Your Version of X

[Conners]

It's fun to take something from popular media and give it a twist. Whether it's vampires, goblins, or just tropes in general.


Do you have any interesting twists on common things, in your settings?

[jseah]

I, uh, tend to end up doing this to the concepts of various shows/books/anime/manga that I watch or read.

I took the character erasure that Shakugan no Shana had and wrote a short story based around tracking down all the holes left by the common "you get deleted and no one will remember you!" mechanic.
Essentially, modern society tracks its citizens to such an extent that simply deleting a person and everyone's memories, as well as making their pictures go blank (which is a popular mechanic for some reason)... doesn't actually delete them. About the only way to properly delete a person in the modern world is to rewind time to their conception and delete them there, then wind forwards again.

The story has the protagonist, an unreasonably good detective for a high school boy, tracking down the disappearance of his (ex-)girlfriend who no one, including him, remembers. He does this by tracing the holes left in the world by a simple deletion of the girl and everything connected to her by 1 step (so pictures of her become empty, places where her name was go blank, and no one remembers her).
He also infers that the simple deletion mechanic is a natural law of some sort and not the result of an intelligent agent, and therefore this thing is safe to investigate.

He also demonstrates how to find a location with an Attention Deflecting Field that makes everyone everywhere spontaneously forget about it and unconsciously ignore it.
And so I managed to take the mechanic of people disappearing, which was played for Drama, and wrote something not-quite-a-mystery out of it.

Essentially, you don't *actually* have to introduce a twist into something to make it new. You just need a new perspective.
Or take it to its logical conclusion, which is very often not what was intended. =D

[00dlez]

In many of my games I usually take one of the classically savage races (gnolls, goblins, orcs, etc) and turn them into to tactics masters, using all the dirty tricks and feats that low level martial players use so efectively.

They still may use swarms and ambushes, but it's a lot more orderly and planned.




I also often use a striking or uncommon race combination for a recurring NPC in the world. For example, I have a favorite ship captain who is half-orc and other half gnome or halfling. He's a half-orc stat wise, but dwarf size/build and quite the uncommon sight compared to the typical 7' linebacker half orcs players are used to.

[PersonMan]

I've had an idea for a while that, instead of just being undead, vampires are mages who use blood to fuel their powers. At some point they 'run low' on spirit energy-rich blood in their bodies and consume most of what they have left to strengthen their mind and body. They then take in blood from others to keep the magical furnace inside them working.

Sunlight kills them because it destroys (or severely damages) all magic - it radiates absurdly strong unstable magical power, which does to normal magical energy what RL radiation does to molecular bonds (if I understand it properly, that is).

---

In one of my other settings, the fey are a massive empire that controls almost all of the world and puts down rebellion by setting off magical nuclear explosions (of sufficient strength to obliterate entire peninsulas) in the capitols of the rebelling nations.

In this setting, elves are warrior people who don't do anything other than keep ready for war and relay messages between their creators, the fey, and the mortal races. They have everything provided for them by the fey empire so they can't do much of anything but fight.

The dwarves are an older creation of the fey, left to rot in massive mountain-forts after they failed to do much against the last rebellion.

[Tesla_pasta]

All of my monsters have class levels.

ALL OF THEM.

Okay not ALL of them. But I assume that monsters are not a static force, and individuals are capable of training and learning every bit as much as PCs.

Not to the same extent (usually only like 1-3 levels for a monster), but it makes combat more interesting when the ogre is investing essentia, the ghouls have 3rd level maneuvers, and the shambling mound can rage.

I also do the "half-something doesn't imply other half-human" thing like OOdlez said.

[Yora]

For my lizardfolk, I wanted to make an advanced and ordered iron age civilization with big capital cities and large temple districts, while individuals are still viscious warriors with maws full of sharp teeth.
So I pretty much made them a hybrid of Turians from Mass Effect and Jungle Trolls from Warcraft.
http://fc03.deviantart.net/fs70/i/2012/080/9/1/me3_turian_sketches__by_meken-d4tgg3e.jpg


The only type of beings from other planes are demons.
They are not outright evil by nature, but they are creatures of the default state of the multiverse, while the world of mortal beings is just a small anomaly. The mere presence of a demon in the material world starts reality to break down, causing disease and mutation, and general decay. It's not that they want doing it, it just happens to everything near them when they are visiting.
Since their world is immaterial, they can not go to the material world, but they can replace the spirit of a material being, be it alive or dead. It can be a corpse, a living creature, or sometimes even just a heap of stone or ice. But even then, they need a material spellcaster to open a gateway for them from the inside, and can only interact with the material world through telepathy by their own power.
The motivation for all demons to visit the material world is curiosity. Some try to avoid causing damage, while others don't care, and some even find it quite entertaining to destroy material things. As they are completely immortal, they can stay for decades before their body is destroyed. But no matter how well meaning, all demons corrupt their surroundings and anyone who spends time near them.


Vampires can be barely called that, since I stripped them of almost all their powers, and they are now much more like the Inspired from Eberron, but they fill a similar niche. They are created when a living person is possessed by a demon and both the mortal spirit and the demonic spirit merge. The new being has all the memories of the originals, but it doesn't care at all for anything that was important to the mortal and whatever the demon left behind in the demon world. It's all about living one mortal lifetime in the material world. And with the improved physical and mental abilities of the demon possession and the considerable magical powers, it's usually about climbing up to power. They usually lead some kind of secret organization that gathers wealth and political power. Often they also arrange for some of their demon friends to get a mortal body as well, so the organizations endure for longer than the demon who started it.
They are basically super-humans who are almost immortal and of superior mental abilities, who are always at war with those people who try to fight the spread of demonic curruption of their world.


Lycathropes are entirely natural creatures and there is no disease and no moon influence involved. They are mortals who have the spirit of a humanoid and an animal, which allows them to shift between the forms. Most live in their own communities, but powerful animal spirits can also give this gift to people they consider worthy friends.

[sktarq]

While I mess with game mechanics on a regular basis the twist of a popular pop culture image is more rare.
My personal favorite is gollems. Power them with bound souls. (I have a thing for finding ways of powering magic (or at least boosting the power of magic) in nasty ways.
I did take the idea of the saurians (as in the lost valley inhabitants from FR) as having a past fleshwarping culture who created most of the humanoids in the world. With one nation creating humanity expressly as a base for additional experiments and breeding programs (which is why human cross breed so easily) thus leading too changelings, lycanthropes, planetouched, etc. to be various tools created by leading nations (I apply a similar idea to my tweaked version of Eberron with the Bound Lords of Dust being the modifying force)
Oh and Orcs being fully integrated into society with Elves in an Eastern Setting. With the racial divide falling along the noble/commoner hit (it was a gimmick to a large extent but it played up the idea that destroying the system would release a powerful menace on the world and it hit my players harder than I thought it would)

[Yora]

Goblins look just like in the Lord of the Rings movie, because I like those.

Also, they are not a race of swarming marauders, but rather the only true subterranean humanoid race. They are also the only people who regularly travel between deep caves of the material plane and the Underworld, the underground realm of the Spiritworld. When surface people want to go to the underworld, they have to get themselves some goblin guides, because they are the only ones who know the unmapped passages and are familiar with all the dangerous creatures and how to find food and water in the underworld.
Unlike other mortal humanoid races, goblins can see without any light source. They have no connection to worgs, but instead gain incredible climbing abilities. Not only are they short and very thin, their entire equipment is also made to not get into the way when squeezing through incredibly tight and narrow cracks. When you fight goblins, it's always tuckers kobolds. They don't need to fight one on one, they can simply disappear into the rock and come out somewhere else any time, while medium sized travelers can only stay on the main path that is large enough for them.


