What races have you allowed into the Flanaess as optional player races?
(or not allowed)
I am thinkning of including the Winged Folk from Dragon Magazine and thought I would place them somw ehre down near the Crystalmist Mountains due to the climate.
I am also thinking of including the Trollborn from the Vikings hand book as well as the artilce on Snow Elves either Blackmoor or Corusk Mountains.
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The Trolls of Oerth are quite different than the trolls made popular on other worlds. Oerth trolls stand between seven and a half to nine feet tall, with some variants here and there. Trolls are broad shouldered and husky resembling Ogres with goat-like horns attached to their heads. Unlike the ogres though trolls posses great knowledge and intellect with strength to match. It is said that the dwarven culture is slightly influenced by the trolls own culture. But it is ill advised to state this to the dwarven race. It seems that trolls and dwarves share similar types of dress, and much of the Sheldomar Valley has been influenced by both cultures. Most sages believe that the ancient Jotens' were actually the main influences on both dwarven and trollish cultures. Both cultures have differences in beliefs and overall ideology, yet one can see the similarities in both cultures.
Trollborn, Trow, and my alternate Spriggan are also included. But additional races not really just more of a play on the existing ones. Also I am more inclined to lessen the amount of elvin races instead of expanding them.
Argon thanks for the info on your Troll born option. I am looking forward to reading some more.
I divide my Player Races into two categories; Group & Solo Race Options.
Some races are not meant to played in a group unless a significant backstory supports the option. I dont like the over the top character options, so I wont be looking at allowing a player to play just anything. As long as the player has an idea that he can back with some input, then I will always consider it, BUT his idea mya just become a SOLO game.
Basically catfolk and batfolk in the east, and a bunch of other races in the Celestial Imperium, who filter their way through the Crystalmists into western Flanaess.
Argon your trolls sound pretty cool.
Darkherald, winged folk would fit on Greyhawk fine, there were Aarococra in the Yatil's from memory.
I am thinkning of including the Winged Folk from Dragon Magazine and thought I would place them somw ehre down near the Crystalmist Mountains due to the climate.
I put them in the Lortmils for a few different reasons. One, the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer notes that "winged folk" are found in that area. It also puts them close to, but still isolated from, several major elven realms. And it allows them to have a history in the region of the Ulek states during the Flan era. My attempt at resolving the history of the Winged Folk (Al Kalak Elam) from Dragon #51 with the Greyhawk setting and the avariel from The Complete book of Elves is on this page right here.
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I am also thinking of including the Trollborn from the Vikings hand book
The only difficulty with this is that the "trolls" in the Vikings Campaign Sourcebook are really ogres (in game statistics and appearance, though a bit more civilized), which means the trollborn are conceptually identical to half-ogres.
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as well as the artilce on Snow Elves either Blackmoor or Corusk Mountains.
In the article you cite ("In the Frost and Snow" from Dragon #155), the snow elves are said to dwell in the Crystalmists.
Winged Folk are an excellent choice of demi-human to add to your Greyhawk campaign, DarkHerald, because they are different from the other races. Like Argon, I minimize the types of Elves, Dwarves, etc. by making all Elven races identical, all Dwarven races identical, etc. as far as game stats go in the same manner as all human races are identical. It just makes sense.
I played my own Winged Folk character back in High School (mid '80s) and had a blast with him. (Temporarily lost the ability to fly in the Sentinal module when he had acid poured on him while running through a gatehouse. ) I think they should be very rarely encountered outside of their own realms, though, or their uniqueness will be unimpressive. My own Winged Folk (AD&D Ftr 11/Ill 11) character jointly rules a small Winged Folk/Dwarven kingdom in the southwestern Rakers (hex S2/60) with my Dwarf (AD&D Clr 8/Ftr 8) south, southwest of Ogburg. They trade with the Pale, but go out of their way to make it appear that only a few tribes of Dwarves and a very small number of Winged Folk dwell in those inaccessible reaches.
In my own campaign, races like Drow, Tieflings, half-Celestials, and Dragonborn are as rare as Minotaurs and half-Ogres in civilized lands. This is how I treat Winged Folk as well. This is supported by the information provided in Dragon #51 mentioned by Rasgon.
I forbid any player races first introduced during the 3.0 tenure and beyond, meaning Dragonborn and Warforged.
Tieflings and drow are also not acceptable.
Half-orcs, in my GH, do not mean a half-human/half-orc, but an orc who has forsook orc society in favor of living with humans for which he is then branded "half and orc" by his own kin.
I want to permit sahuagin, but just because I love them. But my sahuagin are the drow-equivalent of the sea elves, much as they were suggest to be in the 77' MM.
