# Different Races



## Wings&Weird (Aug 11, 2011)

As in, elves, trolls, dwarves, dragons, vampires, werewolves and made up races all in one world. I usually put them miles apart on my maps of worlds, and give them different cultures and religions and traits. 

What are the most races you've ever had in one 'world', what were their traits and did they get on?


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## TWErvin2 (Aug 11, 2011)

One thing to consider, just as humans form different cultures and belifes/religions, other races could do so as well.


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## Theankh (Aug 11, 2011)

I tried having three different races once, but it didn't work for me - they were all just humans really but some of them had pointy ears and funny coloured hair, and others were really great at fighting or magic  it was a bit rubbish.

I envy people who can juggle genuinely different races!


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## LostMagi42 (Aug 12, 2011)

Well, I have four major ones, anthen two not so major ones that are halves. then I eventually need to incorperate the half elves...


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## SeverinR (Aug 12, 2011)

Lets see,
Wood elf, High elf, Gray elf, Wild elf(nomads), Desert elfs, (sorry no elves being gagged with a spoon, Valley elfs)So elves will have to mingle with each other and humans.
Mountain dwarfs, island dwarfs, Social gnomes, dungeon gnomes,
Orcs: Tribal orcs, desert orcs, tropical orcs
and so on.
They each have a region they live in, possibly several areas with exploration and seperation from the original (like spain and mexico, England-Australia/Americas)
Then the cultures would blend/mix with the other cultures around them. Such as South west states mix with Mexico.

Even enemies affect the culture.  One set of Elves may live in small wood palisade defended towns, while others would never venture outside the stone fortified walls during certain times of the month.
The ways to form a culture is as wide as the imagination in our fantasy worlds.

In my world there is cities with large human populations, some with large elves pop. Probably each race would have its own homeland, but more over with exploration most societies are mixed.  If you couldn't tell, the part of the world I write about is predomintely Elf/human. With the other races just a small percentage. I'd probably say 50%human, 30% elf, 10% dwarf 5%orc bred, 4% gnome, 1%other races( hybred, mixed breed, etc)

I guess I forgot the question,
They each are based loosely on the traditional races in D&D, but I make them more survivable to the world, and strengths and weaknesses.  HUmans: I use the typical human based on our 15-17th century period.  I take this setting and apply magic and think about how things would be different if humans had magic. Then look at the lore of elves, make them stronger in magic then humans, compare and contrast with the humans, then add the amagical races-dwarf and gnomes.  I don't get into specifics until I have needed them for a book. (currently only mentions of the dwarf and gnomes.)
Main enemy is orcs, they tend to be violent, strongest survive, the world is theres to reap the rewards of.  Some are nomads, roving bands killing and pillaging to survive. There are more permanent bands, and even an orc homeland.  There is a small percentage of religious shamans(1 in hundreds), even fewer mages(1 in thousands)

Basically just look at the group and make it yours.


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## Harbinger (Aug 12, 2011)

I am currently Workin on a land with six races. It is difficult coming up with that many diffetent customs and mannerisms but i try to use the real world for my research. It is tedious but it pays off i find when u are able to make so many distinct and defined cultures live in one land, much like America...


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## Ravana (Aug 15, 2011)

Hundreds–since the world began as a RPG setting. In serious writing, that number is getting pruned down considerably: there's no virtue in including variety if it's unmotivated. As was mentioned before, humans with pointy ears are still humans, no matter what you call them… at which point it's pretty pointless to have them be anything other than humans.

Apply some basics of ecology to begin with: _could_ all these races exist side by side, or would some outcompete the others? (Answer: yes… in any vaguely "realistic" setting.) Are there niches for the others to occupy that would keep them around? Would these communities be large enough to be self-sustaining, or are they so small they'll wither and die out, even without anybody wanting to move in on them? Is there anything else that might allow them to remain, even in very small populations? (Dragons, for instance, tend to be either immortal or at least extremely long-lived: as long as they don't mind traveling to breed every century or so, the population needn't be particularly large. That, plus they're notoriously difficult to dislodge from wherever they choose to live.) Or do they reproduce rapidly enough that even small communities can replace their losses? (And at the same time avoid the consequences of inbreeding?) What conditions would allow these races, or at least some of them, to coexist? Do they all require the same resources? Do some of them consider other races to _be_ resources? (Slaves, food sources, etc.?)

