d20 Campaign World Advice [Archive] - Wizards Community

d20 Campaign World Advice [Archive] - Wizards Community

Post/Author/DateTime Post
Dalakmar
10-19-06, 10:41 AM Hi all,

For the past two years I've been working on a d20 Campaign World that I hope, when finished, to post on the web.

Whilst I am exited by the depth of my creation one fact keeps niggling at me: my world has NO standard races i.e. no elves, dwarves, gnomes, orcs etc.

Instead I have created 20 new playable races that fit in much better with the history of my world.

My question: Do you think not including the traditional races will limit my audience?

At the moment I have produced an: Optional Races section that explains how such races could be introduced to the world. But this would not allow for vast numbers to be introduced.

Your thoughts on this are very much appreciated.

Dalakmar
AegriSomniaPress
10-19-06, 10:11 PM I would say rule number one is if something does not fit don't include it. The reasoning is that despite the fact that it will be more familiar for people to interact with its like sticking a square peg in a round hole every one is going to see that they don't really fit. My opinion on the matter is that the standard races are not right for original ideas. Your choice to not included them will allow people to take themselves into a whole new environment instead of just simply transfer old over done clinches.
Regards, Seth
Lissa
10-22-06, 03:48 PM If the standard races don't fit you don't use them. Two game systems I've used don't have humans at all. Albedo and Halogen systems both use anthropomorphic animals as the races in their games with no humans allowed.

Remember it's your world and you decide what races to use and not use.
fatal error
10-29-06, 12:04 PM At the same time, don't replace standard races just to make it look original.

For example, in my fantasy campaign setting, one kingdom has been torn apart in a three way rebellion. One side, which is mainly backed financially but not militarily, has decided to recruit the mountain orcs that were originally working for the regime the rebels were rebelling against. Thus, while they're still orcs, they're more organized and mercenary-like orcs than many campaign settings. No need to entirely replace them and describe a new and very orcish race just to emphasize that they are slightly different than standard orcs.

On the one side, you gain the advantage that no one will be able to immediately apply stereotypes to your races. Which means you are free to mold them and make them fit exactly without people nit-picking, since they're "original".

On the other side, however, now everyone will be disoriented by your setting, and may not be willing to read the descriptions of them all just to understand what's going on culturally. In that way, it can be better to use the old races and be able to quickly emphasize the changes you made to it.

In the end, they both have advantages, it probably comes down to how different they are from standard races and how much your players like to read your campaign world's information.
dragonearwax
11-27-06, 10:54 PM Have you guys ever heard of the Talislanta fantasy RPG? probably NOT. It was published by WOTC from 92' to 94' right before they dropped role-playing games all together,and started their Magic the gathering card game. It was,and is a beautiful fantasy world without demihumans.no elf,dwarf etc..The games been around for 20 years,and is now published by a Canadian company called Morrigan Press. Its good to hear someone's creating something different.Don't get me wrong i love traditional fantasy,but theirs been to meany Tolkien clones out there over the years!
Paper_Bard
12-04-06, 10:51 AM The thing I have asak is... can I play? LOL!

To tell you the truth, I find 20 new races invigorating. Haivng the same old elves, dwarves, humans, etc. in your camapaign gets really boring. Everyone knows elves... no one knows Narflaks, or whatever you decide to call your races. Keep with how you want it. I do agree with fatal error, however, that monsters/races we thought we knew being changed is fun. For example, in my Iron Heroes campagin setting, Tales of Arnesia, dragons are beasts with no magical abilties, all breath fire, animal intellect, and only fire resistance. They're not super uber.
Skrittiblak
12-05-06, 05:38 PM Instead I have created 20 new playable races that fit in much better with the history of my world.

Are you a good artist?

Without pictures I am alienated by new races. I need to know what the races look like to play them and sometimes a description isn't enough. A picture tells a thousand words.

If you do not have pictures - then perhaps steering clear of the 'classics' may alienate some people. I don't want to be harsh - just expressing my view.
ScottTheGM
12-06-06, 01:41 PM I'd echo what a few other posters here have said...making your own races is quite rewarding and serves to differentiate your setting from others right at the outset. Provided they aren't old races with new faces it works quite well. If they are just old races with new appearances, it can be tacky. You'll run into the problem of people calling a race "dwarves" if that is in fact what they are. Trace your races histories back to their creation myths and make sure they are different right from the word "go" on a cosmic scale.

