Kitchen Sink Roleplaying

[Username17]

The Kitchen Sink: Forehead Aliens and Anthropology

Dungeons & Dragons is at its core a kitchen sink fantasy game. That means that the stories you tell with it will be set in a world that has a whole lot of stuff in it. There are more than a dozen varieties of true breeding serpent people. There are more than twenty kinds of magic. And that means that there are a lot of stories you can tell. It means that you can tell a story that revolves around any one of those unique types of serpent people, or one that involves people using any of those kinds of magic. But there are also stories you cannot tell. You can't tell a story where, like on Earth, there is only one sapient species and all differences that people base nations around are subtle variations of pigmentation or height. You can't tell a story where anyone is particularly surprised that they don't recognize some new serpent man race, because there are so many of those things that slithering around that no one expects to be able to identify them all. In short, you can't tell a story where uniqueness is unique. Nor can you tell a story where the edges of things are well defined, because there are too many edges to define.

The best analogy is to think about the galaxy of Star Trek. There are a lot of different aliens, and most of them differ only by a couple of bumps on their forehead. Even though each one is a sapient race with thousands of years of history and culture and experiments with different governmental and economic systems, generally each one is going to show up in one episode and contribute only a couple of characters with speaking parts and only a single rather simple dilemma. Their treatment is necessarily shallow, because there needs to be room for all the other sapient races. If you double the page space devoted to one race, you have to eliminate another altogether to make room.

What this means is that the vast majority of races are going to have just a simple description and some basic rules information, and if they don't happen to show up in the campaign, they'll stay that way. And if they do show up, they will be fleshed out at the table. If a player brings in a minotaur, it is partly their responsibility to flesh out the basics of Minotaur physiology and culture as part of their character's backstory and ongoing roleplaying. Often a factoid about such a species will not be important or considered until some point well into the story. And when it does come up, it is important for a Kitchen Sink game to have someone make up an answer that is cool and then move on.

The Mythic Origins of Major Races

There are hundreds of races that appear in a kitchen sink setting, and any of them can be a major race in some peoples' campaigns. But there are a few that are going to be major in most peoples' campaigns. To extend the Star Trek metaphor, these are the Vulcans and Klingons – and Humans. These races have enough traction that they are used very frequently. And in response to that, they get extra descriptive text to help players have less dissonance between different games. And because they get the extra descriptive text, they are even more likely to get used in individual games and thus become even more deserving of the extra description they receive. It's a delicious cycle.

Cambion

The Cambion are a race of demonic people made from the blood of humans and demons. Demons have a difficult time getting into the mortal world, so they created a race of halfbreeds to help them n as part of an ancient plan to destroy and/or conquer the world. The plot appears to have failed, in that the world still exists and people grow and play without being under the yoke of demon masters, but the descendants live on. Cambion vary wildly in appearance, with some looking angelically beautiful and others looking like skulking monsters. There were apparently a lot of different demons being used in the original Cambion creation process and there are a lot of recessive genes knocking around – there's no special guaranty that the children of Cambion will look terribly similar to their parents. In general, you can spot a Cambion by looking basically like a human with extra demon traits. How extensive the demon traits depends entirely on what the budget of the makeup department is.

The word Cambion is an archaic Latin word meaning the child of a human and a demon. This sort of thing appears in the folklore of practically every culture on Earth, and has appeared under such disparate names as Mandeha, Hanyo, and Nephillim. Cambion have graced such important literature as Shakespeare's The Tempest, and have been brought into fantasy gaming by Dungeons & Dragons under the names Tiefling, Genasi, and “Half Fiend.” Cambions are often portrayed as being haunted by evil, or gleefully evil, but in a game about role playing and choices, the Cambion are treated instead as just being kind of jerks.

Drow

The Drow are black skinned Elves that live underground. They are creepy, treacherous, and cruel, and a lot of people don't like them very much. Their culture prides the use of poison and is fiercely competitive. The very first question that a lot of people ask about the Drow is why they have black skin rather than white skin if they spend all their time underground in the absence of light. And the answer is that they have black skin because they are tunnel adapted. They don't have dark brown skin (from excessive melanin production to protect against sunlight), they have black skin – a result of a build-up of microscopic carbon dust in their skin. They live in tunnels, and rather than getting “black lung” they get “black skin” that is totally harmless. Presumably a newborn baby Drow is the same color as any other Elf and if they stayed in areas with very low quantities of carbon dust, their skin would only get a little spotty with black and gray patches.

The Drow are very iconically associated with Dungeons & Dragons, because the folklore they are based on is now rather obscure. The origin is with the black skinned alfar from the underworld kingdom of Helheim in Norse legend, with whom they share a name. Now in the original legend they have black skin, not because of any biological mechanism, but merely because they look much spookier that way and everything from Helheim is supposed to be as spooky as possible. Interestingly, in D&D the Drow show up twice, once as black skinned Elves, and once as black skinned Dwarves (as “Derro” which is of course the same word). Evil, or at least frightening Elves are pretty standard throughout the world, and come with such names as Sidhe, Wakyambi, and Yaksha, but the specifically black skinned, tunnel dwelling variety can be blamed on old Germanic folklore, and the fact that any of us have heard of them can be laid at the feet of R. A. Salvatore.

Dwarf

Dwarves are hardy and strong tunnel dwelling humanoids who are prone to great feats of mining, metalwork, and have a love of strong booze and a long history of kicking ass and taking names. Dwarves are very temperature tolerant and live in places that are so cold that ice forms in their massive beards, and also get by in sweltering conditions adjacent to magma flows. Dwarves are hardy against poison and need alcohol for its nutritional value.