Also:
Goliaths are Earth Genasi.
Jarael (http://media.comicvine.com/uploads/1/15455/421000-Jaraelactiondustinweaver_large.jpg) from KotOR is an Air Genasi.
Draenei are Tieflings.
And I made a race based on mashing together Shifters (http://www.wizards.com/dnd/images/roe_gallery/88207.jpg) from Eberron, Cathar (http://images.wikia.com/starwars/images/4/4e/Rasi_Tuum.jpg) from KotOR (http://www.wikiswtor.com/images/d/d4/Cathar_--_Master_Quilb.png), Ferai (http://media.giantbomb.com/uploads/3/33720/1267711-primal_4_super.jpg) from Primal (http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-bzGzvF9D_yI/T5QJmWnVywI/AAAAAAAAA9A/hy0JYeRc_Io/s1600/primal-feraibody.jpg), and Qunari (http://images.wikia.com/dragonage/images/e/e3/Qunari_DA2.png) from Dragon Age (http://media.giantbomb.com/uploads/11/117581/1692316-qunarida2_large.png). You basically have 2 meter tall muscular warriors with lions heads who don't take **** from anyone. :smallbiggrin:

[falloutimperial]

Gnolls are to me such good candidates for a proud, military race that I forget that isn't what they are to most people.

[the_david]

Dwarves are very good at using poisons. It's a shame nobody notices this, but with better saves against poison, they should be using that stuff all the time. Not just in their ale.

[Otacon17]

I've been working on a Pathfinder campaign setting for a few months now where all of the races are at least slightly different than the 'original' versions. My goal is to convert everything in the Advanced Races Guide into something in my new setting.

Changelings are people who somehow came into contact with the setting's resident Lovecraftian horror, and were irrevocably changed. They can't remember anything of their past lives and are usually driven insane within a few years by the mysterious voices they hear in their heads at night.
Dhampir, being walking paradoxes (since they were given life by an undead creature), are monsters that look human but are, essentially, ferociously violent animals; many vampires use them as the undead equivalent of guard dogs.
Elves are so strongly tied to nature that if they stay in one place long enough, they begin to take on it's physical characteristics - i.e., an elf who lives in the forest may find their hair turning the color of the leaves and their skin might take on a bark-like quality.

I haven't finished all the races yet, but those are some of my favorites so far.

[Jeff the Green]

Well, for my setting:

Orcs are extinct, wiped out by a disease similar to small pox.
Half-orcs are nomadic horsemen.
Elves are descended from humans who were abducted by the fay and changed a bit by their time in faerie. They're also quite martially inclined.
Dwarves are naturally and culturally attuned to magic.
Gnomes are slave-taking, communist sailors and merchants.
Halflings are mostly poor subsistence farmers, but the adventurers are pretty much either pirates or paladins.
Kobolds don't worship dragons, they worship a kobold (who is yet to be born) who will turn into a dragon.
Undead can't stay animated if they're too far from their necromancer.
Elementals and outsiders form spontaneously from magical energies; they don't come from different planes (since there aren't any).

[Craft (Cheese)]

In a new somethingsomething I'm preparing for my next campaign:

- Undead have troll-like regeneration powers, and need no necromancer to animate them: All dead human bodies that aren't burned will rise up and start hunting people down within 3 days or so. Also, they're immune to bullets (which have advanced enough to replace most weapons).

- Necromancy isn't hated and feared but is instead a valuable community asset, as it has the power to *control* undead, not just create them. Towns are kept safe from the undead hordes by large necromantic devices that keep the zombies away.

- Clerics no longer exist. If you need healing/buffing magic, talk to an alchemist instead.

- Pretty much all mundane flora and fauna have gone extinct and been replaced with monstrous versions in the wild. Farming and animal husbandry of traditional foods has become all but impossible: Most communities now rely on hunter-gatherer subsistence on nearby monsters, though easily-accessible firearms mean communities are significantly larger than they are in stone age hunter-gatherer cultures.

[Veklim]

Kobolds don't worship dragons, they worship a kobold (who is yet to be born) who will turn into a dragon.


I use a similar idea for my Kobolds in my main setting. Dragonwrought Kobolds become dragons after a certain point (the change happens when/if they finally reach venerable), and this is the only way a dragon can be 'born'. They do not reproduce themselves. This is why most Kobold tribes serve a dragon, and why Dragons like to keep them around, even when they're being a full on nuisance (i.e. most of their conscious lives). This is a secret kept closely by Dragons, the only members of other races privy to the fact are the highest ranking of Dragon Shamans.
Amusingly enough, not a single player in my campaigns has ever uncovered this truth, and so it's never actually played a conspicuous role in my setting!

Warforged exist in the setting, but have nothing to do with the Eberron mythos. They were Moradin's first attempt at a race, before the Dwarves came along. They are immortal unless utterly and completely destroyed by something powerful enough (wish, miracle, disintegrate, etc...) and are hailed by Dwarves as Forge Prophets. Each warforged has the designs imbedded in it's mind for a unique artifact (varies wildly, often plot related) which they can create given enough power and ranks in the appropriate craft, and this artifact is their purpose in life. These artifacts are referred to as ForgeGifts, and have been the start and end of many wars and troubles in the world, leading many to question the LG intentions of Moradin.

[NothingButCake]

Dwarves are very good at using poisons. It's a shame nobody notices this, but with better saves against poison, they should be using that stuff all the time. Not just in their ale.I could see this translating into dwarves having more flexibility to use plants in food that would normally be deadly to other races, but using it as a murder tool within dwarf culture seems like hobbling yourself to give your victim a sporting chance. Or an elf thinking, "I'll murder my elf enemies! With old age!"

[Maquise]

To make gnomes stand out more, I took a page from the Golarion campaign setting. They only recently arrived in the main world, having emigrated from another for reasons only they know. Also, they keep their skin covered at all times, wearing brightly colored cloaks and robes.

[Altair_the_Vexed]

Kobolds and dragons
Kobolds are spawned by dragons - their task is to tend the lair of their queen, expanding and trapping the tunnels, and gathering treasure. The wiliest of them will eventually become a dragon and go on to spawn her own brood.

Trolls
(I always felt that trolls in vanilla D&D were just basically a different kind of ogre - not much special about them at all.
So, taking a hint from old folklore, which has differing troll myths depending on the region - some small, some large, none rubbery and regenerating - I made up my own troll monster, with its own entry.)
Trolls are shapeshifting giants, who can shrink down to medium or even small size. As they increase in size, they become dumber, but stronger. When smaller, they are scheming and cunning, but weaker.
A troll can disguise itself as another race of the same size - but the illusion is imperfect, and always leaves some monstrous aspect visible: horns, unnatural eyes, tail, claws, etc, etc.

[Arcran]

Well, I'm working on making the Pokemon World better. Does that count? (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=255976)

[Vamphyr]

In my game worlds I usually change around a lot of popular culture or religious ideologies. I have an entire world that runs on a sort of demented christianity. (Not intending to start any religious arguments)

One of the things I'm currently working on involves vampires. Their are 12 Fathers of vampirism currently on Earth. All of them are massive, alien, monstosities. They originated on a far off world and after the races of that planet realized they were extremely difficult to kill, they bound them in cubes of obsidian and cast them into space. These cubes crashed to Earth, freeing each Father. As local populaces came to investigate the Fathers drank from them.

So, Vampirism is caused by the mixing of alien and human DNA. Each Father is a slightly different creature and thus produces different bloodlines with different abilities.

