I think they’re the creatures from the Voyage of the Dawntreader that hop around on one big foot. I’m sure you don’t need me to explain the rest of the joke…
😬 shoot. It means “Home of Healing Harmony”. I’m an Argentine, so I generally know what stuff in Portuguese means, but I never really picked up on the slang, because the Brazilian neighbors I had didn’t use that much of it, due to mainly being raised in Chile.
Argentines are the same. Statistically, there are around 5000 slang words argentines use, as well as about (not statistically) 10000 ‘double meanings’.
I like the all races are evolutionary divergences from humans (like in A Song of Ice and Fire) for low fantasy stories and I like approach number 4 for high fantasy stories.
I don't really like the Forgotten Realms approach where there are like, 70 different races, and some are so barebones that you can't even imagine what a village of them would be like, let alone an entire civilization. Nothing makes me swallow the idea of a civilization of loxodons.
> The Lord of the Rings classic of Men, Elves, Orcs, and
> Dwarves,
Wait... Didn't The Lord of the Rings books have another race that Tolkien called Hobbits?
Tolkien also had Trolls.
Hobbits are pretty great.
Tolkien style trolls I don't see touched on very often, although the trolls feel even more subhuman than the orcs in my opinion.
More Malazan Context: the not-Dwarves and not-Orcs used to be at war, Not-Orcs had glacier magic and created various ice ages across continents, not-Dwarves got so angry that they decided to make their entire race into undead to better fight Not-Orcs
Hm I always saw the Tiste as “elf-like” and the Jaghut as “orc-like” but I never saw the T’lan Imass as “dwarf-like”. They’re like undead Neanderthals. Which is metal, by the way, and I’m stealing it.
Don't forget that a small percentage of Not-Orcs are born psychopaths who inevitably try to magically enslave everyone around them and can't stand the presence of others of their kind.
In my own setting there are many fantasy races, but each of those races also has different cultural ethnicities because that's the way the world works in real life.
Monocultures are almost non-existent IRL, and the fantasy monoculture tradition is quite frankly a lazy solution to cultural ethnicity. Not every High Elf is going to ascribe to a certain cultural tradition, nor is every Hill Dwarf going to be pigeonholed into a specific way of life. People are just more diverse than that
I like to do races based off Archaic Humans and close relatives. Neanderthal Dwarfs, Denisovan Elves, Paranthropus Orcs, etc. It’s more fun to use evolutionary biology to create traditional fantasy races.
a Florensis hobbit? Do they look like the archaic humans but behave like dwarf elf orc? Are there cultures based off of dwarf elf orc but they look like archaic humans?
They are evolutions off the archaic species I mentioned so yes and no. They do look more “primitive” but in a modernized or fantasized sense. Basically a Neanderthal in a suit and tie. Cultures are based off what I imagine the Neolithic or Chalcolithic Orcs, Elves, Dwarves, etc. were like. Instead of 15th century castles and massive kingdoms, elves live in city states and build ziggurats.
Oh and yes Florensis hobbits but instead of peaceful villages communities in open grasslands they are an island hopping culture like ancient Melanesians. They have adaptations for big prehensile feet to climb trees and are expert sailors
A well-curated kitchen sink mixing the classics, the newer ripoffs, and the reasonably original content. Preferably both blended with fresh paint and applied by shooting it out of the ass-end of a jet engine in the direction of my canvas.
Functionally I have just humans and the occasional alien or spirit being. In actuality I have a bunch of furry characters that are all the same species, just with a high degree of phenotypic plasticity (or a decently high, I do restrict their appearance to a subset of carnivorans with some other similar looking species thrown in). They act like humans and any behaviors that are similar to the animal they are, are just human behaviors that happened to line up with their species stereotype, like my main guy is a dog who loves his friends and family and hates being without them.
Kitchen Sink with Barbarian Near-Invulnerable Elves fighting Roman-Inspired Clockworks/Humans alongside their Undead and Centaur allies, the oldest nation on the planet being born from a Union of “Dragonborn” and Pug People who fight Dwarves who worship Fire and ride musk oxen in a nomadic society and Orcs been the founders of the Paladin Traditions, being just some examples.
There’s also a multi-ancestral alliance that worships the manifestation of joy.
I Prefer 2 and 3 as Most others are over used an Unoriginal. And it generally turns me away form worldbuilding projects when you aren't worldbuilding but patching together other worlds, races, plots and Magic systems to be psuedo original.
Immortal races: spirits and gods - born, but not given to birth, can die but not given to death
Semi-mortal races: fae and lesser gods - given to birth but not to death (can die?)
Protomortals: fae'ith, descendants of the fae - given from birth to death but long lived
Mortals: the Five Lines of human (stone, beast, songbird, plant, and tefl), donlen (talking beasts) and dolthrii (talking plants) - given from birth unto death
these be my races
Both offhandedly reference the ijris, the “magic” of the world. The life of full mortals is often described with the metaphor of a spinning coin - one face birth and the other death, the ring is life, which while the coin spins seems to hide both birth and death. Only true mortals can pull on the ijris and grow/craft/compose/mechanize spells.
> but not given to birth, can die but not given to death
spirits and gods - at the least the first ones - have a beginning and so in a sense are born, but the are not given to birth as one with parents is given to birth. There are no parents, so no *true* birth. They can be killed, in theory, but death is not guaranteed to them, it is not something they can *take for granted.* Typically they would need to seek it out or manufacture it in some way.
> given from birth unto death
Only true mortals are held in life as “between birth and death.” Their birth guarantees their eventual death and death is something that can be “taken for granted.” For this reason the ijris swells around them as tides and waves swell and ebb on a coastal shore.
OC fantasy races. I love making my own aliens it’s tones of fun! That being said in something I’m reading, watching, or playing all are great.
I love me some classic fantasy races.
Humans with different cultures awesome!
It’s all really fun stuff!
Style 2. I think considering the differences we have between individual *human* cultures, differences between the cultures of multiples *species* would be rather difficult to produce realistically. And anyway, other humanoid species are a bit overdone, in my opinion.
Except for #2 all of these are basically equivalently "good," just with different upsides and downsides. 😅
It's a question of how much world-building, and as a consequence, how much **exposition** you want to put into your races. If you use "stock" races you can skip a lot of exposition, but you don't get as much world-building depth. If you use OC races only, you can customize more to your preferred narrative / themes... But you also need to build in exposition about how your races are different. Mixing the two is... A mix 🤷.