Dwarfs have been around for thousands of years, and for most of that period have been roughly interchangeable with Elves. There exists a continuum of these mythic spirit-folk where they range from tiny to large, strong to frail, technically inclined to barbarous, smart to dull, and magical to mundane. And it was essentially Tolkien who divided up the traits into what we normally think of as “elves and dwarves” (and indeed, “dwarves” is a correct pluralization of “dwarf” entirely because Tolkien said it was). Recall that outside the fantasy genre, Santa has “Elves” who are short and skillful at making things and so on. But in the fantasy genre, Santa would have dwarves instead. Essentially, Tolkien based the “Dwarves” on more Norse sources (where the dovetailed more with the Alfar), and the “Elves” more on Celtic sources (where they dovetailed more with the Sidhe). So Dwarves live in mountains, and Elves live in forests. Dwarves are renowned warriors, and Elves are tall and pretty.

The Dwarf has further been refined in the fantasy gaming genre, getting significant updates to the folklore in Dungeons & Dragons, and virtually every fantasy game on the market. Most of the Dwarven culture has been recreated from Tolkien's characters of Gimli and Thorin Oakenshield, both of whom were mighty warriors. However, in recent years, more works have gone back to some of the older works like Der Nibelung and Rumpelstiltskin, where dwarves can be mysterious and powerful sorcerers.

Elf

The Elf is taller than a normal human and has remarkably similar body proportions. They have less body hair, less body odors, and eat less than humans do. They have the ability to gain sustenance from eating grass, wood, or leaves, because they can digest cellulose into sugars without relying upon any bacteria. Elves have pointed ears and large irises that push the whites of their eyes to the very corner. Elves are long lived and graceful. Their ability to garner nutritional value from anything in a forest has left them with a profound ambivalence to civilization as a whole (and agriculture specifically), and most Elven camps are simply camps out in the woods or jungles somewhere. Elves are very obviously related to Drow, and indeed they share common heritage. Drow have a somewhat different metabolism from Elves, and while they can't seemingly survive on a die of sawdust, the Drow can breathe coal dust all day long and not get emphysema.

“Elf” is probably the best known word for “mythological human analogue” in the English language. In various sources, an “elf” might be tall or short, or any of the other things ascribed variously to dwarves, goblins, or men. However the primary source for the Elf is Tolkien's vision, which in turn was derived from mostly Celtic sources like the Sidhe and also some Norse influence from the Vanir. Tolkien's Elves were super humans, better at essentially all things than a human counterpart and gifted with what amounted to immortality. These traits have been scaled back severely over the years, mostly by the influence of games. A game relies upon a certain level of game balance between different players, so having one player get to have a character that is better at “everything” is just not acceptable. As such, as new fantasy games have been produced, the abilities of an Elf – including their signature longevity – has eroded time and time again. Where a writeup of Elves from the 1970s might claim that they lived “forever” or “for thousands of years” – the Elves of today are simply “long lived.”

Gith

The Gith are the descendants of humans who were enslaved outside of the world by the psychic Star Spawn for uncounted generations, used as a source of labor and food. They eventually won their freedom for themselves, and have waged a war across the stars against their brain eating former masters for generations. The Gith are a people scarred by slavery and war, and are implausibly stoic and incredibly violent. There is a taint of star magic on Gith and they tend to “phase out” both by losing track of conversations while paying attention to something else, and literally out of reality itself by shifting to the Astral reality and back.

Every part of Gith in folkloric origin comes from 20th century published literature. The term “Githyanki” comes from a book by George R. R. Martin called Dying of the Light that includes them as a race of psychic aliens who are enslaved to other, more powerful psychic aliens. They were subsequently written up by Charles Stross as specifically humans who were enslaved by psychic aliens and then rebelled. And they have been gradually expanded upon in Dungeons & Dragons literature. The Star Spawn who enslaved them are originally from Mythos books written by H. P. Lovecraft where the Star Spawn are the brain eating children of Great Cthulhu, and have the specific name Cthulhi to indicate their much reduced status from that of the High Priest of Azathoth who spawned them in the great underwater city of R'lyeh. Dungeons & Dragons picked up the Star Spawn and ran with them and called them “Mind Flayers” and eventually “Ilithid.”

Gnome

Gnomes are a small humanoid people with long fingers and long, claw-like fingernails. They have small eyes and rodent-like buck teeth. They look like people who are doing their level best to transform into moles and burrow away. And they do talk to moles and other rodents (they can also talk to marsupial moles, but it it is more difficult). Their hair gets into large tufts that are not always arranged for complete coverage. So a Gnome Man might go bald, but still have frizzy tufts on the sides and protruding from his lips like whiskers. Gnomes are creative and inveterate tinkers, and make all kinds of things. Gnome Women also have whiskers, but less hair in them so it doesn't look as much like a mustache. Gnomes don't see the world the way other people do, and usually rely upon sound and vibrations to “feel” their way through things, relying hardly upon their sight at all.

Gnomes are based on brownies and knockers, and well gnomes. They commonly appear in folklore as helpful spirits in homes, mines, and industries. There is basically a complete overlap between the source material for Gnomes and for Kobolds, and as is the way of these things when they get codified into game formats, the two have split up the concepts. In general, since “Gnome” is a Swiss word for a Cthonic spirit, and Kobold is a German word, the Gnomes end up getting most of the peaceful and clockwork making aspects, and Kobolds get most of the warlike aspects. Which is totally racist and unfair, but no one really cares if you make fun of the Swiss, so it's vaguely OK.

