Quote: Original post by silverphyre673
Stop stealing my lobsterman idea! I came up with it first!

Whatever dude, we're about to go to alpha (in a few months) for our MMORPG, "WarClans"

These are our races:

Humans

Elves

Lobstermen
--like i said, brawlers and telepaths

Lagomoebas
--Bottom half rabbit, top half amoebas. fast and magical, good theives and magical assassins, can't wield bows.

Battuars
--Half Horse, Half bat (wings and head), and half man. archers, scouts, and magical swordsmen.

Kitanyas
-- like human children with claws, covered with fur, and having a kitten head. Wandering healers.

!ktsuggi
-- from african myth: human with long hippie hair, one cat's eye in middle of forehead (no other eyes), frog limbs. scholars, mages, and fashion-loving dandies.

Bovineman
--Looks like a cow. 3 abilities: Moo, eat grass, and ^%$&*.

Thredda
--looks like small asian child. huge bonuses to tailoring, but must use skill 14 hours per day.

Possumma
--half man, half opossum. generally bards and paladins.

These ideas are all copywrited! What do you think?

Lobstermen were in Terror from the Deep? (Xcom 2)

The point made on characterisation of individuals in the races is a good one.
You can have the most original race imaginable, and after meeting four or five of them, if they're all suffering Klingon-itis, they're gonna get boring.

RPGs work best with very strong characters for dramatic effect - it's the only thing that separates the NPC from being a simple quest dispersal mechanism, or dumb henchman, no matter what they look like, and what powers they have.

It's the culture of the race that determines this - if you know what should influence members of a given culture, then it's easier to script characters appropriately, be they renegades of that culture or not. This is one of the places where the backstory of a game can take on critical importance in a game-mechanics sense, not just as fluff.

replace Elves, Goblins, Orcs & Dwarves with Ninjas, Pirates, Robots and Zombies. Obviously.

Quote: Original post by _winterdyne_
Lobstermen were in Terror from the Deep? (Xcom 2)

I knew there was a reason I didn't play that one.

Quote: Original post by orionx103
Okay, I can understand the need to have multiple races in a story. When it comes to fantasy and games, multiple races provide a little variety and make things more interesting, or are meant to. We've been using multiple races since the 1950's, at least. Back then they were using Elves and Goblins and Orcs and Dwarves. They were NEW then. It was okay.

But now, sheesh. Fifty years have passed and we're still using the same old races. There's a lot less variety in our American-made RPG's because we just use the same old formula OVER and OVER and OVER. The EGOD thing has been driven into the ground and I'm frankly surprised people are still trying to use it. It should be dead by now. We're using the same prototypes: Tall Magical Archer, Short Blacksmith Axman, et cetera. Why don't we change it, even in the simplest manner?

AND FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, STOP USING ELVES.

</end rant>

Races are used because they're good physical and (to certain extent) psychological archetypes. Change the name and appearance of the race and you still have to keep the archetypes if you want to have some diversity.

Why call a rose anything but a rose?

I really don't understand this rant, it's like complaining about that all RPGs have Warriors or an Evil alignment choice.

This isn't restricted just to Tolkienesque fantasy. I'd say the vast majority of all fantasy stories feature races like that. You have your humans, then your more advanced/smug elder race, your violent commonly mistaken for evil yet honourable lower race, your actual evil race etc etc. Just look at Star Trek with it's Vulcans and Klingons, or Babylon 5 with it's Minbari and Narns. It's not just restricted to races either. Just think about Star Wars with Jedi and Vader. Dune with Bene Gesserit and Fremen. It's really just a very basic story element, we like to have our heros relatively like us to begin with, they need to have some kind of guide/mentor/aspiration. We also like seeing people fall and achieve redemption. The only real reason we are more aware of this all going on with elves is that it's been more a part of our culture for so long, and we've been over exposed to it. But a lot of people haven't, and they'll still lap up all the stories based on it.

Quote: Original post by Spoonbender

Quote:
Because the lobsterman probably didn't go to magic school with (correct me if I'm wrong, Ive never read the books / seen the movies :) ) Harry Potter and friends while elves and humans have more contact between their societies. This is of course story dependent but this distinction is very natural if the races do not have a deep background.

Well, who says elves and humans have more social contact than the lobstermen and humans do? If you made a setting with lobstermen and humans, I'd expect them to have about as much contact with each others as elves and humans typically do in other games.

Wouldn't lobstermen live in the water? Where humans do not, typically, live?

Quote:
Warcraft was mentioned earlier in the thread. I guess that's the #1 example. As you said, Arcanum tried to use the standard races in their own setting, but it wasn't a huge success.
Not sure if Warhammer 40k qualifies as "EGOD", but the setting rocks. [wink]
How about Discworld or LoTR? (Ok, they're not (primarily) games, but I suppose the same applies)

Really, Discworld is as generic as it gets. Pratchett's genius is to create a world populated with clichés, and then let it evolve naturally. One interesting feature of the Discworld is the absence of any 'superior' races.

Humans: Average at everything, but capable of the most variation. Amongst the humans are found the lowest and greatest individuals on the Disc.

Dwarves: Gruff, bearded, secretive, gold-loving, authoritarian, skilled articifers. Recent books have revealed various factions within the overall dwarf civilisation. Although they weren't at first, they now appear to be a commentary upon the Western view of Arab, Islamic and Islamic fundamentalist cultures (in particular the tendency to either group them all as one, or to draw a sharp distinction between the three).

