Demihumans

[Ninja-Bear]

I was just thinking (yup dangerous I know) that for all the Fantasy Hero is (or should be) is different than D&D, it seems that the Demihumans are just that same as D&Ds. Now some of this is understandable as fair amount of platers like easily identifiable Races. And certain traits should be there such as Halflings being short. However at least the sources of Fantasy Hero I have, the Demihumans are just Heroized versions of D&D. How do you guys tweak Demihumans? So as to he familiar yet not just a Heroized version?

[Alcamtar]

I tweak things a bit to makes them more like Tolkien. For a game that blatantly copied Tolkien, D&D does an incredibly lousy job actually resembling Tolkien. D&D's version of demi-humans are a bit like Picasso's version of a woman... If you squint your eyes you can see what he was going for, but it's not something you'd want to come home to at night.

[GDShore]

I went a different direction, I completely rebuilt my other races plus added some. Your right D&D does lousy Tolkien, I do not claim I did better just different. 

[Lord Liaden]

As I've written elsewhere on these forums, Hero's Turakian Age is the fantasy setting I go back to the most often, and the one I've tinkered with the most. TA was deliberately written to resemble D&D in many ways, so that gamers accustomed to its conventions would find that familiarity (although there are a number of distinctive elements). That includes the "demihumans." In the books about TA there are hints and even a few explicit statements regarding cultural differences between different groups of the same demihuman race in various parts of the game world. The approach I took is to increase the "footprint" of demihumans in the setting, making them more widespread and impactful in some cases; elaborating on the spectrum of their interactions with Men and other races; and making their cultural variations more explicit. Game-stat wise there isn't a lot that's different from the default "Heroized" version of D&D, but their attitudes and motivations are more diverse and distinctive.

 

I won't inflict all my thoughts on the subject here. People who are interested can look up the forum thread linked in my signature, on which I blather on about it at some length.   But I will touch on Halflings, since Ninja-Bear mentioned them and they probably were more subject to my process above than the other demihumans, so make a good illustration. In some places they're pretty much the standard D&D Halflings, but certainly not in all.

 

Per the official history of TA, Halflings were once more widespread, but after Men arrived in their lands the Halflings were gradually, often violently, forced out of the best regions and toward the less-desirable fringes of civilization. Most of them now live in lands ruled by Men. Some Halflings have accepted this reality and get along reasonably well with the "Big Folk," but others still harbor distrust, resentment and even hatred toward them.

 

In TA there's one nominally independent Halfling land (which I moved to a location that suited my purpose better). I built up more of how they live and govern themselves when they aren't under another people's thumb. I added a history of Halflings having come there to escape that thumb, so the attitude of distrust and resentment toward Big Folk is much more prevalent among them. But they're also tributary to a neighboring, more powerful state. In some years it's difficult for the Halflings to gather all the annual tribute, which I figure would be a good motivation for one of them to go adventuring, to try to acquire treasure to help their people.

 

One of those fringe areas I mentioned is noted in the TA source book as being quite rugged, and having been settled by tough, independent-minded, outdoorsy people. That includes a large number of Halflings, who refer to themselves as "Mountain Halflings." I made it more explicit that they're more outgoing and assertive than their kind are elsewhere. The sort of people who are more likely to take to an adventurer's lifestyle, and less likely to take guff from larger folk.

 

The Free City of Aarn is the largest city in the world of TA, and is noted as having a particularly sizable Halfling minority. This appears to be the biggest concentration of "urban" Halflings in the world, and makes a fine origin for characters with that background. I decided that Aarnese Halfings have integrated well into Men's society, and found niches in which they thrive. For example, they dominate the Bakers and Brewers guilds.   They're also major players in Aarn's Thieves Guilds, where their small size and natural stealthiness is frequently a great advantage. I decided that the mysterious "Lord Ebon" who leads the city's largest thieves guild is actually a Halfling who conceals his true nature from all but his most trusted underlings, so as to project a more intimidating image.

