Demihumans. For some they're an essential component of the fantasy RPG genre. Whether they be the belligerent, avaricous dwarves of vanilla D&D or the 7' desert-dwelling elves of Athas you can almost guarantee that most settings will include at least one analogue of the classic races.

The reason behind this thread is that I'm currently prepping a campaign for the Wilderlands of High Fantasy setting and have found myself in a bit of a rut regarding the stock fantasy races. I want to present them as recognisable yet distinct from their more generic brethren. I'm looking for cool and interesting takes on the idea, whether it be physical, cultural or spiritual. A Sword and Sorcery vibe is a definite bonus, as I'm trying to avoid the standard medieval cliches. Examples from other systems (eg. the Dryad-like elves of RQ) and literature are more than welcome.

So, RPGsiters, bring me your demihumans! I'll post my own embyonic musings if and when a few responses are in.

Quote from: DrewSo, RPGsiters, bring me your demihumans! I'll post my own embyonic musings if and when a few responses are in.

Play elves as the fantasy version of Greys (totally alien viewpoint, detached interest in humanity and other sentient races, rarely motivated by outside concerns).

Lord Hobie

Quote from: Lord HobiePlay elves as the fantasy version of Greys (totally alien viewpoint, detached interest in humanity and other sentient races, rarely motivated by outside concerns).

Lord Hobie

that's a good one.  i think i'll steal it for my fantasy setting.

how about dwarves as earth elementals?  they don't have to look like earth genasi (or whatever the part-elementals are), but could just have a drab, tan skin color.  they don't really eat (much) but do still drink, frequently to excess.  "if ya don't drink, you'll harden up, like old Kharazdim the Elder!  didn't touch the stuff, and slowly turned to stone, he did."

Quote from: DrewDemihumans. For some they're an essential component of the fantasy RPG genre. Whether they be the belligerent, avaricous dwarves of vanilla D&D or the 7' desert-dwelling elves of Athas you can almost guarantee that most settings will include at least one analogue of the classic races.

The reason behind this thread is that I'm currently prepping a campaign for the Wilderlands of High Fantasy setting and have found myself in a bit of a rut regarding the stock fantasy races. I want to present them as recognisable yet distinct from their more generic brethren. I'm looking for cool and interesting takes on the idea, whether it be physical, cultural or spiritual. A Sword and Sorcery vibe is a definite bonus, as I'm trying to avoid the standard medieval cliches. Examples from other systems (eg. the Dryad-like elves of RQ) and literature are more than welcome.

So, RPGsiters, bring me your demihumans! I'll post my own embyonic musings if and when a few responses are in.

Hi Drew,

You might want to get "fresh" ideas by looking at classical/medieval/celtic sources for what elves are like.  The Tolkienish Elves are the basis for our common lot in RPGs usually.  However as it happens Elves are much more ethereal and otherworldly than the way they are commonly portrayed as character classes in D&D type game settings, as far as I know.  I would read around a bit on the mythologies related to elves.  There are a huge variety of Elves, dark, light and grey.  I would take a look at classics such as the 'Mabinogion', Spencer's 'The Fairy Queen', and other similar sources and see what comes to mind for you.

The thing about it that I would consider is that Elves by nature (er supernature?) are strange and somewhat unfathomable beings from the Other World (Tir Na Nog), and not really simple tall humans with pointy ears and good marksmanship skills + some magic.   That's a very D&Dish way of viewing them.  For game purposes that works, but from an 'interesting story' perspective you can find a great deal of raw material out there in the old literature of our forefathers.  Dust off a tome or two and see what you can dig up.  When it comes to Elves, Dwarves and the other denizens of Feylandia, you need not have to resort to invention or recombination.  There's quite a bit there already for those who know where to poke around.  Elves are far stranger beings than our RPGs would lead us to believe...

I hope this helps to at least point in a helpful direction...

Batteries not included.

- Mark

My take on two of the race are found here

http://home.earthlink.net/~wilderlands/cselves.html
http://home.earthlink.net/~wilderlands/csdwarves.html

I think the trick isn't coming up with a new gonzo background for them. What I would do is focus more on the individual level. If YOU and your friends were role-playing a group of elves in your Wilderlands campaign what would they be like how would they act. From that extrapolate backwards to a more general culture and racial background.

An alternate is run a campaign (short or long) where everyone plays elves. Essentially you and your groups define what elves are. In my experience a focused campaign like tends to create a  rich and interesting background.

Finally in fantasy, note this is being simplistic, Elves were presented in several ways. Sidhe Fae of high  noble blood, or the Elves of Alfheim of Norse (angelic, direct ancestor of Tolkein's version). Tolkien himself had two versions, the Hobbit Elves and the LoTR/Simarrillion Elves.  From here you can read up on the different version and their variants and take what elements you want.

I choose the Tolkien variant myself as I felt it was the most true to the origins of the game I was playing (AD&D 1st). When I switched to Fantasy Hero and GURPS they remained essentially the same except their society became much more reclusive, powerfully magical, and mysterious.