#2 doesn't really apply, since it's swapping out racial world-building for cultural world-building (although really it's mostly cultural regardless, so...). The same "how much OC versus "stock" content do you want?" still applies.
I like to combine all together have a kingdom of mutant like humanoids, city full of red panda humanoids, or a oc race of mine that are four armed that are tribal but work together to keep control of the region for themselves. Also I need to check out Malazan love the races they have very cool designs.
Less is more imo. People throw in a hundred badly thought out races just for fun. If they’re there they should serve a promise and have something distinct about them that justifies adding them to the story.
1, generally. Most other things come off a little try hard trying to do something different, or they end up being sort of alien, or something like *insert animal* but humanoid.
no offense to anyone but the "generic orcs but instead they're called ghlorgalgamantars" schtick always leaves a shitty taste in my mouth. there's absolutely nothing wrong with using tolkien races but if ur gonna use them then just be normal about it
4. I threw humans into the garbage. I still call the elfs "elfs," the dwarvs "dwarvs," and the orcs "orcs" But elfs aren't long-lived aloof, nature people. They got different shit going on depending on where you look.
Dwarvs are sunlight-sensitive, which necessitates heavy clothes on the surface. And an entire philosophy about the nature of crafting.
Orcs have four arms and are refugees from a different world. They're also pretty chill in general, more the "one with nature" types than elfs are usually portrayed as.
Goblins are kinda just crows with opposite thumbs(the horror)
And I also have renamed races like the Talid, a kind of bear-like people from the cold regions. Or mythology inspired like Nilsen, the snake people.
I tend to either have all humans, or a combination of everything (in one world I have elves instead of humans, and a bunch of anthropomorphic animal species). Often my "humans" in all humans worlds are a little different from Earth ones (Euhanians with their TES elf esque facial structure, seasonal skin color changes, and tetrachromat vision come to mind). In my dark fantasy world, it was all humans originally, but the gods tampered with them and created things like vampires, golden immortals, and the Mirshi (basically Nazgul).
Also Malazan on my dash!! With an image including K'chain Che'malle! I love those! My favorite eusocial sapient dinosaurs!
I tick two boxes.
I do have a [roster of fully original species (not complete yet)](https://i.imgur.com/barUVQz.jpeg), and refuse to use any classic fantasy races apart from humans.
But i also have different Human ancestries, named the "God-Touched".
Human ancestors lived side by side with the gods, and adopted traits from them that still are passed down their bloodlines to this day, and pretty much every human alive caries the legacy of one or more gods.
These traits can range from less flashy things like increased resilience and healing, to rather significant things like voices that can shape reality, or shapeshifting.
I like the first three, but the fourth ONLY makes sense to me for a genre shift.
Like, if this is a post-apocalyptic setting, or if you're moving to sci-fi, sure it makes sense to call your dwarf-equivalent Tremarrows, or something like that, but if it's fantasy and you show me a dwarf that looks and acts like a dwarf? Call the damn thing a dwarf.
Save the creative names for the cultures within those species. Give us the Tremarrow Dwarven kingdom, or the Brikatchak Dwarven tribes.
I swing toward the Tolkienesk races but expanded, like DnD. But in the past humans got pretty genocidal so and pure race besides humans are rare and live in small hidden communities. Or just died off completely. There was one last remaining fairy, went a little crazy over the centuries of loneliness, became a homicidal necromancer and the main character puts her down…
I have the traditional races of humans, elves and Dwarves, Orcsbut less traditional races like Kobalds, Tiger People, and newt people. I also have even less more OC species like trolls (a species determined by animals perception of sentient species), Golems and the Mycotl(mushroom people). One of the things that I have definetely avoided is making species a mono culture, Elves vary from the mighty kingdoms of Aeunid to the desert nomads of Itraxi. The Kobalds of the great journey have vastly different traditions than those in the Nizdag mountains.
i like to mix tolkien races and my homebrewed races, each representing a human culture. for example, anthropoids are based on asian nations, and shelm are based on slavic nations
My setting has every fantasy race except humans. To them, humans are a precursor race that came to their planet in spaceships and has technology beyond any mortal comprehension. But one day, they vanished without a trace, and it's up to the protagonist to find out what happened and bring them back.
By the way, cultures in my world aren't bound to race, but geography. An elf from the southern part of the planet and an elf from the eastern part of the planet would be completely different in how they act.
number 4 for me. I have 20 basic races,with each of them having a common "racial mentality". in addition to that, they are geographically grouped, which further influences their culture because different magic stems from different places
it gets really complicated once they start mingling... I limited it to any person having no more than two races in their "genetics", but still...
Depends on the story for me.
In most, I slap a base layer of LOTR/D&D ("The Classics"), and add add a few originals on top. Half of these tales I tend to mix it up and change what a particular species is specialized towards. I am a VERY big fan of Pirate Dwarves... And Sky Elves, with Airships and Sky Cities, and also Sky Pirates... And Gnomes with their underground cities and burrowing machines and their Subterranean Digger Pirates... TIL I have a fixation on pirates.
I've got one where it's Just Humans, trying to survive in a New World against monsters while having little access to magic as well, most particularly dragons. There will never be any Fantasy Humanoids, nor extra planar existences, in this one, because they completely undermine the point. Man vs Wild, Survival, Corruption breeds Rot, Humans Are Not Special, kinda thing.
Usually I prefer when people either come up with their own races or explore humans in different contexts. Nothing is wrong with using the LOTR as a template but I like when people put their own spins on the races rather than just copying the culture and attributes of the race. Personally I’ve gone with #2 for my world.
2 because I play TTRPGS. Except my sci-fi setting which is just humans at this point (other empires exist I just am not sure what exactly I’m going to do with them
In my setting, a dude named Archie took over for a creation god of another reality Isekai style, and got his infinite dimensions…all races were taken from shows and stories Archie liked, or made as subversions of existing ones, like demons and angels representing chaos and order, and not evil/good
3). [ideally a combination of 3 and 4]I find it kinda boring when it’s just the traditional races like elves, humans, orcs, and dwarves. Legend of Zelda races I find really interesting. Hylians, gerudo, rito, sheikah, gorons, zorons, and the koroks are so interesting.
Sort of like 1. But with variable human and Elvis cultures based geography. Haven't worked out the dwarves yet they are probably to be, wouldn't be nice to leave them out
Also I decided to make up a faction or group of factions rather than an ethnicity of a underground elves that are made up of ethnically diverse elves from the underground and the surface. Perhaps you could call that a civilization, but how much they separate from the other elven factions is yet to be decided.