Explanation for standard vampire myths:

Sunlight burns because the alien DNA is not accustomed to such direct exposure to UV rays or being on a planet this close to a star.

Religious symbols repel because the vampires have heightened psychic and physical senses, so the strong mix of fear, adrenaline, and blind faith causes the vampires senses to overload, repelling them. (This only works if someone is directly facing the creature or is actively aware it is nearby and believes the symbol or symbols it has erected will protect it.)

Vampires must drink human blood due to the fact that the alien portion of their systems is inherently feeding off themselves and without replenishment they will fall into a coma.

Silver and obsidian harm vampires because they disrupt the cellular functions of the alien DNA



As of right now that's about all I can think of for changes I've implemented to Vampires.

[jseah]

Sealed Evil in a Can (you can look it up on the evilwiki if you want)

My version:
My "sealed evil in a can"-s tend to be... not evil. (well, I say 'tend to' but I've only sold one of these things)

Boringly obvious? Well, they'll still cause the end of the world as we know it. But they're not Evil.

How? Magic technology!

Sealed Evil in a Can (tm) can instantly boost your society's tech level to Industrial/Information/Singularity eras, causing widespread social dislocation, riots and occasional tearing off rulers' heads.

But everyone gets to live longer in nice cushy-er lives and better all-round stuff!... Theoretically. Too bad reality has a tendency to say No. With a capital N.

[The LOBster]

I basically am starting to think of a setting cobbled together from my favorite races and settings.

I'll touch on the Good Races first.

Humans: The Republic of the Silver Dragon:
Formed from a group of human pilgrims from various nations conquered by the Empire of Zarus, this diverse group of humans settled the Western Continents. While there are various religious groups in Bahamut's Republic, the most prominent is the Church of Bahamut. Starting out as a revival of an ancient church of the Lost Ones, the founder of the Church - commonly believed to be Bahamut in human guise - ordered his followers to defend non-humans and form strong allegiances with them. He then guided his followers to an unsettled wild land to the West - the Church of Bahamut smuggled non-human races and humans of various religions and races into the New World away from Zarus' influence, while forming pacts with the races that already inhabited this land such as the Raptorans and Warforged. The Republic of the Silver Dragon is a truly multicultural and multiracial place; the various races live here without fear of persecution by Zarus' followers, and the Army of Bahamut is an order founded to defend the freedom of this coalition. The humans here have various skintones, ranging from light to dark as a result of their multicultural heritage.

Elves:
Elves are pretty standard, other than being a fair bit less smug and more likeable. While they're suspicious of outsiders, when you win an elf's trust, he's your friend for life. Elves prefer to keep to themselves - it's what allowed them to survive the Dark Ages... Well, that and they were close enough to humans to pass. They're the second-longest-lived race in the world, living for at most three centuries. They're magic users and artisans, and favor Bards, Wizards, and Rangers as their class.

Dwarves:
Dwarves are standard, other than they get along decently with Elves. There's still some rivalry between the two races, but they banded together during the Dark Ages when the Church of Zarus focused persecution on demihumans as well as the other "unclean" races. Dwarves are miners and builders, focusing on technology. Their best classes are Fighters, Paladins and Techsmiths (basically Artificers with a more tech-bent.)

Halflings:
Halflings have had it rough. The Empire of Zarus spared the Halfling towns... Only to enslave the diminutive cousins of humanity. As such, Halflings were among the first to join Bahamut's Pilgrims on their trip to the New World, where this slave race could finally be free. Ever since achieving freedom, Halflings are free-spirits with a strange sense of humor, favoring the Rogue, Bard, and Techsmith classes.

Raptorans:
A race of scholars found in the New World, Raptorans welcomed the Pilgrims of Bahamut to the New World and were one of the founding races of the Ellegiance, along with Shifters, Elves, Halflings, Warforged and Dwarves. They're argumentative and a bit greedy - it seems these avians inherited their bird ancestors' compulsive love of shiny things. They favor the Scout, Druid, and Wizard classes.

Warforged:
My take on Warforged for setting outside of Eberron is that they were created two thousand years before the main story of the setting by a long lost civilization, and that Warforged are a race that can come in Small, Medium, and Large sizes due to "Scouts" modeled on Halflings; "Champions" modeled on humans; and "Juggernauts" modeled on Goliaths. Since their creators went extinct long ago, Warforged - most of them numbering at least a thousand years old - are an introspective, meditative race that favor religious classes like Clerics, Paladins, and Monks (which are reflavored as Divine). Most of them lived high in the mountains of the New World, choosing to stay away from the rest of the world's affairs... However, they joined the Republic of Bahamut soon after they learned of the threat Zarus' empire posed.

Shifters:
Then you have Shifters - essentially a combination of Catfolk and Beastfolk, they're a natural race that have become rare as a result of persecution by the conquistadors of Church of Zarus. Resembling humans with some animalistic facial features (more feline than canine, but has some influence from both - they have wide, flattened noses, golden eyes and slight harelips), they live in tribes resembling a mix of Native American and African culture. They usually tend towards classes like Ranger, Scout, or Rogue. Instead of suffering a penalty to intelligence, they suffer one to Wisdom - after all, they have a lot of reasons to not be terribly fond of religion. They worship nature, but not to the extent that Druids are commonplace. When the Pilgrims of Bahamut first arrived, the remaining Shifter Tribes were suspicious of the new arrivals, but swiftly allied themselves with them as soon as they learned these Elves, Humans, Dwarves and Halflings were fleeing the Empire of Zarus.


Now for the Evil Races.

Humans: The Empire of Zarus:
Humans are the most numerous race... Although that has a bit more to do with the largest faction of the Old World actively persecuting the other races. The Empire of Zarus believe they're innately superior to non-humans - and even fellow humans who do not meet Zarus' ideal of perfection - and exert a vast influence over the world through their numerous colonies across the continents. Zarus worshippers, or "Purebloods" generally have pale skin tones and blonde or brown hair. They can easily be any class.


Drow:
Perhaps the only race that can contest the evils of the Empire of Zarus, Drow are dark violet-skinned elves. Cruel and capricious, they live in a caste-based society that has constant underhanded power struggles between the houses. However, they work together to take slaves from the other races - the Empire of Zarus secretly allies with the Drow cities, but both sides would gladly stab each other in the back.

Orcs and Goblins:
Taking a page from Games Workshop, Orcs and Goblins are close cousins. Goblins are generally smaller and smarter (but still stupid little pyromaniacs), while Orcs are bigger, meaner, and surprisingly strong. Orcs and Goblins are, in fact, constructs, created by a Mad Warlock during the Lost Age - they're formed from clay, and can regenerate like trolls. They don't truly reproduce, and are effectively genderless.

[Pokonic]

All Dragons are Special.

By that, I mean that there are so many traits a individual dragon may have, scale color means diddly squat.

You see, when a dragon is in a egg, it grows by syphoning ambient magic from around it. This, along with local envrioment fectures, genetics, and random chance, tends to mean most dragons are easily spotted from crowds of other dragons.

Also, dragons, rather than by scale color, see there "kind" as most of there extended family. For instance, the dragons of, say, the Emerald Forest are known for greenish, almost rootlike scale ridges on there belly and a tendancy to have poison-breath, while the family known as the Stonescales have distinct large, flat scales and tend to be more compact than most. Hence, a gathering of a extanded family might literaly consist of every creature with the Dragon subtype in the monster manual, exept there all vaugly friendly with each other and have roughly the same body traits.Scale color is usualy only useful in determining a individual dragons origin, roughly the same as telling which contanent someone's ancesters came from.Breath and powers gained from age catagories is even less useful for identification, because those are always influenced by where there egg was layed. A red dragon from the frozen north would still have a frosty cone of breath and has ice-related powers.