Goblin

The Goblins are small orange skinned humanoids with long arms and a stooped posture. They have sharp teeth and pointy ears. They look a lot like the monsters from Gremlins, but larger, with orange skin, and more likely to wear pants. Goblins are incredibly quiet, and often lope about on all fours like a chimp. Goblins have huge mouths and can easily imitate the baying of wolves. Goblins have a long understanding with Wargs and ride around on them regularly. Goblins are feral, sneaky, and uncommunicative. But they are not unintelligent, and use tools and are able to participate in society. Goblins have slit pupils and bulging eyes, making them look really intense, despite generally standing only 1.25m and spending a lot of time stooping.

“Goblin” is the catch-all term for “monster” with actual examples ranging from Gremlins to Bakemono to David Bowie. The Goblin is perhaps the most contentious position, because they are supposed to look scary, but what actually looks scary varies from person to person. Honestly, the Age of Wonders look for Goblins was chosen because that way they look like they are appropriately related Hobs (which of course they are), who in turn look like the coolest and most iconic Hobgoblin drawings – which are from Spiderman comics.

Golem

Golems are robots. They are roughly in the shape of humans, but they are made of some combination of clay, metal, wood, and stone. While they are remarkably resilient compared to flesh and blood humanoids, they are nowhere near as resilient (or heavy) as actual man-sized blocks of metal would be. This is because Golems are hollow and filled with clockwork, chemical tubes, runic engravings, or some other techno-magical mumbo jumbo that makes them function. Many Golems have no more idea what is on their insides than children do. It's not like they can extrapolate from the insides of bological lifeforms.

Golems are from Czech folklore and literature. There they are called Golems, Homunculi, and Robots. They are a similar story to Frankenstein's Monster, in that they are essentially people but are made by hands of artifice rather than born of mothers. They have become immensely more popular in fiction as the knowledge of what life is has disseminated to the general populace. Golems are an important race of synthetic creatures in the Discworld series, and robotic people are all over modern comics, movies, and stories. Iconic golem characters include Data from Star Trek, Ifurita from El Hazard, and C3PO from Star Wars. They've become important in RPGs as well, where in the various Star Wars games there are droids, World of Darkness came out with an entire Promethean line, and of course Dungeons & Dragons has recently jumped onto the bandwagon with the “Warforged.” They carry that name, because Gygax had already written them into a corner by making the actual things named Golems into giant animated statues, necessitating a new name for the man-sized artificial life.

Halfling

Halflings look like elves who happen to be only about a meter tall. They are thus somewhat more than half as tall as a Human or even an Elf. For their size they are remarkably strong, but they are mostly known for having fast metabolisms, insatiable curiosity, and quick tongues. Halflings get hungry quickly, get bored quickly, come up with witty insults quickly, and run quickly for their small stature. It's like Halflings experience time differently than other humanoids. Halflings are friendly and likeable, and are frequently motivated by a strong sense of justice. Villainous Halflings frequently have the same motivations – the difference between wanting to even the scales and wanting to take other peoples' stuff is mostly just a matter of perspective.

The origins of the Halfling as a major RPG concept is undoubtedly Tolkien's Hobbits. We don't call them Hobbits because we are legally forbidden from doing so, because Tolkien's estate still owns that word (Tolkien made it up), but since he didn't make up “Halfling” we (and by “we” I mean “the entire fantasy genre”) have been using that term instead. And because of that fact, Halflings have become a lot less like Hobbits over the years. Everyone knew that Halflings were supposed to be good thieves and rogues, because that's pretty much what Bilbo Baggins did. And so while Bilbo Baggins was basically completely unlike a “normal” Halfling in that setting, the kinds of traits that would be good in a rogue have been standardized in the race. Rather than having Halflings be fat, insular, and complacent, they have become outgoing, athletic, and proactive. They are, in short, nothing at all like the Hobbits in Tolkien's works – although the original seed of inspiration is plainly visible. Little people who steal stuff is the story seed, and that's from The Hobbit, but the changes made to make that a normal thing instead of a one-in-the-world special character are basically total. Halflings just aren't a standing metaphor for the nobility and tragic complacence of the English Yeomen anymore, they are a metaphor for “the little guy” fighting back at the “big world.” As such, they borrow hardly anything at all from any of the “little people” in fairy stories. They aren't Leprechauns, they are the revolutionary proletariat.

Hob

Hobs are large humanoids who look like goblins would if they were the size of a large man. They have sharp teeth, orange skin, red eyes, and pointy ears. They look in many ways like a scaled up Goblin, both in terms of being physically taller and also standing much straighter. Like Goblins, Hobs are very quiet, but the general air of a Hob tends to portray that trait more as politeness than sneakiness. Hobgoblin society is classically very polite and restrained – Hob etiquette is exacting and convoluted. Hobs have a well deserved reputation for carefulness and perfectionism. Hobs are frequently concerned with martial valor and honor, as well as social propriety.