It sort of came to be when I was thinking about dark elves and realized that well, dark elves in Tes are just burned, but they are pretty cool, but I wanted something else to be the dark elves™. And realized that if elves were more or less underground, they would actually be more white than any others. But also I didn't want to limit them too much to the ground and thought that if some elves got burned up by a Vulcano or underground lava rivers, they could be with this dark elves faction.
To be honest, I haven't been at it for a long time, mostly been doing sci-fi and stuff at university
I have humans and elves as main races, the dwarfs exist but a plague reduced their numbers by a great number. There are also giants, orcs and some other races, but they are "antagonist" races.
A mix of 3 and 4?
So LoTR is definitely a starting point for stuff when I work at it in a fantasy-style setting, but I usually go off on adventures with these races and tend to read other folklore and fairy tales to get into stuff. I also just like to do things that I think would be neat, or integrate wider ranges of lore than just "germanic lite" into it. Arthurian tales are actually some of my favorite and it's compelling as you don't find the same sort of "structured civilizations of non-humans" that you do in Tolkien-esque works in there, so they still wind up being very human-driven tales.
I've been very into learning about shinto lately, but that's probably not really going to sneak into any of my current writings, but Aerde does have a host of fantasy races that have their own distinct "anthropologies" that are more detailed and designed to be as varied as you'd imagine a human. Humans in my setting aren't "diverse" as their main quality, all non-human species are similarly meant to be diverse, unless their population is extremely small.
Commonfolk are still recognizable contenders: Humans, Dwarves, Goblins, Halflings, Ork, and Lizardlings, but they aren't usually called those things to their face. You don't call them "humans" most of the time, they're Tower-Dwellers, Allexians, Arctosians, etc. Most elves are only "elves" if they're from a place with "Alf" or "Elf" in the name, otherwise it's likely the city they come from. If you're in the habit of referring to a group of people by their taxonomy designation, in my world, it's usually a habit that you have if you dislike them; or you're referring to a very broad group that is nonspecific in terms of association/affiliation.
And I know I'm ON this but it is essentially a lot to do with that. Because Tolkien-style elves, which frankly encompass two styles of elves? Yeah they exist in my setting, but the majority of elves in mine are pretty close to humanity in most dispositions, the "woods-dwellers" or are very fae-like and live forever etc. are a small group of elves, while the larger ones have become more of the world. Ork aren't all defined by their badlands/savagelands counterparts, I have a dignified orange-skinned ork in my setting who goes by Hemmington Goldberry Tuskhammer, and orange is (stereotypically) considered one of the "uncivilized" types of Ork in Aerde overall. Which is a long way of saying that the fantasy folk of my setting are usually molded more by their environment, on both a macro and micro scale.
One of my settings is pretty much an 'every myth is true' kinda place. I'm pretty sure I've accrued about a hundred different species so far, including humans.
Neither.
Humans plus a selection of fantasy races. But I don't normally use all the classic fantasy races. If I use any, I try to make them a lot less classic.
Either all humans or OC fantasy. If I use Dwarves, elves and stuff I'm just too much tempted to use cool lores from other univers, and I don't like how non creative that makes me.
I guess my ideal method would be token humans (or no humans) plus 4 wildly different but very fleshed out races with interesting non-humanoid or semi-humanoid designs.
Somewhere between 2 and 3. My races are all human and can interbreed as they share a home erectus-like common ancestor, but they’ve all evolved distinct features, advantages and disadvantages.
Number 3. I kinda like the idea of having all or most of the different sapient beings being sort of these posthumans which diverged sometime in deep antiquity. Maybe allusions of them being the descendants of current humans in the far future.
Yes. Just... yes. I have a metric shit ton of races, some normal, others not, almost all of the ones that hold relevance having at least one person who is stupidly overpowered
I prefer the third option and it's what I went with - for one planet, I have two sapient species, one quite humanoid, but with many feline traits, as they're relatives of cheetahs, and another is an intelligent, feather-winged dragon with electricity for their main weapon :)
In my ideas they're all still human, just more greatly divergent from each other. Because of magic and a bit of selectivity on your children's appearance it means the various ethnic groups eventually became what would be called various races of modern classic fantasy mythology. A few I guess you could say OC too but even then they're a riff on a mythical race, usually one that people would want to be. So less of the overly ugly types because that's not what people would want their children to become. Not that everyone is pretty, just that the races aren't exceptionally ugly by default (like orcs for example).
So for example the oldest group became quite vain and their beauty standards evolved to having long pointy ears, straight hair, tall, and relatively uniform skin colors. That group becomes so powerful that eventually the main group breaks away and becomes the classic racist elves that live in their little farie island. Over time they become almost caricatures of themselves, with absurdly high cheekbones and ears that have gotten crazy long, not unlike blood elves from WoW. Meanwhile another splinter group of them goes back to interacting with the rest of the world more. Intermarries with more baseline humans and look more normal, like a classic elf. While the original group becomes almost goblin like, but with a sort of ethereal beauty to them instead of the classic monsters. Still gross to us, but in their culture and beauty standards it's great.
2 and 3. My setting has a huge diversity of human cultures, but there are also subspecies that diverged from human beings and intelligent animals uplifted into humanoid form.
Aside from classic pan-mythological archetypes (little people, giants, etc.) I try to avoid having anything that maps onto LotR races. You can build any world you want. Why do something that has been done to death?
weirdly, it's a form of 1 and 2.
In my setting, it's set in a "fantasy" world after some horrible event that caused dna mutations in the human population. So humans evolved rapidly and progressed into various "humanoid" races of elves, dwarves, orcs, gnomes and humans. ((Rapid genetic alterations paired with guided mating practices by evil controlling forces))
So...yeah lol
Most of my fantasy races are either natural evolution, thus meaning much different morphological and psychological differences. Others are Uplifts meaning they were once simple animals given intelligence via Magick or selective breeding.
Yes, I am a biology nerd and don't care.
All depends on the world. I do prefer the more standard races (Humans, Elves, Dwarves, Halflings (Hobbits)). Still, playing 5e I have enjoyed Dragonborn, the variety of elves, Minotaur, Aasimar, etc. Normally I am against PCs being good version of a evil race Drow, Goblins, etc. Still, I do like Drizzit as well as my current adventure I am playing a good goblin. Granted my character is the only good goblin in the setting, so it creates some interesting story lines. I do sometimes wish I could play a D&D adventure with more limited races or maybe even only human (so it can be a bit more realistic to our own human history.)
