Your favourite world narrative / mythology twists

[MarkB]

I like to think about and mess with the ecology of game-worlds. I ran a campaign in a world where the main continent's desert interior was plied by sand-skimming sailing ships (punnily named Pirates of the Arabian), and then had to figure out why people wouldn't still trade with traditional sailing vessels around the coast of the continent.

So I scaled up the ocean ecology with megafauna, to the point where nobody would venture near it. Dragon turtles were only midway up the food chain, and Krakens tended to stick to the sunlit upper reaches of the ocean because they feared the far nastier things that lurked in the depths.

And then, because it only made sense, I scaled the coastlines to match. Where we have gulls and puffins and pelicans nesting along the cliffs, in this world those ecological niches were filled by hippogryphs and manticores and wyverns. In similar numbers. Most of the way around the continent, people didn't dare venture within 20 miles of the ocean.

 

[SuperSam888]

in my homebrew setting, humans are descended from Elves who lost their spark of magic, orcs are descended from humans who tried (and failed) to get magic back. Humans and orcs can produce children, but humans and elves cannot.

Also, Gnolls are a merchant race.

 

[Ath-kethin]

In my campaigns we have religions, not gods. I think the trope of gods as big monsters is simplistic, juvenile, and frankly uninteresting. A religion is a far more complex and ethereal thing to handle, and allows for far more nuance (see Eberron, Al-Qadim approaches).

Also in my campaigns, the Way of the Shadow monastic tradition was originated by and is still primarily practiced by goblins. I don't even know where that idea came from, but I had it, I loved it, and it makes for an interesting spin on a campaign world.

 

[oreofox]

I tend to dislike the enemy race "garbage" (in my mind, that's what it is), and threw it out. Similar to Eberron, though it was the same in my 2nd edition short-lived games in an unformed world. Just seems a bit... "racist"... that all the enemy races are primitive tribal rather deformed monsters (green skin with huge tusks, or short with giant noses and ears, among other monstrous features) while the player races are beautiful smooth skinned (mostly pale, some with darker) living in civilized cities and wood/stone structures. That part never sat right in my mind. So, I changed it for my world.

Orcs (there are no half-orcs, nor half-elves) are black-skinned with eyes and hair the shades of flame to reflect their volcanic and fiery homeland. Orcs originally descended from elves, and orcs can still be born of two elven parents if they spend over 100 years within that area. It is speculated that if two orcs could live long enough and reproduce, an elf would be born. However, orcs don't live long enough to be able to find out.Also, within one of the volcanoes lies the entrance to the Plane of Fire.
Elves are the offspring of fey and my race of humanoid plants. Due to this ancestry, they are greatly tied to the environment. Similar to the above with orcs, an elf born from two high elves who spent 100 years within the perpetual darkness of the Shadowlands (a land above ground but with a portal to the Plane of Shadow, which makes the surrounding lands in eternal night), would give birth to my world's version of the drow. None know what would happen in the dwarven mountains, or on the water, and none have dared try.
Gnomes are no longer the happy-go-lucky trickster illusionists that is typical in most fantasy and D&D. They are instead warlike, and live in regimented society. All gnomes must spend 10 years in the national military. There are still 2 subraces of gnomes, living in the same nation, but are different. The one are still tinkerers, and make up the craftsmen and farmers, while the other is war-like. Think the Spartans from 300, and add in steampunk elements (their homeland houses a portal to the Plane of Water, so there's water aplenty for steam power). They also created the Warforged, and are excellent seafarers.
Gnolls aren't demonic slavers of the deserts. They are rather peaceful giant bee keepers who travel the land selling the honey collected from these bees. It is sweeter, and has a mood booster effect that makes the eater happy and relaxed.
Goblinoids (goblins, hobgoblins, and bugbears) live in a mist shrouded country between the blazing hellscape of the orcs and the water-sodden lands of the gnomes. Goblins and hobgoblins have human skin tones, though goblins are still small. Bugbears aren't born, and are sterile at that. Instead, they are created by 6 goblins and a hobgoblin, where 6 of them transfer their life essence into the 7th. The recipient isn't chosen, and no one knows who gets the power until after the ritual. At the end, the ones that didn't get the power collapse dead. Bugbears are excessively rare unless in a time of great strife (such as wars).
Humans are practically extinct, being my world's only "enemy race", having attempted to kill the "lesser races" but were instead brought to near eradication. They did, however, kill the halflings. There are still small pockets of humans, but the more unsavory of the other races who come across these pockets enslave the humans, whereas most of the other races kill them on sight.
Aasimar, Tieflings, and Genasi are "templates" added onto a "base race". They get the abilities of the planetouched, but appear as a different race. So, there are aasimar who look like orcs, tiefling elves, water genasi gnomes, etc. The only way someone can appear as a halfling is by being one of these. So while the true halfling is extinct, there are some planetouched with the physical appearance of halflings that still exist.

