Thread 24868365

Sapient Species, Races, and Miscellaneous Sapients Edition

FAQ:
>What is worldbuilding?
Worldbuilding is the process of creating entire fictional worlds from scratch, all while considering the logistics of these worlds to make them as believable as possible. Worldbuilding asks questions about the setting of a world, and then answers them, often in great detail. Most people use it as a means of creating a setting or the scenery for a story.
>"Isn't there a Worldbuilding general in >>>/tg/ already?"
Yes, there is. However, that general is focused on the creation of fictional worlds for the intended purpose of playing TTRPG campaigns. Here you can discuss worldbuilding projects that are not meant to be used for a roleplaying setting, but for novels, videogames, or any other kind of creative project.
>"Can I discuss the setting of my campaign here, though?"
If you want to, but it would probably be better to discuss it on >>>/tg/ . We don't allow the discussion of TTRPG mechanics, however. If you want to discuss stats or which D&D edition is best, this is not the place.
>"Can I talk about an existing fictional setting that is not mine?"
Yes, of course you can!
>"Does worldbuilding need to be about fantasy and elves?"
Worldbuilding, as already stated above, and contrary to what many believe, does not inherently imply blatantly copying Tolkien. In fact, there are many science-fiction setting out there, and even entire alternative history settings which do not possess supernatural elements at all. Any kind of science fiction book has an implied setting at least, which involves a certain degree of worldbuilding put into it.

Old Thread: >>24748733

>>24868365 (OP)
Thread Questions:
>If you have any non-human sapients species/races in your setting, what are they? And do you tend to stick to ones you’ve made, classic ones like Dwarves, Elves, etc., or a mixture of the two?
>When making said original races, what advice do you have/what is the process that you use, and what races have you made with said process/resources? And how do you make sure that they’re distinct/non-redundant?
>What are your feelings on typical fantasy races like the aforementioned two, Orcs, Goblins, etc.? And how do you go about putting your own twists on said races/make them less generic?
>How can you tell when you have enough races and/or sub-races in your setting? And what do you need to consider when designing the cultures for the races and how they interact with each other?
>Were any of your races created artificially? If so, who did it and why?
>Lastly, how does creating science fiction races/species differ from creating ones for fantasy settings, and what are some common archetypes you’ve seen and/or used or would like to use for either? What about races in science fantasy settings?

>>24868365 (OP)
And a few extra thread questions from previous threads just to be safe:

>What kinds of magic, psychic abilities, and/or other powers exist in your world? And if multiple types exist, how do they interact with each other, if at all?
>If the different types can be combined, what is the result? And if not, what is the reason?
>How do people use/gain access to the magic? And what are the most important things to consider/remember when creating a magic system(s) or power system, and what mistakes to avoid? How did you make your own?
>Is there anything that the magic or powers explicitly cannot do, and if yes, what? And how much of the limits of the abilities are inherent versus a lack of understanding?
>On the subject of hyper-advanced technology, what exists in your world and what do you need to remember when creating/including it? What about magitech, or other tech that incorporates powers, what can you say on that?

>Do the people in your setting believe in any celestial beings like Angels or something similar? And do these beings actually exist, and if so, how accurate are the beliefs?
>How about Demons or similar beings, how accurate are their beliefs to reality? And how do you add your own twist to them, or to Angels?
>Are there any other categories of otherworldly entities in your world, like the Fae, Yokai, Ghosts and specters, Grim Reapers, Elementals, etc.? If so, how are they related to Angels, Demons, or each other, if at all, and what are they like?
>What about the gods in your world, what are they like, how are their pantheons structured? And what is their relationship with the other mystical entities in the setting (do they have any specific groups of Angels serving specific gods, etc.)?