Quite simply, I would not allow them. That means no warforged, no dragonborn, no tieflings and no eladrin. Players can be humans, dwarves, elves (but not drow), gnomes, halflings, half-elves or half-orcs.
I wouldn't allow drow, dragonborn, and most monster races, basically for the same reason - the character would be so feared and/or hated and/or shunned wherever they went it would interfere with the narrative. IMC "normal" people react somewhat weirdly to non-humans depending on where the players are. Somewhere like the Duchy of Ulek and most neighboring states they're not going to be that unused to elves, but in other places they'll react with caution, some suspicion and a little bit of fear. Less so with dwarves, gnomes and halflings, who tend to be less "standoffish" toward humans. The party's goliath fighter is more an object of curiosity, regarded as a savage barbarian by the locals, but has proven to be an OK-sort of fellow so no one gives him too much grief, and the obvious unrepentant racists/bullies in the community know to steer clear of him.
Thats exactly why I have default races for standard "GROUP" play and I have the more exotic races for "SOLO" play.
This way you get the freedom to explore both as player and DM. Suddenly the roles are reversed why I the "DM" get to play the human paladin that is hunting down the evil drow "Player Character." These options are kept with in reason and as long as the player approaches me with a valid backstory to work with.
I will not allow dragonborn or any of the other races that I consider non-canon well at least IMO.
I still have the Gnoll Solo adventure path stuck in my head ....
The same stands for classes, I dont like all these wonderful and weird classes, I am pretty much old school in that respect, but I do have one or two that has caught my eye. Generally its a you must be smoking your sisters socks again, when approached to play something out of the ordinary.
I got the opportunity to play a Gnoll Character in a game once. It was exactly because he was feared and an outsider that made him so much fun to play. It also helped that he was part of another Player's Paladin's retinue that kept him from getting too beat up. However this was also in a Forgotten Realms game where humanoids are a little more accepted. But it all depends on your view of your Game. In the Greyhawk game I am running now I am having Humanoids being an accepted, if Rare, part of Baklunish society. Kind of following suit with the Al-Qadim idea of the religion of Al-Akbar teaching tolerance to all. Also I liked the idea of the Kettite ambassador in Thornward having Hobgoblin body guards. Someone here did a write up on the city and had that in it and I liked it.
I could also see humanoids being a lot more accepted in the Old Great Kingdom's splinter states as they are used as mercenary troops. Also maybe Ogres and possibly some Gnolls up in the Barbarian lands. Also Bandit kingdoms where they would more in likely be fighting for Iuz. But, what if they got screwed somehow or had an epiphany and are now fighting against Iuz along side the other rebels? I could see that environment actually causing some races to become strange bedfellows. Hmmm Wood Elf archers and some Warg riding goblins bursting out of the woods and attacking a supply caravan of Iuz. That would be funny. In the Thornward game I am running the captain of the Kettish Ambassadors Guard captain is a follower of Al-Akbar after having a religious revelation. He is now a Templar of the church and gives all of his money to the poor. So although he is still distrusted in the better parts of the city the poor sections actually look up to him and see him as their guardian angel. It's all about perception after all.
I do not allow drow on the basis that they are monsters. There is a double standard for sahuagin with me, but thus far no one has actually played one so my hypocrisy is still limited to theory right now (at least regarding the above). I have had a kobold and a satyr in the party before, but they were the result of the reincarnation spell.
When I ran 3.0/3.5 I disallowed almost every character class. I fail to see how the class Hexblade is a contemporary of Fighter. Or the class Dragon Shaman. Fighter is a very generalized concept; it represents nearly every character in a fantasy movie to date. Now I just do not allow wotc products into my home; excepting the LGG, of course (even though it contradicts other GH sources regarding the population of Perrenland, which bothers me).
I designed a campaign around the themes of the French/Indian War based between the Uleks and the Pomarj where I intended to detail the intermingling of orcs with humans giving rise to my definition of half-orc. I figure with all the different tribes of orcs, surely some of them maintain a system of values that would put them in opposition to the others of their kind. I do not jive with the interbreeding of orcs and humans--the sum of their parts being more powerful than their origins.
I may be getting a little bit off-topic, but I'll offer this explaination of how I see the various races and their relationships to their gods' pantheons in order to provide a basis for why I treat Humans/Demi-humans differently than Humanoids.
In 'a' beginning, there were the gods. They were divided by race, though how and why that occured is beyond the scope of this short treatise. One pantheon of gods (including Seymuanya) created miniatures of themselves to manipulate as proxies in thier various interactions. They soon discovered that having such proxies worship them gave them additional power, so they pooled their resources and created many more. The other pantheons of gods soon caught on and created proxies in their own images.