I have alternate races in the setting I've developed and use for all my fantasy campaigns, and when I first started developing them (this was 16 years ago) I made the error of just changeing the appearance a little and creating new names and racial histories...I hadn't set enough things as being intrinsically *different*. This led to what I described...players calling Elu and D'Gazm elves and dwarves. Eventually, through using the races with different groups, I have made them quite unique. But, it took me the better part of 10 years to get them to the point where people stopped calling them by their "old race" names. No one who started a campaign with me now would make the mistake of calling a D'Gazm a dwarf for instance...but it took a lot of false starts and stops to see what really makes a race *different*.

Play test play test play test. Not to determine if the numbers are balanced or not...more to determine if the way they are used really makes a difference to the players points of view. If they don't, go back to the drawing board and try to tweak something else to further define the race as a whole as being unique to your setting. It's also important, however, that you don't go *too* far in making a race truly "unique" as a race that doesn't share *any* human-like traits and is completely alien will render it virtually unplayable to the average player (well, at least virtually unplayable if you want to keep things believable). This is one of the reasons that a mind flayer is not a suitable player race (other than the obvious on-paper reasons). No one can truly play a charcter that is so alien in it's psychology properly over a prolonged period of time as they have no frame of reference for the motivations of said race.

The devil is in the details, and you're going to need lots of them to make these races truly your own and still make them accessible to someone that just read about them for the first time. The positive effect of this is that those details help flesh out other parts of world design as you go, so it's a win-win situation for you.

And it's true what Skrittiblak says...if you can't draw, make sure to get some great descriptive text written about each race so that people can immediately grasp your idea rather than saying "oh...so they're like halflings but their hair is straw-like and they only eat bark..."

Cheers! Good luck!
Amala
12-11-06, 03:30 PM I am always thrilled to see that others are not daunted by creating a new experience for players. There are already so many worlds with elves, dwarves and orcs, or very close variations thereof, that it is becoming boring. Creating yet another world with those same races will probably not get your setting the attention you want it to receive. I agree with previous posts in that you should take care to make each race a unique experience. Describe them in as much detail as is needed to give them that special flair you want them to have. Pay attention to things like skin colours, eyes, hair, etc. Do they have a tail? wings? horns? Do their eyes glow in the dark? Does their skin have a peculiar texture? Do they have claws or hands?

Next to visuals, add a few special features that makes each race unique. Maybe they have a magical ability to shape wood or bone, perhaps they have a very thick leathery skin, etc. I have spent about ten years or so fleshing out the details of the races that inhabit my world. They are pretty unique, yet have familiar features as well. Take care not to make any of your races TOO alien or inhuman. Players usually want to form a basic idea of what they are playing and while races like the thri-kreen seem like a nice addition to the standard races, most people don't play them because they really don't know how... most people I know played them just like they play humans. In all cases, feel free to be original. I look forward to hearing from your world.
matrix_king3
01-08-07, 10:28 PM 20!

You realy dont need them...because when you change something like races, equipement and feat...and you are sure that is balanced...and when you create more things that allready exist...you wont limit them...you will encourage them to play in YOUR world.

If you have a electronic copy of your races...can you send them to me

dark_side_adept@hotmail.com

thanx alot
spyone
01-09-07, 10:37 AM Short answer: Yes. There will be people out there who go, "It doesn't have Elves; I'm not interested."

Including the standard races would also limit your audience. There will be people who say, "Oh, look. Yet another fantasy setting with trite Elves and Dwarves. Like anyone needs that."

