How would you reinvent classic monstrous races

[Kevinranch]

How would you put your own spin on some the classic monstrous races. I love hearing about people’s different interpretations of orcs, goblins, kobolds, gnolls, ogres, etc. How do/would you use these races in your own world.

[NovenFromTheSun]

I’d make goblins and kobolds more like their folkloric roots by making them more like fae or spirits rather than purely biological lifeforms.

[Eldan]

I'm a big fan of one suggestion that has been going around various forums for years now, and isn't mine.

Specifically, they are servants created by dragons, as some D&D books already imply. But they are more than that. They are the equivalent of ant workers. Dragon females, after building their huge lairs, start laying unfertilized eggs at a rapid rate, which hatch into tiny, draconic worker creatures, that swarm out to improve the lair, build traps to protect the dragon queen and raid the surrounding landscape to find food for her to eat and gold to add to her lair.

When her lair becomes magnificient enough, she uses it as a display, like some birds, to attract one of the nomadic dragon males that roam the landscape, mate, and lay new "proper" dragon eggs.

[DeTess]

In the steam-punky post-post apocalyptic campaign I used goblins as nomadic scavengers and traders. They'd travel far away from the growing pockets of civilization to loot what they could in a wholesale manner, with specialized scrapping mechs capable of reducing entire ruined building to raw materials. They'd also capture rare feral robots and the like to display to civilization, and they'd be kinda reckless in making crazy tech that'd often work spectacularly, but would also fail in the same way.

The PC's encountered a camp relatively early in the campaign and spend a night looking at the various captured monstrosities, getting drunk on alchemically interesting brandy (Everything tasted like strawberries for the halfling for the next week), and they also bought some interesting gear. The halfling still has a watch with in-built grapple-hook, but the fire-shotgun the ranger acquired blew up after a couple of sessions, which was pretty much as expected as I'd designed the weapons to be pretty powerful, but come with a propertional risk of mal-functioning and blowing up (I'd basically created a set of random tables for weapon generation to represent their crazy and usntablet ech).

[Trask]

I like my monsters a bit more on the "supernatural force" side rather than "thuggish barbarian" side, so I made my Orcs the maggots that crawl through the parts of the world that are rotting. They start as huge maggots and eventually, after eating enough of the poor earth's flesh, grow into orcs.

Half-Orcs are humans who contracted the horrific disease "Orcblight" and survived its germination, but are forever scarred by its touch, their physical body changed forever.

[Le Sigh]

Make them just like the other races, except that they're prejudiced against by the "playable" races like elves, dwarves and humans.

I find that in a lot of D&D adventures (both in modules and in Adventurer's Guild or whatever it is), the way "monstrous" races are often portrayed is crude, savage and uncivilized. Kobolds, goblins and orcs are seen as greedy and bloodthirsty things that live to prey on the weak commoners of the world and collect wealth and magic items for no apparent reason other than to store it all in one big room and keep it there. Heck, they're even commonly referred to by an "it" pronoun, rather than a "he", "she" or "they".

Is this always true? No. But in a lot of the more stereotypical "standard D&D world" type of campaigns, this is how they are seen. Which I think is bull. Living sapient creatures don't just exist to kill and pillage. They don't just collect magic items just to sit on them, or built sprawling subterranean complexes just so a couple of mooks can slaughter them for said magic items. Kobolds, goblins and orcs are living beings with their own cultures, governments, philosophies, technologies and beliefs that are just as intricate as those of the dwarves, elves and humans.

Look at it this way - if a bunch of human adventurers go into a keep, kill all the goblins living there and take all their treasure, it's called an adventure and generally seen as a good thing. When goblin adventurers go into a keep, kill all the humans living their and take all their treasure, it's called a slaughter and generally seen as an evil thing.

Now, does that mean we should all go uber-magically-correct and say that all the races treat each other like fellow intellectuals? Heck no! If there's one thing we can understand about humans, it's that when they encounter a group of people who look different than them and have a different society, the group will be labeled as "savages" and either killed, enslaved or oppressed as the humans attempt to force their beliefs upon them. As I talked about with the POV thing above this paragraph, you could make the humans see killing the goblins as a good thing, but when the PCs actually discover the goblins, make sure to discuss how they are just like humans, just different-looking and with slightly different customs - but still sapient beings whose lives should at least be put into consideration.