Trolls: Stupid, silicon-based, sometimes eat humans. Ingeniously, rather than simply turning to stone in sunlight, they get stupider. Ice-cold Discworld trolls can be smart, even by Human standards. They can also turn into stone if they sleep for long enough. Perhaps there's shades of Tolkien's Ents there.

Elves: Evil fae. Usually appear small, but can adopt any size. Evil. Afraid of iron. Evil. Live in another world. In case you hadn't spotted it: Evil. Pratchett has obviously ignored Tolkien's elves and used folklorish elves directly.

The Discworld doesn't appear to contain orcs or goblins. I believe it has giants, although I don't recall encountering them in the books.

Discworld also has three other 'major' races which are often marginalised in other worlds.

Zombies: Dead people, for whatever reason, were not taken by Death. I don't recall if there are non-human zombies. These are not stupid brain-eating beasts: they are normal people who just happen to be dead. There are quite a lot of them. In Ankh-Morpork the law grants them equal rights with humans.

Werewolves: Sort of human/wolf hybrid. Generally evil, but not inherently so. Virtually immortal; if I recall correctly, only silver harms them. They are strong, fast and intelligent.

Vampires: Vampires. Usually afraid of garlic, sunlight, running water, holy symbols, holy water. Usually obsessive about orderliness: will tidy your house before killing you. They crave human blood, but can do without. Apart from sunlight and stakes through the heart, their weaknesses are all in their mind. Even if they didn't in life, they have a flare for the theatrical, pale skin, a penchant for billowing capes and a distinctive (clichéd Transylvanian) accent.

Quote: Original post by Xipe
I really don't understand this rant, it's like complaining about that all RPGs have Warriors or an Evil alignment choice.

It's more like complaining that all RPGs have "Samurai".

A Samuri is a complex archetype which can be split into many aspects. It's not automatically wrong to have a Samurai class, if your world is set in feudal Japan, but otherwise you better have darned good excuse as to why your world features a class of warriors who follow a facsimile of the 武士道 code of honour.

Similarly, how likely is it that a random world will contain: a race of lithe, nature-loving, beautiful, magical, pointy-eared, immortal, aloof archers; a race of short, swarthy, gruff, industrious, unisex, bearded, axe-wielding, noble warriors; a race of tall, strong, stupid, cowardly, cannibalistic barbarians; and a race of Aryans?

This thread is starting all over again!

Quote: Original post by Kallisti
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!)

I've heard of three of those, and actually read two.

Chronicles of Narnia will obviously be having a billion gazillion games of the movies coming out for the next century. Any attempt at making an indie Narnia will (1) be seen as jumping on the bandwagon and (2) be stuffed so full of cease-and-desist orders it'll turn into peat.

Edit: Thought I better write it in some kind of English.

On the other hand, a Dream-cycle RPG could be fantastically marvelous. There's obviously the question of 'Cthulhu mythos', since there is some linkage between the two. However, the stories set in the Dreamlands do paint a fairly vivid world.

Executive Summary

There are two ways into the Dreamlands.

The more conventional route is via one's own dreams. A staircase in a dream leads to a temple guarded by the priests Nasht and Kaman-Tha. If judged worthy, the dreamer can follow a greater staircase into the Dreamlands. Via this route, if you die within the Dreamlands you wake up in the 'real world'. On the other hand, you can't stay there for long: when you naturally wake up in the real world, you blink out of existance in the Dreamlands.

There are various other physical routes into the Dreamlands. Ghouls often live near the boundaries, and some entrances can be found in cursed graveyards. Other possible entrances might be a pit, an old rusted gate not opened for centuries, or pretty much any ancient passage in a God-forsaken corner of some isolated hamlet.

The physical route is dangerous, and means you stay dead if you die in the Dreamlands, but you can stay for as long as you want and have a greatly extended lifespan. Another way to take up permanent residence in the Dreamlands can be to die in the real world whilst you are there.

The transition from temporary residence to permanent residence would likely be one of the pivotal plot elements in any storylined Dream-cycle game.

Within the Dreamlands, humans can have immense powers. Some dreamers have created cities and thousands of inhabitants out of nothing. A sufficiently powerful dreamer might raise mountains, seed forests or scoop out oceans. Some dreamers can even challenge and defeat the Gods of the Dreamlands.

The Dreamlands are stuffed full of highly non-archetypal races. Nearby human dreamers the dominant races tend to be human, or nearly so. The ghouls are carrion feeders, and share their underland world with ghasts (a sort of demonic werekangaroo), gugs (giants with sideways opening mouths), nightgaunts (unintelligent winged servants of higher powers) and shantaks (elephant-sized bat-like reptilian steeds).

Above-ground creatures include giant spiders, satyrs, evil frog-like moon beasts, the disturbingly intelligent (but not necessarily hostile) cats of Ulthar and the man-eating elfen Zoogs. To the south are areas sometimes inhabited by fantastical creatures which defy a permanent description.

There are also various nearly-human races; hybrids created by foul magic and ever fouler marriages, such as the horned Men of Leng.

Not your usual EGOD.

Lord Dunsaney's tales might also make an interesting setting, if one could make some kind of consistent world out of them. (Or perhaps making a consistent world would be part of the game.)

[Edited by - Nathan Baum on November 30, 2005 12:17:36 AM]