I also have an empire of Sahuagin in the ocean, with a small island chain (I say small, but it's about the size of the state of Georgia + South Carolina) above ground where they initiate trade with other races, when they don't feel like sinking their vessels.

 

[Hexmage-EN]

- Druids are the priests of the Old Faith, which is centered on an alternative pantheon of Great Elder Spirits. The animating spirit is said to be the true essence of a being, with the immortal soul being devised by the gods as a means to steal spirits away from the natural world. Upon death followers of the Old Faith surrender their souls to the Soul Serpent to be devoured, freeing the animating spirit to become one with the follower's homeland, where it melds with other spirits to be reincarnated in a new form. People who reject the Great Elders and worship the gods are pitied, as they have forsaken oneness with the community of spirits that have watched over and melded with their homeland, their ancestors, and all other things since time immemorial in favor of departing for an afterlife in an unnatural plane with distant gods.
- The Border Ethereals of the Material Plane and Feywild thrum with living spirits waiting to manifest when conditions are right. Druid and ranger spells manifest this spiritual energy, and some barbarians manifest it as well. Unlike beings like angels or demons, which have discrete identities as individuals, these spirits wait in forms that are nearly imperceptible even in the Ethereal Plane for a chance to manifest briefly in myriad forms. The vines of a druid's entangle spell or the spirit-echo temporarily reconstituted from a long-discorporated mortal identity through the speak with dead ritual are as much an incarnation of the spirits as the manifestation of a boggle or red cap.
- Nearly all spirits of the Material Plane and its echoes were born from the essence of the countless elementals that were bound together to make the world. Though most of those elementals sleep, many discarded their original identities to become the spirits of plants, beasts, and fey.
- Though the living spirits can take on ghostly forms, they are not the same as undead. The living spirits are animated by the force of the Positive Energy Plane because they have been permitted to dwell within the Border Ethereals of the mortal realms. Incorporeal undead, on the other hand, persist in defiance of the will of the living spirits and are denied access to the power of the Positive Energy Plane as a consequence, meaning that they have no other choice than to channel the power of the Negative Energy Plane.

 

[BookBarbarian]

All dragons are brown when hatched. As their personality develops they seek out an environment suited to their tastes. This combination of personality and environment determines their color.

 

[Draegn]

In ancient times a group of priests and magi worked together to create anthropomorphic races in the image of their gods. (Egyptian). These races rebelled against their creators and brought down the high culture and advanced society to a previous hunter gatherer level. These races then turned on one another reducing their numbers. Now those remaining eek out an existence and trade with the surviving humans while barely keeping the peace.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Sometimes, I have no half races at all, or at least, none based on cross breeding with other standard races. However, I might have all the “Plantouched” as a template for beings with ancestry including otherplanar beings. These, I call Nephilim.

I have had campaigns in which there were no PC Elf races, and what e think of as elven Fey- the “Lords & Ladies”, “Seelie & Unseelie” Courts, Underhill, etc.- are crashlanded alien Greys using high tech to distort perception, time and space. Occasionally, when I do so, the scientists among the Greys/Elves are responsible for the wide variety of sapient species.

I have had The Inheritors- Warforged who are basically fantasy versions of the Cybermen & Daleks. The brains within them are from psionically active Dwarves (who constructed them for another psionically race who were wiped out before they had the chance to accept the devices they commissioned).

I reskinned Dwarves as anthropomorphic snapping turtles who are master river merchants.

I made Dwarves into a earth elementals who carve their progeny into existence, into each of which Moradin breathes life. They have no children, no gender. The kind of stone from which each dwarf was carved determines their base affinity for physical/martial skills (iron ore, lead, etc.), social skills (precious metal ores or semiprecious stones), or magic (precious gemstones), but any type may be found in any role.

 

[77IM]

I like to combine the Feywild and the Shadowfell into a single plane -- the happy parts are the Feywild and the gloomy parts are the Shadowfell, but it's all one place (typically called the Otherworld or the Enchanted Kingdoms).

 

[Tormyr]

I like a lot of the world building in Zeitgeist.

* The eladrin goddess manifested during the second human-eladrin war and was killed. The magical shock wave turned many of the humans present into deva, immortal humanoids who reincarnate fully grown after death with memory of their past lives.
* The explosion caused female eladrin to become incredibly scarce
* The same explosion turned elves into tieflings (if I recall correctly)
* The nation ruled by the church sees the tieflings as abominations
* The explosion also created a null-magic zone hundreds of miles wide prompting the nation that developed there to focus on technological development.
* The nation of Ber is ruled by a minotaur and was established as a place where the monstrous races could set up their own government.