Tanuki Tales
2014-01-06, 02:58 PM
So, I was mulling over an idea where you could get the concept of humanity being the only really dominant and playable race but keep a variety of racial traits open to use (without needing to change the entire paradigm to reflect "societal traits" instead):
A good long while back, humanity was just one among many, many other races. What set humanity apart from the others was not only their almost inexhaustible spirit to go on and persevere, but also their incredible virility and compatibility with all the other races. Like dragons and extraplanar creatures, they could mate with literally almost anything and produce viable offspring that bred true.
Go forward a millennia or two and humanity is the last survivor for the most part. Other races either had been in their twilight and went extinct, were wiped out or had such low populations or other reproductive troubles that they eventually fell to the way side. But humanity had bred "sub-races" of itself with practically all of them and those traits were still being bred true in some way, shape or form.
Then a big cataclysm happens and sets back this era of humanity back to where it needs to be for most sword and sorcery games (or magipunk or whatever). So now you have the case of pure-bred humans being the ones that are practically non-existent, you have all these "mongrelfolk", but they all identify themselves under the same race of "humanity".
You could have a few primitive tribal races or hidden throw-backs to when there were many races or travelers from the future or what ever tickles your fancy, but these could solely be for flavor and not really for player use.
Mechanically this could be represented by a kind of mini-race builder or some kind of random generation table that would be attempted to be balanced out so that the "builds" are more or less on par with one another. Then it wouldn't matter if one "build" was basically tailored for a specific character niche because it'd just represent one specific "genetic blue-print", instead of an entire race with its own society and culture being pigeon-holed.
Thoughts?
A good long while back, humanity was just one among many, many other races. What set humanity apart from the others was not only their almost inexhaustible spirit to go on and persevere, but also their incredible virility and compatibility with all the other races. Like dragons and extraplanar creatures, they could mate with literally almost anything and produce viable offspring that bred true.
Go forward a millennia or two and humanity is the last survivor for the most part. Other races either had been in their twilight and went extinct, were wiped out or had such low populations or other reproductive troubles that they eventually fell to the way side. But humanity had bred "sub-races" of itself with practically all of them and those traits were still being bred true in some way, shape or form.
Then a big cataclysm happens and sets back this era of humanity back to where it needs to be for most sword and sorcery games (or magipunk or whatever). So now you have the case of pure-bred humans being the ones that are practically non-existent, you have all these "mongrelfolk", but they all identify themselves under the same race of "humanity".
You could have a few primitive tribal races or hidden throw-backs to when there were many races or travelers from the future or what ever tickles your fancy, but these could solely be for flavor and not really for player use.
Mechanically this could be represented by a kind of mini-race builder or some kind of random generation table that would be attempted to be balanced out so that the "builds" are more or less on par with one another. Then it wouldn't matter if one "build" was basically tailored for a specific character niche because it'd just represent one specific "genetic blue-print", instead of an entire race with its own society and culture being pigeon-holed.
Thoughts?