[Zenith Games] Seven Bizarre Races

[Broken Zenith]

Let's mix up the playbook a bit.

The races presented within are more than just a collection of minor attribute bonuses and abilities designed to get a bit more damage out of a longsword. These races are unique, vivid, and bizarre in a balanced and instantly recognizable way. They change the game, and present an excellent, fascinating toolkit for players interested in variety.

With these bizarre races, nobody will forget who you are or what you look like. With these races, suddenly your game is new again.

• BUNNYTAURS: Halfling-rabbit centaurs, quick and alert but gripped by instinctual cowardice.
  
• KINDERCLOAKS: Plump, hooded shadows crafted from primitive magics that turn to petrified smoke in bright light.
  
• MERRIEPETALS: Revelrous flowers which exude a certain allure which makes them irresistable – or is it the hallucinogenic spores?
  
• MISBORN: Gangly psychopomp-touched humans with the ability to talk to the dead and see through planes.
  
• PAINTERLILIES: Two-dimensional sentient paintings, with the ability to meld onto surfaces.
  
• SHADOWFRIENDS: Frail fey giants created by a child's wish, disturbing in form but remarkably kind.
  
• BLESMOLFOLK: Sluggish, pain-immune mole rats, carving out vast labyrinths and dungeons. Blesmolfolk are divided between four distinct racial castes: industrious workers, crafty warriors, conniving consorts, and willful queens.

Available now on Paizo, RPGnow, and Zenith Games

[blahpers]

Petrified . . . smoke?

[Kobold Catgirl]

Yeehaw! It's me! It's the thing I did!

So I thought I knew about how to make races when I started on this project. I was just getting to work starting a play-by-post basically dedicated to "play whatever you want, it's a weird wild world", and these were among the races permitted. But I learned a ton from actually putting my weird races through the weird wringer. These seven species have been massively improved since their original conception, and I'm very proud of them.

One of my favorite things about resources like this is how both sides of the GM screen can use them. A player gets to sift through these books and come up with strange, exotic new concepts. A GM gets to use the races to add unique flavor to her world—everyone has ideas of what to expect if they run into some purple-skinned elves or gray-skinned dwarves underground, but what happens if you run into a creepy half-blind naked mole rat walking on two legs? It's a whole new world.

I loved working on this, and I hope you'll love experimenting with what we came out with!

blahpers wrote:

Petrified . . . smoke?

Imagine a mass of thick smoke condensed inside a very thin glass bottle, constantly straining to disperse. The kindercloaks' magic is primitive, and doesn't hold up too well under pressure. They might be likened to scarecrows bound with reed grass rather than string. There's a reason they go hooded and cloaked wherever they go.

[Pizza Lord]

Some really fun, creative ideas here. The addition of the racial points and how they were broken down along the ability lines will help a GM if they need to tweak a race for a player in their campaign and most fall just slightly above the standard RP for base races.

Blesmolfolk has four distinct class types, so it's almost like getting 10, though I do see the logic in it.

I think I like the merriepetals the most. While not usually a fan of plants, and my characters tend towards being strictly carnivorous (strict meaning they only eat other carnivores), I like the concept of the romanticizing plant creatures with their troublesome pollen.