After that, you get into politics: are the races _willing_ to coexist? How expansionist are they? (Does their birth rate _require_ them to be expansionist in order to have all the resources required to support their population?) Which ones are willing to ally themselves with their neighbors? Which ones ally themselves with their neighbors out of necessity (to compete with rival populations of other species), whether they like their neighbors or not? Which ones are willing to tolerate difference, and which aren't? Are integrated communities socially feasible, or does the race keep to itself? 

Combine ecology and politics, and you get economy: can a race find its "niche" not geographically, but through some contribution in this area? Can populations pay for resources they don't generate, thereby removing the need to occupy territory where those resources do exist? Does group A have anything group B needs, wants, or is even remotely interested in, and vice versa? It's amazing how well groups can get along when they are mutually dependent where their wealth is concerned. Conversely, it's amazing how poorly they'll get along if one group believes it can do better by simply taking what the other has, rather than paying for it.…

There's always religion, too–though here I'm not talking about divisive differences, but rather the reverse. One thing that most fantasy writers fail to think through adequately is _the consequences of their gods actually existing_… if that's how their world is set up, and the "gods" aren't non-participatory figures that people merely _believe_ in. For instance: if your god _told_ you to get along with the species next door–I'm talking about showing up in person and saying it to your face, not about some priest somewhere having a "revelation"–you'd probably do it. Right? This is the main integrative force in the world I mentioned above: the gods are manifestly and incontrovertibly real, and they most certainly will tell neighboring populations to maintain friendly relations… especially if that neighboring population worships the _same_ god, or at least one that has good relations with him. Neither of which is uncommon, since because the gods _are_ real, there are only so many of them to go around… and they have their own politics, alliances, rivalries and foes, too. Nobody, but _nobody_ in this world, follows a god that _doesn't_ exist: why would they, when they know some other deity does exist? (For similar reasons, there's no atheism: there are people who don't follow any god, but only the insane would try to deny that there are gods at all.) Also, even marginal races in isolated populations will be much more capable of maintaining themselves if they receive divine support in their efforts… and the fewer followers a deity has, the more resources he can devote to the welfare of each of the few he does have. And deities are notorious for meddling with genetics to alter existing species or create new ones, just because they can… or because they mated with someone or something and generated unique offspring: most monsters of Greek mythology were one-offs, for example, not "species." So if such creation/alteration is within the deity's capabilities, a race might exist simply because some god decided they wanted it to–ecological considerations notwithstanding.

In the end, it's generally best to apply Occam's Razor: "Entities should not be multiplied without reason." If the extra race doesn't contribute to the story _by virtue of being a different race_, turn it into something you already have. Having a couple hundred intelligent races–and thousands of "monster" species–may work for _D&D_, where the goal is to constantly provide novel experiences for your players; for a plausible world, where you can actually envision all these diverse interests and needs coexisting… not so much.


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## Motley (Aug 16, 2011)

The most I've ever done was three. My worlds tend to be rather small, and there just isn't enough room in them for more races.


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## Ravana (Aug 16, 2011)

I should probably add that "most" of my settings deal only with humans, since in general they're mid-length stories where there's neither room nor need for other races. Only my larger worlds—the ones that may or may not someday have epics set in them—have intelligent non-human races to any extent.


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## Peutra (Aug 17, 2011)

Most of my races are just amalgamations of other common fantasy races. You have the typical were-dragons, then it gets more complicated and you have to really see what the "faerolls" are. In my world there are thousands of different races, but that's just me cuz I've made a huge fantasy universe.


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## Antaus (Aug 18, 2011)

This is one of the most developed aspects of my fantasy world, I have quite a few races.

*Human:* What you'd expect, they can be found everywhere doing everything, looking like anything, ranging the full spectrum.

*Elves:* There are three types of elves in my story, but only one actual elf race. The divisions are social, cultural, and in one case, kingdoms.

Elf: Your standard elf, slender, pointy eared, they stand about 5' to 5'4" on average, and live in the forest. They have their own kingdom within the woodlands, but the organization would require a lot of explaining.

High-Elf: High-Elves are elves that act as the ruling class of elven society, the term 'high-elf' is used to distinguish the noble class.

Zalarian Elf: Zalarian Elves (Zalarian is a name derived from a historical figure), broke from normal elves in the distant past to avoid civil war due to a growing social schism in their society. They are very militant, aggressive, and don't take well to outsiders in their land.

