Hi /tg/. Quick question to get all you worldbuilders thinking.
How do you differentiate dwarves from gnomes? Not just how dwarves are miners by trade, and their proportions are slightly different. These two races are very similar. How do you create obvious boundaries and make these two races nothing alike.
Also, this question stands for kobolds and goblins. Kobolds are usually less of tinkerers, but these small tribal green meanies are too alike in everything but appearance. Try to come up with some ways to separate these two as well.
This has always been a pet peeve of mine. (These races being so similar except for a select few traits.) I'm curious to see your responses.
Extra credit: How are orcs and gnolls different from eachother in everything but appearance? (both savage man sized humanoids, living in barbaric warring tribes, usually aggresive.)
gnomes are fey, nature spirits. Gnomes live in small hamlets in forests and hillsides.
>>44119225
goblins are more human like, while kobolds usually are lizard like. Kobolds also are alot more into thievery while goblins tinker more. Goblins live in underground/caves. While kobold live in marshes/wetland and caves.
>>44119501
>>44119225
Orcs are more smarter then gnolls and alot more civilized and its easier for them to take advantages of civilization. While Gnolls live in barbaric tribes and are much more aggressive.
Gnolls are matriachy as well.
>>44119225
Why bother naming something X but making them Y? Why not just give it a different name?
Why name a race "dwarves" when they're 5 foot tall half minotaurs with pointy ears?
That bothers the fuck out of me
why are kobolds both lizards and dog like? Which one is original? i get so confused.
>>44119732
Dogs first then lizards.
I think 3.5 made them lizards but I might be wrong.
From the sound of it, your framework is some version of D&D, and a recognized issue with most D&D settings is race overcrowding. As a general means of dealing with overlapping races, you can always just exclude one of the two from your setting. As for the three specific race overlaps you ask about-
Gnomes vary wildly by setting. Some make them related to fey, some have them as magical halflings, some have them as solitary forest dwarves. In my setting I removed the overt dwarven connection entirely and made them related to elves in the same way halflings are to humans.
Goblins tend to be more aggressive, stupid, and independent, whereas kobolds tend to be more territorial, communal, proud and intelligent. Which of the two is the tinker race alternates depending on the setting. In my setting I just cut kobolds entirely, since they also overlap with dragonborn and lizardfolk, which both appear in the setting.
As for orcs and gnolls, gnolls tend to be more bestial in than orcs not just in appearance but in behavior. They're typically even less civilized or organized than orcs. In my setting I cut orcs and just applied the "orc" name to half-orcs as a human subrace, though for reasons other than avoiding overlap with other baddy races. Gnolls are uncommon, specific in their geography, and barely more intelligent than real-world apes.
>>44119225
Personally I think Gnomes and Halfings are ultimately superfluous if you have Dwarves in a setting, but I'm not a big fan most "standard fantasy races" since they all feel like off-shoots of human anyway.
Frankly, if you have to ask "how do I differentiate" two races, you should probably just axe one and flesh out the other.
>>44119683
Because Dwarves don't fucking exist, they can be whatever you fucking want.
>>44119732
>>44119799
I thought they were lizard like, but when D&D got ported to Japan they got jumbled up with Gnolls and eventually the idea of dog bolds got ported back west. At least that's what I think what happened?
gnomes are what happens when a elf and a dwarf fuck
>>44119957
>They can be whatever the fuck you want
True, but I'm also not going to make a race of 4 ft tall, stout, mountain folk and call them dragons.
You can deviate a bit with names, You can put in your own flavor. But making a race entirely something other than the name ascribed to it is just lazy, douche bag writing "Oh look at my clever race of dwarves who are so unlike all other dwarves. Aren't I so clever, I'm like the Steven Jobs of fantasy"
If you're going to make a unique race, give it a unique name. Don't cheapen your own creation.
>>44119957
Folkloric kobolds were tiny humanoid house/mine spirits. In D&D they were always some degree of reptilian, but were primarily dog-like in the earliest editions (and goblinoids). Pretty sure the switch to full reptilian came before 2e. A lot of non-D&D stuff, especially from Japan, still uses dog kobolds though.
>>44119225
I usually treat kobolds as a distant relative of dragonborns. First they were legit dragonborns but over centuries of subjugation by dragons as servants, ~half of them became a meek servant-caste spending their whole lives worshipping and serving their master. The other half became a guard/warrior-caste dedicated to actually going out and getting whatever the dragon wants as well as running interference on any would-be-dragonslayers.
I treat goblins as a savage cousin of orcs. Most goblins travel in roaming bands made up of a couple of families, (trying to) take whatever they need as they come across it. They aren't usually very cognitively developed and rely more on overwhelming any opponents en masse rather than actually strategize. Occasionally an intelligent goblin will develop and eventually leave their family to seek whatever catches their interests; most cities turn them away based on their race but a few will accept them to try developing their potential.
>>44120115
Reptilian/Draconic kobolds go back at least as far as AD&D 1st ed.
I illustrate them as hairy little dragon guys, because in rather a lot of fantasy art fur and dragons are not mutually exclusive.
>>44119225
In my setting, Dwarves Gnomes and Haflings all descend from the same progenitor race, but Dwarves evolved to survive better in high mountain areas and caves, Halflings settled the grasslands and hilly fields of the east, and Gnomes were affected by the heavily magical background radiation of their forest home.
Similarly, Humans and Giants share an ancestor race as do Orcs and Goblins. Then of course there's the split up of elven races, but that is more due to ancient racial and political tensions, where the religious sect of the Dark Elves led a schism in the old elven empire and split it in half, separating the two halves of the empire to evolve vastly different, culturally.
Kobolds, Gnolls, Harpies, etc are just the names given to various animal-like races that inhabit the land, instead of just going "catfolk" and "dogfolk".
>>44119225
When I run games, Halflings and Gnomes have usually already been genocided. Because I hate those little fuckers. There is ONE TRUE SHORTRACE.
With that, there's a lot more room for Kobold expansion into former gnome conceptual territory. I like to use gobbos as swarmers with warg cavalry, and kobolds more as stalkers, trappers and ambushers.
>>44119225
>That Female Gnome
muh dik
>>44119225
>How do you differentiate dwarves from gnomes?
Dwarves are short humanoids, Gnomes are good and not-ugly Goblinoids.
>Kobolds
I like to just flesh them out as happy go-lucky lizard folk living in the underground trying to eek out a living, being lawful neutral.
>Goblins
Nasty little buggers who like traps, but due to cultural differences they consider their traps to be "pranks"
>>44119225
Its rather easy to make them distinct.
Dwarves are the race of hirsute underground crafters of crude metal and stone. They are dour and curt and rather drab.
Gnomes on the other hand are fey tricksters, bright and cheery and full of life. They like to talk and experience new things, since if they dont, they will bleach out and die a slow agonizing death.
One is solid like stone, built for lasting against the ages doing the same thing for long periods of time, the other is flighty and flits from one experience to another or else face having their souls disintegrate.
As to Kobolds and goblins, one is a draconic race of tinkers and trapmakers who survive against all the bigger races with quick wits and command of tech, while the other is a lunatic horde of green sociopathic assholes who are three feet tall and like explosions, fire, and spiky things.
Orcs are the rampaging horde, the celtic warriors who ran into battle naked to prove their strength and vigor. Orcs always come in large numbers. Gnolls are the bestial hunters and cowardly scavengers that come in the night and harry and harass till an opportunity opens to kill. Gnolls come in small packs looking for easy prey.
Essentially you're a moron who has never given any long thought to the actual races and rely on simplistic and superficial differences and are now upset with that.
