>I hate orcs, elves, dwarves, gnomes and halflings
>I hate generic fantasy and anything that's very derivative of Tolkien's works
>but every system continues to use the same template for races and fluff
>every time a new race comes along it's just a humanoid version of an existing animal
>no fantasy system will ever make a genuinely new and unique race
>why does everyone think TTRPGs need to be their own take on D&D or LOTR?
Does anyone else feel my feels?
Also "this thing about tabletop gaming sucks" thread.
>>48089430
There's no such thing as a "genuinely new and unique race" because nothing is ever completely original. However, your problem is very easy to fix : make up your own settings and lore. Even if you think you're bad at it, you'll at least create something that fits your taste.
>>48089465
The issue with that is I'd have to DM. Annoyingly, being the DM stresses me the fuck out for no good reason. I just wanna play in a world that's fresh and exciting, you know?
>>48089490
You could play a more collaborative system and work with your GM to build the setting. I'm the GM for two Fate campaigns, and while I handle most of the worldbuilding because I'm autistic and obsessed with it, I have my players contribute lots of lore too. In one campaign they each wrote basic lore for their country of origin while I handled the specifics and connecting all of it, for example.
How do the people you play with feel about the issue ? Would they be up to work on an original setting ?
But seriously, what kind of race would you make? The one that isn't tolkien/d&d demihuman or anthro. Plant/mushroom-men? Immaterial spirits? Robots?
>>48089575
The people I play with are pretty close minded. I've been trying for years to get them off pathfinder let alone switch to something like a collaborative system.
The best idea I've got is to mix and match a few different mechanical ideas from some different systems and add in my own fluff, then run a trial campaign, and hope it catches on with the group to the point where the DM decides to use it.
>>48089490
>being the DM stresses me the fuck out for no good reason. I just wanna play in a world that's fresh and exciting, you know?
In other words, you're a lazy entitled shit who wants others to do all the hard work while you reap all the benefits?
Why are foreverPlayers so entitled?
>>48089430
Here's an idea: Play something other than fucking 3.X derivative systems
>>48089661
Honestly just demi-humans other than tolkien races would be enough. The vaarl from banner saga were pretty awesome. Even lifting alien races from space operas and inserting them into fantasy would be better than rehashing the same old shit.
Nihil novi sub sole, bitch.
>>48089731
>it's not my fault I'm not having fun, it's everyone else's fault for not having fun the way I want them to
>I don't want to make an interesting setting, because that takes work
>Why doesn't anyone want to do all the work for me
>"this player sucks" thread
>>48089726
Most alien races from space operas are just reskinned Tolkein races.
>>48089705
It's not that I'm lazy or whatever. I write out long plots, make dungeons, build my own monsters. My NPCs have secret motivations and clear personalities. I have plenty of character ideas written down in case I need to come up with a random black smith or bartender. Everything is fine, until we go to play. Then I freeze up. I don't know how to talk properly, I take every minor slip up as a huge fuck up. Every time someone points out that I messed up a rule (which happens often as I prefer to keep the ball rolling than stop to check the rules), I take it as a personal attack. I really wish I wasn't so socially inept because there's so many cool ideas I come up with constantly that I'll never be able to share short of writing a book, which is a lot of dedication that I'm not willing to make.
>>48089782
Some are, but definitely not all. At the very least if you get into the novels of a lot of franchises they become more interesting, fleshed out and unique.
>>48089787
>it's not my fault, I just can't hack it!
>but these other guys owe me a quality game using the settings and characters that I want them to portray and it's not fair that they refuse
Let me guess, you were born some time between 1993-2000.
>>48089841
I'm not saying they owe it to me, I'm just saying I wish that the genre of fantasy was a bit more imaginative. I realise no one's going to make that happen for my benefit and I don't expect anyone to. When >>48089575 suggested ways to encourage my group to change for my benefit, I explained why I don't think that would work, and offered my own idea in >>48089684 which would actually be more work for me than a collaborative setting would.
You need to chill the fuck out, whatever the fuck happens with my game group has literally no effect on yours.
>>48089787
Find a DM and write a detailed setting for them to run, then
>>48089465
>There's no such thing as a "genuinely new and unique race" because nothing is ever completely original.
Hate cunts with this attitude tbqh
>>48089430
Make your own races/settings then you massive faggot.