*Dwarves:* Dwarves in my story are about what you'd expect for stock dwarves, I'm still working on them.

*Goblins:* They're about what someone would expect, dumb and destructive. They are however excellent engineers... so long as it involves destroying something, or blowing it up, themselves included at times. They're not well liked for obvious reasons.

*Orcs:* Unlike many stories, in mine Orcs aren't 'evil', they're primal. They're a tribal people who live by the rule of survival of the fittest and they're quite violent believing in solving disputes through brute force. They do not however do things for the sole purpose of hurting others. Raids, 95%, of the time involve acquiring resources they need and can't otherwise acquire. War is not something they declare for the hell of it either, even though their victims may not understand the reasoning behind wars, there is one. They have their own society, culture, and if someone understands it well enough, they can actually interact with them on reasonable terms... if they don't mind a few bumps and bruises along the way.

*In the Works:* Trolls, Elemental half-breeds, Draconics (humanoid dragons), Gnomes, Dragons, and others are likely to follow


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## Hans (Aug 19, 2011)

Wings&Weird said:


> What are the most races you've ever had in one 'world', what were their traits and did they get on?


Because one of my worlds just had a devestating magical war with chimaerology as one of the main magic schools, there are lots 'n lots of different creatures. Some are intelligent or semiintelligent and can be seen as different "races". But most live in a very limited geographical area.
If they are roughly human shaped and fast breedet as cannon fodder I sum them up under "Orks". So these come in many different flavors. There are no classical Elfes, Dwarfs and so on.

On my other worlds there are Humans. And Humans.
Generally I don't like the "one race one culture" approach. If they are widespread enough they should have developed different cultures. And I don't see a good point why a culture can not include different races.


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## The Blue Lotus (Aug 19, 2011)

Hello all! I am the new kid on the block, so hang tight as I learn the ropes around here. 

I had a question in regards to this topic... hope you won't mind my barging in. 

Most stories of this nature have "races" and are set either on Earth in the middle ages or in the modern world but lacking diversity of the races... simply having a vamps and were people imho does not count.

In my story I am working to bring the Older style of  Tolkien into this day and age where all these races do exist but humans are oblivious to them. (as they are with most things.) 

The question I had is this, Since most myths start out as a way to explain things that we humans can not understand otherwise is there a reference book of these mythical beings that details out how they were in the beginning?
Example Fairies (Now they are tiny "people" with gossamer wings and are usually friendly sorts normally seen by children.) But In the beginning they were considered vicious little creatures whom one should be ware of and treat with respect lest you offend them.


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## Map the Dragon (Aug 19, 2011)

Welcome Blue Lotus.

A few offerings:

A Short History of Myth by Armstrong - very historical and less along the line of fantastical creatures, but worth reading.
Heroes, Gods and Monsters of the Greek Myths by Bernard Evslin
Giants, Monsters, and Dragons: An Encyclopedia of Folklore, Legend, and Myth

There are tons of others on sites like Amazon. 

I hope this helps.


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## The Blue Lotus (Aug 19, 2011)

Thanks I will have to hit the book store.


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## Barnes4321 (Aug 24, 2011)

I made up a race or two mostly to survive a week long hosptial stay last year.

The Vagga-Hahn. A rare and extremely dangerous race, their numbers dwindling. In the day time they are less than two feet tall, with a sickly grey coloured skin that look's five sizes too big, so they've got more wrinkles than a shar-pei. (Forgive the spelling). While they are none too physically imposing, they also possess their own variety of plague and poison magic, used as assassination and morale breaking tools. At night, however, their magic fades and their bodies grow to seven feet of lean, harsh muscle, the skin now taunt across their bodies. Their skin becomes pitch black and while they have no magic, their physical abilities are heighted, speed and strength preternatural, as well as having skin like kevlar. Their deadliness is balanced by their race numbering in the high thirties, low forties. Coupled with a very low number of females and lower birthrate, they aren't all that expendable. Their culture is very Law Of The Jungle, Might = Right. They can live for centuries but while they are dangerous at all times, it is possible to kill them. Their tough hide is little trouble for magic, if properly applied, while in the day, their skin is about as protective as the air against arrows. They have their own language but it's impossible for non-Vagga-Hahn to learn. The only thing they truly fear are the Aurora Priestesses (short version: worshippers of a goddess who originally convined the other gods to give the sentient races magic.

