "norm" of the lizardbred is evil, the surprise LG kobold NPC becomes even more of an anomaly, or when the BBEG turns out to be a Lizardman blackguard instead of a ranger or even a kobold wizard specialist. Its not that any of this was hard or even a leap of faith as it were, but it has always amazed me that the solenoid and other "racially aligned" races, rarely actually cooperate with one another. Of course the solenoid "bullying" was drawn mostly from Tolkien, but why must every other race "bully" those of its ilk? The most intriguing thing however, is pitting a mixed group of lizardbred against a humanoid party. Suddenly instead of a group of monsters, the party is facing an opposingly evil, yet equally balanced adventuring party. No more evil NPC humans (not that I don't use them) but a group of determined lizard NPCs with fighting, healing, and magical might on their side as well. At first it was simply, see monster, kill evil, but as the party has played they are starting to see the "community" inside the lizardbred. Evil (mostly) but organized and bent on survival. Even the paladins are having moral issues of [I]Detect Evil[/I]; hack, maim, kill; claim victory in the name of justice - when lizard children are encountered, is it a matter of nature or nurture? Suddenly nurture becomes the standard answer so each decision must be weighed carefully. The dynamic of the campaign has changed and each of the players are starting to "grow" in the decision making process - hack and slay are no longer the first action, but in most cases a reaction to such thinking from their "enemies". I have come to realize that a thinking, living, feeling enemy is much more of a threat and a much more effective "monster" than the standard ugly thing with multiple heads. [/QUOTE]

Verification