What Makes a Good Non-Human Fantasy Race?

[Shadowsoul]

Re: What Makes a Good Non-Human Fantasy Race?

 

I got tired of humans always being the younger race. In my current campaign humans were the first to achieve civilisation with either the Strell or the Golgira coming in second depending on who you ask. Despite this long history though the current humans feel little kinship with the first human civilisations which fell long ago. It's just a part of the history of the world and something that learned humans can trot out if they want to irritate members of other races.

[Fenixcrest]

Re: What Makes a Good Non-Human Fantasy Race?

 

Typically, I try to make my (PC) races somewhat alien, in that they are a different species, but still human-like in a way. That is, in the category of sapient races, there are two broad subcategories: psychologically compatible with humans (PC races), and all the others (NPC races).

 

One example from a lot of the worlds I've built, including the current one, is that humans are a form of goblinoid. What seperates them from orcs, goblins, and the like, though, is the fact that they are physically wired for things like emotional compassion and extended bouts of "rational" thought. The goblins, on the other hand, remain as essentially vicious little eating machines who have figured out things like language, structural engineering, and metallurgy, as well as their own form of culture, which is a culture completely incompatible with humans, who are food. A human trying to talk to a goblin in gobbish is about the same as a goblin trying to talk to a human in northwestern commontrade, a largely frustrating exercise in which the other party doesn't ever answer questions in a way that the asker deems useful or sane, and usually results in somebody getting stabbed.

 

The elves, on the other hand, while technically a form of fey that has nothing to do with mankind or its ancestry, are able to interact with and largely empathise humans, and vice-versa, leaving only minor confusion about why humans go to great lengths to alter the land around their settlements, or why elves insist that their roads are very clearly marked and laid out when nobody else can ever seem to tell them apart from the rest of the forest floor.

[Vanguard00]

Re: What Makes a Good Non-Human Fantasy Race?

 

I got tired of humans always being the younger race. In my current campaign humans were the first to achieve civilisation with either the Strell or the Golgira coming in second depending on who you ask. Despite this long history though the current humans feel little kinship with the first human civilisations which fell long ago. It's just a part of the history of the world and something that learned humans can trot out if they want to irritate members of other races.

 

I played in a world like that and thought to one day develop the idea. Essentially humans were the first race, and all others stemmed from the various usages and developments of magic in the land. As elemental mana (for lack of better term) was tapped, those with such potential eventually became the world's equivalent to elves, with several "subraces" developing concurrently. As the "binding" magic (that which bound the world) was developed, so too did the race that would eventually fill the traditional dwarf/gnome niche. Other races were created from tainted magic (orcs) or simply from living with the magic instead of using it (halflings, faeries and the like). Some few developed from preying on magic (draconian-like race).

 

The magic of the world--and time/evolution--allowed for a variety of races to populate the planet, but humans were still the oldest race.

 

Those are about all the notes I had as I never developed the idea on my own and I've long since lost touch with the original GM. Still, they helped formulate my own ideas of using fantasy races.

 

For me personally, with the one world I developed fairly extensively, humans populated the main continent and were essentially treated as a European community, with mostly similarities but a few differences between them. Fantasy races filled the niche of other historical cultures, such as Japan (elves), Egypt/Sumeria (dwarves), Gypsy-esque nomads (halflings) and American Indians (orcs).

 

So, to answer the original question of "what makes a good non-human fantasy race" I'd have to say that it's one you are happy with, whether you're a GM or a player.