Creating Fantasy Races that aren't just Humans in Costumes

Comments · 70

• JO

  @JonathanOldenburg · 6 months ago · pinned

  Here is the other video I referenced: &nbsp;Poisons of the Second-Hand Tolkien: &nbsp;3 Techniques to Reinvigorate Fantasy Races <br><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2L_eYdlqec">https://youtu.be/m2L_eYdlqec </a><br> <br>I’d love to hear your thoughts! <br>How do you make your fantasy races stand out from each other and humans? <br>What are your thoughts on the techniques discussed in the video?

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• DE

  @derickviana9831 · 6 months ago

  Justa little side note. Wolf packs dont have an &quot;alpha&quot;, they form family groups.

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• KU

  @kuronaialtani · 6 months ago (edited)

  One of the breakthroughs I had when making my world’s races was to center a lot of worldbuilding around “blood.” Bloodlines, birthrights, rituals, what separates someone from another, who you give honor to, etc. And so, races are known as “bloods.” The old-bloods are all humans, the dragons, and the golems. The kin-bloods are all your humanoid beast races. But particularly are the forest tribes, my version of the orc elf dwarf goblin quartet. They exist as sentient pieces of a single great tree (taking some inspiration from Avatar’s Na’vi) in that they are all of the one, born through raw magic the tree has given to the world. Elves are the branches and roots, dwarves are the bark and vines, orcs are the stones and waters, goblins are the leaves and winds. They have a general human shape (as in, two arms two legs, a head) but are fully “made” of what they represent, and speak and act as it.

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• JP

  @JP-1990 · 6 months ago

  Final Fantasy games have a lot of fun original races. Final Fantasy 10 in particular.

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• DA

  @daniyel_ma · 6 months ago

  Love your videos! Thank you!

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• JO

  @Joe-Dadjokes · 6 months ago

  We recently watched Zootopia 2, and were even more impressed with the species- types-as-world-building-tools than the first one, which largely focused solely on predator vs prey. Worth the watch... it just hit D+ recently.<br><br>I&apos;ve toyed with only having various human cultures in my fantasy worlds, because so many fantasy races can&apos;t help but turn into analogs for human stereotypes, sometimes in very offensive ways (looking at you, 5e D&amp;D Hadozee). And then there was Peter Dinklage&apos;s comments about how sad it is that nerd society still enshrines a separate species called &quot;dwarves&quot; as not being human, because he likes being thought of as a human. And I want to respect that.<br><br>But at the same time, I really like the idea of cat-people, or wolf-men, or lizardfolk, or mer-people, or bird-beings, or sentient constructs, etc. as living parts of a mostly-human world, because then I can also play out my Star Wars fantasies of a mostly-human evil empire existing as a background threat. So I can&apos;t quite shake my need for fantasy races. I accept that I need to work on this.

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• KA

  @katsandall3673 · 6 months ago

  I only just found this video and it is great to see someone finally talk about something no one else has covered on youtube yet. I have been working on my own dragon like fantasy species for many years and it has since moved away from typical dragons to something else entirely while still being somewhat dragon like, if that makes sense. (They won&apos;t be called dragons, it will be something else). I did a lot of research on real reptiles and based my own dragon species around that instead of just copying existing dragons. Of course those aren&apos;t the only inspirations for my dragon species as I also used swans as inspiration for the flight mechanics (I am a bird watcher, swans are my fave) and I have played a lot of liminal space horror games for the more otherworldly horror part of them. The &quot;dungeon/cave&quot; my dragons live in is a kind of cosmic horror, liminal space place and not a cave with a nest of gold.<br><br>I could talk about this all day but then my comment would be way too long 😅.

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• EM

  @emmadray9813 · 6 months ago

  I like to see my fantasy &quot;races&quot; as not even another race. I just say they are magical beings/species in the world with their own magic and abilities. My elves are more like a physical nature spirit and that&apos;s why they are tied for the forests and they don&apos;t do human type of magic - they sing and dance and do their own magic which is related to nature. Their glamour is tied to their spirit essence and it&apos;s like their soul so when they are happy it sparkles and becomes bright and radiant. I&apos;m mostly using the &quot;physical being with a spirit essence&quot; for all different types of these creatures/beings like Nymphs, Dwarves, Elves, ect..

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• DO

  @douglasphillips5870 · 6 months ago

  I see where the problem is here. It&apos;s not the inspiration of the fantasy race, but the surface level execution. You need to build them as their own people, not just a stereotype of an existing social group or an animal.

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• TI

  @timmyV-c5y · 5 months ago

  I&apos;m currently working on some original fantasy races for a project I&apos;m working on, but they still need more work done as well as a way to incorporate and adapt them to the worl itself. they are all humanoid as they all came from the same ancestor, like neanderthals and homo sapiens.<br><br>currently there are:<br>*Eyumin*, basically humans or orcs but with tusks, claws, and a tail.<br>*Liminaelites*, a group of humanoids with bat like wings and a traditionally nomadic lifestyle.<br>*Imagi*, humanoids with fins, tendrils, and other body extensions covered in paper like skin which they use to cover their bodies in art of all sorts.<br>*Shiftlings*, humanoids who can transform into animals, typically wolves but I could see other animals being possible.<br>*Netzeers*, basically goblins, but they create and utilise a magic network where they can interact with each other and the other races. the more time they spend in the magic network the more their bodies deteriorate, they can also reproduce by anyone of any race who spends large amounts of time on the magic net.<br>*Draphaim*, a group of giant, reptilian humanoids with soft, weak skin who spend their days collecting and gluing precious object to their skin for pretection and for status.

• NA

  @NaDa-kw2fu · 6 months ago

  I&apos;m in the process of developing a &apos;race&apos; and on reflection, I seem to have fallen into some of the traps you mentioned. Your breakdown was quite relevant to me and now off to watch the 2nd video.

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• DE

  @dementiamaster2 · 6 months ago

  That is an interesting topic. while I think it is good to have some recognition in traditional fantasy races like orc, elves and dwarves. since many fantasy worlds draw inspiriation from Tolkien and DnD there does not need to be a complete overhaul. Dragons are hard to compare to those I think, since most of them are at the time of the story past their high civilization state or never cared to build one. I think the difference in aging is one of the best method to make the cultures of different races feel interesting. The best example from my favourite game are the elves who split of to different biomes after the extremley violent collapse of their empire. they are very long lived and adopted the mentality that it was their own ambition that caused their downfall. so the survivors really disencouraged ambition, and they turned kinda nomadic, whenever a problem showed up, they simply moved, because it will &quot;soon&quot; be gone. I say kinda nomadic, because if there is no problem they can stay for a few hundred years, with the avarage life span of abou 700 years and no aging, just fading away. The continent has very few anthropomorphic animals though. They made a supset of the game on the same world but far of continent, where there are a lot of them though. I am not as well versed there, but I saw some of the qualities mentioned in the video in those races.

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