I'm currently running a game in a Mongol/Byzantine themed Silk Road type setting, where the main races are Humans, Giant Snakes (With a snake-man servitor race) from not!India, Blood-skinned butchers from not!Africa that come in two flavors, big and FUCK THAT'S BIG, who herd elephants and megabeasts across the psudo-African plains, water-spirit touched humanoids, tainted by the Oasis of the cities, various folks from the cursed Black Desert (Which is currently a Theocracy run by a goddess of Vengance...who is one of the more benevolent gods in the setting) and those are just the races the PCs know exist.
Git gud at making things interesting son.
>>48089973
It's true tho
>>48089430
That's why I playa system based in the MLP universe
My friends, it has often been said that I dislike Tolkien. My friends, I dislike Tolkien. No, friends, I HATE Tolkien! I hate elves. I hate orcs. I hate dwarves. I hate Gondor. Rohan. I hate the Wild Dunlendings and the Knights of Dol Amroth. I hate hobbits in shires, on mountains, in Moria, in plains, at towers, in badlands, in cities, in the stronghold of the enemy I hate every location of every hobbit that can occur in any fiction!
I hate when elves sing precious songs that brighten the hearts of men on the fields of battle! My heart sinks with despair whenever a plucky young hobbit tosses the power of the enemy into a pit of boiling! There is nothing acceptable about dwarves donning iron masks to withstand enemy dragons. And the feeling that comes when an elf-blooded king runs screaming into the endless ranks of the enemy only to be victorious is such a horrible feeling.
>>48089490
Right, so you're an entitled asshat who is happy to shit on other people's efforts but refuses to step up to the fucking plate. Gotcha.
DMing is always stressful. You aren't special.
>>48089973
I don't mean it in a bad way. I just think you have to accept that you can never be completely original. You can certainly do something that feels new in some ways, but we never create out of nothing, we're influenced by everything we've read, played, watched. And that's completely normal and okay.
>>48089787
Co-DM with somebody else.
>>48089782
Play Mass Effect.
>>48089973
You're retarded. Originality is dead and gone. Authenticity is the important thing that has been left in it's place.
The only way to be original these days is to be deliberately contrarian with audience expectations, which isn't a good way to weave a good narrative. On the other hand, almost anything can be authentic if you put some soul into it.
>>48090117
That's not a bad idea, how well has that worked out for you (if you have any experience co-DMing)?
Some of my friends have co DM before and unfortunately it seemed as if they didn't have enough going to keep them both busy. At any given point one of them was basically just sitting there doing nothing.
>>48089430
>Thinking Tolkien invented elves
>Thinking mainstream media dent just steal old folk stories
>being a faggot who can't just change them
>>48090166
It can be a little awkward at first, with one person basically just sitting in the background and observing like some shadowy overlord, but as long as you can trust the person you share the role with implicitly there aren't usually any major roadbumps. He/She will be dealing with combat and character interaction, you'll be feeding them setting information and quickly coming up with new scenarios to put the PCs into. You don't really even need to be creating things that you intend to put into play immediately.
It's like having one person writing the campaign and setting even while another person is running it.
>>48089490
Hahaha you entitled whiny turd. I'm a forever DM myself and i cannot have sympathy for your pitful ass when you whine about nothing being original but aren't willing to take the DM seat. Do you think i wouldnt love to just sit back and be a player in a perfect setting crafted for my liking? Yes I would.
Knock knock.
Who's there?
Reality.
What do you want?
To tell you that's not how life works.
>>48089841
>I don't know when mellinials were born
>>48090046
It's not.
>>48090149
>this post
>You're retarded.
>>48089987
Tell us more of this setting anon.
>stories would be nice
>>48090149
i hate you people, first off theres new shit all the time in different forms, if there was nothing new we wouldn't have patent offices. yeah every idea has something similar or whatever, or inspiration, but thinking nothing can be new is retarded, what do you think in 100 years it will be the exact same shit, no, there will be new shit, new technology, new tabletop races and new stories, so shut your mouth.
second off, you can be original by being just that, throw out what /tg keeps telling new gm's, every time i see a "how do i gm" thread everyone says "Take inspiration from other media" if you want to be original stop that, thats the opposite of originality, you have to work for it. it can be done, thats why you see new and interesting green text stories of people being original in their ideas.
Lastly and most important, BEING ORIGINAL DOESNT MATTER!! as long as you have fun, if you're more worried about the elves being elves, and the big bad being genuinely bad, and everything being fantasy europe instead of just having fun, you're a bad player and you should just quit, you're being a good for nothing whiney bitch and ruining your own good time for a story and fun.
>>48089430
>>48090307
>there will be new shit, new technology, new tabletop races and new stories, so shut your mouth.
All of which will have been imagined before.
Learn the goddamn difference between authenticity and originality.