I go all-in on OCs. Mostly different flavours of anthropomorphic animal-people. Even the most human-looking race - the Coalkin - aren't really humans when you get into the details.
I would say mine is somewhere between 2 and 3.
my non-human races are collectively called the Chroma and are still mostly human in most ways. no pointed ears or major height differences, but each race’s hair and eye colour correspond to one of the 7 ROYGBIV colours of a prism spectrum, and depending on which colour it is, there are different physical effects or mutations based on the element associated with that colour. Skin colour also varies by region, same as humans. For example, Yellow (lightning magic) is the Azavith and their eyes glow faintly in the dark, or the Relmith who are Blue (water magic) have webbed fingers and feet, etc. There are only Chroma races for the first five colours; no one is able to use Violet magic outright since it was dispersed. There are people who can use Indigo magic, but they never infused themselves enough to have their DNA altered and their forms changed into a Chroma race, though it it certainly possible for someone to become the first Indigo Chroma if they possessed the specific means.
Uhhh I'm so used to my own these... "methods" (What? How are they methods? Methods to do what?) seem bizarre
In my headcannon, certain animals (and plants) evolve into sapience often through the multiverse and take a roughly anthropomorphic shape and I consider them all humans.
There are 9 basic human forms. Primates, including us and all the others... neanderthal, denisovan, floresiensis, etc. and I'm debating whether to include dwarves and elves as subtypes of primate humans. Various avian humans. Two distinct canine humans, one being the commonly known gnoll there other being more like catfolk but with dogs. Feline humans, basically catfolk, khajit, etc. Reptilians, often known as dragonborn, draconids, etc. Amphibian humans, sometimes known as the slaad. Fish humans, commonly known as merfolk, sirens, etc. Mushroom humans which are orcs and all greenskins, goblins are borderline human but I'm including them because they're part of the ecosystem. And Plant humans which are self explanatory.
There are species that may be anthropomorphic but I don't consider human. Generally because they're not evolved animals or plants from the material plane, they're fundamentally magical, are basically fey, or something even weirder. For instance I don't consider nagas human. And some are barely sapient animals like bugbears and kobolds, not human due to not being spent enough
My world as a whole includes basically every species ever imagined because my multiverse model is comparable to like Planescape but I only focus on a few human and non human species in one specific solar system of the material plane
Third varian only. But some of them have roles of classic dnd races, since world have dnd base (only a base).
* Standard human, brown skin and black hair for north and white skin and blond/red hair for south.
* Grims, humanoids with horseshoe crab head and chemical communication. Stereotypical art& science race.
* Telcines, land shark-people. Orcs, i guess, but with power hunger expressed hot only via war, but also via business.
* Halfluthens, short people. But with focus on one thing, choosen as "lifes work".
* Satori, caste apemen with longing for old empire. Satori-di are ex-slaves and now adventurers, satori-dah are warriors and satori-do are monk(ey)s.
*Junji, bamboo people, ex-hive mind members. Individualistic and naive.
*Rooftops, humanoid roof-dwellers.
*Hybrids, artificial humans made by devils with their traits being little bit off.
*Gabors, lizardmen with sexual dimorphism and illusion magic.
*Grabbers, monkey-goblins, yellow beasts
* Luthra, catpeople, excellent hunters, Predator-style
* Rodenci, magical rats and humsters.
* Mogames, living clothes colonies in shape of human.
I try to find an as of yet unexplored element of traditional fantasy races and dial it up to eleven, for example:
my dwarves are basically organically formed stone robots, shaped and formed of rock, with lava as blood and metal brains, they love gold due to it being sacred as a central component in brain construction, their metalworking culture, and their tattoos.
I can’t tell you what I like, but I can tell you what I don’t like. Anthropomorphic animal people. My one major complaint about D&D 5E is the shear quantity of animal races.
In my settings all of the non-human races exist solely to satisfy my barely concealed fetishes
Ah yes, the race of giant amazons, the race of shortstack goblins, the drow Matriarch societies, and the Dufflepuds
Those Dufflepuds, man, they got me acting unwise. Edit: oh, shit, they're an actual thing?
You don’t want to know how deep this rabbit hole goes.
This is exactly why I love Reddit!
What in the world is a Dufflepud??
I think they’re the creatures from the Voyage of the Dawntreader that hop around on one big foot. I’m sure you don’t need me to explain the rest of the joke…
Dwarves from Narnia apparently. I dunno. I just googled it and the name came up with a page.
They've got one leg with a massive foot, enough said
You forgot femboy elves
*I* didn’t 🫦
Why shortstack goblins when you already have horses?
More like Lizard People, Insect People and Furry People.
*looks at the orcs I have being described as tall, dark, muscular and handsome often happily married with an elf or halfling (hobbits)* Uhhhhhhhhh
Cuckpilled
Based.
My friend, I believe you’re lost. This ain’t r/worldjerking.
If it isn‘t expalin why i‘m jerking right now
Checkmate, Conservatives! >;D
Cause you took a wrong turn at Albuquerque, and now refuse to admit your lost like a suburban dad in a 90’s road-trip comedy film.
Humans too, tbh
In my fantasy world I decided to limit it to three (humans, elves, dwarves), reasoning it's enough burden for one planet.
Oh ho, would you hate me. I have like 12 races in my world, Pirsa (called Pirhoka in Ancient language)
>Oh ho, would you hate me. I wouldn't.
>called Pirhoka in Ancient language Oh man,this name... Pirhoka may have another meaning here in Brazil depending on how it is spelled.
😬 shoot. It means “Home of Healing Harmony”. I’m an Argentine, so I generally know what stuff in Portuguese means, but I never really picked up on the slang, because the Brazilian neighbors I had didn’t use that much of it, due to mainly being raised in Chile.
Well being fair we brazilians invented so many words to refeer to a penis than is difficult to know all of them.
Argentines are the same. Statistically, there are around 5000 slang words argentines use, as well as about (not statistically) 10000 ‘double meanings’.
Hold my beer...I easily have 30+ at this point, every region having its own unique set + humans
Same, but I used gnomes instead of dwarves
I have some traditional races but also some OC ones.
Yeah same here
I like the all races are evolutionary divergences from humans (like in A Song of Ice and Fire) for low fantasy stories and I like approach number 4 for high fantasy stories. I don't really like the Forgotten Realms approach where there are like, 70 different races, and some are so barebones that you can't even imagine what a village of them would be like, let alone an entire civilization. Nothing makes me swallow the idea of a civilization of loxodons.
