Do you think having fantasy races are a necessity to some extent?
They're necessary if you can't write well enough to make your different groups of humans varied and interesting
I personally enjoy them.
Plus at this point I'm sick of humans only, no fun allowed, Game of Throne rip-off worlds made by people who are trying way too hard.
>>46472069
I think they're fun m8 and you can't stop me from putting Sahaguin into my world fucker
>>46472184
I'm equally sick of "elf-men-orcs-dwarves."
What's your fantasy race dream team?
I'll start
>>centaurs
>>46472231
Elf men orc dwarfs
>>46472231
Perdito Street Station did a really good job of making new and interesting fantasy races.
>people with bugs for heads
>amphibious frog people
>anthromorphic cacti
>moths that eat souls
I like The Elder Scrolls approach; a numbers of human races in addition to fantasy races. You've got your humans that are strong, humans focused entirely on magic, humans balanced between might and magic, and even black humans.
Sure, Orcs are stronger than Nords, Altmer are better at magic than Bretons, Dunmer are better at sword and sorcery than Imperials, with Bosmer being better at bows and Khajiit better at stealth, and Argonians are better at being the token minority race than Redguards; but there's still variety.
>>46472273
Elf-men and Orc-dwarves. Magical skinny wide-spread surface-dwelling people and grumpy industrious beefy tusked tunnel-digging people.
>>46472231
I'm actually aiming for cultures, races be damned. As long as there are Mesoamerican, Southeast Asian, and Persian expies, I'm okay with any (or no) fantasy races.
I prefer space settings. It's much easier to justify different races when you have entire solar systems to work with.
>>46472545
Would you prefer Feline Persians, or them being Lizardfolk instead?
>>46472584
I'll save feline for when I wanted Egyptians. So I think Persians go with lizardfolk.
>>46472050
> Do you think having fantasy races are a necessity to some extent?
No.
In my experiences when the setting has fantasy races, usually they're there just because D&D (which also is fine example how to not do fantasy races) or LoTR has them. It can be done right, but practically never is and I much prefer human races only settings.
>>46472050
It's not a necessity but it makes things more interesting.
That being said, having fantasy races shouldn't be a pass to make every race totally homogenous. Not every human should have the same culture or traits. Not every elf should have similar personality quirks or attitudes. Things like that are specific to cultures, not to entire species of people.
>>46472050
No. Fantasy races are just cariactures of foreign cultures.
You can have a fantasy setting without having to typecast Norwegians as tall or short magic people.
>>46472050
They aren't necessary unless they are.
The only type of fantasy race I have a problem with is person+animal features.
Not because of being anti-furry, I just find it lazy.
>>46472231
>Skaven
>Druid slothmen
>Many different bug races
>Octopi that rely on mechs to be able to traverse on land
>80's style rock & roll, sex, and murderbots
>CRAB PEOPLE
>Dwarves
>Snow elves bound to their sapient mammoth partners
>lizardmen/kobolds with dragon overlords
>>46473164
To be honest almost every setting (no matter if it has only human races, fantasy races or one human race) has cultures that are based on caricatures of real life cultures. Also, there is nothing wrong with this if it's done well. Best settings use mixed cultures like Dunmer from elder scrolls that are a mashup of different irl cultures.
This is because it's pretty damn to invent a truly new culture, so hard in fact that I've never really seen any setting that tries doing so. Would be interested to see one though.
>>46473211
it's pretty fucking cool in the Dwarf Fortress setting. Pretty much all animals have a giant version and a man version, and the men usually form small tribes in the wilderness behaving mostly like wild animals, with occasionally them finding their way into society somewhere.
They are not attractive.
>>46472584
>not winged humans
Zarathustra is disappointed.
Not a necessity, but depending on setting, theme and handling they can add or detract from game/whatever.
Not really a big fan of this whole modern 'human-only' trend that is taking up a lot of space in the world of fantasy fiction.
Elves always seem to make things more fun.
>>46473310
Pretty much this.
I can't think of a single reason why the mere existence of non-human races would automatically make a setting better or worse.
>>46473331
Why have elves when you can have human race that has pointy ears (double points if the setting manages to find believable evolutionary reason for them) and is basically elf without all the unnecessary historical baggage that comes with naming it elf?
The classical species in fantasy represent a flaw in humans played out to the extreme.
The traditional fantasy species are meant to represent a flaw played out to its extreme:
Elves: Pride
Dwarves: Greed
Orcs: Wroth
Whereas the fringe races people detest don't have such an easy sin to play off of (Halflings = sloth? Gnomes = envy?)
In the context of an RPG, their usage is twofold:
1. Present the dungeon master a problem to present to players (Dwarves dug too deep for gold, Elves believe the BBEG is nothing to worry about) and
2. Give the player an entry point for character creation that is familiar enough yet sparks imagination (When rolling a half-orc, you're fighting your inner rage).
So long as you can capture this feeling in your creation of cultures, subcultures, or other fantastical species, You've done well.
They CAN be fun but are overused 1000%
My two best characters ever were elves.
On the other hand I'm starved like fuck to play some conanesque low fantasy game with humans only
I'm especially sick of faggots that insist of playing game with non-human races because "lololo, humans are so normal and bland and boring", and then pick up a non-human character, terribly fail to rp it differently from human, beside few most blatant, stereotypical traits, and with no other quality either, so it's actually their character who is insanely boring when compared to human ones and not vice versa
And those faggots are like 80% of players picking non-human races, and like 100% of players insisting on having a choice to do so in every game.