The real question is which group of chased-off people is bigger. And, IMO, there are more who will disregard a setting with Elves than one without them.
And part of the beauty of d20 is that, if the consumer really must have Elves, they're right there in the SRD for him. You might even tell him so. :)
Rhialto
01-10-07, 05:28 PM Really, 20 new races just is too much for people to handle, especially if thats 20 playable races. Psych studies have shown that most people cant handle more than about 7 bit of information at a time (ymmv), which is why D&D traditionally has just a small number of playable races. To have to learn teh details of 20 new items and then make a decision with 20 different and unfamiliar forks will almost certainly alienate people.
ragoftag
02-04-07, 09:42 AM Best advice I can give is to start small, prehaps a half dozen of the most common races, then add the rest as you can. You won't overwhelm your audience with a host of 'choices'. An anthromorphic world of all animal people is effectively one race with umpteen subraces, but a Star Wars universe with dozens of races available always threatens to take the 'human in a funny suit' path.
By giving emphasis to the early races, you can bring out their unique qualities better. A friend has a short, stout race of hairy craftsmen that are very clannish. Dwarves? Try Ewoks! Basing their clan structure off the Hopi Indian culture and setting them in a great forest, no one noticed that they were Stat-ed as dwarves! His 'halflings' were tooled after H Beam Piper's 'Little Fuzzies' and he pulled the Living Greyhawk Wood Elves for duty as Glen Folk, a wolf/wolverine race that is only vaguely civilized. All 3 races were nearly lifted from their original sources with little mechanical change, but I think I may be the only one who has noticed it. All the fluff was changed, but with enough detail that the Glen Folk are not 'munchkin' choices, but serious RP challenges. We know other races exist outside the forests, but we don't see a lot of the poor, 'Furless' people.
Drohem
02-04-07, 02:47 PM Others have already posted this but:

Talislanta is a great example of an RPG without standard races. It is a great RPG, and IMHO is the forerunner, or original, d20 RPG system. It still has a loyal fan base, and now is in its 5th edition by Morrigan Press.

It is so successful do to the great art work by P.D. Breeding (sp?) inconjuction with a rich cultural and contextual description in the world of Talislanta.

As others have already stated, I think that in order for the non-standard fantasy races of your world to be successful, you will need a very rich and detailed cultural description and integration within your fantasy world. Also, you will need some very good artwork.

Don't under estimate the power of artwork- it can make or break an RPG. I collect RPGs as my hobby and have seen many small press RPG games. A lot of these games were "good" as an RPG, but since they were small press or homemade, they didn't have great artwork. Not having good artwork can detract from the game itself and turn off a lot of people. Let's face it, most people are lazy and made decisions about products based upon the artwork. It's an extension of our media driven society these days.

I love a small RPG called Justifiers. I love the concept of anthromorphic humanoids, and this game has it. But the great attraction was the good artwork which illustrated to me my mental visions of half animal/ half-human creatures in a science fiction setting. Also, I bought Palladium's Northern Wilderness book just for the cover art of the Wolfen shaman in the woods, and I jammed the Wolfen into my campaign world.

Anyway, my point is that you need good artwork to visually illustrate your fantasy races in order for them to be successful and "mainstream." I do think that gamers have evolved and that there are gamers out there who would recognize your concept and campaign based upon good writing and depth of culture, etc. However, good artwork will just make it all that more accessable to the average fantasy buyer or gamer.

Cheers!
cat_god
02-12-07, 07:40 PM This sounds interesting. How long do you think until it will be done?
spyone
02-13-07, 03:34 PM Psych studies have shown that most people cant handle more than about 7 bit of information at a time (ymmv), which is why D&D traditionally has just a small number of playable races.
Funny, I'd obseverd that but I didn't know there were applicable studies. :)

I'd found that, as a rule, the more races present in a setting, the more likely it is that players will feel overwhelmed by the choices and go with "Elf", "Dwarf", or "Human".

Same about classes, really. Up to a point, expanding the available classes means greater variety in the group, and a better chance of having no 2 characters with the same class. But past a certain point, it seems to drive people to the "plain vanilla" choices. So, if there are 121 fighting classes, your party winds up with 1 guy who took 1 of them and 3 who took "Fighter".

I've long considered campaign-world design to be the art of carefully balancing all the nifty classes and races I want to include with the problem of presenting overwhelming choices, thus forcing people towards the familiar.
cat_god
03-01-07, 10:52 PM Thump.
Yakman
03-22-07, 05:50 PM It sounds okay.

