A friend of mine and I are currently trying to construct an entire world. While this is quite fun and I really enjoy this kinda thing I would like to for ask some advice.
First of all, one of our primary goals of this world is to create a world where a "party of freaks" as some people like to call a group of non-standard races would be pretty normal by making most playable Pathfinder races just as prominent and numerous as any of the standard races. In order to facilitate this we also are making the world very urbanized with a little bit of inspiration taken from the Ravnica setting of Magic. Not that there are only giant cities but most adventures would be in urban areas with typically high diversity among the races. There are a lot of nations that historically and culturally are dominated by by specific races in the past but at present are more metropolitan with a distinct bias towards the original race of the nation and a couple other common races while other nations are diverse to the point where if you walk into a bar and can't pick out 11 races that aren't your own you would consider it strange.
We plan on making all the partial outsider and other half monster races as full fledged races so there are whole cultures and civilizations of Undines, Aasimars, Dhampirs, Changelings and the like. Does anyone have any opinions on this?
I would like to ask what are peoples opinions on keeping half-elves and half-orcs as races. In a urban area with high racial diversity I feel like half-elves/orcs would be more common but I feel like we can't really fulfill our goal of giving all the races fleshed out background culture if two of our races are primarily hybrids of two other races.
Also with the announcement of Bestiary 5 we are afraid there will be enough new potential playable races that if we overdevelop geography and cultures and whatnot that it will be difficult to splice in new races. I know playable darkfolk and some kind of ape man like race have been confirmed but do you think there will enough new races as to cause some difficulty incorporating them as full nations?
We are wanting to make all races somewhat neutral overall so there aren't races that are always evil except in specific individuals like goblin and drow and the like are often portrayed and also all races to be roughly the same in level of civilization. If anyone has any cool ideas on how they think an advanced non-evil civilization of typically evil or primitive races like gnolls, goblins, gripplis ect. would be we would love to hear them.
Are there any races you think should just be avoided? (We aren't going to use the Shabti because we agree that Shabti should be avoided at all cost)
Also do you think that we should homebrew any races to fill in some lacking areas. For example the only playable aquatic races are humans with gills, blue humans with gills, and humans with gills and tails and the only subterranean races are underground elves, underground dwarves, underground gnomes, and with playable darkfolk underground humans. Any specific voids you think we should fill?
Also just any suggestions about any of it would be most appreciated
1) Make a list of all the races you want to see here. I'm not personally a fan of fantasy kitchen sinks, though. If you have a race being here, have a reason for that race being here. The coolness factor is perfectly fine, but for within the world there should be some story to explain them.
2) I always found the partial-outsider races to be confusing since they mainly seem to happen to humans for no really good reason (except on worlds where humans dominate). Consider instead having the origins of the undine, oreads, ifrits, sylphs, aasimars, tieflings and similar be a result of some minor planar breech rather than some odd mingling of blood. It would explain why a number of them might be in a particular place. You could even make them into subraces of a given race - sea elves, fire gnomes, etc. Alternatively, you could have it where the deities have abodes on the Prime (instead of the Outer Plane - think Mount Olympus in Greece) and they came from around these abodes. I'm a bit leery on dhampirs and changelings, especially since changelings can have a lot more interesting origin than simply the descendants of hags/shifters.
3) Make it so that half-elves and half-orcs actually have their own societies and cultures now. Usually these two just sort of hang around one or the other of their parent races. Perhaps at some point they got tired of this and decided to forge a society of their own. They could even have done it together. Otherwise I'd argue you shouldn't have them.
4) See point 1. Just because there is a race that can be used does not mean it should be used. Have a good reason for including a particular race. If you want to see one or both of these (and other) races here, wait until the book comes out and be sure they'll fit in.
5) Basically reimagine them. There was another person here who had the Drow be magitech users that split from the Elves because the Elves liked impractical pretty magical nature things whereas the Drows could combine the magic of Elves with the practicality of Dwarves. If you really can't figure out how to make a race fit it, you might want to reconsider using it.
6) I think you should avoid races with much higher than 15 RP (which is where the aasimar are now). I'd argue either avoiding ones over 12 RP or creating advanced versions of races below that threshold so everyone is around the same RP.