Dheilarm: Know to many as the dragon hounds or hellhounds. They are a failed experiment by a group of empire sorcerers (S.V. Sorcerers tend to be the ones who use the "darker", here meaning "less moral" magics, like mixing races together or healing, a dark and difficult to master discipline.) They are the size of ponies and while they are shaped like bulky rottweilers sans tail, they have a scaley hide, like dragons, and big black talons. Their scales can be any shade but only their shamans can change the colours based on their mood or role in a predicament (Brown or arbiting a disagreement, dark green for healing rites, etc etc). While their shamans powers are very much routed in their purposes, such as healing, fertility rites and other such services, all Dheilarm possess a minor telekinetic ability which they use for writing with quills, while their other items and goods are suit to them alone. They are, despite their beastial appearance, extremely intelligent. Occasionally, often one in a birthing of a thousand at best, a child can be born with magician style abilities (S.V. Sorcerers work with more ritualistic abilities, Magicians have more swift 'handwave' abilities and shamans are all nature magic.) they are packed off to the Academy or to a magician to study. Many Dheilarm magician are renowned for their innovative and skilled use of magic.

Well there's my two for now, a third is currently in development, no 'proper' name yet but colloquially referred to as Devourers. Thank you for reading, please feel free to shred my designs with your skilled opinions and wit *bows*


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## Kaellpae (Aug 24, 2011)

The thing I don't like about Dwarves is how similar they always seem to be. I find it tiring to see stories with bearded Dwarves, who almost always seem to specialize in mining, fighting, and drinking. From films and video games you'd almost think that the entire Dwarven race is only Scottish.


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## Barnes4321 (Aug 25, 2011)

Would you rather have effeminate dwarves?


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## Ravana (Aug 26, 2011)

It would certainly be a refreshing difference. Why not have the elves be the stoutly-built, bearded craftsmen for a change?


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## Hans (Aug 26, 2011)

Mythology has some examples of albs or similar beings being craftsmen.


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## Kevlar (Aug 26, 2011)

There are two types of dwarves I've enjoyed seeing in the past few years: Orzammar dwarves ,because they do twist some of the clichÃ©s, and Tyrion.

That being said, why not create a race that breaks _all_ of the clichÃ©s, save short. It would then fail to be a dwarf, because dwarves are short people. I'll have a go.

With pale skin, grey, pink, or yellowish depending on their enic group, in response to the lack of UV energy in their subterranean homes, dwarves who ever travel to the surface will need to wrap up tight like an albino, sharing the same lack of melanin. Because of the heat underground they have no hair on their bodies, but the fleshy appendages on their chins are commonly mistaken for beards. These appendages actually have a variety of uses. Being more sensitive than the dwarves' strong fingers, and containing sensory organs thrice to four times as powerful as a human nose, they help the dwarves find the minerals and underground water that compose their diet. Dwarves also have eyes that, compared to their smaller bodies, are twice as large as a human's, with huge pupils and rarely excercised irises. The irises of dwarven colonies who use fire regularily, or live close to some other light source, such as lava or fantasy-typical glowing shrooms, have become more developed. This is especially true of smiths, who gaze into hot coal fires every day. Like their skin, their eyes have an almost complete lack of melanin, and so are red or pale blue. They have tapetum lucidum, allowing them to see in extremely low light, and giving them a green eyeshine in the same situations a cat might. While once all dwarves were born with carbon-high, very solid, protruding front teeth, upper and lower. With the advent of a mining tool in some way or another, this feature has shrunk to practically the size of their other teeth, though it remains dark compared to the others. These other teeth are used to chew other subterranean life, such as fantasy-typical subterranean mushrooms, even sometimes the glowing ones that give a tingly feeling, spiders that somehow survive without other bugs to eat, those spiders' giant counterparts, giant burrowing worm-things, and small cattle that live on underground islands.


There you have my non-clichÃ© dwarf. Next up? Elves...


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## Kaellpae (Aug 26, 2011)

Effeminate Dwarves, maybe. Kevlar's Dwarves remind me of mole people, but when I said different that's what I meant. I like how their 'beards' are supersensory organs.
Even if you had a civilization of people who were shorter and burlier on average than everyone else.

To a world of giants, would we be dwarves?


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## Kevlar (Aug 26, 2011)

Who said they were burly?

They could be elegant and agile. They could have Gollum's build. I left that part ambiguous.