As such, a pesudodragon from the local swamp have more in common with his half-fey (which would have been gained from being layed in a fey-controled area) three-headed white-scaled uncle who breaths poison who lives a few miles away than another pesudodragon who lives in the same swamp who, by contrast, has a fire-breathing Linnorm for a mother(who rightly sees the pesudodragon as a runt compared to a fellow sibling who looks almost exactly like her). It gets even more fun if said uncle and mother get together and have there own brood.


Ahh, the fun I have had with my players with this.:smallbiggrin:

[akma]

Demons
Demons were created by the god of freedom, each with a bit of his divine essence. Killing a demon won`t destroy the divine essence (only a god can destroy that), and in a year or more, a new demon will be born, with the same powers and almost the same personality.

They are evil becuse they do whatever they want, and always prefer enjoyment over other beings rights. They have no morals. They have no honor. They sometime "play nice" with other demons, and rarely with other beings with similiar power.

Each one is unique, and is based around something - usually an emotion or impulse, like the demon of hope or the demon of hunger.

Each one has a cult or more, and they treat them diffrently - some think of those cults as a personal army, and nurture it; Some think of it as entertaining, and even have their cults fight against each other; And some simply ignore them. Clerics that worship demons can cast spells.

They have no home plane or region. Instead, they go and live wherever they want to.

Elementanels
Elementanels are found in places made from the same material. Earth elementanels are underground. Water elementanels are in the sea. Air elementanels are high in the air.

There are no element based planes. I do not like that idea, and I think it`s dull.

Also, I changed some mechanical aspects of elementanels too. For exemple, earth elementanels must always remain connected to a chunk of earth bigger then them (if they somehow get disconnected, they die), so they can`t jump, but they can manipulate their shape, so they can stretch. However, it is always clear what materials they are made of.

[Q. Flestrin]

In one of my worlds, I turned elves into the main nasties, inspired by the Terry Pratchett book Lords and Ladies. These are the kind of elves that don't even fit into the good/evil system, these are the kind of elves that fit into the bacon/necktie system. And most of these elves ally themselves with the neckties. (No, bacon and neckties aren't supposed to make sense.) Basically, these elves enslave your mind, run wild across your fields and towns, burn things, and/or be so incredibly cultured you can hardly stand it. And iron messes them up bad. Most of them would be Neutral Evil or Chaotic Evil, if they fit in the alignment system.
In another, I turned elves into the selverei, which are red-eyed, pale-skinned, Tech gypsies. Wacky fun. (There were also the tellerei, which I won't go into.)

[Zireael]

In my world, I did a twist when it comes to several things:
- the underground isn't dark, as most people believe caverns to be
- I lumped devils and demons and all other non-Material Plane creatures into a single category of outsiders
- I got rid of alignment entirely, it's a world where there are no words for good, evil, chaos or lawful. Everything is grey.

[Sgt. Cookie]

In my setting, Humans are a genetic cocktail of all the other races, dragons, fey, outsiders, etc.


Gnolls, the regular ones at least, are a cultured, honourable race of warriors. They rarely resort to warfare, but all are skilled in swordplay. Think a romanticised oriental Japan, except combat training is more widespread.

[megahobbit]

Though this is not much of a different perspective I have many different forms of lizardfolk, ranging from brutish crocodile men who have close relations to orcs, dwarf like iguana lizards, sly chameleon nomads, and jungle dwelling gecko tribesmen, with my personal favorite being the hobgoblin like komodo dragons (all of which are pc races). I have a great fondness for lizardfolk and they have always featured prominently in my campaigns. Also races don't have alignments the choice of alignment is chosen by the individual. But the alignment of the gods of the race play a major factor in that choice.

[Melayl]

Though this is not much of a different perspective I have many different forms of lizardfolk, ranging from brutish crocodile men who have close relations to orcs, dwarf like iguana lizards, sly chameleon nomads, and jungle dwelling gecko tribesmen, with my personal favorite being the hobgoblin like komodo dragons (all of which are pc races). I have a great fondness for lizardfolk and they have always featured prominently in my campaigns. Also races don't have alignments the choice of alignment is chosen by the individual. But the alignment of the gods of the race play a major factor in that choice.

I would love to see these!

[Q. Flestrin]

Though this is not much of a different perspective I have many different forms of lizardfolk, ranging from brutish crocodile men who have close relations to orcs, dwarf like iguana lizards, sly chameleon nomads, and jungle dwelling gecko tribesmen, with my personal favorite being the hobgoblin like komodo dragons (all of which are pc races).
I've done this sort of thing once. It was a pretty cheesy idea, once you think about it, and it never got off the ground, but the concept was that there were virtually no mammals in the world, and, mysteriously, reptilian analogs had emerged for all the humanoid races.

[Sgt. Cookie]

Is it just me, or do the Dwarven and Kobold out looks on life, love and work make it seem like they'd be natural allies?

[TheKoalaNxtDoor]

All Dragons are Special.

By that, I mean that there are so many traits a individual dragon may have, scale color means diddly squat.

You see, when a dragon is in a egg, it grows by syphoning ambient magic from around it. This, along with local envrioment fectures, genetics, and random chance, tends to mean most dragons are easily spotted from crowds of other dragons.

Also, dragons, rather than by scale color, see there "kind" as most of there extended family. For instance, the dragons of, say, the Emerald Forest are known for greenish, almost rootlike scale ridges on there belly and a tendancy to have poison-breath, while the family known as the Stonescales have distinct large, flat scales and tend to be more compact than most. Hence, a gathering of a extanded family might literaly consist of every creature with the Dragon subtype in the monster manual, exept there all vaugly friendly with each other and have roughly the same body traits.Scale color is usualy only useful in determining a individual dragons origin, roughly the same as telling which contanent someone's ancesters came from.Breath and powers gained from age catagories is even less useful for identification, because those are always influenced by where there egg was layed. A red dragon from the frozen north would still have a frosty cone of breath and has ice-related powers.


As such, a pesudodragon from the local swamp have more in common with his half-fey (which would have been gained from being layed in a fey-controled area) three-headed white-scaled uncle who breaths poison who lives a few miles away than another pesudodragon who lives in the same swamp who, by contrast, has a fire-breathing Linnorm for a mother(who rightly sees the pesudodragon as a runt compared to a fellow sibling who looks almost exactly like her). It gets even more fun if said uncle and mother get together and have there own brood.


Ahh, the fun I have had with my players with this.:smallbiggrin:

Stolen! :smallbiggrin:

[Veklim]

Is it just me, or do the Dwarven and Kobold out looks on life, love and work make it seem like they'd be natural allies?

Right up until the stoic and almost habitually lawful Dwarves suddenly notice the practical joke traps, missing shiny stuff and mysteriously broken equipment left in the blissfully chaotic wake of Kobolds being, well, Kobolds...

I could easily see them in a class system, Dwarves on top (so to speak...and ewww :smalleek:) and Kobolds as the surfs and unskilled labourers as well as the specialists. Maybe even a split parliament of governance...actually, given enough thought that could work...I'm amused!

[Lyndworm]

Right up until the stoic and almost habitually lawful Dwarves suddenly notice the practical joke traps, missing shiny stuff and mysteriously broken equipment left in the blissfully chaotic wake of Kobolds being, well, Kobolds...
I'm not sure where you're getting that at all... Kobolds actually tend to be very serious, and would never waste resources on jokes (at least, from what I gather in Races of the Dragon). They tend towards a Lawful alignment, not Chaotic, and would probably never sabotage a mine (unless it was a gnomish mine, in which case the irony would sate them for years).