Too long, didn't read: I go on a rant about fantasy racism before wrapping up by saying that by using clashing POVs, you can create an interesting moral dilemma within your campaign while also making sure to not make the monsters a bunch of illogical savages.

[Weirdlet]

I take what 'cool' elements were most prominent about them, and then reshape those to make more sense to me.

Dark elves who worship an insane spider goddess deep underground, hating everything instead become desert people draped in blue cloth, riding giant spiders on trade routes between oases and their secluded city built into the cliffs at the edge of the sands. They have smaller complexes made of silk-reinforced tunnels (trap spiders!) away from their big city, and clan matrons spin fate and prophecy onto their enormous, sacred looms- while their lesser weavings sell for exorbitant amounts of money, being of a rare skill and material.

Being long-lived but slow to reproduce as all elves, the dark elves are territorial but not vicious unless provoked. They prefer stealth and intimidation to open combat, moving by night and hiding by day.


Orcs depend on the role I need them to fulfill, but I tend to take a sympathetic view with them- in Tolkien, they were the representation of industrialized warfare as suffered and enacted by the working class (complete with Cockney accents). So as the former slave-soldiers of a failed empire, orcs have survived either as roving packs of near-feral bandits, or by integrating with tribes of 'barbarian' humans from around the empire's territory. Those who have, often follow shamanic and martial paths dedicated to taming and soothing the mind-scars of having served endless war. Meanwhile, their one-eyed god is a sneaky type who traded his eye for wisdom and secrets, such as the ones that freed them from their bonds and led them to this good life, where they serve no masters and suffer no invaders to live.

[GnomishPride]

In my work-in-progress setting, I lumped orcs in with goblinkin, as they all share very similar traits. I then put goblinkin as a subtype of fey, along with elves and dwarfkin (includes dwarves, gnomes and halflings), similar to what Noven suggested earlier in the thread. All fey are native to the Feywild, but goblinkin, elves, and dwarfkin all migrated largely en masse to the Prime material eons ago. Goblinkin are more inspired by the mischievous, malicious fey of folklore. They're not necessarily evil and definitely not stupid, but certainly not friendly.

Hobgoblins are actually very interesting, from a worldbuilding standpoint, if you look a bit at the flavor text in the Monster Manual (I personally play 5e primarily, which is where much of my information comes from [and what my setting is designed for], but I'm sure there's other lore out there). They're warlike and aggressive, like most goblinkin, but they're far more organized, methodical, and even bureaucratic than their kin. I figure that hobgoblins can reasonably form a stable, if violent, society, thereby providing structure and order to a goblinkin nation (or even nations!). One could imagine a pure hobgoblin nation, or one where all goblinkin are equal (although the hobgoblins probably form the majority of government and military structure), or one where other goblinkin are subjugated to hobgoblin rule, or a thousand other sociopolitical structures.

Of course, this is largely inspired by OotS, but there's plenty of other interesting hobgoblin options out there. It doesn't take a large leap of imagination to put a hobgoblin nation on the map when you consider the militaristic hobgoblin hierarchy.

I also imagine kobolds as very close dragon-kin, with a large true dragon controlling a region nominally, but kobolds of the same color actually forming the bulk of the population of the region. These regions would be on par with real-life city states: not enough political umph to hold more than a single settlement, but definitely a force to be reckoned with when considering travel routes.

I've also started thinking about aquatic and underground regions, as there are four or five friendly aquatic races in the 5e core, plus a couple hostile races, and a whole host of Underdark races. There are Underdark versions of practically every main surface races (dark elves, dark dwarves, dark gnomes, dark humans [grimlocks], dark giants [fomorians], potentially dark goblins [orcs] - no dark halflings though. perhaps halflings are already dark?), so there's no reason your Underdark map should be any less complex and interesting as your surface map.

Hopefully this helps!

[sandmote]

I've made my gnolls druidic folk instead of demon infused hyenas. The Aardgnolls aren't going to interact with much anyone else, but the other gnolls are more than happy to buy things you can't eat if it means they get more food for less work. Their technology is from the high middle ages in a mostly late middle age setting, and they scavenge most of their quality goods from their neighbors.

