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What are some of the changes you as a GM have made to whatever base races you allow in your game in the form of culture, mentality, etc. to make them more interesting or appropriate to your home setting?
Example: In my home game Elves come in 2 forms. The first are cultured urbane elves that live in and amongst humans, have lost their true connection to nature and have had to reforge it through worship and alliances with the fey, and are considered a dying race as they have trouble reproducing producing viable pure blood offspring which leads to a lot of families having half-elf children to continue the lines.
The second are greenskined and worship the Aztec pantheon, the mass bloodletting occurring as an outgrowth of their slow death due to losing a war with humanity and now desperately beseeching their gods for answers to stop their slow grinding extinction due to being pushed out of their homelands and just general small numbers.
i made drow acceptable to the other elves but orcs were a freakish offshoot of elves that were driven out. i also made it so that all "pure" elves were female and enslaved half-elf men to keep their lines going. All the players agreed to play orcs that campain so it was pretty fun.
My elves worked like this:
There was an elven empire. They were masters of the high magics and all that stuff, elders of the world (although technically younger than humanity and derived from magically-affected humans). Arrogance and strict traditional roles were central to their culture. Each class had another (not necessarily lower; some were cyclical) class they were pridefully disdainful of and that hubris was accepted as essential to their superiority over everyone else in the world.
The Goblin Kings: Fairly frequently, goblins raided outlying settlements and a popular activity while pillaging was to steal children and raise them as their own. Because elves lived for so much longer than their adoptive parents, they eventually grew into a rulership role in the goblin nation. Their fashion and culture developed as an extravagant mockery of high elven nobility, garish and flamboyant (This idea came from equal parts Dwarf Fortress and Labyrinth). Some become adventurers out of curiosity and exuberance, seeking new and exciting things and having a special like for gaudy treasure and adoration from the 'common folk'.
The Dark Elves: When the empire fell to the undead hordes of the Dread Host and the betrayal of their Elder Dragon (Argentum the White, patron of Immortals, was offered the ultimate form of immortality by the Lord of the Host: It became a Ravener), the elves at first refused to believe it was possible there was any power greater than their own. Out of utter blind hubris, their leadership declared that the only possible threat to the empire could be the empire itself, and started a purge of one specific caste: The Keepers of the Dead. These were the already-distrusted morticians and golem-makers dedicated to the interment of the rich and noble and the reanimation of the poor as eternal golem servants (CR 1-ish bone golems with no powers or magic immunity). It was not strictly necromancy, but they were blamed for the rise of the Host nonetheless. The remaining mortuary elves fled South, away from the war and the empire. They were welcomed by human lands and settled. Long after the fall of the empire and the later defeat of the Host, these elves were counted as betrayers by the remaining survivors for giving up elven ways and joining human culture, named 'dark elves' for the darker skin of their descendants, due to intermingling with humans. Modern dark elves are considered the most personable and pleasant of all the elves, characterised by openness and tolerance of foreign cultures and a cheerful if morbid celebration of life and death. Those amongst them most likely to become adventurers are those wishing to make restitution for the evils of their former empire and help others suffering from oppression.
The Relic Keepers: After the fall of the empire, the last survivors were of the Lorekeeper caste. They were tasked with the preservations of the empire's secrets and legacy in its last days. They fled east with what holy and arcane artifacts they could carry. Over the centuries, many were lost and the relic keepers never recovered from their malaise of losing the empire and their gods. Without a home to call their own, they wander the lands, diligently searching for any vestiges of their glorious heritage. They are most true to the original culture of the elves, although they do not have the caste system. They are all adherents to one cast alone, the original keepers of knowledge and history. Their tendency toward arrogance makes them distrusted by most and they have difficult times finding welcoming shelter amongst the nations. Nevertheless, they are recognised as the foremost experts of forgotten lore, ancient places and the secrets within. The relic keepers have a strong incentive to adventure, as so much of their former empire lies beneath the earth in dark and dangerous places.
I have town-dwelling, wine-making, shop-keeping prairie dwarves. But I make most of my npcs human, except the villains, which are all over the place.
Oh, and my dwarves are the world's foremost sailors. The traditional image of hard-working, alcohol-loving craftsmen has been taken and applied to the arts of shipmaking and mercantile expertise. Dwarves have a reputation for holding their breath longer than anyone and being good swimmers not for their strength but their endurance and tolerance for harsh conditions.
So yes, dwarven pirates are amongst the most feared dangers on the seas.
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No real monocultures anywhere for any races, but at a glance:
Orcs - Generally CN-bent tribal types. Nomadic hunter-warrior culture big on personal and tribal honor for the most part. They cleave much more to the Blizzard Orc mold than the Tolkien Orc one.