Hob is short for “hobgoblin” and those are a classic type of fey folk. The most famous hobgoblin in history is the shapeshifter Puck from A Midsummer Night's Dream. In their original conception they are tiny tricksters, which is especially interesting because in today's folklore the hobgoblin is exactly the opposite, being a larger and more “serious” than regular goblins. This reversal of fortunes comes from a combination of errors and dramatic necessity. The question of size is merely confusion on the part of Tolkien when he wrote The Hobbit. In that book he calls his orcs “goblins” and the bigger nastier ones are hobgoblins for emphasis. This error actually so embarrassed him that in the later LotR books he stopped using the word “goblin” pretty much altogether. However, later fantasy authors took a lot of inspiration from The Hobbit, and in the absence of conflicting sources, the bigger hobgoblins pretty much stuck. The evolution of hobgoblins from Puck to the iconic sharp toothed avatars of seriousness is a little more complicated. See, being disrespectful is something that requires and expectation of respect to even be noticeable. That is, Costello's antics are not funny without Abbot there to get annoyed. So in order to set up the kinds of jokes that prankstering requires, hobgoblins had have the kinds of formal social situations that those need. And so, since every time hobgoblins showed up, there were rigid social structures, they became associated with those very structures in peoples' minds that. That is, the hobgoblin has gradually become their own foil.

That the modern Hobgoblin specifically has orange skin can be laid at the feet of Spiderman comics. Spiderman had a villain named the Green Goblin who was very important to the story. So when they made a spin-off character to be a new villain they made the “Hobgoblin” to fill that space. And since that was an age of comic printing when they could reasonably expect to have secondary colors come out right (and had only recently acquired that ability, which is why the older Superman is Red, Yellow, and Blue and the younger Hulk is Green and Purple), the character's main choices for colors were Green, Purple, and Orange. Since he was supposed to be distinguishable from the Green Goblin (who was of course green), it was basically a coin-flip to make him primarily purple or orange – or would have been if it wasn't for the act that an orange hobgoblin looks much better than a purple one throwing pumpkin bombs at things.

Human

The Human of fantasy literature is just like the modern human. That's an important consideration, because they are not much like the humans of medieval times. When people think of Humans in the context of a fantasy world, they think in terms not only of the physical size of a modern human (apparently fantasy humans can reliably get 2000 Calories a day while they are growing), but they also judge them by the modern moral zeitgeist. While true medieval and iron age humanity seemed pretty much OK with genocide and similar crimes against other nations, if humans do that kind of thing in fantasy adventures, they are capital-E Evil. Humans can breed freely with Elves, Orcs, Gith, and Cambions. While the child is technically a “Half-Orc” or whatever, game mechanically they just end up using the game mechanics for one or the other and use their mixed parentage in order to have a more convoluted backstory.

Kobold

Kobolds a small humanoids (a meter or less tall), who have dog-like voices and faces and have scaly skin. They yip like wounded dogs and are smaller than the other “standard” humanoid races. They are tunnelers and artificers of such skill that they rival the Dwarves and Gnomes (in those professions respectively), and are adept at magic. He scales of a Kobold are usually bright blue, and sometimes they develop little horns that have been described as “sinister” and “adorable.” The iconic riding animal of the Kobold people is the giant weasel.

Kobold is an ancient word that is basically interchangeable for the words “goblin” or “gnome.” There are stories of kobolds who carry away bad little children and stories of kobolds who are helpful house spirits that chase away vermin in exchange for gifts of milk and cheese. It is a Germanic word, and the explanations for why you don't see them are generally that they can turn invisible, or transform into various animals. The modern conceptualization as a tiny man with monstrous features is undoubtedly the direct influence of Dungeons & Dragons. When Gary Gygax wrote them up, they simply had features of animals that hunted rats, rather than having magical powers to transform themselves into such beasts. And the idea of Kobolds as yipping, scaled humanoids turned out to have so much traction that many people today don't have any idea that the classic kobold had a human form to revert to. And that's fine, there are plenty of creatures in the sink with a human form. The scales of a Kobold are literally Cobalt Blue, because Cobalt is named after the Kobolds that supposedly live in the mines it was discovered in.

Orc

Orcs are big, strong, and imposing. They have hearty immune systems, and tusks. They tend to want to eat more meat and less vegetable products than humans, but biologically they probably count as humans, because they can produce nonsterile offspring with human mates – and they do sometimes. Compared to humans, Orcs look more like gorillas than humans do. They are larger, have longer arms proportionately, are hairier, and have much bigger teeth. Like Humans, they are recognizably apes. Orcs are considered more emotional and less civilized than humans, but it's not entirely clear how much that has to do with them coming from swamps and wild lands where they drive herds of swine and hunt and raid for food. Orcs appear as both honorable savages and vicious savages. The signature riding beast of the Orcs is the riding boar.

The word “orc” is an Old-English word for “foreigner” or “monster-man.” And you've never heard that word in that context, because no one speaks Old English at the dinner table any more. The reason why you know what Orcs are is because the word was used in Tolkien's LotR books after he decided that he wanted to stop using the word “goblin.” Thematically, Orcs draw upon a wide variety of monstrous humanoids from Norwegian Trolls to Indic Rakshasa to French Ogres. But while that explains the whole thing where they are big, strong, and betusked, the part where they can breed with humans is largely the fault of Tolkien's racism (where making half-orcs was some sort of symbol of society degenerating or something). Although to be perfectly honest: Rakshasa have half-human offspring all the time in Hindu stories, so it's not like we can't move on and have the half orc as a reasonably respectable thing that doesn't make us feel bad. Orcs in Warhammer and -Craft have green skin in order to show that they are totally different from humans. Our Orcs do not, and instead have skin tones that you might find on a human (or a pig, if you'd prefer). This is because they do breed with humans, which makes them look a lot more like the Chronopia Orcs than the Warhammer ones. In general, the Chronopia Orcs are a pretty good place to start, since the Tolkienian ones were supposed to look like East Asians and on that basis be hideous. And modern society would like to move past that description, because it makes us really uncomfortable. So they are large, hairy, have big mouths, and huge teeth, but they do not look like “Mongoloids.” Orcs are not a metaphor for Black people or Asian people. At least, not anymore.