The various animalfolk races share a pantheon, and the hyena god was killed by the god of the tiger/lion/cheetah-folk. So those have a byzantine style empire and feed their prisoners to elite hyena mounts, while the gnolls were spirited away to another continent by an ally of their former god. The political organization is that the hyena god's priests handle civil matters while the goddesses' clerics handle religious matters and have most of the power.

Because I think that gnolls at the very least should act like humanoid hyenas instead of acting like Spartiates or a demonic plague.

[Okizruin]

I've made my gnolls druidic folk instead of demon infused hyenas. The Aardgnolls aren't going to interact with much anyone else, but the other gnolls are more than happy to buy things you can't eat if it means they get more food for less work. Their technology is from the high middle ages in a mostly late middle age setting, and they scavenge most of their quality goods from their neighbors.

The various animalfolk races share a pantheon, and the hyena god was killed by the god of the tiger/lion/cheetah-folk. So those have a byzantine style empire and feed their prisoners to elite hyena mounts, while the gnolls were spirited away to another continent by an ally of their former god. The political organization is that the hyena god's priests handle civil matters while the goddesses' clerics handle religious matters and have most of the power.

Because I think that gnolls at the very least should act like humanoid hyenas instead of acting like Spartiates or a demonic plague.

I approve of this, by the way, even though I'm no GM.

[Tempest Kitsune]

I decided to go full Mongol Tribesmen with Orcs in my Sky Pirate setting, with them travelling alongside herds of Pegasi; and masters of the bow. I also basically used the stats for Half-Orcs due to them being less physically powerful and having adopted a lifestyle that better rewards slimmer and more flexible builds.

[Dargaron]

When I was making my 4e campaign setting, I had Goblins, Hobgoblins, Orcs and Bugbears all be part of a single over-race. Basically, all four species had verifiable reincarnation, and were basically castes of a Russo-Mesopotamian civilization (think ziggurats, but also vodka and lots of timber architecture) on the other side of the ocean from the PCs main continent. A reincarnated soul could return as any one of the four races, and each was seen as receiving its blessing from its own patron deity (Maglubiyet, Bane, Gruumsh and -I forget who Bugbears worship-).

The reason for a lot of their conflicts with humans is that orcs and goblinoids, knowing that they reincarnate, have very little inclination to avoid killing people. This naturally led to a lot of "misunderstandings" when orcish refugees arrived from the East and started blatantly slaughtering humans back in the day.

[Tvtyrant]

My latest one had sins/emotions be inherently corrupting in regions damaged by an ancient spell war. Goblins aren't just conniving backstabbers, they are the embodiment of betrayal. Orcs are bloodlust, gnolls are gluttony, kobolds cowardice, etc.

Mages and heroes get more powerful and evil forms. A greedy wizard eventually becomes a dragon, a bullying hero becomes a giant, etc. The reason society is a post-apoc nightmare of dungeons and evil humanoids is this taint, and civilization flourishes in the islands where it doesn't exist.

[Trask]

Mages and heroes get more powerful and evil forms. A greedy wizard eventually becomes a dragon, a bullying hero becomes a giant, etc. The reason society is a post-apoc nightmare of dungeons and evil humanoids is this taint, and civilization flourishes in the islands where it doesn't exist.

I like this, its similar to something I did for Dwarves. If a Dwarf accumulates massive wealth but doesnt control their greed, they get afflicted with "dragon greed" and start to turn into a dragon, getting exponentially more greedy for wealth until theyve made slaves of everyone around them.

[Dienekes]

I tend to go for more history-inspired roots in my setting.

The ones that my players are currently facing the most are the hobgoblins, who are basically the mechanical inclination of the Romans, the social structure of the Spartans, and the brutality of the Mongols all rolled together. This has made them terrifying to at least one of my players as there is a hobgoblin NPC who seems friendly enough to the PCs, offers aid when convenient and always attempts to be polite if a bit terse. But they've seen him, and heard him discuss acts of supreme violence during his time in the army as a matter of course. His cheerful discussion of the time his regiment broke into a city and slaughtered everyone nearly made my players attack him. But anyway, those who survive the abject brutality of the hobgoblin conquest can find living within the hobgoblin empire fairly comfortable. They aren't really interested in oppression for the sake of oppression, so long as they get the food and money to fund their armies, building projects, and further expansion they're a pretty stable and even handed leader. But if you cross them, if someone within the empire revolts, then the veneer of civilization falls away.

