New Playable Races

For the Rules, Character Workshop, and other general discussion of the game.
User avatar
Sareth
RPG All-Star
Posts: 2604
Joined: August 23rd, 2007, 8:54 pm

Re: New Playable Races

Post by Sareth »

I only look like an adult. I'm actually three 12 year olds pretending to be one 36 year old.

And "Imp-chens" sound absolutely marvelous!

Seriously, though, I do like the idea of Errant Road being relatively true to Errant Story cannon (in spite of my little fun with Jamie playing around with M-60 machine guns and 1911 colts, a throw away joke as I am about to post...) So I tend to give Impy a great deal of attention when she comments. Should I overstep, one word from Impy and I'll roll over like an SUV cornering at 110 MPH. So until things are clarified, I'll just not reference any of the critters not already listed.
Image
Image
User avatar
Templar771
Forum Regular
Posts: 41
Joined: March 18th, 2009, 1:22 pm

Re: New Playable Races

Post by Templar771 »

If Impy has an entire functional backstory for one or two more new races then I dont see why she cant post these as well (unless you guys want to keep the number of new races to make things run more smoothly. This is understandable. But seeming for know that we have a thread where ideas for new races are flying around I dont see why we cant add a couple more to the mix). If anything adding more would make things a lot more interesting and could give us an oppurtunity to add more diversity to the RP threads.

For the record I fall into the 'less' category.
User avatar
Viking-Sensei
Evil Admin Overlord
Posts: 1193
Joined: August 14th, 2007, 12:18 pm
Twitter @: Kallisti_x
Location: Vikingopolis, USA
Contact:

Re: New Playable Races

Post by Viking-Sensei »

I think the concern was mostly over a mis-communication - I started out requesting an underground race, because the Mountains of Madness needed one. Apparently, I didn't make that clear enough, because what I got, while excellent input, was everything *except* an underground race. I created the Ghob to fill in that roll, trying to keep in the spirit with the ES universe if not the actual letter.

Errant Story works against going too cliche, not running the standard elf-dwarf-halfling-orc-goblin-kobold-troll-dragon gauntlet of fantasy fiction for the last 100 or so years, and that's one of the reasons why it's awesome - the elves may still be pretty, but they also suffer from a range of psychological differences (and, let's face it, defects) that immortality brings. The Dwarves were awesome - but are now all gone. The trolls (not even counting Graybeard's excellent characterization here in RPG) have been depicted somewhat as savages, but only in the same way european settlers to the Americas considered the native people there 'savages'... it's so much easier to kill them and not feel bad if they're just animals, after all.

So from that spirit I tried to create a goblin analog - realistic analysis of legend and folklore about goblins, not just the standard D&D goblin, translated through a slightly cynical and sarcastic lens, into what could be a real species even in the real world. The eyesight limitation, that they aren't completely blind and can see and use regular lights, but are weak/blinded by the UV rays that the sun gives off, gives them a reasonable and realistic justification for why they're earthen-dwellers and don't come out, even at night... no turning to stone here, just over sensitive eyes.

The suggestions for giving the golems a full, fleshed out race profile and for reuniting ES with it's long lost race of catgirls were great, so I used them with only some minor modifications. (One of them was changing the aging rate of the catgirls, which I have since reversed at Impy's request). The imp suggestion was good too, but I'm still not 100% satisfied with how it was turning out under my hand, so I'm bouncing a re-re-revised version of them off Impy before adding it to the list. There was also couple of other ideas which could probably work but don't make sense with our story as it is now, so I've opted to withhold them for potential future release.
How could a plan this awesome possibly fail?
Image
User avatar
Imp-Chan
Not Yet Dead
Posts: 1407
Joined: August 10th, 2007, 11:03 am
Twitter @: ImpChan
Location: Seoul, South Korea
Contact:

Re: New Playable Races

Post by Imp-Chan »

You know... Poe doesn't actually like catgirls that much. He was mostly originally going to include them as yet more fantasy parody, but since we have the macro and the t-shirt (technically, Jim has the four remaining t-shirts to sell at Penguincon) it seemed fitting to give them life. There is a reason for them, we just can't tell you what it is yet.

I suppose what would probably be most helpful is if I actually follow up on the leads I was given for people who can help us put together a good world book, and got that project underway. That way you'd all have a reference for this game, and we'd have an expanded market for the property. Though, since Poe has an entire timeline for this world and various historical/societal structures planned for the different periods, perhaps it would be better to make several world books, one for each era.

^-^'
Because scary little devil girls have to stick together.
Image
User avatar
Sareth
RPG All-Star
Posts: 2604
Joined: August 23rd, 2007, 8:54 pm

Re: New Playable Races

Post by Sareth »

OOOooooooooooh! That would be cool!
Image
Image
User avatar
Templar771
Forum Regular
Posts: 41
Joined: March 18th, 2009, 1:22 pm

Re: New Playable Races

Post by Templar771 »

The book sounds like an awesome idea! I was wondering what the whole situation was on these new races with regards to using them in RPs. If there are still any loose ends with some or any fine tuning needed etc. Sorry if I sound impatient in this but they just seem so cool!!
User avatar
Graybeard
The Heretical Admin
Posts: 7180
Joined: August 20th, 2007, 8:26 am
Location: Nuevo Mexico y Colorado, Estados Unidos

Re: New Playable Races

Post by Graybeard »

OK, so with action beneath the volcano starting to die down, I've written some hooks into the MoM thread that would allow introduction of strange races on the other side of that nearly impassable channel that cuts the Farrel "continent." Now we just need to get some people there to interact with them, and also to reach closure on what the strange races are. We're working on the former; any more to do on identifying the races? Jim?
Image

Because old is wise, does good, and above all, kicks ass.
User avatar
ChunLing
Advocate of Justice
Posts: 858
Joined: October 20th, 2009, 4:32 pm

Re: New Playable Races

Post by ChunLing »

Given the degree of possible errancy with errants, is there really a need for rare hidden races?