[Judging__Eagle]

I like this. Thanks Frank.

[CatharzGodfoot]

But Frank, every knows that drow have dark skin because they live in caverns full of radiation. They have lots of melanin because they can use it to block (and in fact metabolize) the harmful arcane emanations of the Underdark.

Also, cambions have been known as "cambions" in D&D.

[Edit] Just so that you don't get the wrong impression, this is totally fukkin rad, and I would much like to see more. [/Edit]

[Red_Rob]

Very interesting stuff. The naming of Cobalt actually made me go check Wikipedia. Kobolds are so having blue scales in my games from now on!

Cambions have appeared in 1st Ed. AD&D, in the Monster Manual 2 I believe, however it is true that their incarnation as Tieflings has brought them much more recognition.

Regarding the Kitchen Sink style, I prefer a more limited selection of races with more meaningful interactions. The Babylon 5 way as opposed to the Star Trek or Star Wars way you could say. I find that by having a more developed shared history for the races they become more real, and there are more hooks to use during play. Making everything about your race up on the spot can be fun, but it can also lead to some odd inconsistencies because things haven't been thought through. If you know that 5 years ago the humans beat you in a war and now own large parts of your territory, but your people are too weak as a nation to do anything about it, it gives you more to work with during character interactions.

[God_of_Awesome]

Of course, this is all flavor and anyone can use any flavor they want. I make orcs herbivores that generally act like they are descendant of prey and that's okay.

[K]

Very interesting stuff. The naming of Cobalt actually made me go check Wikipedia. Kobolds are so having blue scales in my games from now on!

I'm from the bad old days of the Red Box, man.... my kobolds have always been blue!

[Judging__Eagle]

I've always been influenced by Baldur's Gate's little brownish-green skinned doggie people with eety-beety horns, since in my own 2e games, we never saw a Kobold once.

I didn't even know what a Kobold was until I played Baldur's gate.

[Lago PARANOIA]

I'm surprised that you haven't included fishmen up on that list, Frank, because they turn up in a LOT of stories.

Little Mermaid, Breath of Fire, One Piece, even Star Wars; they're all there. Common traits seem to usually having them envy land-dwellers to some degree or other probably because it's impossible to have a complicated civilization underwater. Also because they don't compete with land-dwellers for resources they're tolerated more. They can be either mammals or fish depending on a personal interpretation (probably mammals, though).

Hell, just occupying the prime non-human slot in One Piece should get them a spot, as One Piece has just recently surpassed Dragonball as the highest-selling manga of all time.

[CatharzGodfoot]

Which of the fishmen did you want? Mermen, locathah, saughin, kuo-toa, nixies, tritons, aquatic elves, ixitxachith, morkoth, weresharks, kopru, ixitxachitl, sea hags, or sea trolls?

Or were you perhaps thinking about some other aquatic race, like thanoi (walrus men), marid (water genies), one of the types of crab people, or of one of the billions of humanoid amphibians?

[Lago PARANOIA]

The fishmen should either be compressed into one overarching race and the variants should be related-offshoots (like goblins or elves) or we should just pick one particular aquatic race, move them to the coasts, and make them the most common PC aquatic race.

[IGTN]

The fishmen should either be compressed into one overarching race and the variants should be related-offshoots

Why would you only have one kind of fish-people for all the seas (bigger than the land, and more mysterious to boot), when you have little differences making entirely new species on land?

[CatharzGodfoot]

The fishmen should either be compressed into one overarching race and the variants should be related-offshoots (like goblins or elves) or we should just pick one particular aquatic race, move them to the coasts, and make them the most common PC aquatic race.

You're in the wrong damn' thread.

[Koumei]

Fishmen won't fit in the kitchen sink, you'd need a proper aquarium.

[Surgo]

Lizardfolk aren't fish but they make pretty solid fish-men.

[Lago PARANOIA]

IGTN, CA, stop being dumb, the reason why there should only be one 'Fishman' race is because it's stupid to have more than one aquatic race we expect PCs to be.

The race needs to be numerous and interesting enough to stand on its own and currently none of the aquatic races except for maybe the KTs and Sahus fit the bill. I'm down with making any of the above races be the posterboy for fishmen, but we don't need that 4E crap where we have 3 PC races filling up the same goddamn niche (Shifter, Goliath, Half-Orc). Stick as many aquatic races in the oceans as you want, but only one actually needs to be PC-accessible.

Honestly I think that a new race should be crafted right from scratch for this purpose; I think that the fishmen from Breath of Fire I or One Piece would be acceptable, depending if you want them more fishlike or mammal-like.

Lizardfolk aren't fish but they make pretty solid fish-men.

Unfortunately, Lizardfolk already belong to the niche of 'reclusive, savage, but not entirely hostile/xenophobic swamp dwellers' and people want them in WITHOUT the aquatic race schtick.