Goblins and Bugbears were the two first races that the Hobgoblins conquered. Bugbears, who have attempted to rebel a few times have been reduced to a completely enslaved people and used as farmers, grunt workers, and shock troops. They are kept by law to be uneducated and it is not unusual for the Hobgoblins to perform preemptive strikes against Bugbear population if they get a whiff that a rebellion might be brewing. Goblins on the other hand have had it rather well, with a lot of their religious and cultural practices becoming tied to the Hobgoblin's own. Though the generally more free-spirited and chaotic goblins do occasionally find living within the more structured Hobgoblin empire to be too constraining. As such it's not uncommon that they abandon the empire for other lands.

Orcs on the other side of things play a role most similar to people like the feoderati of the Roman Empire and mercenary armies in the Late Medieval period. Groups that may or may not have land that they call home. But they're more a roving army that goes where the money is. Some of them may have family back in what land was given to them, but more than likely they'll pick up wives and husbands and have children while on campaign. This is largely what creates the race of half-orc, children born of this roaming army as they pass through and pick them up. They will grow up with the army, and can reach a pretty high position, and after a generation or two where they'll likely breed with others within this army structure they're children will be unrecognizable from one of the original orcs, not that there really are any of the original orcs left. And if there are, the orcs don't care enough to make certain. But because of this harsh and constantly moving life, the army is their home and their family. And since the orcs have often violent and short lives, it is not unusual for one veteran soldier to be raising the children of one or more friends he'd lost around the way. They are very communal, and their lack of any solid social structure means just about anyone can join and find themselves as the leader of the army.

Ogres on the other hand, I've gone mythical with. In my world they (or more accurately the Ogre-Mages, or Oni as 5e calls them) were basically the first empire. The exact details of how the empire was toppled is some mystery, though the formerly enslaved dwarves were a part of it. And somehow the Ogres got cursed resulting in the Ogre Mages being very, very rare, while the idiotic and brutish Ogres were the result. A lot of the campaign has so far been peeling back the details on what happened back then, and things have been thrown a bit of a loop when they discovered at least one of these original Ogres is still very much alive and controlling things behind the scenes.

[Tvtyrant]

I like this, its similar to something I did for Dwarves. If a Dwarf accumulates massive wealth but doesnt control their greed, they get afflicted with "dragon greed" and start to turn into a dragon, getting exponentially more greedy for wealth until theyve made slaves of everyone around them.

I dig it! The dwarven association with greed and mining makes for a good motif there.

[Sam113097]

In my setting, most people on believe that goblins were a failed attempt by some lesser demigods to create another mortal race, some sort of unsuccessful rough draft. They are semi-sentient but are soulless, devoid of empathy, and look to be literal “rough drafts,” with varied, irregular proportions. New goblins aren’t born, they’re sculpted out of clay and goblin blood by other goblins, making each one uniquely shaped.

Ancient mages took it upon themselves to try to “repair” these monsters and create the mortal race that they believed the gods had intended goblins to be. After generations of trial and error and numberless dead goblin test subjects, they finally managed to etch runes into their very beings, creating a highly intelligent, magically-gifted race of ”perfected” goblins: gnomes.

[Trask]

In my setting, most people on believe that goblins were a failed attempt by some lesser demigods to create another mortal race, some sort of unsuccessful rough draft. They are semi-sentient but are soulless, devoid of empathy, and look to be literal “rough drafts,” with varied, irregular proportions. New goblins aren’t born, they’re sculpted out of clay and goblin blood by other goblins, making each one uniquely shaped.

Ancient mages took it upon themselves to try to “repair” these monsters and create the mortal race that they believed the gods had intended goblins to be. After generations of trial and error and numberless dead goblin test subjects, they finally managed to etch runes into their very beings, creating a highly intelligent, magically-gifted race of ”perfected” goblins: gnomes.

