Scottish Dwarves?

[Orion]

Assigning a cultural equivalent does at least one really good thing for you though, which is that it gives you names which gives your setting a more consistent feel and avoids a glut of PCs name Yathrinshee and Garion. Also some idea about what *clothes* look like and what kind of *plants* they have/eat. Really, I think a commendably efficient way to do a fantasy culture is with the following form sentence:

"They're like the [ethnicity] of [time period or place], but with [animal/practice/terrain]

Goblins are like Kublai Khan's mongols, but they started with wolves in the Shwarzwald.

Orcs are like Picts during the roman invasion, but with kung fu.

Halflings are like the roman republic with pegasi and crazy population density.

Drow are like Spanish aristocrats if the entire underclass had been eaten by zombies and replaced with magic robots.

See how easy that was? And the best part is that not only is it faster to type, but you can just verbally say that to people at the chargen session every time someone asks.

[K]

Assigning a cultural equivalent does at least one really good thing for you though, which is that it gives you names which gives your setting a more consistent feel and avoids a glut of PCs name Yathrinshee and Garion.

Also some idea about what *clothes* look like and what kind of *plants* they have/eat.

Really? You find the names the hard part? This is fantasy, and the naming part is stupid easy.

Plants and clothes are equally easy. You just look at materials available from location or trade and then look at technology.

Really, I think a commendably efficient way to do a fantasy culture is with the following form sentence:

"They're like the [ethnicity] of [time period or place], but with [animal/practice/terrain]

That's like the worse way to do a fantasy culture.

First, because it assumes people actually know enough about history to know what you are actually saying. Chances are they don't, so you aren't actually saving any time explaining the culture to them.

Second, because it implies people can do the mental math to figure out how your twist actually changes the culture in a meaningful way. Clearly this thread is evidence that people can't do that.

Third, it prevents future expansions of the culture if you should come up with something interesting for them because you have to shoehorn the new idea into pre-existing ideas of a culture. People are more forgiving of a fantasy culture it is not a known culture with a few alternations.

Fourth, some ideas just don't have an analogue.

[Orion]

It's not that coming up with a name is hard, it's that if you tell 6 people to come up with "a fantasy name" you will get a laughably mismatched party. If you tell people, "your name can be greek, roman, or celtic" you get a set of people that, well, sound like they come from the same world.

On to plants and animals: "Think about the location:" well, yes. But here's the funny part. Fantasy ecosystems are *also* done by analogy to real world. If you have to cross "the desert" and you want to know about it, you ask the DM "is this like the Sahara or like the Mojave? [theoretically it could be the gobi or some shit but it never is]. If you prefer, you could say, "is this a rocky desert or a sandy desert?"

But guess what? If you tell players that the hobgoblins live in "a sandy desert" everyone will imagine them with Bedouin headscarves.

Everyone knows elves live in the forest, but what forest? You could say, "they live in a temperate ore-rich forest, therefore have steel-tipped arrows and advanced swordsmithing" or "they live in a dense rainforest, therefore live up in the canopy and use native poisons."

Or you could say, "Elves are Teutons, therefore they live in the Scharzwald", or "Elves are Amazons, they live in a rainforest".

[Mask_De_H]

It's not that coming up with a name is hard, it's that if you tell 6 people to come up with "a fantasy name" you will get a laughably mismatched party. If you tell people, "your name can be greek, roman, or celtic" you get a set of people that, well, sound like they come from the same world.

On to plants and animals: "Think about the location:" well, yes. But here's the funny part. Fantasy ecosystems are *also* done by analogy to real world. If you have to cross "the desert" and you want to know about it, you ask the DM "is this like the Sahara or like the Mojave? [theoretically it could be the gobi or some shit but it never is]. If you prefer, you could say, "is this a rocky desert or a sandy desert?"

But guess what? If you tell players that the hobgoblins live in "a sandy desert" everyone will imagine them with Bedouin headscarves.

Everyone knows elves live in the forest, but what forest? You could say, "they live in a temperate ore-rich forest, therefore have steel-tipped arrows and advanced swordsmithing" or "they live in a dense rainforest, therefore live up in the canopy and use native poisons."

Or you could say, "Elves are Teutons, therefore they live in the Scharzwald", or "Elves are Amazons, they live in a rainforest".