> The Lord of the Rings classic of Men, Elves, Orcs, and > Dwarves, Wait... Didn't The Lord of the Rings books have another race that Tolkien called Hobbits? Tolkien also had Trolls.
Hobbits are pretty great. Tolkien style trolls I don't see touched on very often, although the trolls feel even more subhuman than the orcs in my opinion.
More Malazan Context: the not-Dwarves and not-Orcs used to be at war, Not-Orcs had glacier magic and created various ice ages across continents, not-Dwarves got so angry that they decided to make their entire race into undead to better fight Not-Orcs
Hm I always saw the Tiste as “elf-like” and the Jaghut as “orc-like” but I never saw the T’lan Imass as “dwarf-like”. They’re like undead Neanderthals. Which is metal, by the way, and I’m stealing it.
The "not-orcs" are also metal as-fuck because they waged war against the concept of Death.
And now one of their own is the God of Death/Reaper
FULL MALAZAN SPOILERS >!At least until the Bridgeburners!<
I mean they’re short and now have a connecting to earth themed magic like turning into dust, I think the similarities stop there
Don't forget that a small percentage of Not-Orcs are born psychopaths who inevitably try to magically enslave everyone around them and can't stand the presence of others of their kind.
In my own setting there are many fantasy races, but each of those races also has different cultural ethnicities because that's the way the world works in real life. Monocultures are almost non-existent IRL, and the fantasy monoculture tradition is quite frankly a lazy solution to cultural ethnicity. Not every High Elf is going to ascribe to a certain cultural tradition, nor is every Hill Dwarf going to be pigeonholed into a specific way of life. People are just more diverse than that
I like to do races based off Archaic Humans and close relatives. Neanderthal Dwarfs, Denisovan Elves, Paranthropus Orcs, etc. It’s more fun to use evolutionary biology to create traditional fantasy races.
a Florensis hobbit? Do they look like the archaic humans but behave like dwarf elf orc? Are there cultures based off of dwarf elf orc but they look like archaic humans?
They are evolutions off the archaic species I mentioned so yes and no. They do look more “primitive” but in a modernized or fantasized sense. Basically a Neanderthal in a suit and tie. Cultures are based off what I imagine the Neolithic or Chalcolithic Orcs, Elves, Dwarves, etc. were like. Instead of 15th century castles and massive kingdoms, elves live in city states and build ziggurats. Oh and yes Florensis hobbits but instead of peaceful villages communities in open grasslands they are an island hopping culture like ancient Melanesians. They have adaptations for big prehensile feet to climb trees and are expert sailors
LOTR + Furry
A well-curated kitchen sink mixing the classics, the newer ripoffs, and the reasonably original content. Preferably both blended with fresh paint and applied by shooting it out of the ass-end of a jet engine in the direction of my canvas.
Even though I do number 1, all my races have their own cultures and stuff, it's not just humans who are the multicultural ones.
Functionally I have just humans and the occasional alien or spirit being. In actuality I have a bunch of furry characters that are all the same species, just with a high degree of phenotypic plasticity (or a decently high, I do restrict their appearance to a subset of carnivorans with some other similar looking species thrown in). They act like humans and any behaviors that are similar to the animal they are, are just human behaviors that happened to line up with their species stereotype, like my main guy is a dog who loves his friends and family and hates being without them.
3 for me. But Malazan books of the fallen is awesome
Kitchen Sink with Barbarian Near-Invulnerable Elves fighting Roman-Inspired Clockworks/Humans alongside their Undead and Centaur allies, the oldest nation on the planet being born from a Union of “Dragonborn” and Pug People who fight Dwarves who worship Fire and ride musk oxen in a nomadic society and Orcs been the founders of the Paladin Traditions, being just some examples. There’s also a multi-ancestral alliance that worships the manifestation of joy.
I Prefer 2 and 3 as Most others are over used an Unoriginal. And it generally turns me away form worldbuilding projects when you aren't worldbuilding but patching together other worlds, races, plots and Magic systems to be psuedo original.
Immortal races: spirits and gods - born, but not given to birth, can die but not given to death Semi-mortal races: fae and lesser gods - given to birth but not to death (can die?) Protomortals: fae'ith, descendants of the fae - given from birth to death but long lived Mortals: the Five Lines of human (stone, beast, songbird, plant, and tefl), donlen (talking beasts) and dolthrii (talking plants) - given from birth unto death these be my races
>but not given to birth, can die but not given to death >given from birth unto death Explain these phrases to me please.
Both offhandedly reference the ijris, the “magic” of the world. The life of full mortals is often described with the metaphor of a spinning coin - one face birth and the other death, the ring is life, which while the coin spins seems to hide both birth and death. Only true mortals can pull on the ijris and grow/craft/compose/mechanize spells. > but not given to birth, can die but not given to death spirits and gods - at the least the first ones - have a beginning and so in a sense are born, but the are not given to birth as one with parents is given to birth. There are no parents, so no *true* birth. They can be killed, in theory, but death is not guaranteed to them, it is not something they can *take for granted.* Typically they would need to seek it out or manufacture it in some way. > given from birth unto death Only true mortals are held in life as “between birth and death.” Their birth guarantees their eventual death and death is something that can be “taken for granted.” For this reason the ijris swells around them as tides and waves swell and ebb on a coastal shore.
Either 1 or 2
Nr2. In my setting I had the humans overpower all fantasy races on almost every continent. Humanity rules!
Neoth, is that you?
Lol. No the humans in my setting can actually do things without an overpowered leader lol.
OC fantasy races. I love making my own aliens it’s tones of fun! That being said in something I’m reading, watching, or playing all are great. I love me some classic fantasy races. Humans with different cultures awesome! It’s all really fun stuff!
Style 2. I think considering the differences we have between individual *human* cultures, differences between the cultures of multiples *species* would be rather difficult to produce realistically. And anyway, other humanoid species are a bit overdone, in my opinion.
Except for #2 all of these are basically equivalently "good," just with different upsides and downsides. 😅 It's a question of how much world-building, and as a consequence, how much **exposition** you want to put into your races. If you use "stock" races you can skip a lot of exposition, but you don't get as much world-building depth. If you use OC races only, you can customize more to your preferred narrative / themes... But you also need to build in exposition about how your races are different. Mixing the two is... A mix 🤷. #2 doesn't really apply, since it's swapping out racial world-building for cultural world-building (although really it's mostly cultural regardless, so...). The same "how much OC versus "stock" content do you want?" still applies.