Wow this might be my favorite one in this thread so far. Super creative man.

Naturally it follows that many goblinoids could be cast as attempts by magicians to shape the goblin into something new.

[BioCharge]

In my setting, Orcs used to be as all settings traditionally have them: barbarous hordes and the like. However, within the past about 1500 years, the traditional mortal races were able to form an alliance with more forward thinking Orcs, allowing them to be granted improved education, food, and equipment in exchange for protection during a (still currently ongoing) planetary demonic invasion. The Orcs are akin to the Krogan from Mass Effect for those who have played the series.

My Kobold, which I can proudly say my girlfriend did a lot to shape, are essentially little draconic Jawas from Star Wars. They roam the endless battlefields hoarding scrap and machinery and fixing it up. They drive a hard bargain, but a group can find all sorts of wonders in the horde of a Kobold clan.

[D&D_Fan]

What if there were originally 2 worlds and the "monstrous races" are actually a reflection of the races that were on world 1. The world merged a long time ago and now both exist on on 1 world.

Maybe the reflection of elves is orcs.
Goblins and norkers are reflection of halflings and gnomes
Dwarfs and Gnolls.
Dragonborn and Yuan-ti
Firbolg and Bugbears
Humans and Hobgoblins
etc.
you decide.

[timmyd-93]

In my world, Goblinoids were given full citizenship in one of the smaller nations on the continent after the players recruited a huge army of them (using Matt Colville's S&F) to help win a civil war, and eventually defeat Vecna. Was very epic. Now they're just like everyone else in the two main cities of the nation, but experience prejudice out in the frontier still.

[S@tanicoaldo]

I avoid them like the plague in my games.

They are way to boring and played out.

The only one I still use are the dwarfs, but I got with the mythological and fairy tale take on them not the classical fantasy.

They are basically the opposite of the elves, dark, evil and cruel.

Live in caves.

Black skin, glowing eyes and allergic tot he sun.

Blacksmiths and warriors but also magic users.

Miners of gems and metals.

Wicked sense of humor, sarcastic jokes and evil (And often lethal tricks).

Powerful magic power often making deals with humans for goods just to backstab them when they least expect.

Stuff from viking tales and fairy tales such as Snow white and red rose and Rumpelstiltskin.

[Eldan]

I, too, enjoy having my dwarves be master illusionists and craftsmen more than surly norse vikings.

[sktarq]

Catfolk. I've often based them culturally on various groups that eat a lot of meat. So archetypes similar to the Inuit and Masai (who drink cow blood and milk). And have similar boarder and land rights issues.

Medusa. From a the Pathfinder classic monsters reinvented came the image of the idea that the medusa's heart was an ever corroding, ever regenerating, flexible heart of stone that bestows the age defying magics that allow the race to live for so long. I kinda decided to run with it. What if Medusa's are the result of a failed attempt to bestow immortality. Maybe the originator never want another person to mourn like he had. The original epic wizard or druid bound the power of stone to make life as resilient as stone, used ancient snake magic (either similar sources to Yuan Ti, ancient snake people of Faerun's source, as a Druid was linked to snakes personally, used a "serpent-earth" sympathetic magic bond) , and wanted to share it so made the great work passable by simple eye contact.

But he messed up.
Some forces can not be conquered and death is one.

He managed to make himself unaging but his first subject he passed it to (his wife, lover, daughter whatever-female anyway) it did not transfer the way he expected. And her ability to gift others with this magic was not as expected. Those poor people turned to stone completely instead of just their hearts and lost all sentience or mobility. They were however still trapped as being alive (thus why stone to flesh spells work and don't just give you a corpse you need to raise dead on the life has not left the stone (also means if you break up the stone it has good chance that the life energy may stick around as a ghost/haunting or similar and also means that you can't speak with dead or resurrect petrified characters). This first medusa eventually found she could pass on what she now saw as a curse but only by birthing her own companions. For the nature of what she had become was rather stable, but the act of becoming the monster she now saw herself as was where her creator had failed and even here he was not perfect, the medusa's body could not host male offspring.

