How can you make the standered fantasy races more interesting by borrowing from myths

[Rfkannen]

So you all know the basic fantasy races; elves, orcs, dwarves, goblins. For this thread lets also add halflings and gnomes. When I say the name of one of those races you get an immediate idea of what it is. And as much as I love all of these races except elves; however some times they get a bit bland. I mean an elf is an elf is an elf. So I had an idea, mythology has some crazy stuff, like some stuff that is incredibly weird. So how can we take inspiration from classic myths and apply that to our rpgs? Only thing I can think of right now is fusing drow and dwarves, but I bet you have better ideas :)

[Jay R]

So you all know the basic fantasy races; elves, orcs, dwarves, goblins. For this thread lets also add halflings and gnomes. When I say the name of one of those races you get an immediate idea of what it is. And as much as I love all of these races except elves; however some times they get a bit bland. I mean an elf is an elf is an elf. So I had an idea, mythology has some crazy stuff, like some stuff that is incredibly weird. So how can we take inspiration from classic myths and apply that to our rpgs? Only thing I can think of right now is fusing drow and dwarves, but I bet you have better ideas :)

My current game has no elves. I intend to introduce them, as the elves from Terry Pratchett's Lords and Ladies.


Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder.
Elves are marvellous. They cause marvels.
Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies.
Elves are glamorous. They project glamour.
Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment.
Elves are terrific. They beget terror.
The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have changed their meaning.
No one ever said elves are nice.

[Spriteless]

Halflings and Gnomes are both based off friendly brownies/house elves, who do chores like make shoes and clean up while you are asleep, and harmless pranks like dancing in the fireplace. If you hurt them in the slightest, even while they are invisible, they will scare children, and if you give them clothes they will run away never to be seen again. Well, Gnomes are based on that, while Halflings are based on Hobbits which are based on that but the exceptions are more famous. Fantasy is kind of odd that way.

[Laserlight]

So you all know the basic fantasy races; elves, orcs, dwarves, goblins. For this thread lets also add halflings and gnomes. When I say the name of one of those races you get an immediate idea of what it is. And as much as I love all of these races except elves; however some times they get a bit bland. I mean an elf is an elf is an elf. So I had an idea, mythology has some crazy stuff, like some stuff that is incredibly weird. So how can we take inspiration from classic myths and apply that to our rpgs? Only thing I can think of right now is fusing drow and dwarves, but I bet you have better ideas :)

An elf is an elf is an elf....well, maybe. Do you mean Tolien elves? Or do you mean elves more like those found in Three Hearts and Three Lions? Or Pratchett's Lords and Ladies?

I've thought that one could handily combine elves and vampires (the "opera cape" sort, not the original animalistic vampire). Complete sociopath, elegant, aristocratic, mesmerizing, can't stand full daylight or holy symbols.

And dwarves and goblins could easily be the same. Or dwarves and elves, if you're going to go back to Germanic myth.

You could of course mine non-European myth. Mix in a little Japanese, or Aztec, for example.

[mephnick]

Even Tolkien couldn't make halflings interesting, don't ask me to try.

[Mastikator]

Even Tolkien couldn't make halflings interesting, don't ask me to try.

Even Tolkien's races suffer from Planet Of Hats Syndrome.

To be honest, fantasy races are borrowed from myth, if that doesn't make them interesting then I don't see how adding clashing myths will make it interesting.
If humans are interesting but elves, dwarves and hobbits aren't the answer isn't to treat them like hobbitelves, it's to treat them like humans.

[Jay R]

One solution is to consider each mythos a separate culture, not a race. There are Tokien high elves deep in one forest, Pini wolf-riders in another, Germanic elves below the ground, Spenserian Fairies pricking on the plain, the fairy king Sir Orfeo visited in another land, etc.

This solves the Planet of Hats issue by making their characteristics cultural, not racial, in origin.