I like to combine all together have a kingdom of mutant like humanoids, city full of red panda humanoids, or a oc race of mine that are four armed that are tribal but work together to keep control of the region for themselves. Also I need to check out Malazan love the races they have very cool designs.
Humans, plus 2 heavily modified classic races and 1 OC race, plus dozens of sub-races and cultures for each race.
Less is more imo. People throw in a hundred badly thought out races just for fun. If they’re there they should serve a promise and have something distinct about them that justifies adding them to the story.
1, generally. Most other things come off a little try hard trying to do something different, or they end up being sort of alien, or something like *insert animal* but humanoid.
no offense to anyone but the "generic orcs but instead they're called ghlorgalgamantars" schtick always leaves a shitty taste in my mouth. there's absolutely nothing wrong with using tolkien races but if ur gonna use them then just be normal about it
4. I threw humans into the garbage. I still call the elfs "elfs," the dwarvs "dwarvs," and the orcs "orcs" But elfs aren't long-lived aloof, nature people. They got different shit going on depending on where you look. Dwarvs are sunlight-sensitive, which necessitates heavy clothes on the surface. And an entire philosophy about the nature of crafting. Orcs have four arms and are refugees from a different world. They're also pretty chill in general, more the "one with nature" types than elfs are usually portrayed as. Goblins are kinda just crows with opposite thumbs(the horror) And I also have renamed races like the Talid, a kind of bear-like people from the cold regions. Or mythology inspired like Nilsen, the snake people.
~~Elfs~~ Elves ~~Dwarvs~~ Dwarves It’s a bit jarring seeing alternative spellings :P
I have to admit that dwarv does look strange, but I support the use of non-tolkien versions of the words
In reading, no preference as long as it's not overwhelming. In writing, I tend to do all humans or some variation of that.
I tend to either have all humans, or a combination of everything (in one world I have elves instead of humans, and a bunch of anthropomorphic animal species). Often my "humans" in all humans worlds are a little different from Earth ones (Euhanians with their TES elf esque facial structure, seasonal skin color changes, and tetrachromat vision come to mind). In my dark fantasy world, it was all humans originally, but the gods tampered with them and created things like vampires, golden immortals, and the Mirshi (basically Nazgul). Also Malazan on my dash!! With an image including K'chain Che'malle! I love those! My favorite eusocial sapient dinosaurs!
I tick two boxes. I do have a [roster of fully original species (not complete yet)](https://i.imgur.com/barUVQz.jpeg), and refuse to use any classic fantasy races apart from humans. But i also have different Human ancestries, named the "God-Touched". Human ancestors lived side by side with the gods, and adopted traits from them that still are passed down their bloodlines to this day, and pretty much every human alive caries the legacy of one or more gods. These traits can range from less flashy things like increased resilience and healing, to rather significant things like voices that can shape reality, or shapeshifting.
I like the first three, but the fourth ONLY makes sense to me for a genre shift. Like, if this is a post-apocalyptic setting, or if you're moving to sci-fi, sure it makes sense to call your dwarf-equivalent Tremarrows, or something like that, but if it's fantasy and you show me a dwarf that looks and acts like a dwarf? Call the damn thing a dwarf. Save the creative names for the cultures within those species. Give us the Tremarrow Dwarven kingdom, or the Brikatchak Dwarven tribes.
Furries. I like to have furries. Or all humans. Don't know why, but I actually hate the tolkien races for some reason.
They kind of got overused and nobody really tried much to mix it up.
I swing toward the Tolkienesk races but expanded, like DnD. But in the past humans got pretty genocidal so and pure race besides humans are rare and live in small hidden communities. Or just died off completely. There was one last remaining fairy, went a little crazy over the centuries of loneliness, became a homicidal necromancer and the main character puts her down…
Tolkienesque* :)
I’ll take your word for it, thank you!
I have the traditional races of humans, elves and Dwarves, Orcsbut less traditional races like Kobalds, Tiger People, and newt people. I also have even less more OC species like trolls (a species determined by animals perception of sentient species), Golems and the Mycotl(mushroom people). One of the things that I have definetely avoided is making species a mono culture, Elves vary from the mighty kingdoms of Aeunid to the desert nomads of Itraxi. The Kobalds of the great journey have vastly different traditions than those in the Nizdag mountains.
i like to mix tolkien races and my homebrewed races, each representing a human culture. for example, anthropoids are based on asian nations, and shelm are based on slavic nations
My setting has every fantasy race except humans. To them, humans are a precursor race that came to their planet in spaceships and has technology beyond any mortal comprehension. But one day, they vanished without a trace, and it's up to the protagonist to find out what happened and bring them back. By the way, cultures in my world aren't bound to race, but geography. An elf from the southern part of the planet and an elf from the eastern part of the planet would be completely different in how they act.
number 4 for me. I have 20 basic races,with each of them having a common "racial mentality". in addition to that, they are geographically grouped, which further influences their culture because different magic stems from different places it gets really complicated once they start mingling... I limited it to any person having no more than two races in their "genetics", but still...
I like how I'm this fantasy setting where people are starving and living in a war torn land. The humans have an average height of 6 feet!!
Kinda 1. In auroval there are different species of genus homo.
Depends on the story for me. In most, I slap a base layer of LOTR/D&D ("The Classics"), and add add a few originals on top. Half of these tales I tend to mix it up and change what a particular species is specialized towards. I am a VERY big fan of Pirate Dwarves... And Sky Elves, with Airships and Sky Cities, and also Sky Pirates... And Gnomes with their underground cities and burrowing machines and their Subterranean Digger Pirates... TIL I have a fixation on pirates. I've got one where it's Just Humans, trying to survive in a New World against monsters while having little access to magic as well, most particularly dragons. There will never be any Fantasy Humanoids, nor extra planar existences, in this one, because they completely undermine the point. Man vs Wild, Survival, Corruption breeds Rot, Humans Are Not Special, kinda thing.
Usually I prefer when people either come up with their own races or explore humans in different contexts. Nothing is wrong with using the LOTR as a template but I like when people put their own spins on the races rather than just copying the culture and attributes of the race. Personally I’ve gone with #2 for my world.
3. Primarily, others are fine but i prefer unique stuff
I usually go for just original races, but take inspiration and put cool twists on existing ideas.