Goblins - Second-class or lower-citizens almost everywhere. One of the most victimized races on the planet, most of their history has been spent in some form of slavery. The Golarion take on halflings was actually pretty close to them, but these guys get even less respect on average. Free goblins are reknowned salvagers. If you need something that would even remotely be classified as junk by someone, hit the goblin market. Slight fey influence in their origins.
Hobgoblins - Born out of goblins and their treatment listed above. Historians are split on whether they were purposefully bred from goblin stock by their masters or if they were born as a defensive reaction to their suffering. The end result was a race of people typically known for military leanings and imperial mindsets. Some served the masters of their ancestors as slave-warriors. Some overthrew their masters. Some of those became liberators and safekeepers of goblinkind, some went on to become what they had just overthrown, enslaving their own kind.
Bugbears - Another "reactive" offshoot of the goblin race, born out of those tribes that had been forced to seek freedom in the harshest environs. Typically savage in culture. Like orcs, very shamanistic in leaning, but lacking the honor codes that most orckind cleave to.
Drow - Just called dark elves. They don't live in the underdark, but rather in the darkest forests, mostly isolated from the rest of the world. Highly conservative by the usual elven norm, they're the traditionalists of elvenkind, holding ancient ways that their kin have left behind, or in some cases have grown out of, long ago. That Eilistraee is the primary deity for all elvenkind plays into their racial identity as well. Their brand of isolationism and xenophobia is less about hating the outside world and more like being afraid to leave the house. Those with enough wanderlust and bravery to step out of their shadowed woods are the odd ducks of their kind.
Kobolds - Like goblins, they've got a severe case of the underdogs. But where goblin culture has been warped around a survival-driven need to position themselves in subservient positions to other humanoids, kobolds tend to have a religiously driven take on that between them and dragonkind. The biggest cultural schism isn't a matter of morality but rather between dragonsworn kobolds and those more integrated into humanoid culture. The values dissonance gap between them is pretty big, even as "city kobolds" still have a strong reverence for dragonkind embedded in their culture. The big difference kicks in with how they interact with other humanoids. City kobolds tend to have an easier time relating to others on an individual level and live more "in the now". Dragonsworn kobolds are more collective and tend to treat others as part of a whole, and judge and interact with them in kind. They also take a "long" view on matters, even moreso than some elves that could easily outlive several of their generations.
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I've used elves as fey in temperament, with passions that run hot and fast. An elf might flip out and kill their best friend because they took something said the wrong way, and then drop sobbing to the ground over what they've done, and, five minutes later, get up and petulantly kick the body for 'making them feel bad.' By human standards, they are dangerously insane, and anyone whose ever had dealings with an elf (or even just heard the stories) tends to walk on eggshells around them, trying not to provoke one of their legendary tantrums. (Not every elf is prone to these, and most elves don't flip out *that* spectacularly, but they don't mind the reputation, either, and do not downplay it... It also doesn't help their reputation that the elves that nine out of ten humans will meet in their lives will be wanderers, far from elven society, generally the most unstable of their kind!)
Due to their long lifespans, elves tend to live in the eternal 'now,' with little regard for the past (often forgetting the names of peoples, towns, or even *countries,* within moments of hearing them, since they don't expect to ever see them again, assuming that they last), and no real plans for the future (since anything they would build would decay in their lifetime, and anything they accomplish will be forgotten by everyone else in the world).
Given how quickly elves get bored, and how transitory they see the other races, it's hardly a surprise that there are plenty of half-elves running around who have never met their fathers...
There are certainly elves who regard themselves as superior to humans and other races. There are also elves who deeply envy humans concepts like family and stability and patience and the ability to plan and execute a task that takes weeks, months or even years to accomplish, as well as the self-control necessary to remain with the same family, the same friends, the same lovers, for months, years, or even decades.
Elves watched curiously from the woodline and shrugged dismissively as humans invented agriculture, and cities, and roads, and commerce, and sailing ships, and empires. They're still watching, shaking their heads in disbelief, and teaching their kids to shoot bows and live off of the land, because they stubbornly think this 'farming thing' is 'just a fad' and 'too much work.'
I made goblins terrifying.
My campaign actually broke up largely because the goblins were just too punishing. Goblins had lived out in the country, grudgingly putting up with human settlers, but they got ever more bitter.
Eventually, the real villains gave them a magical ritual involving building totem things around an area. Everything inside was immediately struck dead when the ritual was completed. They built them around the outskirts of towns and activated them all at once.
