Okay, so my second gaming groups Mad Max: Fury Road campaign is winding down. We found we like the homebrew system we made for it (minus some serious power scaling issues and some cheesy exploits people discovered that will have to be fixed). We intend to try it next in a pulp fantasy setting. Think Conan plus Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, plus a the less epic parts of Elric (so, yes, not unlike the less Tolkien half of D&D, although D&D is its' own thing at this point). The game will be standard open sandbox, player's pick their goals; advancement closer to linear than logarithmic or the like; magic is subtle or slow (Light spell? yes. Control weather? long strenuous ritual. Fireball? no.); heavy focus on survival; probably not the resource management game that would make it truly OSR-ish.

Anyways, one thing the DM would sorta/kinda/if-it-works include from the D&D-isms we come from is player race or species... but not Tolkien... but not rubber-headed people ala Star Trek aliens of the week... but not stupid. Er, yeah. At this point I think he doesn't know what he has in mind either. So I'm kind of looking for suggestions. What makes sense in this context? I think some animal-man creatures like lizardfolk (or crocodile), wolfen, ratfolk, or bizarre yakmen types might be suitably bizarre without making it seem like a furry convention. Leiber ghouls might be interesting. Anyone have any other suggestions that fit the definition of not being just alternate Tolkien, nor humans with latest prosthetic facial features?

Much appreciation!

Degenerate snakemen that are human enough apart from one or two tells.
Intelligent apes.
Cornish ogre (look like handsome humans but >6feet and cannibalistic).
Were-spiders.

Will add more as I think of them.

Do you just want a random grab-bag of things which fit a pulp/S&S vibe, or something more themed? Are you going with the standard assumption that only humans are sympathetic/playable? At the very least, not including "demi-humans" would go a long way towards de-Tolkein-ising things.

The themed option could make for something more coherent. That might be that humans are the only mammalian species, for example, so anything else has to be reptilian, amphibian, avian and so on.

Do relict neanderthals count as humans with prosthetic facial features?

The thing is, pulpy swords & sorcery is a lot more grounded in humanity than most high fantasy is. Most of your races here are probably just going to be slight variation on human because anything too far removed would just be a monster.

How about these then:

Barbaric humans
Decadent, civilized humans
Modern humans transported through time and space
Neanderthals/ape-men
Immortal cosmic-beings inhabiting human form (think Great Race of Yith)

Quote from: Kiero;1032662Do you just want a random grab-bag of things which fit a pulp/S&S vibe, or something more themed? Are you going with the standard assumption that only humans are sympathetic/playable? At the very least, not including "demi-humans" would go a long way towards de-Tolkein-ising things.

I honestly don't know what I'm looking for. On some level, Elves, Klingons and Catmen seem like Tolkien, rubber-headed prosthesis people, and furries, respectively, while in my mind, a yakman or ratman or snake people seem pulpy. I'm really just trolling (in the fishing sense) everyone else's creativity for ideas of what might fit.

It is kind of like asking, "guys, what am I hungry for?" -- there's no right answer, but maybe enough ideas thrown out will hit on something that sounds good.

Something akin to Wookie.

Moorcock had all kinds of crazy folk in his books.

The thing is, Tolkien is actually pretty much what we actually had on Earth 100,000 years ago.

You had homo erectrus, the first "humans", still around. Call them elves. You neanderthals, brutish people who felt more than they thought. Call them orcs. You had that little tiny people. Hobbits.  You had the big (relatively speaking) primitive cannibalistic homo antecessor, which could be ogres. You had denisovans who could be gnomes or dwarves.

Quote from: Cave Bear;1032671

The thing is, pulpy swords & sorcery is a lot more grounded in humanity than most high fantasy is. Most of your races here are probably just going to be slight variation on human because anything too far removed would just be a monster.

This is right on the button. Personally, I think non-human PCs really aren't very Sword and Sorcery; unless, as Cave Bear says, they are fairly close to human. Melneboneans are about as out there as it gets. Yes, they a sort of elf, but they get away with it because they are about as far away from JRRT's tiresome pointy-eared gits as it is possible to get.

If your group must include such PC options, I like Kiero's idea of making them non-mammalian. Atlantis: The Second Age featured a host of bio-engineered humans who developed into different sorts of 'beastmen' - perhaps a peek of that might provide inspiration.

For pulp era it depends on the pulp. Overall I prefer to stick to humans and variants thereof. Which could drift into the freakish if you are going the Lovecraftian pulp style. Otherwise its good ol humanity and the occasional animal.

A PA setting tends hot to be pulp era and there it really depends on what you want to allow or not.  Fallout for example has humans and some biomodded humans and some humans altered by radiation. And robots of course. Theres so far apparently not been much that wasnt human as races.

I'd stick to humans. Different types of humans, maybe.