And to giants we would be dwarves. And to dwarves we would be giants. Which really begs the question of why we name races by size. 
If dwarves call us giants, and giants call us dwarves, it would show how these terms are susceptible to perspective. But what would they call eachother?


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## Kaellpae (Aug 26, 2011)

Super-giants and Toy People?

I just meant in general Dwarves are seen as burly. Probably because of the mining and war mongering. I agree with you though. As most stories are through the eyes of humans or human sized creatures that I have read, then giants and dwarves could be named because of size. It could also be because humans are more populated than Giants and Dwarves, so they are seen as the average size, or a medium size at least.

How about a Dwarf like Dopey? No beard, not burly, but still a Dwarf. Perhaps make a race of Dopeys.


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## Rowancool (Aug 26, 2011)

You could have a tribal race. In my world i'm creating i have a carnivourous forest dwelling species which culture is based around tribalism. Just a thought


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## Meka (Aug 26, 2011)

I tend to use loads of races and have even made up a few myself. I use Humans, Elves, Dwarves, Wizards (which I class as a different race entirely), Goblins, Trolls, Kish (invention), Khraal (invention), Limech (invention.) Each of these have very different attributes, beliefs, homelands, rituals etc. It takes nearly as long inventing the world and the things in it as writing the book itself for me. None of these races get a long too well, elves and dwarves tolerate one another so that they have a chance to defeat the evils, as do Orcs and Goblins etc.


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## Kevlar (Aug 26, 2011)

Rowancool said:


> You could have a tribal race. In my world i'm creating i have a carnivourous forest dwelling species which culture is based around tribalism. Just a thought



Herein lies the problem with this idea: having a race with a single culture is very flat, imho. Same with having a single religion, language or, if you want to go really deep into the subject, race (like black, white, Arabian, asian etc.) of each species. Consider the variation of our own cultures. 

Also, while not a deadly mistake, I find categorizing races into good and evil very shallow. First, nobody is the same, so why does your whole race have the same opinion? Good and evil isn't a well defined subject of logic. It's all based on opinion. And culture. Our standardized ideas of good and evil are only that: our ideals. Put yourself in a KKK member's shoes. While the rest of us have no idea where they get their twisted sense that whites are supreme, beyond it being a part of their personal views of Christianity, we know that they think they're in the right. They think they're the good guys. They probably also think that non KKK whites are misguided. We have the same idea about them. We can't look at it logically and say that one party or the other is right or wrong, but we can look at it from our own moral point of view. In our opinion, murdering people over the colour of their skin is apalling, and most of us would kill a KKK member if we got the chance, but for some reason it's righteous by their ideals. And it's not limited to them. Look at the Crusades. The Christian armies slaughtered the _infidels_ wholesale, from the Saracen soldiers, to the Muslim women and children to the neutral Jews. Saladin, on the other hand, protected the Jews, who are infidels to Muslim perspective. Naturally, as far as my own ideals go, I would rather have been fighting for the Saracens, even if I was religious and Christian. But perhaps I'd view that differently if I was Christian, and I would definitely view it differently if I had grown up back then.

Next is this issue: Are all goblins evil? Yes? There you have a racist sentiment.

Hope I wasn't rambling too much, and I hope I didn't offend anyone's views. What I write is purely my opinion, nothing else, and I'll never claim it to be otherwise.


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## Kaellpae (Aug 26, 2011)

For all beliefs to be, at the very least, very similar you would have to have a race so low in numbers that they only in one tribe or a couple tribes in a tight knit area.

It seems like for a few fantasy works though, that any black sheep are very rare.


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## Rowancool (Aug 27, 2011)

What i meant was that humans have different cultures and you could make it a bit different by just having humans who live a bit differently. Same with elves or dwarves


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## JCFarnham (Aug 27, 2011)

What I think is often over look with Fantasy species, is common sense and logic. Tolkienian-style Dwarves make very little sense to me, for one how do they manage to live  and still have a culture like that of surface-dwellers? The mining trope is short sighted in the same way racist narrow-mindedness is towards these races. 

Why NOT have dwarves like Kevlar suggested? They make far more cultural sense than the traitional kind do, even in the short paragraph. Elves too seem to fall in to the same trap. People seem to forget logical culture building in favour of Tolkienisms. I think it would make a nice change to see traditional high fantasy races with more thought put into them. 

I mostly write sci-fi so my races don't particularly fit in this thread, but I think the same ideals can be applied across genres. Don't forget that they should be "people" and not "stereotypes".


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