Within a couple of days goblins were ruling a decent sized state, every other race was living in fear of them and a continent-wide war was looking probable. It's odd how different a race seems when its them hunting you, rather than the other way around.
I made goblins terrifying.
My campaign actually broke up largely because the goblins were just too punishing. Goblins had lived out in the country, grudgingly putting up with human settlers, but they got ever more bitter.
Eventually, the real villains gave them a magical ritual involving building totem things around an area. Everything inside was immediately struck dead when the ritual was completed. They built them around the outskirts of towns and activated them all at once.
Within a couple of days goblins were ruling a decent sized state, every other race was living in fear of them and a continent-wide war was looking probable. It's odd how different a race seems when its them hunting you, rather than the other way around.
thumbs up thats awesomesauce
I'm yet to find a place for halflings and gnomes in my world. They're around sort of by default, but have very little developed culture and no designated nations of their own. The world mainly revolves around elves, dwarves, humans, goblins and kobolds.
Elves are basically Time Lords.
So they are gods?
My ideas:
Dwarves: Beardless, pale, living in a magocratic caste system.
Humans: Recently freed slaves, barely civilised tribal society, with a few early cities sprinkled in. Slave ownership is widespread.
Orcs: Hunter-gatherers living in the coldest parts of the planet, prone to raiding and invading due to lack of resources. Might be descended from humans or dwarves.
Elves: Stranded aliens, highly civilised, ancient style democracy (replace slaves with constructs), society based on magitech.
Lizardfolk: Declining decadent empire, slave-owners (those damn dirty apes mentioned above).
I've yet to come up with ideas for gnomes and halflings. I might replace them with dromites (a non-psionic version) and feral catfolk. I simply can't think of anything that is at least equal than what Keith Baker did with the gnomes, and I'm stumped about halflings.
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Elves are basically Time Lords.So they are gods?
No, just that every couple hundred years they return to the Feywild to regenerate, and when they awaken, they are similar, but slightly different people, and have to start over. So the elf you travel with may be a 2nd level Fighter, but used to be a 20th level Wizard, and before that a 20th level Rogue, and before that etc. And he vaguely remembers those past lives.
What are some of the changes you as a GM have made to whatever base races you allow in your game in the form of culture, mentality, etc. to make them more interesting or appropriate to your home setting?
We don't have human-based half-elves or half-orcs. In our campaign elves and orcs are descendant from the same stock, and half-elves or half-orcs are genetic throw-backs that are usually killed if born to an orc or cast out if born to an elf... players can use the half-orc or half-elf racial template except that the character counts as both an orc and an elf for purposes of classification and suffer a -2 on all Charisma-based skills when dealing with either race.
In my setting it was mostly by having different kinds of Elf.
Stat wise they were all the same Elves but there was an Elven Table of Nations, describing the different tribes and languages of Elves.
Each Elven people had their own language and writing system and each ended up settling in a different part of the world.
The Kingdoms of Salem, Kaorie, Dilmund, Korija, Vedda and Atzeloutl were the main ones left by the time of the setting. Each had its own language, customs and building style. Though linguistically they all had many similarities and each had accounts of Elven history that detailed where each one settled.
In that setting Elves also formed an alliance of Neutral nations as every other Kingdom was Human and the world was on the verge of a world wide war.
Many Elven countries also had adopted official Eugenics programs as the Elven race was slowly dying out due to declining fertility. Most Elven nations were actually Half-Elven, and humans were picked out based on magical aptitude and psionic ability and basically they were offered generous dowries to contribute their bloodline to the Elven Kingdoms.
Since I have been working on my own setting for some time, I have a lot of these in place.
Elves: Elves in my setting come in three varieties: Wood Elves, Painted (Desert) Elves, and Frost (Tundra) Elves. The three subraces all have distinctly different cultures and rarely ever intermingle.
Wood Elves are your traditional foresty folk. Except that they have an occasional superiority complex that led them to disdain their human neighbors except in times of great peril. (Didn't help that after they united to drive out the first threat the races had, the Yuan-Ti, they immediately started fighting over who would get the land they'd just won back, and the elves lost.) They eventually managed to overwhelm and conquer the nearest human kingdom in a war at one point, then were driven back into the woods and secluded on their defeat.
Painted Elves are vagrant tribes of genie devotees who roam the sands. They care little for the "beauty and purity" of nature and are more interested in simply surviving, and appeasing their masters.
Frost Elves are shamanistic, primitive, and xenophobic to the extreme. A lot of people don't even believe they exist.
Half-Elf: Little different, save the disdain they receive in areas where humans and elves don't get along.