Is it just me, or do the Dwarven and Kobold out looks on life, love and work make it seem like they'd be natural allies?
I'm fairly sure that RotD says dwarves and kobolds tend to get along well enough, and sometimes even work together on mutually beneficial projects (I don't feel like looking for a specific reference, though, so I might be way off). Kobolds tend to be Evil while dwarves tend to be Good, though, so the two aren't always the best of bedfellows and few alliances last long.

[Pokonic]

Stolen! :smallbiggrin:

Yay!:smallbiggrin:




I'm fairly sure that RotD says dwarves and kobolds tend to get along well enough, and sometimes even work together on mutually beneficial projects (I don't feel like looking for a specific reference, though, so I might be way off). Kobolds tend to be Evil while dwarves tend to be Good, though, so the two aren't always the best of bedfellows and few alliances last long.

I would think that a accepting group of Dwarves/A niceish clan of 'balds would get along fine.


Until Gnomes show up, forcing the Dwarves to pick sides in the inevitable conflict.

[Lyndworm]

I would think that a accepting group of Dwarves/A niceish clan of 'balds would get along fine.
Oh, yes, probably so. Any sort of "converted" group (Evilish dwarves, Goodish kobolds) would likely get along excellently with the other.



Since it occurs to me that I've barged into a conversion to contradict someone and haven't even posted on-topic yet... Here, have some of my X:

Goblinoids are to the Papionini (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papionini) tribe as humans are to the Panini (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimpanzee) tribe. Goblins have tails and bugbears have mandril-like facial markings.

Kobolds and true dragons are the same species, and all true dragons are female (think queen bee). Further, dragon/kobold color is a good indication of breath type (though not a guarantee), but not of alignment; both are passed down by lineage, while alignment is decided by the individual.

Gnomes are a client-race of dwarves; most (but not quite all) gnomes live in traveling family groups of mysterious and distrusted merchants (and the merchant's guards, of course... never mess with a gnomish caravan) that pay tithe to the dwarven empire.

Halflings are wild "savages," who engage in ritual cannibalism as a religious belief. They have almost no technology and use riding dogs to hunt, to pull carts, to ride, and to war. They live in plains areas and do their best to make sure fights take place in the waving fields of 6ft tall grass. My players now refuse to go anywhere near grass over 4ft high without a team of scythemen.

There are three kinds of elf (High/Arcane, Dark/Divine, and Wood/Nature), but the differences are entirely cultural. Any physical differences have to do with where the elf is born, as they magically take on the appearance of their environment at birth.
High elves live on swampy, foggy islands with lots of jutting stone, and have very pale skin, silver, pale gold, or gray hair, and usually have eyes like yellow/green moss or blue/black water.
Dark elves live in caverns, and have black, blue/violet, or dark gray skin, similar hair colors (white hair is rare, and often seen as an omen of greatness), and have eyes like precious stones.
Wood elves live in forests, and have rich, bark-like skin colors, any brown or blond colored hair, or sometimes hair like the surrounding foliage at the time of their birth, and eyes like the sky at the time of their birth.



I'm working on more, but most of it doesn't strike me as very special at the moment.

[Pokonic]

Well, elves in my world tend to have roots in older kinds of elves.The old kinds still exist, but only in tiny, tiny handfuls, and are often secluded from there "lesser" kin.


The Light Elves were a magicaly gifted race, and ruled over vast crystal cites. The Green Elves, the rulers of the southern reaches, had had ties to the varying gods of nature, and prospered with fantasticly powerful drudic circles running the show. Finaly, the Dark Elves ruled in the frozen north, and lived in great halls streching from the tips of the highest peaks to the very roots of the world.

Then came the typical shattering of the Elven peoples. The Seelie blame the Unseelie, but then the Unseelie point out that they had not split up by then and were still, in perfect harmony, hating the Wild Hunt. As such, both blame Lolth on the whole debacle , but that leaves out the general conflict between the gods proper, with the whole Elven panthanon blaming the other side even as it blames the others (non-elven). Timat probably had a head in it too, words still out which one. In general, it was the colective actions of a whole slew of factors, with some sides getting the blame more than other.

Neverless dispite the exact reasoning one goes down, the elven races split up nastly, with some from the same basic root race hating the ones from the same branch, so to speak.

The most common decendent of the Light Elves were the High Elves, and it shows, for they are the main reason they are linked to the Fey. Often called Sidhe, because of there involvement on both sides of the courts, they are actualy less common on the Prime then there other cousins, because the vast majority only come onto it for business related to there powerful, immortal cousins. Some, in fact, belive there fey proper, and there not above not saying that they are not.

The Sun Elves.... basicly moved into there parents houses and, after waiting for the straggelers to die, started paying the rent and took there identity for tax uses. As in, they are mostly limited to former Light Elf lands, and generaly claim to be there true decendents, not like those other elves, who deserve the raids, attacks, and higher taxs that they put on them. After all, they make only the most humane crusades against lesser races, unlike those dirty short dwarves and those silly humans!

The Pearl Elves are not nice folk. Well, they trade with other races and rarely pirate, thats about it. The only sort of smile they make is that most commonly seen near calm, tropical waters, usualy associated with happy swimmers and the creature, usualy with a fin near it's head, that watchs them. Easily the most secretive of the Light Elven decendents, they are apparently based out of a single, forgotten Light Elven port in a otherwise unremarkable island chain, and have access to a large fleet of magical ships that can telaport across the sea....or move realy, realy fast. They are not above firing apon ships they think are too near there hidden location (or are too close to there own, or is more pimped out, or might, like, totaly have the shifty gnome fellow who the first mates wife cheated on) and attempts to magical track them down have all failed.



The Green Elves left a colorful heritige, and none meets that so much as the Forest Elves, who are the other most commonly seen elf in the world, so much so that other's are unsure what another means by the word elf if it's not in buckskin and bark armor and is swinging a bow around. In general, good druids, bad hosts, and worst guests.

The Wild Elves are restricted to the sandy wastes, and they like it that way. They tend eat other creatures who get too close to there lands, and probably think a horse is some sort of hornless goat. The Wild Hunt gets a lot of new recruts from these scattered folk.

The Snow Elves are odd folk. Being in the southern pole, they mostly fish, fish, and talk about fishing. They also deal with merfolk quite a bit. Otherwise unremarkable Inut-like elves, who have natural talents at ice magic. They also worship horrific forgotten gods of the ice and frost who are athema to most of the world, who provide them with pesudonatural whales and other twisted sea life in exchange for there worship for nightmare eternal. That might have been important.



The most common decendents of the Dark Elves are, as one would guess, Drow (who call themselves Shadow Elves, but then quickly say something along the lines of "O-oh man, did I realy just say that?! Pffahahahah!"). They live in underground citys, in the traditinal Underdark, but Lolth is mearly the main god they have in this case. In fact, there are plenty of non-Loth worshiping drow, but they tend to be pius folk no matter what god suits there fancy. They never quite loose the black-leather-spider-motif fashion sence, however, which might make it odd for the local LG cleric of Bahmut to see his the local chapter's head clad in a dominatrix suit and with Tentical Rod in one hand.

The Dusk Elves are strange. Some claim there somewhat tainted by the Plane Of Shadow, but those people tend to end up dead. In essance, there fabled theives and sneaks who live in every super-city, and there surrounding areas. Theives Cant is there only contrabution to the world, and most secret theives guilds in such cites count a few strange members with tanned skin and head-wraps amoung there members who eat lunch together and hardly talk outside there little group.

