Quote: Original post by Sneftel

Quote: Original post by silverphyre673
However, the Chr'raskkrl, lobster-rhino-giraffe-people of the sea, is pushing it.

Oh, well goodness, we certainly don't want to push it.

Yes, elves and goblins have been around for awhile. But then, so have ifrits, and shedu (shedus?), and kappas. And even if they hadn't been, someone could invent them tomorrow. There's nothing to be gained, and much to be squandered, by sticking to the same races as everyone else (even with depth added).

I don't mean that we shouldn't invent some interesting new races that aren't derived from your standard generic stock; I mean that we should avoid just randomly throwing together a weird amalgram of traits, with no regard to form or function, in an attempt to be different. We need new races, yes, but they need to make sense in some way - that doesn't mean that they have to look or act conventionally, but they do need to have a reason for having a 3 foot tongue and nine eyes.

And to the posters who corrected me on the difference between Tolkien Elves and the elves of fairy tails: I'm sorry. I should have thought before I posted that =) I've read enough books on the subject to know the difference. Anyways, I still stand by my point that the identities of different creatures needs to be fleshed out more.

I like the concept of the Brown Man of German folklore: he is a benevolant protector of the woodlands, but he stands taller than any human, eats only nuts and berries, and rends men limb from limb if they kill any of the creatures he protects. I like the idea of a super buff elf/fairy that doesn't take s*** from nobody, and doesn't need some wimpy bow to fight =) They just tear you to pieces.

Quote:
Originality for originality's sake is not necessarily the way forwards. Sure, you can replace elves with 12 foot tall levitating porpoise-men with prehensile nasal hairs, but what does it actually achieve? Too much unfamiliarity will likely put many people off, and those that aren't put off will probably wind up stereotyping them just as much.

Yeah, what he said.

I'm glad someone is bringing this to our attention. Tolkein is ripped off so much that people don't even realize they are ripping him off when they use elves and dwarves.

Yes, elves have been around before him, yes so have dwarves. But before Tolkein there was no standard characteristics. How elves and dwarves are used today is taken directly from Tolkein. And how can you really say the Orcs in Warcraft are so different than Tolkein's? Unlike elves and dwarves, I think Tolkein invented the orc just like he invented the hobbit or halfling.

Is the problem really that there are elves in a game or just a poor implementation of races in the storyline? I don't mind "elves" because as someone posted above, they are familiar. I don't have to learn the complete details of a new race just to play a game. Sure, I would if it was presented and making the effort to learn the new details would make a difference in the game, but I am more interesting in the depth of the story. There are tons of novels on the shelves right now that successfully use alternate races and build terrific worlds. I think that in games, publishers are looking for a set template that has a track record of success to put their money behind. It is easy to be daring and innovative when there is nothing to lose.

What I find ammusing, is we (as a community) would sit here and complain about something that we CAN CHANGE. Kind of like fire fighters complaining about putting out a fire.

Quote: Original post by Will F
I would love to see more innovation/originality in games, rather than catering to the lowest common denominator, but I suspect something like the following conversation has actually occurred:

Quote: Game Designer: I'd like to make a fantasy RPG.
Publisher: Um, ok... tell me about it
GD: We're going to eschew conventions and not have any of the standard RPG fare. No elves or other elements that players have come to expect from an RPG.
P: Ok... how much is it going to cost to make?
GD: 5 million dollars.
P: I'm sorry, we're just not interested in investing that much money on what we believe to be a risky proposition.

I just picked up Shadow of the Colossus - really interesting game, but I highly doubt the dev team could have gotten funding from a North American publisher to make it.

I agree with this - it's the same problem that's found in book and movie publishing. Everything is about money, and that leads to statistical analysis, low-risk planning, least-common-denominator targeting, and general wimpiness. Only Indie-ness can save us from it, if anything can.