Uh, I'd rather have the long form description, because it makes sure that there are no misconstructions of your setting. What if you have someone who doesn't know how the medieval Teutons lived or acted, or if they don't know who the Picts were, or if you wanted to make the Teutonic Elves have some temperate climate tropes mixed in? And besides, if you're playing in a multicultural world, you're going to get 6 wildly mismatched names anyway.

A trip to Wikipedia is not a better option than spending another 30 seconds creating a stronger mental connection. You're being reductionist.

[Judging__Eagle]

Actually.... I was going to have all of the "global" races be the result of the magical copying of single individuals at some point long ago in history.

Dwarves, Elves, Drow, Hobs, Gobs, are magically altered, and don't have normal dietary constraints; so they can ply their skills everywhere; without impacting a communities ability to produce food.

All of these species are originally normal organic food consumers; except that now they can achieve alternate methods to satisfying their nutritional needs.

Dwarves can eat minerals; and their hair turns into the colour of metals that they eat; their teeth turn into stone, and their bodies eventually can become living earth, or stone, or metal. So long as they have been eating only dirt, stone, or metal.

Elves can eat leaves, and grass. They can re-process plants to get maximum nourishment. They can still eat meat, and bread, and mead; but thier nutritional requirements are different from anyone elses.

Drow eat ash, and sand, and can absorb infinite amounts of sunlight to energize themselves. They're basically carbo-silicone based, photo-volt sustained, humanoids. So, you'll see them in areas with lots of heat, sand, sunlight. Which gives deserts everywhere, and deep underground, possibly in coal or diamond or graphite, mines. Both for food, and trade goods.

Hobs only 'feed', while they are breaking a sweat. Most Hobs do some sort of weapon drill, or physical labour, in order to keep their bodies 'fed'. Hobs are just naturally adapted for combat roles, but it's not like an Elf or Dwarf can't also work out, and get stronger and tougher.

Gobs get 'fed', so long as they are .... I'm not sure on gobs though.

[K]

A trip to Wikipedia is not a better option than spending another 30 seconds creating a stronger mental connection. You're being reductionist.

I agree. People generally know what's in a desert, but the game is going to grind to a halt as people hit the Internets to find out anything at all about the Teutons or Picts. Finding a Teutonic name to use for your character may actually take longer than it takes to generate your whole character concept and statblock.

At the end of the day, using historical cultures is not a time-saving practice when the average gamer's knowledge of history is spotty at best.

[K]

Elves can eat leaves, and grass. They can re-process food to get maximum nourishment.

Elves are poop eaters? Do you really hate them so much?

[Orion]

Sorry, I should be more clear: there's a distinction between how you come up with an idea and how you communicate it.

I firmly believe that people are more likely to think "I want bedouins, so the setting needs a sandy desert" then to think "the setting has a sandy desert, so its inhabitants will need sun-protective clothing." And they will do so *even if they don't know the word "Bedouin"*, because they will have some image in their head of wanting "those sandbender guys from Avatar" or whatever. Furthermore, I maintain that if you *do* know who the Inca or Teutons were, using them as a model is a perfectly reasonable way to start.

Now, communicating is another matter. I *do* think it's reasonable to expect people to be able to deal with "imperial mongols," "nomadic mongols," "republican romans" or "conquistador spaniards." But yeah, picts not so much. And my entire post on terrain was from a setting-writer perspective. I don't expect my players to associate "Mojave" or "Gobi" with a type of plants correctly.

Honestly when you communicate fantasy terrain you're going to do to by referring to a movie. You're gonna say, "this is the swamp forest from Avatar or the hilly forest from the end of Fellowship" or something.

[Crissa]

I don't think that's more likely or not. If the desert pre-exists the idea of the culture, for instance, there's a desert on the map and you travelled to it.

...Also, Beduins lived in rocky deserts, too. For the most part, they may be known for crossing sandy wastes, no one really lives there. There are sandy wastes in China, too, and no beduin there. But you still get a culture that's known for crossing it.

No one ever seems to think about natives who crossed the sandy wastes in the Americas or Australia. They were literally no different - stone age tribal people living on the edge of survival - they just didn't have a valuable trade route running through their lands.