[Username17]

IGTN, CA, stop being dumb, the reason why there should only be one 'Fishman' race is because it's stupid to have more than one aquatic race we expect PCs to be.

I like reductionist fantasy. But as Catharz pointed out, this is a thread about doing Kitchen Sink fantasy. And that means that there are at least 3 forms of Ungulate Beast Man. Of course there's a long list of fish men. You got your deep ones, you got your tritons, you got your merfolk, you got yor icthyds, you got your frog people, and so on.

If a player can choose between being a bull beastman and a yak beastman, being given only one aquatic option is just bizarre.

-Username17

[Lago PARANOIA]

Oh, I thought we were just dreaming up iconic races for PCs, not filling out a setting.

Then yes, there should be like a dozen variety of fish people.

[Prak]

I like the idea of merfolk in mechimagical pants, kind of like the sligs from Oddworld.

but... that's just me...

[CatharzGodfoot]

I like the idea of merfolk in mechimagical pants, kind of like the sligs from Oddworld.

but... that's just me...

It would sure beat being stuck in this tank all day with nothing to do but troll 4chan textboards and snort cocaine off of pickled herring.

[Username17]

Additional Occupants of the Sink

Are there only 13 races in a kitchen sink setting? Hell no. There are hundreds. But you're only going to get around to a couple dozen races into any campaign at the outside (and let's face it: it's entirely possible to play a whole campaign, even in a kitchen sink setting, where all the player characters are humans and all the NPCs are also humans). This means that the chances of any particular race seeing any kind of development in any particular game is close to zero. And that's good for crossovers. It means that if you've had a big campaign setpiece involving some race or another and you go to another game, you are relatively unlikely to run into the same race. And you can often reuse the material you developed cooperatively in one campaign with another group of players and you'll look really creative. In short, the fact that there are so many races that you'll never get to them all actually protects you and everyone else at the table from cognitive dissonance. A world with over a hundred true breeding sapient, tool using species may not make any logical sense, but it can make great dramatic sense.

It is important to note that any any time you can introduce a previously unmentioned subrace. That is, while it may be that the Naga are not the race you need for a story, or have been burdened with baggage from a previous encounter that would make them unsuitable, you can always bring in a new kind of Naga that has different traits relevant to the story. Sometimes these are as simple as palette swaps. That is, you might have “Black Scale” or “Golden Scale” Nagas, who are basically just the same Nagas but painted a different color, justifying them to have a different backstory or power list – or both. Sometimes it' something slightly more substantial, such as “Rattler Nagas” who have a rattle snake rattle at the end of their tails and are therefore presumably different in some way.