Half-Orcs: Don't exist. Humans and Orcs can't interbreed in my setting. Half-Orc stats are used for full Orcs.
Halflings: In my setting, Halflings do have a homeland - the "first land" continent, which is much like our Africa in nature, culture, geography, and history. Thus, they come in two flavors. One is the "native" halfling, the other is the "traveler" halfling.
The native halfling tends to be closely communal, but extremely territorial and prone to sharp conflicts with rival groups or foreigners.
The traveler halflings are not "halflings who up and left the homeland for some reason"; rather, they're descended from them, and have formed a culture of their own - a vagrant, disconnected society of wanderers and curious scholars, traveling the world in search of new knowledge and new experiences. They tend to be intellectual and studious rather than suspicious and troublesome.
Gnomes: Played up heavily on their fey connections, since the Elves have had theirs greatly downplayed. They live only in one secluded corner of the world, where reality between the Prime and the fey realm is thin, and are heavily preoccupied with the abominations that dwell in the Mountains of Madness and Unknown Kadath to their north.
Kobolds: They are a full PC race in my setting. Master miners, earthworkers, smiths, jewelers, alchemists, machinists, and so on. Their rivalry with gnomes is nonexistent.
Dwarves: Dwarves do not mine, do not smith, do not live underground. Dwarves in my setting are sailors and pirates, with no homeland of their own - all the sea is their homeland, and many dwarves live their entire long lives without ever touching dry land.
Dwarves and Kobolds have had their stats adjusted to suit their new roles (and in Kobolds' case, to make them on-par with the other PC races).
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I'm thinking of giving the dwarves and elves alternative conceptions of personal property:
Elves believe that one's possessions are an expression of one's self. Therefore, they consider individual property rights sacred. Stealing is as bad as murder. If you own something, it's yours to do with absolutely as you please. Elves don't believe in any obligation to use one's possessions for someone else's benefit. To ask someone to share or lend something they own is insulting. Selling things is considered degrading, even if it's sometimes necessary. On the other hand, giving someone a gift is a sign of honor and respect. Even after death, an elf's possessions will be buried with them permanently, unless they have explicitly willed them to someone else.
Dwarves, on the other hand, believe that one's creations are an expression of one's self. Therefore, an item permanently belongs to whoever made it. This is an absolute right that can never be transferred. The maker can rent his products out to others, but he always retains an absolute right to demand them back for any reason. This is why dwarven creations always have their maker's mark permanently inscribed upon them somewhere. When a dwarf dies, everything they made becomes the property of their apprentice, who is usually one of their children.
Both of these cultures have obvious economic weaknesses -- which is a big reason why humans, with their much more flexible concepts of ownership, have managed to build much larger and more successful civilizations. It's also a big reason why elves and dwarves sometimes have trouble dealing with outsiders.
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I'm yet to find a place for halflings and gnomes in my world. They're around sort of by default, but have very little developed culture and no designated nations of their own. The world mainly revolves around elves, dwarves, humans, goblins and kobolds.
Ohh I actually just figured them out recently in my world.
Halflings are these wondering nomads that either travel the world in caravan searching for some place to settle down and be accepted or living quietly within human civilizations. In this I've always thought of them as having a lot in common with Jews throughout history where they are kind of looked at with suspicion and sometimes subjugated yet still manage to keep their heads up and solider on. Also the image of halfling cleric that looks like an orthodox rabbi was just too cool and humorous to pass up.
As for Gnomes they have become the only race in the modern world to have decided to make the pilgrimage to the continent where the campaign world takes place (unlike the civilized humans, halflings, and elves that were dumped there as a form of exile). Problem was that they had to find a way to this massive continent without using technology that could be copied and used by the Exiles (the aforementioned) to return to their far off homes. Seeing this as a challenge they decided to craft 3 massive pilgrim ships which were powered by "The Genius of a God" each built to get there in it's own unique way. They were The Horse We Road In On, The Jump at Dawn, and Through the Eye of the Needle. The Horse was a village sized boring machine that dug under the ocean and clawed its way back to the surface on the other side (the name is a misnomer as horse & badger are the same word in gnomish). The Jump at dawn basically builds this massive sphere ship that plane shifts to the elemental plane of air, plummets till it hits terminal velocity, and is then plane shifted back to the material plane on a horizontal axis using the accrued force to propel them along; when the thing started to slow down they would just repeat the process till eventually it hit the earth like a cannon ball. One of my PC's decided to make a gnome after he figured out he could be from a race that basically crossed the ocean with a village sized portal gun. The last one basically got there by having a ship travel through the plane of shadow via shadow walk. Problem was that though they got there within days of the others the relative time to them was most likely centuries allowing a whole new subspecies of gnomes to develop in the interim, creating the wayang.