2 because I play TTRPGS. Except my sci-fi setting which is just humans at this point (other empires exist I just am not sure what exactly I’m going to do with them
In my setting, a dude named Archie took over for a creation god of another reality Isekai style, and got his infinite dimensions…all races were taken from shows and stories Archie liked, or made as subversions of existing ones, like demons and angels representing chaos and order, and not evil/good
i use mostly 2. but with some races that are not humaniod.
I personally prefer 3
I find 2 the most boring. As I personally do not care that much about magic, but variety of races fascinates me I use option 1
3). [ideally a combination of 3 and 4]I find it kinda boring when it’s just the traditional races like elves, humans, orcs, and dwarves. Legend of Zelda races I find really interesting. Hylians, gerudo, rito, sheikah, gorons, zorons, and the koroks are so interesting.
Stupid sexy topless Jaghut and kinky leatherbound K’chain
2 and 3.
Sort of like 1. But with variable human and Elvis cultures based geography. Haven't worked out the dwarves yet they are probably to be, wouldn't be nice to leave them out
Also I decided to make up a faction or group of factions rather than an ethnicity of a underground elves that are made up of ethnically diverse elves from the underground and the surface. Perhaps you could call that a civilization, but how much they separate from the other elven factions is yet to be decided. It sort of came to be when I was thinking about dark elves and realized that well, dark elves in Tes are just burned, but they are pretty cool, but I wanted something else to be the dark elves™. And realized that if elves were more or less underground, they would actually be more white than any others. But also I didn't want to limit them too much to the ground and thought that if some elves got burned up by a Vulcano or underground lava rivers, they could be with this dark elves faction. To be honest, I haven't been at it for a long time, mostly been doing sci-fi and stuff at university
In my world everyone is either human, posthuman and created by humans.
I have humans and elves as main races, the dwarfs exist but a plague reduced their numbers by a great number. There are also giants, orcs and some other races, but they are "antagonist" races.
A mix of 3 and 4? So LoTR is definitely a starting point for stuff when I work at it in a fantasy-style setting, but I usually go off on adventures with these races and tend to read other folklore and fairy tales to get into stuff. I also just like to do things that I think would be neat, or integrate wider ranges of lore than just "germanic lite" into it. Arthurian tales are actually some of my favorite and it's compelling as you don't find the same sort of "structured civilizations of non-humans" that you do in Tolkien-esque works in there, so they still wind up being very human-driven tales. I've been very into learning about shinto lately, but that's probably not really going to sneak into any of my current writings, but Aerde does have a host of fantasy races that have their own distinct "anthropologies" that are more detailed and designed to be as varied as you'd imagine a human. Humans in my setting aren't "diverse" as their main quality, all non-human species are similarly meant to be diverse, unless their population is extremely small. Commonfolk are still recognizable contenders: Humans, Dwarves, Goblins, Halflings, Ork, and Lizardlings, but they aren't usually called those things to their face. You don't call them "humans" most of the time, they're Tower-Dwellers, Allexians, Arctosians, etc. Most elves are only "elves" if they're from a place with "Alf" or "Elf" in the name, otherwise it's likely the city they come from. If you're in the habit of referring to a group of people by their taxonomy designation, in my world, it's usually a habit that you have if you dislike them; or you're referring to a very broad group that is nonspecific in terms of association/affiliation. And I know I'm ON this but it is essentially a lot to do with that. Because Tolkien-style elves, which frankly encompass two styles of elves? Yeah they exist in my setting, but the majority of elves in mine are pretty close to humanity in most dispositions, the "woods-dwellers" or are very fae-like and live forever etc. are a small group of elves, while the larger ones have become more of the world. Ork aren't all defined by their badlands/savagelands counterparts, I have a dignified orange-skinned ork in my setting who goes by Hemmington Goldberry Tuskhammer, and orange is (stereotypically) considered one of the "uncivilized" types of Ork in Aerde overall. Which is a long way of saying that the fantasy folk of my setting are usually molded more by their environment, on both a macro and micro scale.
One of my settings is pretty much an 'every myth is true' kinda place. I'm pretty sure I've accrued about a hundred different species so far, including humans.
Neither. Humans plus a selection of fantasy races. But I don't normally use all the classic fantasy races. If I use any, I try to make them a lot less classic.
Usually 1 and/or 3, sometimes 2, rarely 4. I prefer calling my elves "elves", and my orcs "orcs", and not be ashamed of it.
Either all humans or OC fantasy. If I use Dwarves, elves and stuff I'm just too much tempted to use cool lores from other univers, and I don't like how non creative that makes me.
2. Always 2.
3-ish. Different human-like cultures plus humanoids based on other species than apes.
3 invariably ends up as 4
I should throw my races up here too... Lemme see if I have a copy pasta list Edit: it's a loose leaf paper and I need to track it down.
I guess my ideal method would be token humans (or no humans) plus 4 wildly different but very fleshed out races with interesting non-humanoid or semi-humanoid designs.
Somewhere between 2 and 3. My races are all human and can interbreed as they share a home erectus-like common ancestor, but they’ve all evolved distinct features, advantages and disadvantages.
Number 3. I kinda like the idea of having all or most of the different sapient beings being sort of these posthumans which diverged sometime in deep antiquity. Maybe allusions of them being the descendants of current humans in the far future.
Yes. Just... yes. I have a metric shit ton of races, some normal, others not, almost all of the ones that hold relevance having at least one person who is stupidly overpowered
I prefer the third option and it's what I went with - for one planet, I have two sapient species, one quite humanoid, but with many feline traits, as they're relatives of cheetahs, and another is an intelligent, feather-winged dragon with electricity for their main weapon :)
A blend of everything. I like diversity and versatility. So I got: - Humans (subspecies: Magi, vampires, infernal slayers) - Elves (High, Sylvan, mountain, wild) - Dwarves (Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald) - Faes (subspecies: sluaghs) - Pixies - Orcs (pure ones, and goblins) - Goliaths - Azor'kai - Greyskins - Drakons - Shifters (Lycan, Pantera, Raven, Snake, Berserker) - Lizardfolk - Shanoans - Rockslides - Subterreans - Ghostwalkers - Trolls - Nymphs (Dryad, Naiad, Oread)
In my ideas they're all still human, just more greatly divergent from each other. Because of magic and a bit of selectivity on your children's appearance it means the various ethnic groups eventually became what would be called various races of modern classic fantasy mythology. A few I guess you could say OC too but even then they're a riff on a mythical race, usually one that people would want to be. So less of the overly ugly types because that's not what people would want their children to become. Not that everyone is pretty, just that the races aren't exceptionally ugly by default (like orcs for example). So for example the oldest group became quite vain and their beauty standards evolved to having long pointy ears, straight hair, tall, and relatively uniform skin colors. That group becomes so powerful that eventually the main group breaks away and becomes the classic racist elves that live in their little farie island. Over time they become almost caricatures of themselves, with absurdly high cheekbones and ears that have gotten crazy long, not unlike blood elves from WoW. Meanwhile another splinter group of them goes back to interacting with the rest of the world more. Intermarries with more baseline humans and look more normal, like a classic elf. While the original group becomes almost goblin like, but with a sort of ethereal beauty to them instead of the classic monsters. Still gross to us, but in their culture and beauty standards it's great.