The one player I had ever seen play an elf in my game couldn't role-play out of a wet paper bag. Eventually he wound up torching a village (He was a GURPS fire mage) After that even his own party was pissed off at him, the village had some important contacts, and he wound up being bagged by the Elves. His punishment was to be treated like an animal as he treated others like animals. He was transformed into a donkey and was to give rides to all those who came to the elven city for a hundred years and a day.

As for the general lack of PCs elves (or demi-humans) in my game is mostly due to the fact I give so many interesting options to the human side. I did have a couple of good dwarven players. And a handful of hobb... err halfling players.

Given the strange history of the wilderlands setting you can pretty much go nuts. Discovered by interstellar travellers, fought over and influenced by the Markrab, the Dragon Lords and everything in between. The players Guide has more history of the setting than the box set, i'm told, but i don't have that book.

I was talking with someone at DexCon and we brainstormed a fun notion of Jungle Elves:  the core notion was that they wore skins and lived in trees and primitive shit like that not despite their intelligence and insane longevity, but because of it.

"Well, yeah, we built a huge city of magic and wonderment a few centuries ago ... and the jungle overran it, like it overruns everything.  Fuck it.  It's not worth the bother.  There's some ruins a day or two over that way, if you want to check them out, but you'll have to dig through like ten feet of vines in order to even see what the city used to look like.  Or, I got monkey-meat on a stick roasting on the fire right here, if you want to deal with something real."

Quote from: TonyLBthe jungle overran it, like it overruns everything.  Fuck it.  It's not worth the bother.

Damn, what a great "been there, done that" attitude.  They might even be able to predict major events in human civilization because they've been there before.

"You know, since King Harold started debasing coinage, massive inflation is going to set in.  Move out of the city before the famine hits in 3 years."

They might figure humans are still evolving and haven't gotten past their civilization fetish yet.  So they don't want to get too involved with humans until they've had their collapse and restructuring.

I don't use demi-human races anymore in any of our games, but when I did, I usually mapped them to a recognizable culture.  This gave me a whole crap load of shit to mine (Orks live in a medieval Venice-like city, Doge and all) and made it easy for the players to get their heads around the idea (okay we all saw Laurence Fishburne in Othello right?  Think the Venicians from that).

This kinda thinking always led me to break from the usualy stereotypes for the races. Orks as Venicians, Halflings as Byzantines, Dwarves as Mamuluks, Elves as the barbaric Franks and Humans as everyone else's bitch is one example.

Keith Senkowski

I went back to the roots myself and twisted them up:

Dvegr
   Born of ancient mountains heart, they are more akin to iron and stone, than flesh and bone.  The Dvegr are smaller than the other races of men, like a boulder to a hill, they are also more solid,  weighing more than even the tallest fomoradgh. The males grow luxuriant beards from an early age and many dvegr hair grays early in their adult years. Dvegr can be as beautiful or as frightful of appearance as humans, and often share traits with nearby human cultures (such as coloration of skin and hair.)

  They are peerless craftsmen, miners and warriors.  While disdainful of magic and the wizards' art, they too have craefters of their own, and items made by dwarf-smiths and girded by their enchantments are things of  legend. Dvegr have better vision than most other Kinships in twilight or low light, but suffer a bit under bright sun.



Kinship Traits: Heart of Iron and Bones of Stone: Dvegr are very resilient and resistant to harm. (Greater)  

Challenge: Pebble's Burden: Dvegr cannot float, thus cannot swim and this makes them less than fond of water. (Greater)



Dwarf physiology is such that when they die their bodies slowly become stone, harder than granite locked in the position where they meet final repose. This is not spoken of commonly but many an alcove with a stone Dvegr Statue within a Dvegrhold's Mourning Hall is actually the stone hard body of a fallen ancestor.
     


Sidda
            Often spoken of in quiet whispers, yet  rarely seen, they are feared by humans more often than not.  The Sidda are known also as the Fair folk, or the Fey. Where this race as a whole has gone is unknown even to the scant few who still wander the lands of men.  They are a lithe folk with inhuman grace and uncanny voices. They have fine beautiful features, large almond shaped eyes, and pointed ears.


Kinship Traits: Mythic Countenance:  As Sidda age they take on mythic traits of their birth name. Slowly becoming elemental or legendary primal forces over time. (Greater),

Kinship Challenge: Sorrow's Burden: Sidda feel things deeply and are moved by sorrow for the pains of the land and their people, as well as the sorrow's of all the kindred of men. They suffer melancholy rather easily due to this.

As Sidda age they take on on some primal elemental aspect until they are unrecognizable as a race of man. The mighty Oak-King  who appears as more a tree each and every year for example, stands over nine feet tall with bark like skin, and antler like branches upon his brow, he dwells currently in his forest home upon a throne of gnarled roots which span from the eldest of all Oak trees.

The Lion of the North, a snow-white lion, nearly the size of the horse, was once a powerful Sidda warlord.