For instance, a female errant with a bit of a fur problem on her ears and tail (and maybe elsewhere) could pass as a cat-girl, right? I imagine that most errants who make it past a few decades of life realize the necessity of hiding their actual race behind whatever lies may seem plausible to humans without being too easily traceable by Rangers, while Sanctuariel can't possibly tolerate every degree of errancy, so just because you have odd individuals running around do you really need to have 'real' races for them?

Alternatively, if certain errant traits tend to breed true, I guess that an errant sub-race could be a real race in most ways that mattered. And hiding their connection to errants would be a long-term benefit to them. So maybe the question isn't really all that relevant after all. If cat-girls are just a strain of errants that have successfully improvised a role which lets the elves ignore rather than exterminate them, does it mean they aren't a real race?

Whatever. I tend to think that it's better to stick to characters that might plausibly enter various human towns on a semi-regular basis. Elves, half-elves, and humans probably cover those bases fairly well. But maybe I'm missing something.
Kill...more...elves.
User avatar
Graybeard
The Heretical Admin
Posts: 7180
Joined: August 20th, 2007, 8:26 am
Location: Nuevo Mexico y Colorado, Estados Unidos

Re: New Playable Races

Post by Graybeard »

ChunLing wrote:Given the degree of possible errancy with errants, is there really a need for rare hidden races?

For instance, a female errant with a bit of a fur problem on her ears and tail (and maybe elsewhere) could pass as a cat-girl, right?
In principle, probably. However, you'd think that the more off-normal an Errant is, the less likely he/she/both-of-the-above would be to survive to adulthood. She (for purposes of argument) would stand out as off-normal in any human-like situation, and that would be likely to draw the attention of an elf, with all that that implies. Not only would that likely end fatally for the Errant, it would also give a strong likelihood that she wouldn't survive infancy in a place like Santuariel or Errant Road's "Snamish," but would be quietly terminated at birth. Otherwise the town would be in constant fear that she'd draw murderous attention not just to herself, but to the town. (You wonder how much of a problem this really is in Santuariel already.) The only obvious way around this is to postulate that your Errant-catgirl lives with a bunch of others of her kind (so that she isn't noticed as abnormal), in somewhere so far off the beaten path that less off-normal half elves don't feel threatened by them. In that case, though, aren't they really catgirls?

I like the way you're thinking, though. Interested in joining the game?
Image

Because old is wise, does good, and above all, kicks ass.
User avatar
ChunLing
Advocate of Justice
Posts: 858
Joined: October 20th, 2009, 4:32 pm

Re: New Playable Races

Post by ChunLing »

I was thinking about creating a character...but I'm terrible. As in, not a good person. I was going to say I was no good at some particular thing, but then I decided the not good in a general sense thing was more important and encompassing.

Anyway, I was thinking it might be interesting to do something with a...thinking of calling them the Sundered.

I'd guess that, since there were initially some half-elves on the anti-errant side of the war, they didn't all either opt for suicide or joining the other half-elves once the war became less ideological and more racial. They can't still have any contact with elves, but they also wouldn't really get along with the community of half-elves that tolerate errancy. I'd guess that in the intervening generations (fewer than for humans, but still leaving the war well out of living memory) they might have lost some of their original motivation on the subject, but in practical terms it wouldn't really benefit them to try and join up with the 'errancy is just a risk of life' crowd. Due to their errant control measures, they don't have a really large population and don't tend to attract attention to themselves (from anyone if they can help it). Part of this is accomplished by using magic intensive horticulture for food production so they can live in areas that don't really have any significant arable land, and to encourage the most obnoxious local plants to discourage the curious (invading the legendary poison ivy patch of return home but suffer intensely for a couple of weeks is never going to become all that popular, after all).

Anyway, I'm thinking of a character who has developed enough physical and personal quirks to cross the rather stringent bounds of what the Sundered consider errancy, and thus chose to try the larger world rather than "painless and compassionate death". Kind of a work in progress, and in fact all the background just mentioned is exactly the sort of secret my character would rather that other people not know or even have reason to wonder about.

Name: Caemon
Sex: errant (precise details are not set)
Skills: Biotharmurgy (covers healing and horticulture) and common crafting. Uses a blowgun with 'enhanced' darts for most combat, flat-out poisoned dagger for melee. Some things that may indicate precognitive/empathic abilities but are possibly just signs of errancy.
Profession: Itinerant.

Caemon worships Exitalis and has even tried visiting the Anuban region...more than once. Maybe I'll post in the New character thread when I've thought of more.
Kill...more...elves.
Post Reply