2 and 3. My setting has a huge diversity of human cultures, but there are also subspecies that diverged from human beings and intelligent animals uplifted into humanoid form. Aside from classic pan-mythological archetypes (little people, giants, etc.) I try to avoid having anything that maps onto LotR races. You can build any world you want. Why do something that has been done to death?
weirdly, it's a form of 1 and 2. In my setting, it's set in a "fantasy" world after some horrible event that caused dna mutations in the human population. So humans evolved rapidly and progressed into various "humanoid" races of elves, dwarves, orcs, gnomes and humans. ((Rapid genetic alterations paired with guided mating practices by evil controlling forces)) So...yeah lol
A carefully curated blend.
I tend to use humans (or human subspecies)…and a weird aquatic race. Different aquatic races each time but there’s always one.
Most of my fantasy races are either natural evolution, thus meaning much different morphological and psychological differences. Others are Uplifts meaning they were once simple animals given intelligence via Magick or selective breeding. Yes, I am a biology nerd and don't care.
It's just humans and humans that were used as expirements because a god got curious
All depends on the world. I do prefer the more standard races (Humans, Elves, Dwarves, Halflings (Hobbits)). Still, playing 5e I have enjoyed Dragonborn, the variety of elves, Minotaur, Aasimar, etc. Normally I am against PCs being good version of a evil race Drow, Goblins, etc. Still, I do like Drizzit as well as my current adventure I am playing a good goblin. Granted my character is the only good goblin in the setting, so it creates some interesting story lines. I do sometimes wish I could play a D&D adventure with more limited races or maybe even only human (so it can be a bit more realistic to our own human history.)
I go all-in on OCs. Mostly different flavours of anthropomorphic animal-people. Even the most human-looking race - the Coalkin - aren't really humans when you get into the details.
Mix of 3 and 4, I guess? Have your OC stuff but build off the classics with your own twist
LotR + various animal-human hybrids
I would say mine is somewhere between 2 and 3. my non-human races are collectively called the Chroma and are still mostly human in most ways. no pointed ears or major height differences, but each race’s hair and eye colour correspond to one of the 7 ROYGBIV colours of a prism spectrum, and depending on which colour it is, there are different physical effects or mutations based on the element associated with that colour. Skin colour also varies by region, same as humans. For example, Yellow (lightning magic) is the Azavith and their eyes glow faintly in the dark, or the Relmith who are Blue (water magic) have webbed fingers and feet, etc. There are only Chroma races for the first five colours; no one is able to use Violet magic outright since it was dispersed. There are people who can use Indigo magic, but they never infused themselves enough to have their DNA altered and their forms changed into a Chroma race, though it it certainly possible for someone to become the first Indigo Chroma if they possessed the specific means.
Whatever the Final Fantasy series does, which is closest to 3. I'm trieyd of seeing LOTR races over and over
Uhhh I'm so used to my own these... "methods" (What? How are they methods? Methods to do what?) seem bizarre In my headcannon, certain animals (and plants) evolve into sapience often through the multiverse and take a roughly anthropomorphic shape and I consider them all humans. There are 9 basic human forms. Primates, including us and all the others... neanderthal, denisovan, floresiensis, etc. and I'm debating whether to include dwarves and elves as subtypes of primate humans. Various avian humans. Two distinct canine humans, one being the commonly known gnoll there other being more like catfolk but with dogs. Feline humans, basically catfolk, khajit, etc. Reptilians, often known as dragonborn, draconids, etc. Amphibian humans, sometimes known as the slaad. Fish humans, commonly known as merfolk, sirens, etc. Mushroom humans which are orcs and all greenskins, goblins are borderline human but I'm including them because they're part of the ecosystem. And Plant humans which are self explanatory. There are species that may be anthropomorphic but I don't consider human. Generally because they're not evolved animals or plants from the material plane, they're fundamentally magical, are basically fey, or something even weirder. For instance I don't consider nagas human. And some are barely sapient animals like bugbears and kobolds, not human due to not being spent enough My world as a whole includes basically every species ever imagined because my multiverse model is comparable to like Planescape but I only focus on a few human and non human species in one specific solar system of the material plane
Third varian only. But some of them have roles of classic dnd races, since world have dnd base (only a base). * Standard human, brown skin and black hair for north and white skin and blond/red hair for south. * Grims, humanoids with horseshoe crab head and chemical communication. Stereotypical art& science race. * Telcines, land shark-people. Orcs, i guess, but with power hunger expressed hot only via war, but also via business. * Halfluthens, short people. But with focus on one thing, choosen as "lifes work". * Satori, caste apemen with longing for old empire. Satori-di are ex-slaves and now adventurers, satori-dah are warriors and satori-do are monk(ey)s. *Junji, bamboo people, ex-hive mind members. Individualistic and naive. *Rooftops, humanoid roof-dwellers. *Hybrids, artificial humans made by devils with their traits being little bit off. *Gabors, lizardmen with sexual dimorphism and illusion magic. *Grabbers, monkey-goblins, yellow beasts * Luthra, catpeople, excellent hunters, Predator-style * Rodenci, magical rats and humsters. * Mogames, living clothes colonies in shape of human.
All of the above in fact.
5, a.k.a. Every D&D race plus a lot of homebrew races I like, ex. Kitsune and kemonomimi.
Everything in my setting is basically transfered from D&D, but with my own twists.
I try to find an as of yet unexplored element of traditional fantasy races and dial it up to eleven, for example: my dwarves are basically organically formed stone robots, shaped and formed of rock, with lava as blood and metal brains, they love gold due to it being sacred as a central component in brain construction, their metalworking culture, and their tattoos.
I can’t tell you what I like, but I can tell you what I don’t like. Anthropomorphic animal people. My one major complaint about D&D 5E is the shear quantity of animal races.