People who are heartset on playing elves are not people that I want to play with anyways.
Taran_Chula
03-24-07, 10:21 PM Pictures of your new races would be best but a good description would be ok. I like playing new races. If they are interesting then people will play them.
cat_god
04-10-07, 07:43 PM bumpo

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Dalakmar 10-19-06, 10:41 AM	Hi all, For the past two years I've been working on a d20 Campaign World that I hope, when finished, to post on the web. Whilst I am exited by the depth of my creation one fact keeps niggling at me: my world has NO standard races i.e. no elves, dwarves, gnomes, orcs etc. Instead I have created 20 new playable races that fit in much better with the history of my world. My question: Do you think not including the traditional races will limit my audience? At the moment I have produced an: Optional Races section that explains how such races could be introduced to the world. But this would not allow for vast numbers to be introduced. Your thoughts on this are very much appreciated. Dalakmar
AegriSomniaPress 10-19-06, 10:11 PM	I would say rule number one is if something does not fit don't include it. The reasoning is that despite the fact that it will be more familiar for people to interact with its like sticking a square peg in a round hole every one is going to see that they don't really fit. My opinion on the matter is that the standard races are not right for original ideas. Your choice to not included them will allow people to take themselves into a whole new environment instead of just simply transfer old over done clinches. Regards, Seth
Lissa 10-22-06, 03:48 PM	If the standard races don't fit you don't use them. Two game systems I've used don't have humans at all. Albedo and Halogen systems both use anthropomorphic animals as the races in their games with no humans allowed. Remember it's your world and you decide what races to use and not use.
fatal error 10-29-06, 12:04 PM	At the same time, don't replace standard races just to make it look original. For example, in my fantasy campaign setting, one kingdom has been torn apart in a three way rebellion. One side, which is mainly backed financially but not militarily, has decided to recruit the mountain orcs that were originally working for the regime the rebels were rebelling against. Thus, while they're still orcs, they're more organized and mercenary-like orcs than many campaign settings. No need to entirely replace them and describe a new and very orcish race just to emphasize that they are slightly different than standard orcs. On the one side, you gain the advantage that no one will be able to immediately apply stereotypes to your races. Which means you are free to mold them and make them fit exactly without people nit-picking, since they're "original". On the other side, however, now everyone will be disoriented by your setting, and may not be willing to read the descriptions of them all just to understand what's going on culturally. In that way, it can be better to use the old races and be able to quickly emphasize the changes you made to it. In the end, they both have advantages, it probably comes down to how different they are from standard races and how much your players like to read your campaign world's information.
dragonearwax 11-27-06, 10:54 PM	Have you guys ever heard of the Talislanta fantasy RPG? probably NOT. It was published by WOTC from 92' to 94' right before they dropped role-playing games all together,and started their Magic the gathering card game. It was,and is a beautiful fantasy world without demihumans.no elf,dwarf etc..The games been around for 20 years,and is now published by a Canadian company called Morrigan Press. Its good to hear someone's creating something different.Don't get me wrong i love traditional fantasy,but theirs been to meany Tolkien clones out there over the years!
Paper_Bard 12-04-06, 10:51 AM	The thing I have asak is... can I play? LOL! To tell you the truth, I find 20 new races invigorating. Haivng the same old elves, dwarves, humans, etc. in your camapaign gets really boring. Everyone knows elves... no one knows Narflaks, or whatever you decide to call your races. Keep with how you want it. I do agree with fatal error, however, that monsters/races we thought we knew being changed is fun. For example, in my Iron Heroes campagin setting, Tales of Arnesia, dragons are beasts with no magical abilties, all breath fire, animal intellect, and only fire resistance. They're not super uber.
Skrittiblak 12-05-06, 05:38 PM	Instead I have created 20 new playable races that fit in much better with the history of my world. Are you a good artist? Without pictures I am alienated by new races. I need to know what the races look like to play them and sometimes a description isn't enough. A picture tells a thousand words. If you do not have pictures - then perhaps steering clear of the 'classics' may alienate some people. I don't want to be harsh - just expressing my view.