Their could have been several of these early - direct from the originator medusas but only the female could expand the race's footprint and so came to dominate the view of the race

If the original creator of the curse has been killed, moved off the material plane, or is still hiding somewhere working on a solution the extended family of snake haired, stone hearted, poison blooded, near immortal women still try and failing to pass on a version of immortality that is to deeply be avoided.

[Millstone85]

I'm a big fan of one suggestion that has been going around various forums for years now, and isn't mine.

Specifically, they are servants created by dragons, as some D&D books already imply. But they are more than that. They are the equivalent of ant workers. Dragon females, after building their huge lairs, start laying unfertilized eggs at a rapid rate, which hatch into tiny, draconic worker creatures, that swarm out to improve the lair, build traps to protect the dragon queen and raid the surrounding landscape to find food for her to eat and gold to add to her lair.

When her lair becomes magnificient enough, she uses it as a display, like some birds, to attract one of the nomadic dragon males that roam the landscape, mate, and lay new "proper" dragon eggs.

I am using that one for the setting I am creating, with the addition of dragonborn as the equivalent of ant soldiers.

[White Blade]

I always think the most important thing is to justify why a race is a "monster" race. So, for example, I have orcs who are ruled by vampires and are thus a nomadic raiding culture. I had goblins who have a high male-to-female ratio and a higher than human birthrate, put them deep underground where there would be natural territory competition with the dwarves. Dragons have a genetic memory, which is how a Wyrmling can have Knowledge (Local) +12, and solitary dispositions. Ogres are carnivores and have a chasing predator sleep cycle (6 awake, 18 asleep). So on and so forth.

[Patras]

Hi!

Interesting thread that actually made me register :)

Orcs: I went from the standard barbarian Horde to close to mindless Killers. A lot like the dark brood from the Dragon Age games. I just didnt want to have to hassle with my PCs slaying orcs and the realizing they just murdered a Village and are left with orc orphansÂ…
You know, just a random Horde of orc Aggression you can throw at a settlement the PCs like and such.

Then the orcs kind of evolved.
Now the normal orc is still a random near-mindless killer, only slightly more sentient than an animal, but now they are refugees from an interplanar war(hello, Warcraft Inspiration^^) that basically went insane from the portal magics they used.
Only a few of them are excempt from this, and they are the ones that lead the hordes. Maybe one in a thousand of them.
And of those only one out of ten is a female.
They reproduce only by dark Magics (females are mostly arcane casters), and they no longer believe in the old orc gods that have forsaken them.
Instead they look to lift the curse on their race, research and breed in the conquered halls of the duergar they vanquished and direct the mindless hordes of their children to the surface to get more slaves and samples from the Surface races.

And yes, if those hordes are let loose without one of the intelligent leaders they act more like a zerg swarm, not an army.
If it is a big horde and several leaders are present...prey to the gods mortals. Whole countries will burn.

Medusa: Those are rare, and always servants of some god. Basically immortal divine emissaries, not (only) man eating monsters. The dwarf in our Party actually kissed one to seal a deal *g*

[SpawnOfMorbo]

How would you put your own spin on some the classic monstrous races. I love hearing about people’s different interpretations of orcs, goblins, kobolds, gnolls, ogres, etc. How do/would you use these races in your own world.

Half-Orcs have a southern accent.

Just because they thought it was cool sounding and wanted to stick out from the other races a bit. They got an inferiority complex going.

Humans (don't tell me humans aren't monsters) can't cast spells. They can do other cool stuff, but spellcasting is beyond them.

[Lvl45DM!]

Orcs depend on the role I need them to fulfill, but I tend to take a sympathetic view with them- in Tolkien, they were the representation of industrialized warfare as suffered and enacted by the working class (complete with Cockney accents). So as the former slave-soldiers of a failed empire, orcs have survived either as roving packs of near-feral bandits, or by integrating with tribes of 'barbarian' humans from around the empire's territory. Those who have, often follow shamanic and martial paths dedicated to taming and soothing the mind-scars of having served endless war. Meanwhile, their one-eyed god is a sneaky type who traded his eye for wisdom and secrets, such as the ones that freed them from their bonds and led them to this good life, where they serve no masters and suffer no invaders to live.

I like this and am stealing it. Lets you do thug orcs and complex moral socio-political orcs in the same game.