The Lady of the Sea, a woman of sea foam and saltwater. She sometimes appears within an ocean wave that breaks apart instead of smashing to ruin. Like the others she too was once a Sidda.

Sorry for the delayed respose people-- an age-old health issue reared it's ugly head again, necessitating another week in a crumbling NHS hospital.

There's some great stuff here folks, real food for thought. Once I come off the industrial strength painkillers in a few days I should be able to frame a response that isn't half-sensate drooling idiocy. My own take on how to present the demihumans (and to a lesser extent humanoid) races of the Wilderlands has crystallized somewhat, although there's definitely a few ideas in the thread that I'll be making considerable use of.

Cool beans indeed.

In Birthright, dwarves are so associated with earth and stone that their skin is stone like (to the point of giving them 2 DR) and grey, and they can actually eat rock (and live off of it). It's kinda bland tasting to them, but they still have whole dishes based around various types of stone. I always found that interesting.

In a home-brew setting I've been working on sporadically for a few years, I've postulated that humans and several other "tall" races are not native to the world, and that the only true natives are the elves, which are small, much more like halflings, the dwarves, and the goblins (which are wolf-riding nomadic hordes similar to the huns or mongols).

OK. The fog is finally starting to clear, so I can finally get to responding. I'll be doing so on a post-by-post basis, so bear with me on this one...

Quote from: Lord HobiePlay elves as the fantasy version of Greys (totally alien viewpoint, detached interest in humanity and other sentient races, rarely motivated by outside concerns).

It's a nice idea, and one that's occured to me before, although the Grey analogy is something I hadn't previously considered. I like the idea of Elves being inhuman in both physiology and outlook, with the traditional "fae" motif being something ascribed by a largely ignorant humanity attempting to categorise. Finding out that the traditional legends of treating with these creatures mean less than nothing certainly has possibilities...

I'm not sure if it quite fits what I'm looking for though. My players are veteran fantasy readers, and it's quite likely that they'd simply view a distanced, alien elvish mentality as little more than a version of Tolkien's Noldorin.

That said, there's a distinct possibility that I can use this as the template for the ur-Elves whom arrived in the Wilderlands hundreds of millenia ago. At the moment I'm tending toward a kind of mystical trans-speciest physiology and mindset that has gradually become 'fixed' into different lineages over the intervening epochs. I think it's a cool jumping off spot that can incorporate some of the other stuff in this thread.

Good stuff.

More responses later.

Quote from: beeberhow about dwarves as earth elementals?  they don't have to look like earth genasi (or whatever the part-elementals are), but could just have a drab, tan skin color.  they don't really eat (much) but do still drink, frequently to excess.  "if ya don't drink, you'll harden up, like old Kharazdim the Elder!  didn't touch the stuff, and slowly turned to stone, he did."

I like the idea of an elemental connection, just one that's a little less pronounced. Perhaps if the hardening of the Dwarfish race was a psychological or spiritual phenomenon? Unless certain rituals are observed and taboos enforced then a gradual mental calcification occurs, resulting in fatally compulsive engineers, prophets and madmen. Maybe a Dwarf hardened into a continual psychopathic rage, who never stops to eat, think or rest would be viewed as a kind of divinely tainted warning against the perils of irreligious thinking.

A group of them would be very similar to the Infected in the film 28 Days Later. Now there's a thought...

Quote from: VBWyrdeHi Drew,

You might want to get "fresh" ideas by looking at classical/medieval/celtic sources for what elves are like.  The Tolkienish Elves are the basis for our common lot in RPGs usually.  However as it happens Elves are much more ethereal and otherworldly than the way they are commonly portrayed as character classes in D&D type game settings, as far as I know.  I would read around a bit on the mythologies related to elves.  There are a huge variety of Elves, dark, light and grey.  I would take a look at classics such as the 'Mabinogion', Spencer's 'The Fairy Queen', and other similar sources and see what comes to mind for you.

The thing about it that I would consider is that Elves by nature (er supernature?) are strange and somewhat unfathomable beings from the Other World (Tir Na Nog), and not really simple tall humans with pointy ears and good marksmanship skills + some magic.   That's a very D&Dish way of viewing them.  For game purposes that works, but from an 'interesting story' perspective you can find a great deal of raw material out there in the old literature of our forefathers.  Dust off a tome or two and see what you can dig up.  When it comes to Elves, Dwarves and the other denizens of Feylandia, you need not have to resort to invention or recombination.  There's quite a bit there already for those who know where to poke around.  Elves are far stranger beings than our RPGs would lead us to believe...

I hope this helps to at least point in a helpful direction...

It does indeed, although I'm moving in a different direction for reasons stated above. I've read a fair bit of mythology, and whilst undeniably cool there's a kind of familiarity to it that just isn't sparking my interest at the moment. The Wilderlands setting has a strong sci-fi undercurrent that I'd like to incorporate into a grander mythological foundation that will inform my sessions, at least on a subtextual level.

Put it this way, I'm more of an Eldar man than an Elf-lover these days.

Thanks for the contribution, though. It's always good to have a reminder of where this stuff originates.