 

Another historical detail I invented is, when Men started driving the Halflings out of their ancestral lands, one group of them fled into the far North away from the Big Folk (an area the writer of TA left deliberately open for GMs to develop), where they evolved a lifestyle and culture reminiscent of the Inuit of Canada and the Sami of Finland. However, with the rise of Kal-Turak in the North (the setting's "Dark Lord"), those Halflings have been pushed ever farther toward the margins of habitable lands. Some of them might become desperate enough to head south looking for a better life, for help defending their people from Kal-Turak, or for a new home for their people.

 

By the way, I gave the Halflings of various areas distinct names that they call themselves identifying their homelands, besides just "Halfling" (which is clearly what Men chose to call them). I did the same for the other demihumans. After all, Americans don't call themselves "Humans from America." But most of those names would require explanation of the changes I made to the setting to understand their context, which isn't necessary to this discussion.

Edited May 17, 2023 by Lord Liaden

[DShomshak]

Well, IIRC some of D&D's "Tolkien but not done well" is actually, "We wanted to do Tolkien but the Tolkien estate sued when we tried." Which is why halflings are halflings instead of hobbits despite being blatantly modeled on hobbits rather than any of the other Short Folk in folklore and Fantasy.

 

I made some notes on demi-humans for my long-ago Fantasy Europa campaign, but almost none of it came up in play. Most of it didn't drift too far from the stock tropes, thought I divided halflings into three cultural traditions: basic Halflings who had converted to Christianity and otherwise assimilated; reclusive Pygmies who maintained their Stone Age culture and pantheistic faith in hiding; and Goblins who struck back at Big Folk as terroristic brigands employing poison and the darkest aspects of Pygmy magic. Rather more effort went into creating new intelligent species for the setting such as the Lizardfolk, Minotaurs and Gargoyles who'd been created by human magic and alchemy. (One of the high points of the second campaign was the team-up with the Lutheran gargoyles who sang "Onward Christian Soldiers" as they carried the barrels of holy water blessed by the PC priest as a weapon against the dug-in undead.) Other sapients, such as saturs, centaurs and merfolk, were peoples who had apparently existed as long as humans. The chief points of consideration were how they fit into European history and their current cultural status. For instance, centaurs had settled down a lot from the rowdies depicted in Greek myth -- I was inspired by the Stinz comic book, here.

 

Dean Shomshak

[Old Man]

8 hours ago, Ninja-Bear said:

I was just thinking (yup dangerous I know) that for all the Fantasy Hero is (or should be) is different than D&D, it seems that the Demihumans are just that same as D&Ds. Now some of this is understandable as fair amount of platers like easily identifiable Races. And certain traits should be there such as Halflings being short. However at least the sources of Fantasy Hero I have, the Demihumans are just Heroized versions of D&D. How do you guys tweak Demihumans? So as to he familiar yet not just a Heroized version?

 

The last time I attempted this I mixed up the races' habitats.  So I had:

 

Wood dwarves, who took a very hands-on approach to maintaining their immaculately landscaped forests

Cave elves, whose narrow skulls and spidery, flexible limbs let them squeeze into unbelievably tight crevices

City halflings, who were excellent at architecture and commerce

 

Never really got to actually play this though.

[tkdguy]

For me it was mostly how my players responded to the changes. I tried running campaigns with humans only or with races other than the standard demihuman races. Neither were warmly received by my group. My players are satisfied with standard fantasy tropes and races.

[Ninja-Bear]

I rather like the idea of Dwarves having Low light vision than Dark sight.  Savage Worlds (at least the edition I have) have an interesting ability for Halflings. They are lucky so with their mechanics they get an extra Benny to start the game.

 

And and D&D and Tolkein, what I’ve heard is that Gygax was big on demihumans but players were and LotR miniatures were available at the time so he made allowances for Demihumans. Gygax always preferred human centric stories. Remember the original game had only 3 classes all human.