In my world theres basically only 1 god for every main plane of existence. 1 for every alignment and one for every inbetween alignment.

Spoiler: Dwarves

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Dwarves are the children of the Mechanus (LN) god, their stone cunning and metalwork are due to their affinity for clockwork, but they are inherently sense-freaks which is why they get so drunk. They arent greedy at all really, but they do love gold because of what they can do with it. No dwarf city has gold coins but they have golden gates and statues and doors and windowsills all beautifully carved. Duergar are dwarves that have never seen the sky. Any dwarf that spends too long underground becomes a duergar.

Spoiler: Goblinkin

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The Acheron (LN with E tendencies) god made goblin kind. They revel in warfare but they don't really feel pain and thus lack empathy towards others since they dont really get that getting your fingers cut off is that big a deal. War is a sport to them, winning is fun. They adore steel and iron and use it as jewellery as well as weapons. All internal conflict is resolved with highly ritualised combat.

Spoiler: Tieflings

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The 9 hells (LE) made tieflings as ambassadors and spies and assassins. But they underestimated how nice the Prime is compared to Hell. So Tieflings have a disturbing tendency to become full on hippies, in love with everything in this world. Those that dont tend more towards becoming disillusioned with the world thinking that its a great pretty lie.

Spoiler: Ogres

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Gehenna (NE with L tendencies) made Ogres who are solitary beings. The only way for them to really feel pleasure is when they eat so they tend to stick to themselves and leave the world alone, but don't bother them or they will decide you are food. They do good work for hire if you feed them well. Lots of holy temples and cities have at least a few ogre guards hidden away.

Spoiler: Lizardmen

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Hades(NE), made Lizardmen and removed their higher emotions. Lizardmen as a result tend to lead simple lives due to their lack of ambition. They make no distinction between eating plants, animals or other mortals. Life is about reproduction and peace. They care not about their dark origins.

Spoiler: Giants and Gnomes

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Carceri (NE with C tendencies) made the Giants. They...got out of hand once. Nearly broke the world so their birthplace became their prison leaving only the least and weakest of the giants behind, hill stone fire frost cloud and storm. But while the giants ruled they decided to have a race of slave folk. They took the earth forged it into a being and gave it a mind. Giants preferred to rule and fight so they gave their race cunning minds to handle the nitty gritty details. This race was freed when the Titanic Giants returned back to their home, and became Gnomes. Svirfneblin are a single city of gnomes living deep in the earth actively seeking to free the Titanic Giants and restore their masters.

Spoiler: Orcs

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The Abyss made orcs (CE. Hunt and kill and rule by strength and break anything you find and kill and kill. Orcs tend to have shortened lifespans despite incredibly low infant mortality. They reach adulthood around 10. But if they make it to 15 its like becoming an adult after being an 18 year old. They start to mellow and build societies, though the young often ruin it before it gets very far.

Spoiler: Gnolls

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Pandemonium (CN with E tendencies) made gnolls and they are just gnolls. Howling biting eating hunting gnolls. Turns out the entire species is insane and literally cannot stop themselves from being monsters. A good restoration can cure them, but if performed past childhood the gnoll tends to stay a monster.

Spoiler: Changelings and Shifters

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Limbo (CN) made changelings and shifters. Then the god of limbo forgot that it made changelings and shifters and let them do their own things. They tend to be fiercely independent and incredibly loyal to family over anything else.

Spoiler: Elves

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The Beastlands (CN with G tendencies) made elves to be caretakers of the natural world and the beasts. But they made the mistake of giving them millenia long lifespans. Many elves were frustrated with what they saw as a menial task and became drow. Drow do not live under the world but live in dead places where little grows, deserts and high mountains, they have cut themselves off from the natural world deliberately. But spiders live everywhere so they have grown attached to the spiders. This lack of nature left them sort of empty and they tend to lash out at the world. High elves struck a compromise and declared themselves guardians of nature but more removed and they build citadels in places of great natural beauty and study the world. Wood elves embraced their task and do not build cities, purely nomadic.

Spoiler: Hobbits

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Arborea (CG) made the halflings, and the halflings are your normal halflings, with the exception that almost every halfling is afflicted with a wanderlust. Dying in the same place you lived is a great tragedy for hobbits.