>>46472231
>Ratfolk
You can't tell me you don't secretly wish to be a rat
Generally speaking I think they're a crutch, but that doesn't mean they can't be fun.
>>46473331
there is no such "trend"
there always were niche games like that, and they aren't really less niche now, at least from my point of view.
Unless you mean general fantasy, not just gaming but then you're uneducated retard, as ripping-off tolkien everywhere itself is a (relatively) recent trend and in film and literature "humans-only" is actually completely dominant thing since forever.
>>46473262
I wonder how you could handle this as a player race in a tabletop RPG setting. A hamster man or kangaroo man probably dosen't need too much of a difference from a normal human. But the flying abilities of kea men and bat men can be problematic in a lot of ways. And that's not even getting into the really weird stuff like leech man, jumping spider man, squid man, mantis man, sperm whale man, copperhead snake man, or even plump helmet man!
I think you could at least deal with the winged issue by saying "animal men have the head, skin, and sometimes feet/claws and tail of their animal", so you exclude harpy, centaur, and mermaid style creatures. Then just deal out improved/diminished senses, waterbreathing, venom, and claw weapons.
>>46473307
Not unless you want them to be smaller birdfolk.
Also, armwings or wings + arms?
>>46473605
All something really needs is opposable thumbs, or some equivalent that allows fine manipulation, and high enough brain function to develop a language.
Give bats the dexterity required to weave and cast nets and a language and bam, you've got some next-level flying hunter gatherers.
Elves should act more like Aliens. Not of the spock-kind, but the kind who is prone to steal cattle and kidnapping people for anal proving.
>>46473712
How did you arrive at that conclusion?
Seems needlessly fetishy and lolrandumb to me.
>>46472231
Terrestrial humans, genespiced martian colonists, androids.
>>46473728
Because this is pretty much the classic characterization of the Fair Folk. Creatues and supernatural beings that act in obscure ways and strange rules, alien morality, alien bodies, who randomly abduct humans, play with them, and return them after years or even centuries have passed, occasionally coming back with weird gifts.
>>46473728
the archetypal alien abduction story maps pretty closely to the legends of being whisked off to by the fey.
I personally like to squeeze the races down into their most composite parts to avoid overlap and give the setting a more 'magical' and mythical feeling.
For example, instead of having elves and dwarves. tieflings, and half-giants as races; make them all human races with those bloodlines. The vicious manead people, humans except with fierce hair and retractable claws. The demonic Cloven; witchery is in their blood. The mighty ash people, closest to the heart of the volcano God. The big folk made when the Warrior queen straddled the mountain so she could fuck the whole world.
This is the origin of human races; mythical and ancient, brimming with magic and flavor.
The other races, few as they be, are similar condensed. Such as the barrow folk, rats and weasels and badgers and bunnies and foxes; they stand on two legs and talk like men, but live far away in their idealistic communities, away from the big folk who enslave them. Or the fated Vanara, enlightened monkey men not lesser or greater then humans, simply on a different path. The path of the jungle.
>>46473249
>>Octopi that rely on mechs to be able to traverse on land
This is one of the best ideas that I've ever heard
>>46473775
>>46473782
Be that as it may, I just want you to imagine how an average group of players would react to their DM telling them that after walking into a forest they wake up and some funny lookin' dudes are jamming things up their butts.
You probably also wouldn't want your character to get raped by Zeus if you were playing in ancient Greece. Some things are just better left away from the table.
>>46473813
i'm pretty sure the anal probing was tongue-in-cheek anon
i'm pretty sure they didn't actually intend literal anal probingfae are much worse than that
>>46473562
My nigga. Had me a rodent hard=on ever since Skaven... or maybe redwall... mmm...
>>46473813
Then get better players
One day a young fisherman named Urashima Tarō is fishing when he notices a group of children torturing a small turtle. Tarō saves it and lets it to go back to the sea. The next day, a huge turtle approaches him and tells him that the small turtle he had saved is the daughter of the Emperor of the Sea, Ryūjin, who wants to see him to thank him. The turtle magically gives Tarō gills and brings him to the bottom of the sea, to the Palace of the Dragon God (Ryūgū-jō). There he meets the Emperor and the small turtle, who was now a lovely princess, Otohime. On each of the four sides of the palace it is a different season.
Tarō stays there with Otohime for three days, but soon wants to go back to his village and see his aging mother, so he requests permission to leave. The princess says she is sorry to see him go, but wishes him well and gives him a mysterious box called tamatebako which will protect him from harm but which she tells him never to open. Tarō grabs the box, jumps on the back of the same turtle that had brought him there, and soon is at the seashore.
When he goes home, everything has changed. His home is gone, his mother has vanished, and the people he knew are nowhere to be seen. He asks if anybody knows a man called Urashima Tarō. They answer that they had heard someone of that name had vanished at sea long ago. He discovers that 300 years have passed since the day he left for the bottom of the sea. Struck by grief, he absent-mindedly opens the box the princess had given him, from which bursts forth a cloud of white smoke. He is suddenly aged, his beard long and white, and his back bent. From the sea comes the sad, sweet voice of the princess: "I told you not to open that box. In it was your old age ..."
No, but I like them. Adds some style. Bonus points if they also have varied cultures instead of the typical "only humans understand diversity" schick.
>>46472231
elf-men-orcs-dwarvesand motherfucking bugmen
>>46475150
>Bonus points if they also have varied cultures instead of the typical "only humans understand diversity" schick.
For fuck's sake, THIS.
>>46473923
>i'll just give him the old age box, see what he will do with it
>lol he actually opened it, the idiot!
Fucking fae.