• Beast Men
• Gnoll The Gnoll was originally from a Lord Dunsany short story about a man who stole a bunch of gems from ill-defined monster people. Originally spelled “Gnole” the spelling of “Gnoll” comes from a typographical error by Gary Gygax. Originally described n D&D as a cross between Gnomes and Trolls, and blessed with some spectacularly bad art in the early days, no one really cared about Gnolls one way or the other until they got a badass hyena-man makeover in the late 80s. That has had a lot of traction and now “everyone knows” that Gnolls have Hyena heads.
• Minotaur Originally from Greek myth as the result of intercourse between a human woman and a powerful but wicked cow, Minotaurs are large humans with bull parts. In ages past they had human faces and cow bodies, but the modern conception gives them bull heads and human bodies. They are able to use axes that way and look a lot more threatening.
• Yak Folk Found first in Tibetan mythology as messengers of gods, Yak-People were brought to the attention of fantasy gamers by D&D's Al Quaddim setting.
• Satyrs Greek fertility spirits, Satyrs have human torsos and goat legs. They also have ram horns sprouting from otherwise human heads. They are portrayed in many stories and games as remarkable musicians and lovers.
• Pan The Pan are goat headed beast men from the Mediterranean. They appear as “Broo” in Runequest and “Ibixians” in Dungeons & Dragons. They are the most frequently drawn “beast man.”
• Centaurs Centaurs are greek Horses with a human torso instead of a horse's neck. They vary wildly in size.
• Naga The Naga are serpent/human mixes that hail from Hindu and Buddhist mythology. How much human and how much snake they have varies wildly on source. The D&D Naga has a human head and the rest of the body of a snake, while the Etherlords Naga has a whole human torso and the lower parts of a snake. The Heroes of Might and Magic Naga goes a step farther than that and has multiple sets of human arms to go with its human torso – and in case you were wondering, all of those can find matches in ancient Vedic paintings.
• Ophidians The word “Ophidian” just means “snake” and so various snake people have born that moniker in countless books and games.
• Glycons From the Macedonian, they are giant snakes with human heads. The historical Glycons were probably hand puppets used by Macedonian prophets to scare people.
• Lamia A different woman-with-a-snake-for-legs. They eat babies and give birth to ghastly monsters. The same name gets used as humans with tauric leopard lower parts for no particular reason in Dungeons & Dragons.
• Medusae Women with snakes growing out of their head who can turn people to stone with their gaze. From the Greek. Sometimes shown with the lower parts of a snake, and sometimes with human legs.
• Serpent Folk Most specifically from the Conan stories, the Serpent People have fangs and poison bites and long slithery tails. They have arms, and usually feet too, but snake bodies and heads.
• Badgerfolk These appear in D&D as Armand, and Warcraft as Wolvar. And in Bread and Jam for Francis.
• Balu These appear as Panzerbjorn in the Golden Compass, and of course thousands of years of Hindu mythology. Since they look exactly like bears, a case can be made that they are not beastmen, but the idea is the same.
• Bandar The monkey people appear throughout Hindu and Buddhist literature, and they get shout-outs in all kinds of games and modern fiction – usually under that name because it was in The Jungle Book. Honestly, it's not at all obvious what is so special about a “monkey that is like a human” since humans are a kind of monkey, but the concept has traction. Monkeys are awesome.
• Nezumi These are rat people. They are most specifically Japanese, but smilar things show up all over the world. They appear in the Warhammer fantasy universe as the Skaven.
• Kitsune These are people – usually sexy ladies – who are foxes in the literal sense. They have fox tails, and often fox ears. This makes them essentially Cat Girls, which means that they are a green light, a rarity among beastmen for those not wishing to indulge furry tendencies.
• Lapins Humanoid rabbit people. Sometimes they are portrayed as tricksters (like Bugs), and sometimes as very serious (like the White Rabbit).
• Nekomusume The oft contemplated cat girls of Japanese mythology, these have appeared basically everywhere, including of course Thundercats and Cheetah from Wonder Woman comics. They've even graced the covers of D&D materials as the Catfolk (and about a billion others in Dragon Magazine and various home brew).
• Frog Folk These are humanoid frogs, and come from the folklore of Ohio (where it is called “The Loveland Frog”) and Connecticut. The most famous Frog Folk is Kermit. Versions of Frog Folk appeared in Dungeons & Dragons as the Bullywug and the much smaller Grippli, and in Everquest as the Froglok.
• Taweret Hippo headed people from Egypt, they were brought in to Dungeons & Dragons as a race of space mercenaries called the Giff.
• Lizard Folk The Lizardfolk are large reptilian humanoids who live in swamps. They are most specifically from South Carolina folk lore, and appear (often as “Lizard Men”) in basically every fantasy setting you can imagine.
• Cherufe The Cherufe are a Chilean legend of reptilian humanoids who live in volcanoes and have extremely hot skin. They appear in Dungeons & Dragons as Fire Newts.
• Salamanders Similar to a Lamia, but specifically on fire, the Salamander hails from bizarre misunderstandings of biology by Romans.
• Draconians They are the same kind of idea as the Lizard Folk, but they have wings that may allow them to fly and can usually breathe fire.
• Sauruses These are dinosaur people nominally, but they usually look more like big alligator headed humans with thick scales and stubby tails. They appear all over the place, but they are perhaps most importantly found in Warhammer Fantasy Battle, because that way there's an appropriate model for them.
• Lemurians Ancient lizard people from a lost continent that use strange magic crystals and do things in inexplicable ancient ways, these guys are originally from the hallucinogenically racist tirades of Blavatsky, but are nonetheless important because they were reused in Land of the Lost as the Sleestak.
• Tengu Part human, part raven, all trickster and totally disrespectful. Tengu are shown with anything from raven heads to human faces with sharp noses. The name is from Japanese nd is also transliterated as “Kenku.” Appears both ways as possibly different creatures in Dungeons & Dragons.
• Yazata Humans with bird wings. Originally from Zoroastrian mythology. They are the descendants of the Amesha Spenta. They appear in Dominions as Caelians, and in Dungeons & Dragons as Raptorans.
• Harpies Human heads (and often arms and breasts) on a bird chassis, in classical Greek literature they often have similar or identical singing powers to sirens. Are pretty similar to Garudas in Buddhist lore.
• Coleopterids Also called the “beetle folk,” these are a race of humanoid beetles from the future that are from H. P. Lovecraft's Mythos.
• Chuhukon From Hopi mythology, the Chuhukon are ant-people that live underground. They are pretty much interchangeable for the Bugrom from El-Hazard.
• Myrmidons Another Ant-based humanoid, this time from Macedonia. Myrmidons are highly warlike and fight in close formation. They are similar to a non-extradimensional Formian from Dungeons & Dragons.
• Broučci From Czech literature, the Broučci are another beetle people, but they are small, fly, and glow.
• Phraint Written up by the now deceased author of Arduin, the Phraints are man-sized mantis people. They were later called the “Thri-Kreen” in Dungeons & Dragons.
• Jorogumo Tauric spider people from Japanese mythology. In Dungeons & Dragons, they appear as “Driders.”
• Amak Humanoid walruses. Originally from Aleutian folklore. Appear in Lewis Carrol as deceptive tricksters and in Warcraft as the “Tuskarr.”
  Aquatic Beast Races
• Merfolk Human torso, fish tail. The tail may or may not be transformable into legs. Usually encountered as “Mermaids” and common enough as a trope to get their own Disney movie.
• Tritons Like Merfolk, but with two leg-like fish tails instead of one.
• Ponaturi Vicious sea-dwelling shark men who come onto land and steal people to take to their undersea homes. Originally from Maori folklore, they appear in Dungeons & Dragons as the Sahuagin.
• Kappa The Kappa are Japanese turtle men. Traditionally possessed of a dish of water on their head that they draw power from, they sometimes appear in a more biological form, looking more like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. They even classically know a great number of Karate techniques, and are therefore predisposed to being ninjas.
• Deep Ones Deep Ones are from H.P. Lovecraft's Mythos books. They are degenerate fishmen who can crossbreed with humans somehow and have offspring that breath water. They are humanoids have fish features and slimy skin. They appear in Dungeons & Dragons as the Kuo-Toa.
• Linxia These are giant prawns that are employed as soldiers by the Dragon Kings in Chinese and Japanese lore. They look basically like the Prawn in District 9 and a similar concept with inexplicable paralyzing tentacles showed up in Dungeons & Dragons as the Chuul.
• Pangxie These are warlike crab people who work for the Dragon Kings in Chinese Mythology. Crab people also appear in Dungeons & Dragons as the Yurian.
• Icthyds Humanoid bodies with large fish heads, these creatures are often brought in as a figure of comedy because they are much less sexy than mermaids. They appear in Dungeons & Dragons as Locathah.
• Atlanteans Humanoid aquatic creatures with a distinctly frog-like caste to their features, Atlanteans are only tangentially related to the Platonic novel of the same name. They are from an underwater city that usually hasn't so much “sunken” as “was built under water.” These are major creatures – under this name even – in Dominions and Masters of the Universe (the archetypical example being Mer-Man).