Before this post heads too firmly into deoxy.org territory, let me change the subject a little: The Tolkien detractors are definitely on to something. He grabbed a ton of stuff from the Eddas, in particular (including the name "Gandalf" IIRC). Not to mention, the damage his success did to the diversity of the Fantasy genre. Beforehand, there were

• Lud-in-the-Mist
• Mardi
• The House on the Borderlands
• The Worm Ororboros
• Juergen
• The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath
• The Chronicles of Narnia
• Gormenghast

Not that I like all of these, but they are definitely diverse. See China Mieville for more Tolkien-bashing fun.

Now to get back on topic before Mare boxes my ears (at least she can't see my screen while she's playing Gaia Online [lol]) - how good of games would these "old skool" Fantasies (Phantasies?) make? I'd expect Dream-Quest and possibly Gormenghast to work well. Don't know about the other ones. (Almost all of these are in the public domain - [google] if you don't know WTF I'm talking about!)

They'd have to be well over fifty years and written by someone with no family to be public domain right now, wouldn't they? Damn, that's old.

I know what people mean when they say the races aren't familiar, but at the same time, elves and dwarves weren't familiar to you at one time, too. But you learned, be it as you watched a movie, read a book, or played a game, you learned about the characteristics of these characters. That's how it works in every other game. Personally, I don't see what the problem is when it comes to unfamiliar races. You learn about them just like you'd learn about every other race. You just have to give enough information to keep the people interested.

Right after I made this topic, I began coming up with a few new races. It wasn't really to be /so/ different, but to just change things up. A dwarf-like race that live in the ice-covered mountains and are known for being the best spell-casters, a race of women that live in volcanoes to weaponsmith and can produce children with or without a man, a race of semi-divine beings who live on a land in the sky and have a somewhat angelic look, a race of giants who were so powerful they were locked away in another realm (except for one who escaped). But I wonder if it's worth using these when, for the most part, two of them are just elves and dwarves with mixed attributes. The angelic race will follow the Judeo-Christian path of having one fall, who will also be the child of one of the giants, and so on.

Anyway, I need a cigarette.

Quote: Original post by orionx103 a race of women that live in volcanoes to weaponsmith and can produce children with or without a man

hah, what fun would that be!!!! But all good ideas that could easily be worked. The trick is to make them interesting enough that a player would be intrigued enough to play them long term.

Finally lol I have found others that hate elves. WOot! It's been so long lol. That makes me so happy.

Well, the Blizzard Orc (and pretty much everything in warcraft, including the style) is a straight rip-off from warhammer 40k IMHO. It actually astounds me that GW didn't come down on them like a ton of bricks when warcraft 3 came out. The style is so close it's not even funny.

Quote: Original post by Spoonbender
[...]Er, I don't think anyone suggested that. As Sneftel said, there are literally hundreds of other *existing* fairytale species to build on. There are literally hundreds of real-world cultures, and literally hundreds of mythologies to build on. And yet, everyone and their uncle chooses to build on Tolkien.[...]

If you pick a nonstandard mythology, either you're going to have to include a tolkein-sized manual or you're going to have a LOT of players that have no idea what is going on. For example, I'd guess I know a lot more about mythologies than most because I've read several books on such things, and I still know very little about most of the mythological creatures mentioned in this thread.

Most of the good ideas I've had or heard of for races come not from inventing something new, but twisting historical cultures together with a fantasy-race stereotype. For example, orcs based on the traditional japanese culture could be made quite unusual without being alien even to those that know little of orcs or traditional japan, because they'd act like humans with different values instead of like stereotypes.

Quote: Original post by MichaelT
Well, the Blizzard Orc (and pretty much everything in warcraft, including the style) is a straight rip-off from warhammer 40k IMHO. It actually astounds me that GW didn't come down on them like a ton of bricks when warcraft 3 came out. The style is so close it's not even funny.

They're really only very similar in the way they look. The two settings have rather different takes on their culture, society, etc.

Edit: Something that applies to the Warcraft vs. Warhammer comparison in general, now that I think about it. Blizzard copped a visual style but added their own mythos.