ScottTheGM 12-06-06, 01:41 PM	I'd echo what a few other posters here have said...making your own races is quite rewarding and serves to differentiate your setting from others right at the outset. Provided they aren't old races with new faces it works quite well. If they are just old races with new appearances, it can be tacky. You'll run into the problem of people calling a race "dwarves" if that is in fact what they are. Trace your races histories back to their creation myths and make sure they are different right from the word "go" on a cosmic scale. I have alternate races in the setting I've developed and use for all my fantasy campaigns, and when I first started developing them (this was 16 years ago) I made the error of just changeing the appearance a little and creating new names and racial histories...I hadn't set enough things as being intrinsically different. This led to what I described...players calling Elu and D'Gazm elves and dwarves. Eventually, through using the races with different groups, I have made them quite unique. But, it took me the better part of 10 years to get them to the point where people stopped calling them by their "old race" names. No one who started a campaign with me now would make the mistake of calling a D'Gazm a dwarf for instance...but it took a lot of false starts and stops to see what really makes a race different. Play test play test play test. Not to determine if the numbers are balanced or not...more to determine if the way they are used really makes a difference to the players points of view. If they don't, go back to the drawing board and try to tweak something else to further define the race as a whole as being unique to your setting. It's also important, however, that you don't go too far in making a race truly "unique" as a race that doesn't share any human-like traits and is completely alien will render it virtually unplayable to the average player (well, at least virtually unplayable if you want to keep things believable). This is one of the reasons that a mind flayer is not a suitable player race (other than the obvious on-paper reasons). No one can truly play a charcter that is so alien in it's psychology properly over a prolonged period of time as they have no frame of reference for the motivations of said race. The devil is in the details, and you're going to need lots of them to make these races truly your own and still make them accessible to someone that just read about them for the first time. The positive effect of this is that those details help flesh out other parts of world design as you go, so it's a win-win situation for you. And it's true what Skrittiblak says...if you can't draw, make sure to get some great descriptive text written about each race so that people can immediately grasp your idea rather than saying "oh...so they're like halflings but their hair is straw-like and they only eat bark..." Cheers! Good luck!
Amala 12-11-06, 03:30 PM	I am always thrilled to see that others are not daunted by creating a new experience for players. There are already so many worlds with elves, dwarves and orcs, or very close variations thereof, that it is becoming boring. Creating yet another world with those same races will probably not get your setting the attention you want it to receive. I agree with previous posts in that you should take care to make each race a unique experience. Describe them in as much detail as is needed to give them that special flair you want them to have. Pay attention to things like skin colours, eyes, hair, etc. Do they have a tail? wings? horns? Do their eyes glow in the dark? Does their skin have a peculiar texture? Do they have claws or hands? Next to visuals, add a few special features that makes each race unique. Maybe they have a magical ability to shape wood or bone, perhaps they have a very thick leathery skin, etc. I have spent about ten years or so fleshing out the details of the races that inhabit my world. They are pretty unique, yet have familiar features as well. Take care not to make any of your races TOO alien or inhuman. Players usually want to form a basic idea of what they are playing and while races like the thri-kreen seem like a nice addition to the standard races, most people don't play them because they really don't know how... most people I know played them just like they play humans. In all cases, feel free to be original. I look forward to hearing from your world.
matrix_king3 01-08-07, 10:28 PM	20! You realy dont need them...because when you change something like races, equipement and feat...and you are sure that is balanced...and when you create more things that allready exist...you wont limit them...you will encourage them to play in YOUR world. If you have a electronic copy of your races...can you send them to me dark_side_adept@hotmail.com thanx alot
spyone 01-09-07, 10:37 AM	Short answer: Yes. There will be people out there who go, "It doesn't have Elves; I'm not interested." Including the standard races would also limit your audience. There will be people who say, "Oh, look. Yet another fantasy setting with trite Elves and Dwarves. Like anyone needs that." The real question is which group of chased-off people is bigger. And, IMO, there are more who will disregard a setting with Elves than one without them. And part of the beauty of d20 is that, if the consumer really must have Elves, they're right there in the SRD for him. You might even tell him so. :)