[The Oni]

The "dark elf" variant in my campaign setting are the hulder/huldra, which show up in Swedish mythology and are often conflated with vampires. When elves are deprived of sunlight for a long period of time, they go a bit mad, and then they start sprouting fur and developing canines. Being near other hulder/huldra accelerates the transformation. Hulder are a lot like the elf they used to be in personality, except for a complete lack of empathy for anything that's not hulder. They don't need blood to survive...but they do enjoy it.

Hulder took over the main Elven kingdom and murdered or drove out any Elf that didn't turn. With serious shades of Social Darwininism, Hulder consider themselves to be the ultimate apex predators, and consider it a moral duty to dominate the land. Hulder-ness is bad news for elves, because the other races don't really understand how it works and as a result, hate and fear ALL elves as potential monsters, so the elves in my setting tend to be wilderness-dwelling outcasts, newly-humbled sycophants kowtowing to humans, or brilliant experts too useful to kick out.

[Rfkannen]

The "dark elf" variant in my campaign setting are the hulder/huldra, which show up in Swedish mythology and are often conflated with vampires. When elves are deprived of sunlight for a long period of time, they go a bit mad, and then they start sprouting fur and developing canines. Being near other hulder/huldra accelerates the transformation. Hulder are a lot like the elf they used to be in personality, except for a complete lack of empathy for anything that's not hulder. They don't need blood to survive...but they do enjoy it.

Hulder took over the main Elven kingdom and murdered or drove out any Elf that didn't turn. With serious shades of Social Darwininism, Hulder consider themselves to be the ultimate apex predators, and consider it a moral duty to dominate the land. Hulder-ness is bad news for elves, because the other races don't really understand how it works and as a result, hate and fear ALL elves as potential monsters, so the elves in my setting tend to be wilderness-dwelling outcasts, newly-humbled sycophants kowtowing to humans, or brilliant experts too useful to kick out.


Wow, I took some stuff from the hulder to but nothing like that, that sounds awesome.

I just gave my wood elves a hole in there back and tails.

[Stellar_Magic]

While most people tend to handle Elves in a way they that makes them rather... dry and boring. I think if you just go back to some of the original myths and ideas you can make Elves far more interesting.

For example, in some myths Elves are long lived not because of their race but because their home is in a part of the world where time flows differently. Perhaps a normal man visits them for a few days and find that decades have passed when they return, and so forth. Therefore if you remove an Elf from their home, then they might age the same as a human...

You could go with Elves being Fey. While DnD makes it so they're only 'like' fey, take the mischievous and otherworldly nature of the Fey and run with it. Abducting musicians and bards, snatching children and replacing them with dopplegangers, cruel pranks, and so forth. The same could easily apply to Gnomes.

If Elves are 'long lived magical beings with terrifying powers and abilities', make it so the average examples your party encounters are several levels higher then a typical human of the same archetype. If the everyday human soldier in a city guard is a 3rd level warrior, make the typical elf 9th level.*

*This one I do for all my archetypes and mooks based on lifespan and typical age.

[Orderic]

Dwarves - when I think of how I first read about them, I imagine small, weak people with great skills of crafting and some magic of their own. Not strong enough to challenge a human in battle, they instead use magic and trickery and sometimes have to be outwitted. But if you do manage to get a dwarf to work for you, you might get some of the most powerful objects imaginable. And not just weapons or armor, you might get a ship that folds to the size of a walnut or a ring from which other rings drop.

Elves, on the other hand I know as strange beings that can not be trusted. Accept their gifts and you are in debt, dance with them and you may never leave, go with them and you could return a hundred years later and become dust when you realize how much time has passed. Make a bargain with them... And you might find yourself wishing you had mande a deal with the devil instead.

In the Setting I am currently working on, I have made both Elves and Dwarves the descendants of fey and human. Which is not as nice as it may sound, considering that in this setting fey are parasitic monsters that infect and destroy your mind to procreate. And getting an actual Elf or Dwarf is even more horrifying.

[The Oni]

That sounds hella cool, Orderic, but at the same time it seems like it'd be awfully hard to make those guys a player race.