7) I've always thought a flying race would make sense even though I know how a lot of people feel about fliers at 1st level. However, I've never seen flying as that big an advantage in most situations outside of scouting ahead, especially since there are familiars like ravens who could potentially do the same things. And, as I mentioned before, you could create a number of subraces or variants to fit the bill. (Adding Amphibious is 2 RP).
Yeah, I can't help you much, agreeing with Indagare here, where my custom worlds are designed to see which races can be eliminated from the roster. I like themed worlds, and pretty much have great distaste for traditional fantasy settings, meaning, there are never elves, dwarves, halflings, orcs (as PC race, monsters yes, but not playable monsters) or gnomes in any of my worlds. In fact I've run many D&D worlds where the only playable race was human. I enjoy and include non-human races as well, but never the standard ones. I like deep and detailed cultures, its difficult to effectively develop interesting cultures when you need detail a thousand different playable races. I like my worlds to culturally make sense.
Any pointers I could provide would have a complete opposite goal to yours - good luck, though.
you could always run through Dawn of Worlds I haven't had a chance to try it out yet but It seems interesting.
Personally, I'm not sure I like the 'half-races' having their own cultures per se. The base idea of one parent from each race would limit how much their offspring would congregate together. Typically if there was NOT a solid family structure with mom/dad/half-breed... then one of the parents should be raising them.
What I MIGHT suggest instead is that each child takes after ONE parent. Could be human, could be elf, but they wouldn't be the half-breed/half powers mix that we're used to. Just from an Ecology standpoint.
Same would probably apply to the Dhampir/Aasimar/tiefling whatevers... For a world without prejudice where the freaks aren't seen as unusal... they'd have no reason to congregate together and form a society on their own.
maybe a small town or something tops... But that's a personal thing.
Start small and build... None of the game worlds I've played in were FULLY fleshed out with every scrap of land covered. Forgotten Realms, Golarion, our Homebrew... they all start with a 'part' of the map like 'inner sea' region. There is a LOT of globe out there that simply doesn't matter... until it does. Any of the new races that show up, or races that people don't really want to play... can be situated off map somewhere. Give them a city/country name when it comes up, but leave it's region/temperature/ecology/economic impact right off the table till someone (ANYONE) actually cares about it.
I think James Jacobs talked once about his games started with Sandpoint, then varisia, then grew from there... That's how I would recommend to start your games. Pick a city, make it a major trade center. That leads to an acceptance of all races everywhere passing through.
Another example I would play with would be Star Wars. They use planets instead of cities/countries... but it still fits as a role model. Lots of races, lots of places, often time mixing together peacefully...
As for homebrew races? I wouldn't bother unless you need them. If you have an adventure calling for aquatic races.... or a player has an idea for a race not presented in Pathfinder (there are a LOT of races now)... THEN find a way to work them in.
If you dive in and want to tackle a whole globe at once with every detail all perfectly written down... you'll probably drive yourself mad ;)
I'm with the other posters with "half-race" as a "race", specially in a setting where all of these races are intermingling; do you really want to figure out all the halfs of one race with another?
It's much easier to just let players choose a base race and be allowed to trade one or two racial abilities with racial abilities of another race to simulate a mix; GM discretion of course.
You are dealing with modern but with magic instead of science.
I'm going to justify Gnolls for you. I've designed a ritual where someone can create a circle of heads that turn necromantic energy into DC current. Gnolls are jackal people. If they wire cities for power, others put up with them. Go to Link.
The ritual summoning gives plenty of time for summoned things of many ethos and elements to date or even marry. Some of the older cities may even have lots of permanent gates like Sigil. Half races might each have neighborhoods within the city. Like in Dr. Who, pure strain humans would have become rare.
If you focus on one city and it's surroundings, other new races might simply never had a reason to come to the city before. New undead may simply be in an undiscovered necropolis. Having the party discover and open trade with some new races of creatures might make a fun campaign.
The Orcs might be mostly civilized, but some small groups might want to go back to the old evil ways. There's terrorist hunting as a plot hook.