The Moon Elves are often thought to be decendents of the Light Elves, which is odd, because anyone who spent a few moments with one would swear that the white-haired pretty boy with skin somehow paler then there locks was some Devil trick to convice others that the gods, in fact, did not exist. Combining the reputation of Drow with the appearance of a angel, they are racist, rude, otherwise nasty, and generaly hateful elves of the lowlands. Tending to brood in ill-kept keeps by themselves, they see other elves worthy only as slaves and other races only worthy of the dinner pot, and keep massive slave rings around to keep themselves supplies. As for how they somehow survive with plenty of LG paladins prancing about, they are, unfortunatly for the world, gifted with surpremely good charisma. You would think the bright red eyes and pale skin would tip creatures off.

[TheKoalaNxtDoor]

My elves (well, at least one type of community of them; I try not to do one race=one culture) are celtic/germanic/slightly comanche indian in nature. Fantastic horsemen who steal cattle, and some of the wilder groups carry off women and children. They have a high sense of honor, and incredibly complicated blood fueds, with complex courtesy and manners that have to followed. Certain things that don't seem like a big deal to most races are types of things that cause elves to go into a murderous rage, and declare you and all of your family permenant enemies of his family. Calling someone a horse thief is the utmost insult to honor, and will generally result in a full scale division of the clan, with every family expected to pick a side in a bloodfued against the families of the other side that could go on for generations. And those are elf generations.

Dwarves are more the norse mythology types, being untrustworthy, tricky, and always have alterior motives. They are known for their honesty, if only because they always twist their words to allow as many loop holes as they can. They are fervently religious though, but in the inquisitorial, burn non-believers intolerant style.

[Agent_0042]

There are no outer planes, only the elemental planes, which each embody a philosophy as well as a metaphysical element. In addition, the planes are actually sentient, and the primary gods of the setting. The material may also be sentient, but if so has been dormant since the beginning.

Humans aren't a separate species outright, but actually a crossbreeding between elves and celestials (outsiders). Thus you have a spectrum: elf, half-elf, human, aasimar, celestial. As a result, humans/half-elves/aasimar are the only ones who can natively use divine magic, because they have the connection to outside planes, though other people can make pacts with elemental spirits (spirit shamans) or have one of the planes intervene on their unknowing behalf (favored souls).

Elves are a race of refugees, exiled to about a half-dozen hidden cities after conflict with humans. They are numerically few, but mke up for that with psionic power that they use to, among other things, compress steam into small spheres and use it to power machinery.

Orcs are also psionically active, but are a nomadic race of horsemen with no organized society. The red horses actually do go faster, because they were bred to.

Dwarves are Dwarf-Fortress-style dwarves, except not played up for laughs. Every species native to the material can at least dabble arcane magic, but dwarves are far and away the experts.

Gnolls and minotaurs are the same species - males are minotaurs, females are gnolls. They're actually highly intelligent, and uniquely capable of using incarnum, shaping the souls of their ancestors into equipment and constructs.

Lycanthropes are the direct result of the rain god (rewnewal, growth, ferocity) mucking about with a small group of humans and leaving them to thrive or die as he is wont to do.

Lizardman are a primitive race in the thrall of Yuan-Ti, whom they worship and fear. Yuan-ti are native to the shadow realm, which is the cosmological inverse of but identical to the material realm, and thus cap tap into that power and become shadowcasters.

[TheKoalaNxtDoor]

The red horses actually do go faster, because they were bred to.

Add some go fasta stripes to 'um and den dey goes real fast! :smallwink:

[falloutimperial]

There are no outer planes, only the elemental planes, which each embody a philosophy as well as a metaphysical element.

This sounds really quite cool; Please expound on this. If it would get into any fobidden-forum-topics, please message me a summary.

[Phoenixguard09]

Ah, where to begin...

Northern peoplesI have a race of short humans who live on the northern icy coasts of Norbayne (my central continent) who hunt from their canoes and are excellent watermen, despite the horrid conditions and their sub-standard equipment. These are guys who row out in canoes and kill whales by diving in and spearing them in the eyes. They then hitch up hundreds of canoes and drag the carcass back to land.

Northern peoples, raiders, dogmenOff the coast of Unterguardt, (my northern continent) lies the isle of Varr, populated by a kingdom of dogmen who are feared across the world as pirates, reavers and raiders. Think a six foot tall dogman viking Jack Sparrow. They view all of life as a game and they love to play, meaning they're absolutely fearless. Death is just another game to them, one that everyone must play eventually.

ElvesThe western edge of Norbayne in covered by the Wardenfells, a vast range of forested mountains inhabited by the Danann. They are sort of like "elves," but they're very catlike, exclusively carnivorous. They raid the other lands for sacrifices and food. Yes I have a playable race who might decide to eat the rest of the party.

Wood elves, halflingsThe southern climes of the Wardenfells are the lands of the Leathe, a race of diminutive possum-people, seen as a delicacy amongst the Danann.

There are many other races, including the remnants of a minotaur empire which once stretched across Norbayne and their Hill Dwarf slaves, the Geardarr.

I also have a southern race of poison-dart frogpeople, the Loschain. They aren't playable but they can show up.

Anyway, I guess if anyone's interested, HERE'S (http://s4.zetaboards.com/Battlehammer/forum/3847483/) a link to the Norbayne board over on my forum where it's being worked on.

Cheers,

[ReaderAt2046]

I got rid of alignment entirely, it's a world where there are no words for good, evil, chaos or lawful. Everything is grey.

"In the name of Light and Darkness, In the name of democracy and the Dragon's Grandmother and all things that are, I charge you to avaunt and haunt us no more!"

That's approximately how any creature in any of my worlds would react to the discovery of the existence of that world, before looking up the Snarl to tear it to peices. As far as they/I am/are concerned, there is nothing, including Hell, that is remotely as horrible and bad as the world I think you're discribing. Just a fair warning.

[Blightedmarsh]

Elves:

They aren't all that pretty. There eyes heads and hands are too big but they have almost no noses. They are very androgynous and they have the ability to change gender.

They are imortal fae creatures who are by normal standards insane. Seriously they are afflicted by the whole fae obsessions of no gifts, keeping absolutely to the exact word of a promise but never the spirit, never telling a lie but never reveling the truth, being really nasty when offended and not seeing anyone but themselves as real people.

Most of what you think are elves are intact half elves. They stand somewhere between classical elves, half elves and this lot. Whilst they can and many do change genders very few of them have anything like any real control over it.

[jseah]

"In the name of Light and Darkness, In the name of democracy and the Dragon's Grandmother and all things that are, I charge you to avaunt and haunt us no more!"

That's approximately how any creature in any of my worlds would react to the discovery of the existence of that world, before looking up the Snarl to tear it to peices. As far as they/I am/are concerned, there is nothing, including Hell, that is remotely as horrible and bad as the world I think you're discribing. Just a fair warning.

I don't really agree. In ALL of my worlds, morality is a concept invented by sentient beings. (there are reasons why they are usually similar to each other and in RL; game theory reasons)

Then again, I tend towards a fantasy system that is rather hard. There simply isn't a way I can make high-level concepts such as Good, Evil, People, Location, One Object work in my settings without totally destroying it.

[Zireael]

As far as they/I am/are concerned, there is nothing, including Hell, that is remotely as horrible and bad as the world I think you're discribing. Just a fair warning.\


Why do you think it's so horrible?

[ReaderAt2046]

\


Why do you think it's so horrible?

4 reasons:

1. All evil desires are only the corruption of good desires. Or to put it another way, the pleasures of hell are still pleasures, and pleasure simpliciter is good. Thus, evil contains within itself a form of good.