Rhialto 01-10-07, 05:28 PM	Really, 20 new races just is too much for people to handle, especially if thats 20 playable races. Psych studies have shown that most people cant handle more than about 7 bit of information at a time (ymmv), which is why D&D traditionally has just a small number of playable races. To have to learn teh details of 20 new items and then make a decision with 20 different and unfamiliar forks will almost certainly alienate people.
ragoftag 02-04-07, 09:42 AM	Best advice I can give is to start small, prehaps a half dozen of the most common races, then add the rest as you can. You won't overwhelm your audience with a host of 'choices'. An anthromorphic world of all animal people is effectively one race with umpteen subraces, but a Star Wars universe with dozens of races available always threatens to take the 'human in a funny suit' path. By giving emphasis to the early races, you can bring out their unique qualities better. A friend has a short, stout race of hairy craftsmen that are very clannish. Dwarves? Try Ewoks! Basing their clan structure off the Hopi Indian culture and setting them in a great forest, no one noticed that they were Stat-ed as dwarves! His 'halflings' were tooled after H Beam Piper's 'Little Fuzzies' and he pulled the Living Greyhawk Wood Elves for duty as Glen Folk, a wolf/wolverine race that is only vaguely civilized. All 3 races were nearly lifted from their original sources with little mechanical change, but I think I may be the only one who has noticed it. All the fluff was changed, but with enough detail that the Glen Folk are not 'munchkin' choices, but serious RP challenges. We know other races exist outside the forests, but we don't see a lot of the poor, 'Furless' people.
Drohem 02-04-07, 02:47 PM	Others have already posted this but: Talislanta is a great example of an RPG without standard races. It is a great RPG, and IMHO is the forerunner, or original, d20 RPG system. It still has a loyal fan base, and now is in its 5th edition by Morrigan Press. It is so successful do to the great art work by P.D. Breeding (sp?) inconjuction with a rich cultural and contextual description in the world of Talislanta. As others have already stated, I think that in order for the non-standard fantasy races of your world to be successful, you will need a very rich and detailed cultural description and integration within your fantasy world. Also, you will need some very good artwork. Don't under estimate the power of artwork- it can make or break an RPG. I collect RPGs as my hobby and have seen many small press RPG games. A lot of these games were "good" as an RPG, but since they were small press or homemade, they didn't have great artwork. Not having good artwork can detract from the game itself and turn off a lot of people. Let's face it, most people are lazy and made decisions about products based upon the artwork. It's an extension of our media driven society these days. I love a small RPG called Justifiers. I love the concept of anthromorphic humanoids, and this game has it. But the great attraction was the good artwork which illustrated to me my mental visions of half animal/ half-human creatures in a science fiction setting. Also, I bought Palladium's Northern Wilderness book just for the cover art of the Wolfen shaman in the woods, and I jammed the Wolfen into my campaign world. Anyway, my point is that you need good artwork to visually illustrate your fantasy races in order for them to be successful and "mainstream." I do think that gamers have evolved and that there are gamers out there who would recognize your concept and campaign based upon good writing and depth of culture, etc. However, good artwork will just make it all that more accessable to the average fantasy buyer or gamer. Cheers!
cat_god 02-12-07, 07:40 PM	This sounds interesting. How long do you think until it will be done?
spyone 02-13-07, 03:34 PM	Psych studies have shown that most people cant handle more than about 7 bit of information at a time (ymmv), which is why D&D traditionally has just a small number of playable races. Funny, I'd obseverd that but I didn't know there were applicable studies. :) I'd found that, as a rule, the more races present in a setting, the more likely it is that players will feel overwhelmed by the choices and go with "Elf", "Dwarf", or "Human". Same about classes, really. Up to a point, expanding the available classes means greater variety in the group, and a better chance of having no 2 characters with the same class. But past a certain point, it seems to drive people to the "plain vanilla" choices. So, if there are 121 fighting classes, your party winds up with 1 guy who took 1 of them and 3 who took "Fighter". I've long considered campaign-world design to be the art of carefully balancing all the nifty classes and races I want to include with the problem of presenting overwhelming choices, thus forcing people towards the familiar.
cat_god 03-01-07, 10:52 PM	Thump.
Yakman 03-22-07, 05:50 PM	It sounds okay. People who are heartset on playing elves are not people that I want to play with anyways.
Taran_Chula 03-24-07, 10:21 PM	Pictures of your new races would be best but a good description would be ok. I like playing new races. If they are interesting then people will play them.
cat_god 04-10-07, 07:43 PM	bumpo