Once they all get there they broke down their ships and created a small city from the remains and started to invent eventually creating a nationally known guild called Gnome Tech which is the face by which they sell many of their devises to the rest of the world.
Currently in our homebrew world Gnomes have not arrived yet. But as we play in a world based losely on Middle Earth they are actually decendants of hobbits who lived in the joy of the undying lands now returned to ME to battle evil basically when there was a major hullaballo involving the Valar centuries after the 3rd age forces from the undying lands went back to Middle Earth to help. Some of those forces remained. Gnomes (decendants of those hobbits who lived in the undying lands) have a markedly different outlook than traditional hobbits/halflings. These gnomes have a similar feel to standard Golorian gnomes just a different history and they are more celestial than fey.
I started years ago building a setting on Norse mythology but it has drifted away from that over the years. Now it's something different all together, though the general setting where these races live still is a place of long, cold winters with little sunlight and short, mosquito ridden summers.
Dwarves: Are fairly standard, though religion plays an even bigger role for them. The one big difference is that men and women live almost completely separated, only meeting to propagate or discuss matters that concern both genders. The only other exception are baby boys, who are raised by their mothers for the first few years before moving to the other men. One gender isn't considered better than the other, they just believe this is how their gods want them to live.
Elves: Only exist as nature loving savages. They live in tribal societies and have little contact with other races and even less friendly contact. They mainly worship an aspect of the goddess of death that personifies the hunt and the kill.
Drow: Are all female and, while called Dark Elves, are all completely white skinned with white hair. They live underground near the entrances to the underworld and in the underworld itself where they serve as the handmaidens of the goddess of death. To propagate they kidnap surface dwelling men who proceed to mate with as many of them as he can bear before being sacrificed to their goddess. The pregnancy might result in a boy, but they are all stunted and misshapen and die within hours to days after birth.
Gnomes: Are creatures of legend and extremely rare, or so the other races think. They are the only race completely safe from both the Elves and the Dark Elves as both consider the owl eyed Gnomes to be signs of bad luck. The Gnomes live in the deepest forests where even the Elves don't tread. There they live peaceful lives together with all kinds of owls and owlbears, which are extremely docile when working with a Gnomish handler. While not xenophobic, they do enjoy the quiet of their isolated homes and only emerge from it for the occasional trade.
Orcs: Are an offshoot of the giants and they live in the ruins of their own ancient empire. Once, ages ago, orcs ruled the lands with an iron fist, forcing other races into slavery. Eventually their society crumbled due to corruption at the top and revolution among the lower ranks. These lower ranks were formed by the Humans, which are the result of couplings between Orcs and other races.
Ogres are oversized Orcs supposed to be blessed by their gods. They are born to normal Orc mothers and are considered a blessing, even though the mother rarely survives giving birth to an Ogre.
Halfling don't have a place yet, I only established them as being Southerners and riding horse sized capibaras.
I've yet to come up with ideas for gnomes and halflings.
How about Halflings as hill- and mountain-top dwellers, they way that Goliaths were in 3.5?
And for kicks, say that gnomes live by rivers, swamps and lakes.
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This is something I have been using with my elves to explain their distance from humanity and the other shorter lived races that I've liked and thought others might be interested.
The 1st Great Fallacy: A right of passage the 1st great fallacy is the moment in all elves lives where they love another non-elf with the same amount of connection and love that they feel for other elves. This inevitably leads to tragedy as the elf soon has to go through the heartbreak of watching their friend, lover, or even culture full of non elves succumb to the ravages of time and pass on to dust while they, the elves are left untouched by time. This is a mistake that all elves make at some point in their life and is considered a dour right of passage for every member of elvenkind as it allows them to have common ground with elves from all over the continent and understand their unique place in a world full of those who live such fleeting lives or are they the ones that are cursed to live these lives apart? When trying to explain this to other shorter lived races they often equate it to the first pet a child has and that bitter moment when they realize that though they love their new furry friend they will outlive it and his 8 descendants before they ever fear the grave. This is magnified by when they think of children that come from the union and are often terrified of watching potentially human children grow old and die over and over again as their histories play out in front of their immortal eyes.
No, just that every couple hundred years they return to the Feywild to regenerate, and when they awaken, they are similar, but slightly different people, and have to start over. So the elf you travel with may be a 2nd level Fighter, but used to be a 20th level Wizard, and before that a 20th level Rogue, and before that etc. And he vaguely remembers those past lives.Elves are basically Time Lords.So they are gods?
Makes me think of Samsarans