[Scott Ruggels]

Old Campaign:

Demons summoned by the eastern Emperor, were pathologically selfish and lazy. They summoned a race of horned therapods as middle management.  Being mortal and horny, the spawned several generations that could not be unsummoned by then.  Having a talent for bureaucracy and contract, they avoided becoming slaves, so the demons summoned in a race of small, strong idiots as slaves, that anyone could beat and boss around. Civilization grew, the people mostly prospered. However discontent grew and eventually someone took a swipe at the emperor.  It was successful, so some of the demons returned to their planes.  Others fought amongst each other until civilization was knocked back to subsistence levels.  The idiot slave races rioted, until the middle management organized the people into a militia and chased the little creatures into the Western mountains. Eventually the remaining demons were unsummoned, cancelling out a lot of the magics, leaving a desertified land with scattered small towns and ruined cities near the broad rivers. In the West, lots of little polities, coalescing into nation states with few demihumans if any, except a forest of elves that everyone avoids as they are of the fey, and not to be trusted.   
 

New Campaign:

Currently run as pBP, No-to-Low Magic campaign taking place in a late classical period. The players are artist colleagues with furry tendencies (all women), so the Demi humans are”furries”, specifically Lupines, at the edges of the human empires (Byzantium Analogue, and. Persia Analogue to the east, fractured by some internal rebellion s. ). The are having fun with it and tend to be more bloody minded than expected.  
 

No Tolkien races in sight. 

Edited May 18, 2023 by Scott Ruggels

[Lord Liaden]

On 5/17/2023 at 7:34 AM, Ninja-Bear said:

How do you guys tweak Demihumans? So as to be familiar yet not just a Heroized version?

 

Personally, I love the original concepts being presented here. I'll just remind everyone of Ninja-Bear's OP inquiry, should you wish to address it.

[DentArthurDent]

I go to myths and legends for both monsters and players. I also love the myriad sites of lesser known artists. (Just be sure to include the artist’s name if you show them to your players. Artists and writers get very little monetary compensation. The least we can do is spread their names around.)
 

I haven’t read Beowulf in its entirety during this century. And I never made it through the Mabinogion. Or most other cultures’ legends. 
But I’m not looking to recreate a particular creature. I’m looking for something that will hold my interest long enough to figure out some stats and behaviors.
 

Most of the time they end up acting a lot like dwarves or elves or hobbits or orcs. But the sources of their motivations are different enough to make it interesting. 
 

And if the players end up calling them gnomes or wisps (instead of Zana or Sprites) then that’s fine. At least they know to expect a few surprises.

 

I once ran a campaign with elves and uruk and spectral kings. It was three months before they realized they were in the northern Misty Mountains. The elves were standoffish and rustic while the orcs were pretty lazy. It was just different enough to twist their expectations.

 

[DShomshak]

On 5/17/2023 at 12:47 PM, Old Man said:

 

The last time I attempted this I mixed up the races' habitats.  So I had:

 

Wood dwarves, who took a very hands-on approach to maintaining their immaculately landscaped forests

Cave elves, whose narrow skulls and spidery, flexible limbs let them squeeze into unbelievably tight crevices

City halflings, who were excellent at architecture and commerce

 

Never really got to actually play this though.

Even if one doesn't go for complete replacement of habitat, extending the range of habitats can put a new twist on old standards. For instance, Middle-Earth is very Northwestern European, so no surprise if the elves live in forests and hobbits live in lightly hilly regions that are good for agriculture, while dwarves delve into mountains. But what would they be like in deserts?

 

In my Magozoic D&D setting, the Plenary Empire extended into a desert regions. The orcs of the Coral Desert and Bone Desert live as nomads driving herds of camels, goats and meat-lizards in a constant search for forage. Traditionally they fought each other ferociously when they crossed paths, and frequently raided out of the desert. That led to their conquest. They've settled down somewhat under the Plenary Empire's rule. When tribes meet, they settle issues with competitive drinking and bare-knuckles brawling rather than melees with axes. Any orc who finds modern life too quiet is always welcome in the Plenary legions, where they can travel, meet new people, and kill them. (And the chow is good! Good compared to orcish cooking, anyway.)