2. In order even to exist, evil must have intelligence, power, and free will. All of these are, in and of themselves, good.

3. It is impossible to be evil (that is, break the law) without acknowledging and knowing the law you break.

4. Corruption can never cause a creature to become completely without good, for then the creature would have become incorruptible, and to say that corruption can make a creature better is a logical contradiction.

In summary, all four of these reasons show that a completely evil world must still contain some remnants of good. A world completely without good and evil would hence be far, far, worse. To put it more poetically, "the shadow implies the light it is not, but in a world where there is no light and no darkness, the light cannot even be known from its opposite."

[Inglenook]

3. It is impossible to be evil (that is, break the law) without acknowledging and knowing the law you break.
But breaking the law isn't evil, necessarily. :smallconfused: Moreover, all the reasons you posted are based upon a very particular worldview and some strangely circuitous reasoning.

I believe you might be slightly confused by what Zireael meant. I don't think he meant that there are no good or bad people/actions in his setting, but rather that the concepts for such things are nonexistent, since any action or mindset could be seen as good/evil/lawful/chaotic by different people. And that such concepts in his setting would be restrictive and nonsensical from a game mechanic point of view.

But I could be wrong.

[Craft (Cheese)]

The details differ from setting to setting, but in my worlds if dragons exist at all, they're invincible. You meet a dragon, you either run or you die. Doesn't matter how many class levels, epic spells, ancient artifacts of plot, or even gods on your side. You meet a dragon, you run or you die.

In one setting I've worked with before, dragons actually reproduce by destroying worlds. They let a plane grow into a healthy, prosperous civilization over centuries, then they come in, lay waste to everything within seconds, and a new dragon is born out of the ruins.

[ReaderAt2046]

But breaking the law isn't evil, necessarily. :smallconfused: Moreover, all the reasons you posted are based upon a very particular worldview and some strangely circuitous reasoning.

I believe you might be slightly confused by what Zireael meant. I don't think he meant that there are no good or bad people/actions in his setting, but rather that the concepts for such things are nonexistent, since any action or mindset could be seen as good/evil/lawful/chaotic by different people. And that such concepts in his setting would be restrictive and nonsensical from a game mechanic point of view.

But I could be wrong.

Several things to say here. First to deal with paragraph 1: I meant (and should have said) the moral law, the set of rules defining what is right and what is wrong.

On the second paragraph:

1. I'm pretty sure saying that "There is no concept of good or evil in this world but there are good and evil people in this world." is nonsense.

2. A world where there is no concept of good or evil is exactly what I hate and fear.

3. I know that I may be misunderstanding Zireael's works, and I hope that I am.

[Inglenook]

1. I'm pretty sure saying that "There is no concept of good or evil in this world but there are good and evil people in this world." is nonsense.
Untrue. Take a look at the Pirahã tribe in the Amazon. They have no cardinal or ordinal numbers and it takes an extreme amount of work to teach them anything beyond the idea of "a few things" and "a lot of things". They also have no concept of social hierarchy. A culture of pragmatic agnosticism, which is pretty unique for a "primitive" tribe. An extremely strange sleep schedule. All their color words are based on something that has that color (the closest thing in English being the color "orange", which was named after the fruit).

We're the same species on the same planet, but the way that we perceive the world is vastly different.* Now imagine people from what's more-or-less a different universe, and the idea of them not having a concept for our understanding of good and evil isn't too farfetched.

To use the numbers example above: Our concept of numbers is something we take for granted, but it's not a given. We could recognize examples of good and evil in Zireael's world even if the people in that world have no concept of it, just like we can recognize how many mangoes a Pirahã tribesman is holding when they themselves can't.

[stonedphilosophymajor] Perception is reality, maaaaan. :smallwink: [/spm]

* Unless you're a Pirahã tribesman posting here. In which case … congratulations! And welcome! :smallbiggrin:

[Razanir]

4 types of elves. High elves are mostly stereotypical, but notably have unisex names. Drow elves are the most commonly evil race. Twilit are a cross-breed between them, that neither parent race particularly wants. And aquatic elves are often forgotten. To be honest, I just included them so the one ocean would have underwater city-states
Dwarves are like stereotypical elves, in that they're vain and xenophobic, but are master craftsmen not master wizards
Gnomes have a massive trading empire
Halflings live in some rolling hills and are vaguely Incan-inspired, but with Irish hospitality
Humans aren't nearly as common as in some settings, but are still the dominant race

[Veklim]

Halflings live in some rolling hills and are vaguely Incan-inspired, but with Irish hospitality


So they tell dirty jokes, get you drunk and dance a lot before they ritually cut out your heart and mummify your corpse with herbs and smoke? :smalltongue:

[Razanir]

So they tell dirty jokes, get you drunk and dance a lot before they ritually cut out your heart and mummify your corpse with herbs and smoke? :smalltongue:

I meant it more in terms of they have runners and stuff going through the hills...

[megahobbit]

There are nomadic elves in my setting inspired by the Hebrew tribes from Genesis. They have strong family but are very open to strangers and are very skilled clerics. They have specially curved swords that allow them to hook onto there opponents weapons (yes I got that from barsoom) and are skilled archers.
P.S. sadly the states for the lizard folk variants were lost in my most recent computer change.

[willpell]

I have twists on nearly everything in my campaing world "Whiteleaf", though not as major as some of what's been mentioned here. But of all my revisions, I think what I'm proudest of are my Demons.

In my home city of Minneapolis, we have these sewer tunnels or utility access or something under the streets of downtown, with rickety-looking grates in the sidewalk which let you look down into these underground spaces. When the flow of traffic on the street is such that you have to walk on one of these grates, it can be a pretty vertiginous experience. I thought about how precarious it feels to not be able to trust the solidity of the ground under your feet, and it hit me - that's how the Abyss should feel. The home of Chaotic Evil beings should be a place where the most fundamental experience of a sane and ordered world, the solidity of the ground, can betray you at any moment, making it impossible for you to ever feel safe.

Thusly, in my setting, the Abyss isn't 666 or more different planes; it's just one incredibly gigantic cavern with hundreds of mile-wide ledges surrounding an immense Pit. And at every moment, any spot anywhere on those ledges might crumble away, and there might be nothing underneath but the Pit, which is the absolute end of existence. Every creature in the Abyss knows this; the demons can all feel the Pit underneath them, clawing at them with the gravity of annihilation. Their surroundings always feel fragile and grainy, especially for demons that are large and powerful; a goristro or something shakes the ground when it walks, and while it dares not show weakness, its mind is constantly near paralyzed with terror as it worries that the next hoofbeat is going to send it plunging through the floor. Legions of demons live in the Abyss, some of them ruling gigantic empires, but even the most powerful of them is constantly afraid for its existence, having marinated in that fear for so many centuries that it's no longer conscious of it anymore. Even the greatest demon lords is theoretically capable of having its entire empire hurled down to destruction without a second's notice; spawning avatars and conquering dominions are ways of trying to secure safety, but they are never going to be totally effective.

Demons are ultra-hedonists, because they don't believe they have a future; they will do anything for the chance to invade some higher plane further away from the abyss, and once there, they sate all their most debased urges nonstop at any cost, other than when faced with the immediate threat of someone sending them back. Within the Abyss, there is one and only one law: never push anyone toward the Pit. Because when a creature falls into the Pit and is annihilated, Abyssal superstition holds that every sympathetic connection to that creature remains - now belonging to the pit, and tying everyone that the victim ever knew to the pit, making it more likely that they in turn will fall, possibly bringing those they know with them in turn. Thusly, those who break the one Law, by causing or helping to cause a fall into the Pit, must suffer the worst of all punishments: being ignored. Everyone in the entire Abyss recognizes the criminal as Marked, and they will go the other way as soon as it shows up; they will never help it in any way (by Abyssal standards, torturing or killing someone counts as "help", since they consider all life experiences to be good ones, by contrast with the Pit), they will never risk forming a connection to it, because they know both that isolating it makes it more vulnerable to the Pit (karmic justice in the only form they recognize it) and that they need to not have a connection to it in case it does fall in, lest they risk being next.