I've noticed an annoying trend in fantasy writing especially that for wide market appeal that I just realised is the opposite of speculative fiction or diverging cultures.
Remember how 50% of the jokes in the Flintstones were about cave people imitating modern life with non-technological gadgets?
How did they mow their lawns without engines and steel manufacturing? They used creatures that ate the grass as they pushed them forward.
How did they shower without plumbing? They used a mammoths trunk.
How did they shoot stuff without gunpowder? Mechanical slingshots.
It's all retroactive logic, which is played for laughs in the show or funny backdrop.
But modern fantasy writing does the same thing just retarded.
How do disabled people get around without modern manufacturing and healthcare providers? Magic glowing purple wheelchair and wheelchair accessible dungeons.
How did black people exist in European mediaeval society without mass migration? Enough travelling merchants to make up at least 10% of the population.
How did people enjoy modern comforts without modern technology? Magic just so happens to behave exactly like technology with research and colleges and inventors.
I call this "Flintstoned worldbuilding". It is working backwards from our modern expectation to a society and expecting it to always work like that in every society, time and technological level. It doesn't work off the assumption that a divergent path leads to different outcomes but that every path must lead to the same, ideal state which just so happened to be 2010s California. And every disruption of that conclusion must be the work of an evil influence which just so happens to also embody everything that people from 2010s California consider morally reprehensible.
It's basically the opposite of suspension of disbelief, like an upholding of expectation. That's because all current western art acts not as a commentary of human nature nor an exploration of alternatives but a declaration of ought-to-be. It is the demand that even in middle earth, there is an equivalent of a BMW cruising alongside the riders of rohan.
The result of " end of history" thinking. We have arrived at the conclusion of history and the only good change allowed from now on is convincing more people to our side.

Bump

>>24868365 (OP)
>Worldbuilding is the process of creating entire fictional worlds from scratch
No, it's not. 99% of the time it's the process of stitching together all the same tropes and archetypes that everyone else does and trying to add some quirky chungus shit to it to stand out. You people are completely delusional and even more uncreative.

>>24868365 (OP)
Perfect, I asked for help last thread but didn't get much, hopefully things go better this time. To sum it up, my races are all aligned with two or three of the six elements (Light, Fire, Wind, Water, Earth, and Void, with humans being the Light and Void race), with the elements informing traits of the race like their preferred environment. For example, the Fire and Water race is the Naga, so their nation is on a set of tropical volcanic islands and they’re equally comfortable in the water and on the beach, and the Fire/Earth race is Dwarves, etc. To be clear, the idea was that the elemental alignments were the result of the gods of the respective elements being the primary contributors in the design of the race in question. So for dwarves, while they still have traces of the other elements in them (such as having liquids in their bodies instead of just being molten rock in a stone shell because they have Water in them, etc.), the mentioned elements, like Fire and Earth for dwarves, dominate the others. In addition, in some cases one element is "dominant" over the other(s), like Dwarves being a bit more aligned with Earth than Fire, though there are occasional exceptions, like Dwarves that tend more towards Fire. Things like a Dwarf with a Void affinity would be extremely rare, and usually the case of inter-species pairings (since the races were designed using the same basic "template", they can interbreed but the child is always, or at least 99% of the time, the race of the mother). That make sense? Humans would be the Light/Void race, before I forget. I just need some help with filling in some of the combinations, especially the three-element ones, and I can use some suggestions please.

>>24868365 (OP)
In my setting, I was thinking that the goddess of Life and Death wanted to retire, so she made deals with the god of the Day and the god of the Night to have kids with each of them. She had planned to split the two spheres between each respective child, but they instead they both inherited power over Life and Death, filtered through the Light and Darkness spheres they inherited from their respective fathers. As a result, both healing magic and necromancy have a Light and Darkness variant these days. For Light healing, I was thinking that it would be better at healing people in area-of-effect spells, both to tie into the typical depiction of a fantasy cleric and healing spells and to represent a lantern’s light. Darkness healing, at the other hand, is better at healing single individuals, including the caster. For necromancy, I was thinking that the necromancy would use either Light or Darkness as a replacement for the life force of the body, or as a medium to hit their foes with the essence of death. I would greatly appreciate any feedback you have, especially on the necromancy and undeath angle please. For instance, I was thinking that taking a cue from the White cards from Amonkhet in MtG, mummies could be one of the kinds of undead affiliated with Light necromancy, does that make sense to you? Healing magic and necromancy share some basic principles if one squints, but are separate disciplines save for perhaps the most skilled, those who can keep a soul from leaving the body until it’s patched up. I was partially inspired by Yin and Yang, but not strongly following it, if it helps.

>>24869907
What is the point in having all those elemental combination races anyway? Is it just spreadsheet autism or is there an actual purpose in the plot? And I mean a purpose that matters, not something in the backstory along the lines of how the gods of the primeval elements created all these races in the beginning of time and none have gone extinct since.

Like, if you like nagas why can't you just have nagas without having to determine the identity of the Water/Earth/Wind race and its place in the world?