You basically want to add everything into a tight area, into one magical city. The best way, I think, to handle such a concept is instead of treating everything as its own individual species each with a nation's history and space, treat each race as a separate bloodline. A bloodline can have its own history, just smaller in scope making more room for races to be worked in. Half-Elves and Half-Orcs could just be distilled bloodlines. In a similar vein, elementals could all be separate divisions of a greater bloodline. Etc.
This also makes it easier to add new "races" in; they could be a new bloodline that's just moved in.
Everyone who doesn't have a bloodline? They're just human, or elf, or halfling (or whatever you want your muggles to be).
Lots of good stuff here. I love this community.
I like the bloodline idea and will discuss it with my friend. It's and interesting concept and one that at some point I would really like to explore.
I do think you guys are right that we should start with one really major city, one that is massive. I think we are really overreaching wanting to try and make a whole world. Though we are actually considering making one massive city and some amount of surrounding land be in some sort of demi-plane and basically be some sort of weird trap/experiment by some sort of incredibly powerful being that prevents anyone from leaving or entering the demi-plane except when suddenly a couple thousand members of an entirely new race suddenly appears with a new section of the city but with virtually no memory of their former lives or culture.
We decided this might be a good idea since it allows us to mash together whatever we want and create races that behave a bit differently than they would typically do on say Golarion. It also allows us to avoid having to make incredibly detailed histories on some races since say, halflings have only been in the city for 30 years and their culture is still developing as opposed to Ratfolk who were one of the earlier races in the city and have gone through all manner of wars and other events and have had time to really build up a full culture. Actually we were talking about how it could make a cool adventure where the PCs are actually trying to deal with the chaos of several new races appearing with new sections of the city basically appearing between older areas completely redefining the map and and having to deal with various factions trying to sway the new races and claim parts of the new territory.
I think we are going to just make half elves and half orcs full races and just change the names and actually give them some sort of culture. Haven't really come up with a good name for half elves but my friend wants to call half orcs Grendels.
As for the half-outsider races we have decided to make Aasimar, Tieflings, Slyphs, Undines, Ifrits and Oreads as full races as much as humans or goblins are races. They aren't descended from some hybridization but a just another distinct race. We were actually thinking about making them the first 6 races to live in the city.
Lots of good stuff here. I love this community.
I like the bloodline idea and will discuss it with my friend. It's and interesting concept and one that at some point I would really like to explore.
I do think you guys are right that we should start with one really major city, one that is massive. I think we are really overreaching wanting to try and make a whole world. Though we are actually considering making one massive city and some amount of surrounding land be in some sort of demi-plane and basically be some sort of weird trap/experiment by some sort of incredibly powerful being that prevents anyone from leaving or entering the demi-plane except when suddenly a couple thousand members of an entirely new race suddenly appears with a new section of the city but with virtually no memory of their former lives or culture.
We decided this might be a good idea since it allows us to mash together whatever we want and create races that behave a bit differently than they would typically do on say Golarion. It also allows us to avoid having to make incredibly detailed histories on some races since say, halflings have only been in the city for 30 years and their culture is still developing as opposed to Ratfolk who were one of the earlier races in the city and have gone through all manner of wars and other events and have had time to really build up a full culture. Actually we were talking about how it could make a cool adventure where the PCs are actually trying to deal with the chaos of several new races appearing with new sections of the city basically appearing between older areas completely redefining the map and and having to deal with various factions trying to sway the new races and claim parts of the new territory.
I think we are going to just make half elves and half orcs full races and just change the names and actually give them some sort of culture. Haven't really come up with a good name for half elves but my friend wants to call half orcs Grendels.
As for the half-outsider races we have decided to make Aasimar, Tieflings, Slyphs, Undines, Ifrits and Oreads as full races as much as humans or goblins are races. They aren't descended from some hybridization but a just another distinct race. We were actually thinking about making them the first 6 races to live in the city.
Maybe Peredhil for half-elf?
Where is the food for your city coming from? I'd advise having the demiplane expand outward as new people come in, the new land being good for farming. You could have some variants in terrain as well, perhaps bits of lake or even seas are appearing?
Half creatures that are a separate race, are created. A strand of human hair and an angel feather are hit with a divine version of alternate clone to make an Aasimar.
Perhaps the park in the middle of the city was originally the garden of Eden, for that demiplane.