Spoiler: Dragons and Kobolds

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Ysgard (NG with C tendencies) is the place of the Muses, gods of great stories. They made Dragons and Dragonborn. Dragons in my world are all Neutral and are dependent on their environment rather than their colour for breath weapons. Dragonborn are meant to be bards and heroes, and some take that seriously, some claim that makes them superior to all others and try to conquer everyone, and some just live their lives out rejecting their destiny. The dragons exist to be monsters for heroes to slay, though not all of them play that role. The first great dragons made homonculi from their breath and thats how we got kobolds. Kobolds are seemingly compelled to cause havoc in societies. They dont dwell far from other mortals, they move under a city and start stealing and kidnapping babies and performing evil rituals to undermine everything. Even they dont really understand why.

Spoiler: Aarakocra

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Elysium (NG) made arakocra to soar above the mortals and give them something to aspire to. But they badly underestimated the relative cruelty of the world. arakocra tend to be vicious evil sociopaths. Towards the beginning many tried to cut off their wings and became Kenku, who have a bad reputation due to the arakocra.

Spoiler: Goliaths and Tritons

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Bytopia (NG with L tendencies) made the Goliaths and Tritons to guard the land and sea from what they saw was a move by Elysium to rule the world with their flying minions. It worked out a little differently, and the Goliaths and Tritons still maintain strong relations with each other though they try to stay away from other mortals. They believe they are superior and therefore shouldn't impose on those beneath them.

Spoiler: Aasimar

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Celestia (LG) made the aasimar with one intention. To build the shining city on the hill that every other race would flock too. They uh. They didnt do it right. Buildings on the Prime are made of rock and wood, not out of clouds, gold and pure light. They built the largest city in the world which, while having the greatest buildings of beauty, is also a hive of scum and villainy. Aasimars tend to be great merchants and most kings of any race claim some aasimar heritage.

Spoiler: Illumians?

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Arcadia (LN with G tendencies) did not make a race and is content to watch. Occasionally beings much like humans but with glowing sigils on their heads are seen, taking notes of how the world progresses. But these "Illumians" are probably just myths.

Spoiler: Gith

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The Faceless god, lord of the Etheral/Astral made the Gith. But Mindflayers appeared from nowhere, kidnapped every Gith and enslaved them. As such, the Gith, after their freedom, are active dystheists, hating all gods. Some preach atheism, and others actively assassinate priests and worshippers. They dwell under the earth, and only exist in the Ethereal/Astral through magic/psionics.

Spoiler: Humans and Genasi

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The Mother of the Prime look at everything that had been made and made humans to be perfectly balanced. If any side becomes too strong, humans tend to balance it out.
Each Elemental plane has a lord which is a child of the Prime, so they took humans and added themselves in and made Genasi. Genasi are mentally and culturally humans, and crop up in bloodlines every now and then. Two Genasi will make a human child 75% of the time, and an Earth and a Fire Genasi are as likely to make an Air or Water Genasi child as a Fire or Earth one. Genasi are usually considered to be blessed by most human societies.

[Dienekes]

I avoid them like the plague in my games.

They are way to boring and played out.

The only one I still use are the dwarfs, but I got with the mythological and fairy tale take on them not the classical fantasy.

They are basically the opposite of the elves, dark, evil and cruel.

Live in caves.

Black skin, glowing eyes and allergic tot he sun.

Blacksmiths and warriors but also magic users.

Miners of gems and metals.

Wicked sense of humor, sarcastic jokes and evil (And often lethal tricks).

Powerful magic power often making deals with humans for goods just to backstab them when they least expect.

Stuff from viking tales and fairy tales such as Snow white and red rose and Rumpelstiltskin.

Amusing (to me any way), it seems we went a similar route but each chose different races. In my world I've mostly kept dwarves Tolkienesque (why mess with perfection?) but it's the elves I've gone deeply fae with. Wicked humor, pranksters, flighty pains in the ass, with a lot of mind control and illusion magic. They're not all evil, per se. But their Eternal King is one of the most feared beings in the world, and even their allies treat them very delicately. You can never tell just what might set an elf off, and they're always changing the rules on you.