 

Further out, humans stay close to the river system of Drohash, but other folk claim the arid lands in between. Dwarves dig into the rocky hills, but they dig for subterranean aquifers as much as for gemstones and ore. While the dwarves of the Plenary heartland are brown-skinned and called Fjellkin, the desert dwarves are coal black and call themselves Svarkin. The center of their society was the Omphalos, a shield volcano that's one of the few places to semi-reliably wring rain from the sky. Svarkin legend says it's the center of the universe and where the creator Balkin carved the first dwarves from the black basalt of the mountain. It formed the hub of an amphictyony, or religious confederation, the way DElphi formed the hub of a collection of Greek city-states.

 

Other hill or badland regions hold the Usmantae, or Dry Elves. Their villages resemble the publos of the American Southwest; they cultivate garden plots using what water they can hoard from the infrequent rains. They are the most mystical of the elf nations known to the Plenary Empire, full of cryptic maxims and significant silences, with mental magic learned through meditiation and austerities. They are also great astronomers.

 

(Bedouin elves could also be cool. Maybe for some other region -- though the desert orcs cover some of this already, and I've currently reserved some other associated tropes for my desert giants.)

 

Halflings claimed a half dozen oases, cultivating them as intensively as humans farm the river banks. Like the Usmantae, they build in adobe; for which the Plenary Empire dubbed them Laterculi, or "Bricklings." Their villages are all ring-shaped fortresses, a response to millennia of raids from cetaurs, feline tabaxi, and miscellaneous brigands driven out into the desert (not to mention the occasional monster). The Laterculi are deeply suspicious of all outsiders and fiercely defensive of their islands of life in the sea of the desert. As the Plenbary Empire expanded into Drohash, its chief interest was the densely settled river banks; demi-humans were integrated gradually as subject but self-governing tribunates -- but the Laterculi were the least accepting of Imperial hegemony, with two significant mass rebellions. (Ironically, it was Plenary domination thatgave the Laterculi a national consciousness: Before then, they were as isolationist from each other as from everyone else.)

 

Transplanting the "old standards" into other environments is left as an exercise for the reader.

 

Dean Shomshak

Edited May 19, 2023 by DShomshak

[tkdguy]

I thought about using the Wolfriders from Elfquest in my D&D games. I would  have written them up as telepathic Grugach elves riding dire wolves. My players didn't like the idea though; the elves seemed too much like goblins.

[Lord Liaden]

10 hours ago, DShomshak said:

Transplanting the "old standards" into other environments is left as an exercise for the reader.

 

Dean Shomshak

 

The Turakian Age mentions that while the majority of Elves prefer temperate forests, "some Elves prefer to live by the seaside, in the mountains, or among Men in cities." (p. 36). When I was defining/adding Elf realms I placed more of those variants among realms where the geography seemed appropriate.

 

P. 109 also notes that a major jungle has "some groups of Elves" living in it. That seems like a suitable location for a "barbarian" flavor of Elf, if that sounds appealing.

 

7 hours ago, tkdguy said:

I thought about using the Wolfriders from Elfquest in my D&D games. I would  have written them up as telepathic Grugach elves riding dire wolves. My players didn't like the idea though; the elves seemed too much like goblins.

 

That's the line you have to walk with some players' expectations: familiar enough to feel comforting, different enough to be interesting.

[tkdguy]

The Glorantha setting for Runequest has interesting takes on elves, dwarves, and trolls. Elves are sentient plants, and different types of elves have different lifestyles. Dwarves can live forever as long as they keep performing the duties delegated to their castes. Trolls are more civilized than they usually are portrayed in other fantasy games.

