A World Without Elves?

[Palanan]

--Not that I have anything against elves, mind you, but still:

I'm looking for a campaign setting that's multiracial, but without the standard, achingly overdone variations on elves, orcs, dwarves, and (hack, ptui) gnomes. The closest I can find is Rokugan, which I like for other reasons, but it's still not quite what I'm looking for.

Can someone suggest a setting with distinct, unconventional races? This would have to be third-party almost by default, and I'd be interested in solid homebrew as well.

.

[Gildedragon]

Just swap in races you like. Take the fluff and crunch from settings you like and voila.

[thethird]

You might want to adapt the Talislanta (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talislanta) setting.

[Nettlekid]

Look through some of the Races Of X books for more obscure races. You'll get the same Elves, Dwarves, and Gnomes, but you'll also get races like Changelings, Warforged, Raptorans, Goliaths, Catfolk, Dragonborn (if you want to call it a race), and the like. Just take out all the old and overdone races that you're tired of.

[BWR]

If you feel like digging up some stuff, you can get Empire of the Petal Throne (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tekumel).
There are humans, but other than that it's all original races, quite well designed and detailed.

Rokugan isn't multiracial by any standards. There are some non-human races, but for the most part they don't show up and are often misunderstood and despised when they do.
The naga are sleeping and dying, the nezumi are hated by all except the Crab and now almost entirely gone, the zokujin are enslaved (except for one tribe in Dragon lands, and they are ignored), the kenku hardly show up, the rest are dead, nearly gone, Tainted or don't really live in the Emerald Empire.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Guigarci
Just swap in races you like.

....

Yes, I know I can sift through the various lists of player races. Obviously, or I'd hope obviously, I'm interested in seeing what else is out there, in terms of settings which have already been developed.


Originally Posted by thethird
You might want to adapt the Talislanta setting.

...for instance, like this, which I'd vaguely heard of but never looked into. Very cool, thanks for the suggestion.


Originally Posted by BWR
If you feel like digging up some stuff, you can get Empire of the Petal Throne.

And this, which also looks really interesting.

Anything else along these lines?

[Phippster]

Alternately, you mention you're tired of overdone variations. Depending on your viewpoint, you could easily look into settings that present a stark contrast to the typical view of fantasy races; Dark Sun is a fairly good example of how to take generic fantasy races and mix them around a bit. You can also come up with interesting bits of fluff for them to make them different from what you view as the norm.

You could also do what someone else suggested and take an established setting and mix-and-match the races. Change up the fluff, but not perhaps the reasons for their settlements there. Things like that can make a setting people have played in previously feel fresh and new.

[nedz]

Make up your own races. Do you know what you want ?

[Palanan]

Okay, let me rephrase this:

I'm looking for suggestions of worlds and settings which don't rely on minute variations of the typical Tolkien-clone races. I'm especially interested in campaign settings that feature well-thought-out cultures and societies with interesting, unconventional races. I am perfectly capable of creating one of my own, but I would like to see what other people have done.

Talislanta and Tékumel are both really interesting, and very much along the lines of what I was thinking. What else is out there?

[BowStreetRunner]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_campaign_settings

[mattie_p]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_campaign_settings

Wow, I'm not even into Pathfinder but I immediately noticed it was missing Golarion. Someone needs to get on that.

[Ailowynn]

Im guessing you already know this, but The Giant's campaign setting has no elves. It's all in the Gaming articles, although I forget if he finished the whole series of articles though.

[Fouredged Sword]

I was once making a humanless setting based around races that all had 2RHD for an E8 game.

We had
Gatortaurs - lizardman croc tuaric creatures.
Beefolk - Small humanoids with some natural armor and 20ft fly perfect and a poison stinger
Cattis - Cat folk with natural fire powers, equivalent to eldrich blast of a warlock of their HD.
Kordith - Living golems with natural DR, they craft more of themselves as asexual reproduction.

[Twilightwyrm]

Im guessing you already know this, but The Giant's campaign setting has no elves. It's all in the Gaming articles, although I forget if he finished the whole series of articles though.

Indeed, I'll second this. I've looked through all the articles, and he seems to have a fairly compelling world, with multiple, interesting, cultures all detailed for your pleasure. You can stick with the normal D&D classes if you are fine with a higher level magic campaign, but otherwise, yeah.

[Zombulian]

--Not that I have anything against elves, mind you, but still:

I'm looking for a campaign setting that's multiracial, but without the standard, achingly overdone variations on elves, orcs, dwarves, and (hack, ptui) gnomes. The closest I can find is Rokugan, which I like for other reasons, but it's still not quite what I'm looking for.

Can someone suggest a setting with distinct, unconventional races? This would have to be third-party almost by default, and I'd be interested in solid homebrew as well.

.

You... You like elves more than you like gnomes? :smallfrown:

[tiercel]

Well there is Dark Sun, though if you're running 3.x you'll have to use conversion documents from athas.org or Dungeon/Dragon mags.

Yes, it still has elves and dwarves and halflings but they've been retooled enough that they aren't your standard Tolkien-clone races.

I was curious (even though it doesn't match the OP) whether there was an actual "humans-only" published setting for D&D per se, and while there are some d20 systems that have no/very few demihumans, that doesn't seem to be a direction much taken for D&D.

[Arbane]

Glorantha (the original setting for RuneQuest) is pretty cool. It's got elves and dwarves, but one are actual plant-people and the other are machines. It also has trolls (big, matriarchial, extremely omnivorous, and dying out due to an ancient curse) and ducks (small, flightless, aquatic bird-people).

[Yora]

You might want to adapt the Talislanta (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talislanta) setting.
Despite their obnoxious claim, Talislanta actually has like 11 races of elves. They just don't call them elves.

Conan d20 is humans only. It's basically the same game with only magic working differently. But I think the "Return to the Road of Kings" book, which is almost entirely setting description, should even work with the normal D&D Player's Handbook and Monster Manual.

[Rhynn]

Glorantha (the original setting for RuneQuest) is pretty cool. It's got elves and dwarves, but one are actual plant-people and the other are machines. It also has trolls (big, matriarchial, extremely omnivorous, and dying out due to an ancient curse) and ducks (small, flightless, aquatic bird-people).

And so many others... grotarons (giants with an arm in place of a head, a mouth in their chest, and eyes on the backs of their hands), dragonewts (humanoid neotenic immature dragons), morokanths (intelligent evil tapir people), baboons (big human-intelligence baboons), tusk riders (half-human pig-men), waertagi (aquatic semi-humans who once ruled the seas) ...

Anyway, AD&D 2E had Lankhmar as a setting. The nearest thing to demi-humans I can think of there are the ghouls (humans with invisible flesh).

Are we talking D&D settings, though? If not...

The Known World of Artesia: Adventures in the Known World has no elves, dwarves, etc. There's theoretically centaurs (not statted), satyrs, etc., but only humans are playable.

Conan d20 has no non-humans.

Praedor is, unfortunately, only available in Finnish. No demi-humans there. Just humans (and demons, and Nameless Beings).

The Riddle of Steel technically has elves and dwarves (not very D&D standard), but they're not really emphasized in the pretend campaign setting.

The OSR has produced some cool settings that mighty apply, too... Lamentations of the Flame Princess has elves more in the Poul Anderson style; Mazes & Minotaurs only has humans; Carcosa has no traditional D&D demi-humans, but the world sure isn't ruled by humans... :smallamused: And the blog setting of Savage Swords of Athanor (http://swordsofathanor.blogspot.fi/) has no elves, dwarves, or halflings, and instead has arthropod Alemanians and fungoid Throons.