The gods of some of the pantheons could not agree on a uniform type of proxy and each made its own version (e.g. the various dragons and giants, each having an innate alignment that it was destined to follow). Others were of a similar disposition and, whether agreeing on a uniform physical manifestation of their proxies or choosing slightly differing forms, they all agreed upon a uniform alignment. Thus, the gods of the Orcs, Goblinoids, Gnolls, and other 'humanoids' created their proxies also without agency. Some good and neutral pantheons did likewise and such creatures as Azers, Baku, Lammasu, and Satyrs were the result.
Finally, there were the pantheons whose members were of such varying dispositions that they were neither able to agree upon a uniform alignment, nor was any one faction strong enough to force its will upon the whole. These pantheons included the gods of the humans, elves, dwarves, halflings, and other similar 'demi-humans'. These pantheons created proxies and imbued them with the power of agency. Thus, since the gods could not agree upon an alignment to force upon their representative proxies, each proxy was allowed to choose for itself. Of course, this immediately began a war of influence between these pantheons for the worship of their proxies. Some times, later, various members of these pantheons secretly created their own, individual proxies and innately aligned creatures such as the various good and evil forms of Sprites were the result.
Sub-races like the Drow and Duergar represent entire civilizations that chose to follow the influences of the evil members of their respective pantheons. Despite their civilizations being given over to evil, each individual member still has his or her agency. It is just very difficult for someone raised in a pit of depravity to choose good over evil, so it rarely happens. Half-Orcs are granted agency by the grace of their human parentage and thus, are not destined, except it be by choice, to the service of evil.
The above being the case in my campaign, my PCs know that, though you can raise an evil dragon from an egg and expect it to behave according to the alignment of the person raising it (Best of the Dragon #3?), such is the case only so long as that person is with it. If the evil dragon is divested of its goodly-aligned master, it will revert to its innate evil alignment. They also know that, though it is good and just to allow an evil human or demi-human a chance to repent and surrender without being slain, it is folly to do so for a humanoid or any other innately evil creature.
It gets more involved, but this works for my players as they don't have to worry about the moral questions involved in slaughtering humanoid females and young when assaulting a warren or whether the Orc captive in the Bugbear dungeons can be trusted never to harm another innocent soul if they free it. As far as these evil creatures goes, they are to be slaughtered with as little remorse as one would crush the egg sac of a cockroach.
As far as Drow, etc. characters goes, I reserve such for my more experienced groups of players. New players are always required to play a race and class from the Player's handbook. Perhaps it's my age showing, but in my oppinion, a person's first PC should always be something basic, not a half-Drow/half-Dragonborn Witch/Demonbinder. Any PCs of innately evil races (such as Minotaurs) are actually Reincarnated souls of a race with agency trapped in the new body.
I got the opportunity to play a Gnoll Character in a game once. It was exactly because he was feared and an outsider that made him so much fun to play. It also helped that he was part of another Player's Paladin's retinue that kept him from getting too beat up. However this was also in a Forgotten Realms game where humanoids are a little more accepted. But it all depends on your view of your Game. In the Greyhawk game I am running now I am having Humanoids being an accepted, if Rare, part of Baklunish society. Kind of following suit with the Al-Qadim idea of the religion of Al-Akbar teaching tolerance to all. Also I liked the idea of the Kettite ambassador in Thornward having Hobgoblin body guards. Someone here did a write up on the city and had that in it and I liked it.
See if you can get a copy of Zeif: Rock of the West from Living GH Journal # 5. Fred Weining wrote it. Not sure where you can get a copy though now that Paizo isn't selling back issues. Anyway, they have uruzarys, which are the orc version of janissaries. Cool idea.
Yeah I really liked that they kept the Islamic tolerance idea in Al-Qadim but had it cater to races more so instead. I think I will allow players to play a Humanoid race after they get through this first round of the Campaign, or if they need to make a new Character at any point. There are a few Humanoid NPC's which are mostly old Characters of mine
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) I think they should be very rarely encountered outside of their own realms, though, or their uniqueness will be unimpressive. My own Winged Folk (AD&D Ftr 11/Ill 11) character jointly rules a small Winged Folk/Dwarven kingdom in the southwestern Rakers (hex S2/60) with my Dwarf (AD&D Clr 8/Ftr 8) south, southwest of Ogburg. They trade with the Pale, but go out of their way to make it appear that only a few tribes of Dwarves and a very small number of Winged Folk dwell in those inaccessible reaches.