>>48089987
Not a lot of those races except for humans and snake servitors sound like they'd be easily playable alongside each other.
>>48090144
Asari=elves.
Krogan=orks.
Salarians=gnomes except frog XD!
Batarians=drow.
Protheans=there always has to be a progenitor race, except they're frog XD!
>>48089430
Write your own shit then, you whiny cunt. Be the change you want to see in the world.
>But it's haaaaaaaaard!
Yeah, no one said it was going to be easy. If you're going to be a lazy bitch, you've really got no right to complain.
>>48090342
shut up faggot lmao
>>48089430
>I hate fantasy.
Play sci-fi settings.
>>48090094desu family mlp setting is actually pretty good, no race is archetypal and things like draconequui and ahruizotl makes my playgroup kinda wanna run it despite two of them not really liking it.
If you want new and unique races, let's see some ideas.
I've mostly moved on to humans only games. Most RPGs don't have race make a major mechanical impact and most players don't really take it into account when they roleplay anyway, so what difference does it make? Is one word on your character sheet important enough to justify all this bitching, or is it just another sacred cow?
>>48089934
>I wish that the genre of fantasy was a bit more imaginative.
So write your own setting.
>b-b-b-but I'm retarded
>>48090370
Lesser Slaughterers are totally playable while the larger ones aren't, members of the Black Desert clans? Totally playable. Ditto for Water-spirit touched humans.
>>48090276
Not much to say so far, the players have just arrived in not!Samarkand and are currently in the middle of a job in which the master of camels of their caravan got in touch with them, invited them to the local bath house (Big on public baths, the city is, since water is so scarce and its both a sign of the 'equality' of the city as well as power that the city can support one) and put them in touch with one of his old clan-brothers who had just been smacked about by the local authorities after a job gone bad.
So, they had to find his girlfriend before the guards did, in a midnight shenannigans fest that involved visiting a brothel that caters to scholars, a blackmarket slave auction and is now going to take them to a Sherbert Garden run by an alchemist that's a meeting point for local crooks so they can meet one of the heads of the city Universities/Libraries.
Scholars in this city being locked in a cold war for dominance of the city education and half of them being one small step away from both adventurers and thugs.
Don't fucking complain if you don't have imagination, read you bastard, read books so you can create your setting.
I think animal inspired races can be cool as long as they are far enough removed from the animal in question, and you avoid the furfag or overly generic shit. No canines, felines, ect. Also, they shouldn't just be remodeled humans. They should be distinctive, culturally and biologically. One of the races in my setting is inspired by crabs. I like them, and my players do to.
>>48090830
He's stuck playing Pathfinder. He mighjt be kind of a shit for not being willing to step up to the DM plate, but I can sympathize with someone whose friends are all Paizodrones getting tired of 3.PF.
Feel your way off a cliff.
>>48090267
>fuck i forgot how to spell millenials
>>48089809
>if you get into the novels of a lot of franchises they become more interesting
Completely false.
>>48089430
The dilemma with originality is that the more you stray from the beaten path, the less common ground you have to work with.
Generic tolkien-style fantasy works for most people because it's known and very easy to conceptualize. You can tweak the details with minor effort to create a strong impression. Dragon Age for example, is the very most generic type of setting, but it does things like sticking most of the elves in alienages, setting up tensions between casters and templars, the mystique and uncertainty behind their rather singular religion, and such things. These points of difference are interesting and encourage players to explore and learn about things, without overwhelming them.
>>48089430
What's wrong with 'furry' animal races though? They are clearly mythologically defined and have easy cultural/personality flags based on the animals they are based off of.
How do you feel about all or mostly human settings? I know there are some of those out there.
OP, if you're still here, worst case if you have to keep playing 3pf, you can at least find some of the stranger splats for it and get your friends hype on them like Distant Worlds. Up the weird abit, show them cool looking stuff and see if they bite.
On being shit at dming, its a practice thing. You only get better by doing it. Start small, don't plan everything out so strongly you get choked up, talk with everyone beforehand about how you're going to be making rulings to keep things fast/exciting instead of rule chasing. Run a module instead of a full campaign, it'll give your dm a break and let everyone try new characters they were interested in and go from there.
If it really seems like its just not going to happen, find a new group of people to game with. There's lots of shit that isn't hyper derivative fantasy.
>>48089430
Everything 'original' is, in fact, derivative. Any concept ever created by humanity is at most a modest alteration to a preexisting concept, regardless of whether the creator was aware of the prior concept. Most of the folklore that we view as original evolved over time, likely 'starting' as stories that would have been fairly typical for current time period. There have never been truly original works, only novel works.