>>24868365 (OP)
What are some “monstrous” races that we can include in our settings besides the classic werewolves, vampires, and constructs like Frankenstein’s monster? And what are some of the more obscure beings/creatures/entities from mythology, folklore, and/or cryptid sightings that could work as races?

>>24869907
You may be better off putting a god to each of these elements, and putting together a mythos for them. Fire God fucked Water God and Earth God, then tempered. These yielded the races of the naga and dwarves, etc, etc. It helps to narrow your scope of racest because it instantly makes your reader think about other combinations and speculate instead of appreciate.

>>24868367
I'm going for what seems to be a standard Tolkienian (very Tolkienian) fantasy world, but then going on to reveal the underlying science fiction and horror elements and have weird twists without betraying the Tolkienian roots. This may seem like an impossible feat, but I think it's entirely doable. My writing skills are the biggest obstacle. I'm planning to wait for the Tolkien Estate's copyrights to run out so I can really go full Tolkien without having to think up synonyms for mithril, etc. (This is a hobby and I'm not in a hurry.)

I think most of the time when people take pointers from Tolkien, they only copy the surface details and miss the heart entirely, resulting in a bland product. Tad Williams in Memory, Sorrow and Thorn shows himself an exception who has some actual understanding of Tolkien's deeper themes. On the other hand, Stephen Donaldson in his Thomas Covenant books does not adhere to the standard fantasy setting much at all, instead going for a more original sort of a high fantasy, but nevertheless is profoundly influenced by Tolkien on a deep level that shows even without the standard races. I think Donaldson of all authors has perhaps understood the heart of Tolkien best of all. Tolkien himself didn't set out to write Tolkienian standard fantasy either.

But, I suppose most people here aren't really taking pointers from Tolkien as much as from nth generation distantly Tolkien-derived video games, and I think that's tragic... I think it is important to be exposed to influences from a variety of sources. That way your imagination can develop.

>>24871382
Okay, maybe I should have said this earlier, but the idea was that when the gods first came into existence and started forming and shaping the primordial world into something recognizable, some of their power escaped and became the first elementals. The gods, seeing this, decided to refine the process to create inhabitants for the world they were shaping, and whether by intention or accident they found that by combining their powers/elements their mortal creations were more adaptable/stable instead of just being more sophisticated elementals (which they also made as divine servants).

>>24870273
See the above paragraph, along with putting new spins on races everyone and their mother have used. And like I said, the elements that take prominence in a race's elemental makeup determine aspects of their cultures, with races that share a dominant element(s) tending to get along better than with races that do not, though this doesn't devolve into violence any more often than it would between different human cultures (save for humans, but they're a bit out of the ordinary there, with some saying that they were made first as an experiment between two opposites). I was even considering the idea that the gods made the two-element races first, and then decided to periodically create a new three-element race every few centuries, with maybe a few chosen mortals each time being granted the honor of seeing the process, and even influencing it, as repayment for some great service.

>>24871921
So dwarves and nagas get well along because they both have Earth, and if you have orcs as Earth/Void, then dwarves and orcs will like each other too. (Romantically? I somehow get the feeling that the story is probably going to be about the MC attracting a massive monster girl harem, one girl of each type, and that's why so many different races are needed.)

That type of spreadsheet autism still feels like it's a creative shortcut that makes the world feel too rigid.

>>24872031
This is more prominent on a societal/cultural level to be clear, and despite the instinctive recognition of the shared element(s) members of the races with shared elements can and do get into personal disagreements, so it's not perfect. I wasn't thinking about that, but now that you mention it, lol...

Also, there 'are' mages who focus on elements outside of the ones that belong to the gods who were primarily involved in their creation, like a naga that might specialize in Earth magic for instance, they just tend to specialize in those because it comes a little easier. It tends to come up more in individuals with mixed heritage though, save for in humans. And the rigidity is part of the idea, the gods all used the same basic template when making the races.

>>24872653
>And the rigidity is part of the idea, the gods all used the same basic template when making the races.
Nagas and dwarves have a different number of limbs, though. That actually feels not rigid enough to me, unless the idea is that physical traits are related to elements, which it sounds like you aren't doing. For example, you could have it so that all the Fire races have tails in place of legs. Then if the Water element causes scales and fins, the Fire/Water race would naturally be merfolk with fish tails. The nagas would have to be Fire/something else though, and dwarves couldn't be Fire.

