There was a request last week for us to share our favorite Fantasy Races. Feel free to tell us your favorite and not so favorite races of fantasy people.
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If I’m allowed to say the race I created for my fantasy writings, then the katano. They’re basically just long living, smart, proud, and in terms of appearance, tall, more-pointy-eared elves.
If I can’t choose them, then I would go with elves, since I prefer speed and agility to strength, or, depending on the universe, drow/dark elves.
Dwarfs are cool because they usually the Blacksmiths and tradesmen. I also like halflings because they are so tiny they make good thieves.
I hate the elves with a burning passion. Not because of tolkien, but because of what they’re often in RPGs: better in every respect (physical and mental), morally superior (Elves are good), and, well, a human city who doesn’t admit other races is racist, an elven forest who kills intruders just protects the forest.
Funnily enough, I like the melniboneans (who are distorted elves), the dwarves (they have their good and bad sides), and am pretty sure I’m missing something else.
When I was young Elves were under 3′ tall and I didn’t know of them any other way. If I remember right in the LOTR and Hobbit cartoons they had short elves too. Then I was introduced to Final Fantasy XI, holly smoke 6′ and 7′ elves. I was thinking when the heck did that happen. Then the LOTR movie and more tall elves. I think sopme times people confuse halflings and small elves. Some people go with round ears for halflings and others go with pointed ears. And I have also saw mix races called halfling because they were half and half. I like to study the races and compare how other people see them to the way I see them.
Admittedly, my favorite “fantasy” races are the ones I created. But that’s probably because most already-existing ones are just mostly-humans with some extremely minor visible physical differences (usually) and tendencies toward one or two personality types which are taken from human archetypes. I mean, elves are basically egotistical, effeminate, magical humans with lanky builds and pointy ears; dwarves are sometimes greedy, often stubborn or conservative and almost always alcoholic humans with short, stocky builds; halflings are either plucky comic reliefs or brave underdogs, who happen to be small humans. On the other hand, a truly “alien” race is hard to imagine, especially on a psychological level, because all you’ve got to base them on is human experiences. Perhaps that’s why I like “furries” so much; they’re different enough to be interesting, yet familiar enough to be conceivable.
There was a time during my rpg days that I was pretty fascinated with the variety of orcisb and goblinoid races. It’s hard to classify, under most rules, these races are clearly monsters, rather than PC races (with the exception of half-orcs), but I remember when I was running an D20 Modern Urban Arcana campaign, that I was busy creating a bunch of goblin, kobold, orc, and bugbear NPCs for my players to deal with. Not just combat, but a lot of everyday stuff too.
Dark Elves / Drow …. This is my favorite artistic style for elves and is how I picture them when I am playing AD&D, Rifts, or Paladium Fantasy.
http://s4.zerochan.net/Record.Of.Lodoss.War.full.1029718.jpg
Record of Lodoss Wars which is where that image is from, it an Anime based on the creators D&D group and campaign.
Actually thinking about it, I want to change my vote from Drow, to Kender. I remember going to a RPG convention and playing my first kender character and from that point on until the convention ended People I didn’t know knew me as the guy playing the Kender! In that first game at that convention which was a low level game the party tracked some kind of giant lizard to its lair, and then stood around debating what to do next. All the talking was boring my character so I had him walk up to the entrance of the cave and shout “Hello In There?!”
My favorite fantasy character type would be a close tie between the Drow ( Dark Elves ) or Orcs ( a cross between the hulk and a wild boar ). I love to look and culture of the Drow. So proud and secretive. Very assassin type. Lots of speed and cunning with cool toys. On the other hand I love the brutish nature of the Orcs and how ebverything is matter of fact and on the table to put it. Theres no hidden agendas. Just power and loyalty and growing that by smashing your enemies. If I find myself playing a game that offers both types I find myself torn and usually make two characters. I like to sneak, decieve, and steal but sometimes its just fun to kill everything and be feared by all. As far as races I dislike, if I had to choose I would say the smaller types like hobbits or dwarves. I dont like how small they are and those types of chracters are usually carried by another or tossed asaide when the going gets tough. Not to say dwarves arent tough but they were not made for long distance fights or running but they are very dangerous in short distances, their natural sprinters, or however that part of the movie goes if you know what I am talking about LOL
My first AD&D game was right after a game of Clue, I had played Miss Scarlet, as I always liked to do. I had never heard of AD&D befor. My first character was a female elf, based off Cher from her Take Me Home album with the gold batwing headdress and gold bikini. I named her Telcocs Ssim, Miss Scarlet spelled backwards. I had a series of Elves after that, male and female. I liked to play females cause I could flirt witht he straight guys characters and no one thought much of it. LOL 😀
But as much as I loved nad played elves from High, to Drey, to Sylven, to Drow, to Wolfriders … My all time favorite race, as some who have been around her for a while can attest, are SATYRS the original Party Animals!
I KNOW that pissed some people off LOL 😀
But that is how a Kender should be played if ya asked me
how did it go with the Giant Lizard?
I think that elves were confused with sprites and fairies, not halflings. Thus the size, ears, twinkly stuff, etc. I believe that elves in folklore were more related to sprites. Tolkien is the reason we have redeveloped the concept.
BTW, I like Tolkien elves, but I like the stories of the “Half-Elven” (Peredhel) best. My choice would be Half-Elves.
Furries are anthropomorphized humans — much of what you are criticizing in humanoid races exists within furries: cat-people who are sneaky and sexually-charged, bear-people who are strong, aggressive, etc. I don’t see how this differs from near-human races . They’re near-humans with fur.
The drow because I like spooky chicks and consider spiders to be good luck. Least favorite… dragonborn because that’s just really trying too hard to be clever.
Granted, a lot of human archetypes exist within furries… What I was trying to say was that physically, they’re more different from humans than other humanoid fantasy races. Like I admitted in my previous post, it’s extremely hard to come up with alien psychology, so all you can really hope for is the physical differences. As far as furries go, like I said, they’re different enough to be interesting, while remaining familiar enough to actually know how to make one. If something else fit that description, I’d probably be interested in that, too. Ever since I was young, I had always seen just regular humans as boring, and for a while the standard fantasy races were interesting to me, until I had become aware of the furry fandom. I had been aware of anthropomorphic animals before then, of course, but while the individual examples I had been aware of were interesting to me, there weren’t enough examples to keep me interested, or to set a standard of “different,” until I had become aware of the furry fandom.
Well Luckily the Lizard wasn’t home, but one of the party members ( a half elf ) throw a dagger at my Kender, sooooooo, I taunted her…”Your mother was a Dryder” I actually turned to Player of the Half Elf and yelled that at her. The DM looked at me and said ” You didn’t” I said Yep Kender Taunt. She failed her save and the rest of the party had to stop the ensuing fight.
I like giants, elves(the little ones, not the Tolkien humans with pointed ears version), dwarves, leprechauns and fairies.
I don’t like brownies(but, I like girl-scout cookies), and as I said before, Tolkien elves.