Having been spawned by Chaos and trapped in the worst place imaginable, demons are defined by one trait above all - insane hyperfecundity. While they desperately want to escape the Abyss, no sane reality will take them in, because they are all like living plagues that infect their surroundings with rot and madness. Spawning children of some sort is a survival mechanism, since the more demons there are, the better the chances that one of them will fall into the Pit instead of you. Redemption is impossible for them, at least without changing species; they live their entire lives in a state of such adrenaline-fueled madness, and are so driven either to escape the Pit themselves or to create spawn who might survive if they don't, that there's no way for them to "dial it down" when they get to a safer world...just being able to exist without an immediate fear of annihilation is such a relief to them that it's like a euphoric drug, and makes them get very "touchy-feely" with their surroundings in a way that has nothing to do with consent, sterility, or not crushing anyone's bones.

And if there's one thing that demons fear, it's a Paladin - of Slaughter. Because such individuals are directly empowered by the Abyss itself, and exist only to annihilate anything they believe shouldn't exist, which is pretty much everything eventually, but demons (because they spend all their time doing anything and everything to try and exist) are at the top of that list.

[Weirdlet]

I *really* like that idea behind the state and the style of being demonic, and I want to incorporate that into my current campaign-thinking. That *fits*.


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Orcs are what comes of torturing Sidhe with iron until there is no unburned soul or body left. They were the experiments of the Ancient Empire that first brought civilization into the wilds where the Sidhe reigned supreme, and their go-to soldiers for the longest time. They are resilient, long-lived unless killed, and their souls are refused from both the Summerlands Underhill and the humans' Hall of Heroes, so they reincarnate again and again- and what's more, they need not always be born to do so. It's a secret of certain necromancers and other illegal magicians that one can create a Pit, with offal and corpses and lots of special alchemical juice, that will grow new orcs in a matter of months. (Certain dwarven factories are rumored to be doing just that in order to keep up a steady supply of cheap workers).

They are grungy, angry, soul-weary, and mostly want to be left alone after having broken free of the dying Empire. Often bullied into soldiering for one great warrior's cause or another (and forcibly made via Pit when they cannot be persuaded), they endure because they must. No one is on their side, so they are on no one's side unless forced to be.

Further, most of the orcs people see are the male warriors. Females are rarer, more organized, and rarely let themselves be seen unless they are capturing resources from outsiders. They are statted as hobgoblins, and while they are more often fighting defensively that sending out raiding parties, they are ruthless and efficient at both.

[willpell]

My version of Devils are also extremely different from that in core - instead of just being random hellscapes full of monsters, the Nine Hells are each dedicated to a particular Deadly Sin (with Pride having calved off two additional sins, Vanity and Hypocrisy - because, you know, it was clearly three times as special as the others to begin with, and is still far and away the best *wink*). The nine hells are "stacked" the way they are because they serve as a barrier between the Abyss and the mortal plane; the devils were originally angels (not yet specialized into Archons) who stationed themselves there as a bulwark against the ravening demon horde, and turned toward Evil as it became more and more apparent that their mission was utterly impossible and they had to accept corruption to even begin to stem the tide. Thusly, while Demons are evil by nature for understandable reasons, Devils are intentionally evil for the sake of "necessity".

The Hell of Wrath is the "bottom" and "smallest" layer, because it serves as the main battleground for halting demon invasion and thus is built to serve as a choke point. When your enemies number in the millions to start with and can give birth during the battle to produce instant reinforcements, you really need a way to control the terrain in order to use your superior tactics to make up for the lack of numbers. Therefore, hate-filled souls who want only to destroy what they consider acceptible targets are prized recruits, transformed into the most powerful diabolic warriors and tasked with the utterly impossible job of holding the line against invading demons. It's a meat-grinder job where failure is the only option; they try to reduce escaping demons to weak, stealth-optimized forms (small, insubstantial, or otherwise not optimally destructive), but inevitably some slip through and begin trying to wind their way through the planar channels to the Material.

Further "up", the planes of Hell are designed increasingly less to fight the demons who have slipped through (as those who get close are more likely to make a beeline for the Material, rather than stop in the "weaker" hells to damage the infrastructure of the diabolic army), and more to gather the power needed for the war effort. You see, thanks largely to the influence of the Fae Folk, who as CG omnibeings like to grant people's happy wishes, human(oid) emotion is the most powerful energy source in my universe; the wellspring of all creation is the Dreamheart, which is powered by people's creative energies, and its opposite the Abyss is a "release valve" designed to limit Creation's growth by snuffing creativity out. (Both are functions of Chaos, while Law is a protective shell around reality; thusly the Devils stand between the Abyss and the Prime, while Archons stand between the Prime and the Dreamheart, making sure villains from the Material can't get into Heaven and gum up the works). The Fae set this up in the Dawn Times before they had really encountered the Demons, let alone figured out how nasty they were, and so they had no idea that the future-Devils were going to figure out a heinous application for their method. Emotions were a source of power, alright - but negative emotions turned out to be the strongest. So Hell was created as, essentially, a gigantic battery to extract the power of people's most severe terrors, hatreds, agonies, and other aversions.

The topmost layer of Hell is devoted to Lust, and seems pleasant enough at first glance; its primary purpose is recruitment, designed to lure corruptible souls into accepting something that seems like perfect joy, but has a few teeeny flaws in it which eventually lure the target to their doom. Every Hell is like this to varying extents, but Lust has the subtlest version; doomed souls may linger there for years or centuries believing they're in Heaven (or more precisely its CG equivalent Arcadia, which the Elves call Arvandor), not recognizing that their depravity is being harvested for energy while their psyches very gradually break down. Of course, not everyone succumbs; "day passes" to Lust are a great way of winning eager low-level peons who play critical but almost-invisible roles in the web of schemes Evil has engineered. But those who reside in Lust long enough will succumb to ennui at best, and more likely an eventual moment of "oh god what have I become" when they're presented with the one taboo they thought they'd never break, and realize that it's the only thing that does it for them anymore. (Exactly how wrong this should get is up to the GM; he should pick the most transgressive thing he isn't utterly unwilling to have in his gameworld, and save that for this moment.)

Regardless of the Hell and the methods involved, it's always about producing this breakdown - get the victim to give in to the sin more and more, with less and less hesitation, until his psyche is down to just a single wire-thin pillar of moral decency, which is then precipitously snapped. The concentration of energy thus unleashed is ultimately what fuels all of Hell's war machines, and is the only thing that can possibly counteract Chaos, since it is rooted in Chaos itself - the fountain of creativity never runs dry, so concentrating it into a firehose spray produces a devastating amount of force, without letting it flow out in every other direction along the path of least resistance. By cutting off every creative outlet except one, and then blocking that one almost completely, you guarantee it will explode with incredible force, and that explosion can be harnessed. The methods for accomplishing this are designed and administrated in the central three Hells (at least one of which is from the Pride trinity, though I don't recall the details, I don't think all three of them are); Asmodeus himself is somewhere in this bureaucracy, though he intentionally leaves someone else supposedly in charge, all as part of his own cardinal Sin.