I think that sort of trait-first generation works much better with your system than coming up with types of creatures and assigning elements to them based on where there are empty slots in the spreadsheet. If you don't have a pre-existing fantasy race to match every trait combination, you just need to come up with some new names.

>>24868365 (OP)
I’m working on a setting where the forces of Heaven and Hell are in conflict, but are prevented from waging large-scale battle in either of their two realms. As a result, they use the mortal world to get around this. That’s not the issue at hand though, I’m running out of name ideas for both sides that aren’t just the names of angels or demons from the Bible or religious folklore (I was thinking that they’d more powerful/established demons compared to the ones I’m focusing on), and could use some suggestions, and I would love to hear how you name your own angels and demons as well. I want the names to be meaningful beyond just slapping “el” to the end of ordinary names for angels, which of course makes it harder on me…

One idea I had was that succubi and incubi, especially the former, mainly take on the role of spies in the mortal world, so I could use some names for that kind of demon in particular. Lilith as their queen is a given, and names of historical women associated with lust (like Helen because everybody in Greece wanted to marry her) could work for some of them, especially if the rumors are true and said women become succubi after death, but I can only think of a few (any ideas there please?) and I still need some more ideas for succubi that weren’t ever human, thanks in advance for any help you can give me! Previous threads suggested I take a page from the book of Journey to the West where the animalistic demons have titles instead of names, and that I name angels after virtues and demons after vices, which is a start at least, what do you think? Another suggestion for angels was having their names start with A and end with Z, but does that mean demons are the inverse?

>>24868367
>If you have any non-human sapients species/races in your setting, what are they?
Greys, Reptilians, Annunaki, Yetis, Faefolk, Demons, Archons, Machine Elves, Personoids, Vril-ya, Chimeras, Dolphins, and more.

>What are your feelings on typical fantasy races like the aforementioned two, Orcs, Goblins, etc.?
I don't like them


>How can you tell when you have enough races and/or sub-races in your setting?
I am against this sort of thinking. There needs to always be some empty space.

>Were any of your races created artificially? If so, who did it and why?
Most were artificially created. The different human races were created by aliens during prehistory to be slave races. Chimeras were created in labs controlled by Majestic 12 where Grey Aliens and Human scientists collaborated. Personoids are synthetic humans with holographic brains created by the Soviet Union to be disposable and cheap bodies.

>>24871432
To go into more detail about the races, Elves and Dwarves both know about advanced technology, especially the Elves. The Elves stagnated a long time ago and are now slowly declining in numbers and tech level. Some groups have preserved the old civilization better than the others. These days Elves mainly concentrate their efforts on magic such as illusions when they feel like applying themselves, which is increasingly seldom.

All the races are derived from humans, though some are so far diverged that you wouldn't ever suspect that. Elves are descendants of genetically-enhanced space humans. Their immortality is a magical alteration of their true nature. The Elves are gradually coming to realize that accepting the "gift" of immortality was the turning point that doomed their civilization as well as all the individual Elves.

Orcs exist halfway between life and undeath.

The High Elves have a slave race that is basically shoggoths but rather good at mimicry. They are each artificially created.

And so on.

>>24874125
As you can see, I have a big death theme going on. The Elves are practically a dead race that just keeps hanging around and acting like they're alive. Elf children have mostly stopped being born, and that is even though the Elves were granted an improved type of immortality that allows for reproduction.

Then there are the actual undead. These all tend to be more or less vampire-like. The ones closer to life such as the Orcs do not subsist on blood only but can eat meat too. The Dark Lord sees it as just and proper to turn bad people into Orcs under his command, as a form of righteous punishment. The Dark Lord can put disembodied spirits into Orc bodies too. The Dark Lord is actually remarkably concerned with (his idea of) moral behavior in comparison to the other powerful entities in the setting who mostly have fallen into complete decadence or have little to no care for the well-being of others. It's a pretty bleak setting where a lot of tragedies happen and the Elves are all effectively lost souls who have lost their connection to the true divine in exchange to bowing to some pagan god LARPers who had the power to grant immortality. ("Thou shalt be as gods.")

Writing a lore dump like this makes it all feel so lacking. In actual story exposition about these things would be dropped piecemeal and in some cases never said outright in favor of just letting the ideas silently influence the plot.