[Lord Liaden]

Turakian Age Trolls are another distinctive feature of the setting. They draw more from Scandinavian tradition than D&D's Poul Anderson-inspired regenerators. TA Trolls are huge, physically powerful, ugly-by-human-standards humanoids, but they're as intelligent as Men, have a sophisticated culture, are master smiths, and wield their own style of magic. And they can breed with Men to produce "half-Trolls." 😍

Edited May 19, 2023 by Lord Liaden

[Lord Liaden]

Turakian Age Gnomes are very similar to the Gnomes you usually see in D&D, but have a distinctive twist in that their origin was as the product of mating between Dwarf and Halfling, which continues to be the common outcome of that pairing. However, those hybrids proved able to breed true with each other, eventually producing their own distinct race. In the TA world of Ambrethel there are several kingdoms with large concentrations of Gnomes, who govern their local affairs under a Gnomish noble within the feudal hierarchy. (I added one fully independent Gnome kingdom.) Thus there are two distinct major origins for a Gnome character, each offering its own possibilities for character development.

 

Also in line with D&D, Turakian Gnomes are more commonly magically talented than other Short Folk. However, without the restriction of Levels and "Dual Classes," TA Gnomes are free to specialize in spell-casting and attain formidable power. At least one Gnomish sorceress is noted in the history of the setting as being a major influencer of events.

[DShomshak]

I was dubious about D&D's gnomes for a long time: What did they bring to the game that couldn't be handled by a culture of other folk? "Uhhh... They're good with illusions?" Nope, not enough for me.

 

5th edition helped a bit by emphasizing gnomes' crazy enthusiasm an innate magic. I decided to push that. Also, in developing my Magozoic setting, I decided to expand the possibilities of "Planetouched" races or subraces -- peoples who are of partial supernatural descent. I'm not a big fan of the official Tieflings (part-fiend), Aasimar (part-celestial) or Genasi (part-elemental jinni), but the concept has possibilities.

 

Also, I don't use the official system of alignment-based Outer Planes. I use a Ptolemaic mystic cosmology, with Hell mystically located at the center of the Earth and the celestial planes being literally celestial, associated with the sun, moon and planets (plus the Palisade of Night, a.k.a. the Kuiper Belt).

 

I made gnomes a race of planetouched goblins, infused with the power of Mercury. This makes them clever, magically resilient, and with an affinity for trickery and travel. (Which I know contradicts the root lore of Gnomes as earth-spirits in the system of Paracelsus, but whatever.) Every gnome has a magical or quasi-magical trick such as illusion or tinkering, even if they don't develop actual spellcasting class levels. Many of them live in caravans, whose members supply both practical services such as dentistry as well as entertainment and commerce to smaller communities. They adore tricks and jokes, from comical mechanical toys to the centuries-long hoax of being ruled by a Gnomish Council that does not actually exist. Gnomish cleverness and fun can turn dark, though: Nobody can come up with a more fiendishly inventive revenge scheme than a gnomes who feel themselves deeply wronged. They are prone to mad obsessions, such as building gnome-carrying kites or studying the life cycle of the manticore, that get them killed. Gnomes know they are a recent arrival on Old Earth (probably within the last 10,000 years). Their gods are gnomes who attained divinity through a mix of dumb luck and lever recognition of opportunity. (I'm cribbing a bit here from the Chinese Eight Immortals here.)

 

One of the PCs is an Orc Paladin who was raised by gnomes, is a toymaker in his day job, and identifies as gnomish. He confuses a lot of people. He currently lives with his kinsman, a master alchemist and tinkerer whose greatest achievement to date is a machine for making cotton candy. It's two stories tall and requires six strong youths to turn the various cranks and stoke the furnace. But it's only a first step in the gnome's goal of spinning stabilized candyfloss into thread, weaving the thread into cloth, and so producing edible candy clothing! GENIUS!

 

Dean Shomshak

[Lord Liaden]

57 minutes ago, DShomshak said:

I was dubious about D&D's gnomes for a long time: What did they bring to the game that couldn't be handled by a culture of other folk? "Uhhh... They're good with illusions?" Nope, not enough for me.