[virgil]

Question Frank, doesn't this contradict some of your earlier opinions regarding kitchen sink games? I remember you mentioning that it makes knowledge of the game impossible and it's all just a blank slate where nothing matters. An example you gave once regarding Star Trek...

It is important also to note that Star Trek is a completely unplayable game world and is in fact a classic example of what not to do when designing a cooperative storytelling game. Imagine: you're on a ship and weird green things are appearing in the hallways and causing energy conduits to explode. Oh noes! What do you do?

Seriously, what the heck do you do? It's Star Trek, what the characters do is wander around running diagnostics until theyfigure out what radiation emissions from the crystal aliens are making their shit explode and then they throw some super physics at the problem to either shut out the harmful rays, solve the deeper environmental problem causing those rays to happen in the first place, or just frickin leave and hope the problem doesn't follow. But what the heck does a player do? The characters are just making extended science tests until they win the adventure, the player has seemingly no input whatsoever.

There's no game there, it's just a narrative. The viewer has literally no basis on which to anticipate what the next group of forehead aliens are or do, and has no idea how to solve any particular problem. Everything that happens is the equivalent of Game Master Exposition.

[Judging__Eagle]

Only one word Frank, and that word is "yoink". Thanks for that write up.

[Mask_De_H]

It seems like adding some kind of bound to a kitchen sink setting: ie pissing in the dark (in an incredibly awesome way).

Edit: It seems like you could switch out one of the big 13 for the other members in the sink if a player wished. So Jimmy wants to be the big imposing ungulate beastman, so he goes Minotaur over Orc. Inaba wants to be graceful and has played far too much Tohou, so she switches out Elf, Drow, or Hob for Kitsune, Nekomusume, or Tengu.

Also, how come the Tanuki isn't up with the other hengeyoukai?

[CatharzGodfoot]

Also, how come the Tanuki isn't up with the other hengeyoukai?

Maybe Frank doesn't like the idea of an animal that makes such great use of his scrotum. Note that it is important to parse that sentence correctly.

[Username17]

Question Frank, doesn't this contradict some of your earlier opinions regarding kitchen sink games? I remember you mentioning that it makes knowledge of the game impossible and it's all just a blank slate where nothing matters. An example you gave once regarding Star Trek...

Player knowledge about the world in a kitchen sink setting is basically impossible. You have no idea how you're supposed to react to a Lizard Folk or a Nezumi, and neither do I. As generally played then, the kitchen sink serves as a tool to wash away familiarity, leaving players with nothing but alienation.

However, kitchen sinks are nonetheless popular because they feel like they are full of possibility. So I've thought a lot about how to make it work. And I think the answer is to have the players make stuff up right there at the table. You run a couple of rounds of straight Munchhausen until you have a group you can agree on. "That's not what I heard... I heard that they have a matriarchal culture where the womenfolk are sent out in the world just after puberty while the men stay home and do domestic work. Those women who make it back after their adventuring journey spend the rest of their lives ruling the tribe and making babies with whoever they deem worthy..."

It seems like you could switch out one of the big 13 for the other members in the sink if a player wished.

By definition, you cannot. The "big 13" are there because they are commonly used in games (plural), and on that basis get more descriptive text and imply a greater familiarity. The players actually do know that Hobs are unsettlingly quiet and have a reputation for precision. They know all kinds of crap about what humans are capable of and what makes humans tick.

In an individual game, you can happen to not use any Orcs. You can have one of the players play a Lapin, or make the Boggarts extremely important to the campaign and go into extreme depth into Boggart culture and have dozens of Boggart NPCs. But that won't make Lapin or Boggarts commonly used, nor will it create descriptive text for those races that is commonly read and understood by players in other games. And indeed, if you did find another game with a heavy investment in Boggarts or Lapin, it's dollars to donuts that they would be completely different anyway. And the reverse goes for those Orcs. The fact that you didn't use them in one game doesn't make them rarely used overall, and it doesn't take the descriptive text away. Other players in other games will still see a lot of Orcs, and the game books will still contain a lot of information about Orcs. And thus between those games that use Orcs, which will be most of them, there will still be a lot of continuity between Orcs in those games. Continuity that does not - and cannot exist between different games and their rendition of the Lapin.

Maybe Frank doesn't like the idea of an animal that makes such great use of his scrotum. Note that it is important to parse that sentence correctly.

Nut. Sack.

Also, because the Tanuki aren't really "beast men" they are "sapient monsters." It's a subtle difference, but it's a whole different list. One that has Ahuizotls and Phoenix on it.

And Nut Sack.

-Username17