-Crissa

[Leress]

There are also cold deserts like Antarctica.

[Crissa]

There are also cold deserts like Antarctica.

And green deserts and playa and salt pans and ones with macrobiotic crusts and ones which are all muddy and and and...

-Crissa

[Judging__Eagle]

It's all internally. Elves as poop-eaters was not what I meant.

Sort of like they have a multi-stage digestive system, that can re-cycle partly processed foods, to earlier stages of the system.

or something.

Elves eating raw leaves, or leave compote is okay, but Elves eating Elf-poop is not. Mostly b/c it's not elegant, or refined, and the person who modified Elves from being omnivorous, to functionally vegetarian, wouldn't have allowed such a weird change.

The origin story is that the 'first party' was made up of a bunch of each of those species; and when they beat the long forgotten menace(s), they did something to have their species changed, and multiplied, at the cost of giving up most of their gained power. They all then went into hiding, and went on to go travel the planes. wouldn't have wanted.

Orks/Humans/Halflings are the 'Descended' races, and are all are just members of the same species, with reduced powers. They're all a type of Doppleganger, and are accepted b/c their ancestors turned on their Cthuli overlords and sided with the natives, instead of using their infiltration to overthrown the world's power structures for a Cthuli invasion to succeed.

Gnomes are just really magical ground people, who live in, and near, trees, and forests; and protect animals and plants. A Gnome has as much affinity for Tapirs and Koalas, as they do for Badgers and Rabbits.

Robota are an ancient practice, and every part of the world creates these people, who earn their freedom once their creator dies. Many Golem-wrights just spend all day overseeing, and applying the finishing touches to their wood, stone, or flesh; creations. Golems/Robota are all sorts of things. From automated fashion experts (srsly... both Girl Genius, and Schlock Mercenary, both have such creatures), to assassin droids.

[Stahlseele]

Elves can eat leaves, and grass. They can re-process food to get maximum nourishment.

Elves are poop eaters? Do you really hate them so much?

who does not?
and they are all dandelion eaters and their women are arrogant cows, so i guess it fits . .
also, i think he meant the thing that cows do, reurgiating and eating their food again or something . .

[Crissa]

You don't need to re-eat dandelions. They're just plain edible. You can get them at Safeway in the winter.

Cows chew cud. Bunnies eat their poo, because they don't have two stomaches like cows and deer and antelope. Horses just have to eat alot and eat dirt.

-Crissa

[Prak]

I think the horse model is the most appealing of the options if we want to liken elves to anything... Hell, I could actually see elves basically just eating a potted plant dirt and all.

[Crissa]

Is it very elfy to eat like a horse, and denude the world of edibles?

-Crissa

[Judging__Eagle]

I personally am going with "eats leaves of trees, or grass".

[Prak]

Is it very elfy to eat like a horse, and denude the world of edibles?

-Crissa

eh? They'd eat less than a horse... and I vote we stop here before other horse-like qualities of elves creep into the discussion...

[Orion]

If you think about Elves too much, the result is *never* satisfying because "naturey" shit has never been appreciated by the people who had to do it.

[Prak]

well, except for weekend retreat "lets go camping and be all nature-y and shit kids!" shit.

[Orion]

I had to do it, and I didn't appreciate it.

[Crissa]

Horses eat alot. So much so that they don't exist in the wild except as huge rats, eating all available grasses and then starving to death as they beat the ground under their hooves. Horses have evolved out their 'sated' sensation, and are never not-hungry, because at no point in nature are they ever faced with too much food. It's a common problem for a horse to break into food storage and kill themselves by over eating. They also can't puke.

I don't think horses are a good fit with elves. They can't really eat much humans can't, and can't eat lots of things humans can.

-Crissa

[Prak]

elves are humanoid, at the very least they should be able to puke.
elves are sentient, they should be able to decide "I've had enough"
elves are smaller than humans, they should have at least a slightly smaller impact on the environment, per elf, than horses.

[Crissa]

That's why for the most part, you only find ponies in the wild, not horses.

I was just listing the problems and contradictions with modeling elves on horses. They'd eat like Tolkien hobbits.

-Crissa

[Agrinja]

Wouldn't that mean they're particularly good at farming, or something? If you follow that train of thought. Kind of an odd thought there, agriculturally based elves...