 

 

For game groups that are willing, Gnomes could replace Halflings altogether as the smallest demihuman PC race. They tend to be more versatile and physically capable, and the published Hero characters support that.

 

57 minutes ago, DShomshak said:

But it's only a first step in the gnome's goal of spinning stabilized candyfloss into thread, weaving the thread into cloth, and so producing edible candy clothing! GENIUS!

 

 

He could certainly expect customers from Ye Olde Sexxe Shoppe.

Edited May 23, 2023 by Lord Liaden

[Lord Liaden]

It recently occurred to me that Turakian Gnomes, because of their hybrid physical abilities and personalities, and their preference for hilly and/or forested regions as homes, would be suited to provide a natural bridge between Dwarves, Elves, and Men. Gnome communities would likely often sprout where the lands of those other races border each other. I could see them becoming the trade middlemen between those races, and developing a strong mercantile "middle class" as a result. Those circumstances and mindset could also lend to them becoming skilled diplomats, useful to themselves and other peoples in settling disputes and making contacts.

 

There's no reason those qualities couldn't be applied to Gnomes in any other setting. They would add another excuse for Gnomes to hire adventurers, or go on adventures themselves: not just to kill things and take their stuff, but to open up new markets or sources.

[Old Man]

1 hour ago, DShomshak said:

I was dubious about D&D's gnomes for a long time: What did they bring to the game that couldn't be handled by a culture of other folk? "Uhhh... They're good with illusions?" Nope, not enough for me.

 

The main issue with gnomes, and many demihumans, is that they are smeared together in the background mythology.  The terms gnome, halfling, brownie, pixie, goblin, and elf are arguably synonymous across a swath of European myth.  It largely boils down to size and temperament.

 

Hero's flexibility makes it well suited to deal with poorly-defined speciation.  You can define your gnome, halfling, troll, half-elf-half-giant, lycanthrope, half-demon, full-demon, half-lizard minotaur, or whatever and the mechanics are there.  It becomes a campaign question to define the various races, so it falls to the GM and players to decide how weird they want it to get.  You could run a maximum weird Mos Eisley-like campaign in Hero if you wanted to.  But I reckon most players are most comfortable with something Tolkienlike.

[tkdguy]

I toyed with the idea of a D&D game with humans and gnomes only and have certain classes only available to the races. Since I play AD&D/OSR games, I'll go with those classes. I would also remove the level limits for gnomes.

 

Both races: assassin, bard, fighter, thief

Humans only: cleric, magic-user, monk, paladin

Gnomes only: druid, illusionist, ranger

 

With the exception of the monk, the classes limited by race have counterparts which perform similar roles: cleric/druid, magic-user/illusionist, paladin/ranger. These classes would normally be seen as defenders of their race, assuming nonevil alignment.

[assault]

I treat Gnomes as a subrace of Dwarves.

 

I call them "Burrowing Dwarves".

No real place for them in my current game though.

[Ninja-Bear]

On 5/23/2023 at 1:02 PM, Lord Liaden said:

 

For game groups that are willing, Gnomes could replace Halflings altogether as the smallest demihuman PC race. They tend to be more versatile and physically capable, and the published Hero characters support that.

 

Wow, as I was reading Dean comment before this, I thought of the exact thing. Now, should I make the gnomes as small as depicted or keep then halfing sized? The halfling’s ability to hide could be a natural illusion.

 

Btw, I was going through the BBB and the wood elves and dwarves packages seem a lot simpler than the Fantasy Hero 4th. I didn’t though do a thorough comparison.

Edited May 25, 2023 by Ninja-Bear

[Lord Liaden]

7 hours ago, Ninja-Bear said:

 

Btw, I was going through the BBB and the wood elves and dwarves packages seem a lot simpler than the Fantasy Hero 4th. I didn’t though do a thorough comparison.

 

If true, I wouldn't be surprised. The BBB examples were mostly for illustrative purposes, but the ones in the genre books were intended to be usable for actual PCs.

Edited May 25, 2023 by Lord Liaden