The Campaign Builder's Guild

Naxians: Citizens of the free city of Naxos, they generally value civil responsibility and honor. Familial obligations, even those to the extended family, are highly important. Equally important is a citizens' loyalty to their city. As is the case in many other Ohridian Sea city-states, the Naxian identity is more cultural than ethnic —  not all those born in Naxos are citizens, and plenty of citizens were born far from Naxos. Those foreigners who are willing to be bound in duty to Naxos are able to become fully incorporated. Much of the peasant class and laboring class of Naxos are in fact non-Naxian natives of Izmir from the surrounding farmlands, towns, and villages. Naxian laborers and peasants are required to enter into some of the several guilds representing them and as such have a considerably higher quality of life than the non-citizen peasantry who reside in workers' barracks while Naxian citizen peasants usually have their own (humble) residences, are guaranteed their weekly ration of bread, and receive better pay and treatment through their guild. For this reason even the poorer of the Naxians have a significant cultural life, and many are even literate. From the Naxian guild-peasants to the nobility and merchant-lords, there is a consistency of colorful dress and the attendance of plays and parades among all the citizenry.

(Below: Feudbound Naxian, a Citizen-Soldier preparing for a fatal battle.)

https://imgur.com/a/jEujO

   Naxos is a city of mosaics and gardens amongst ancient stone aqueducts and amphitheatres. Though carrying arms is banned for foreigners without explicit diplomatic approval, citizens of Naxos are not only permitted but encouraged to carry arms —  a Naxian citizen is hard to miss, as they will be dressed in bright purples and rich reds, wearing fine hats and holding ornate swords at their hips.  Though passionate in their loyalties and obligations, Naxians are generally quite humble and welcoming in their daily interactions, and tend to give strangers the benefit of the doubt. Once you are no longer a stranger, they will commit to either a warm but reserved friendship or a cold, formal, and deadly rivalry.
Because the category of Naxian is determined through legality and not blood, there is no overall appearance to the Naxians. On average they have those features most common on the Ohridian Isles: most have skin of a naturally tawny or olive shade, though they tan to a bronze if often in the sun. They have dark curly hair that they will often grown out, beards likewise. The salt-air and sea breezes keep any un-hatted hair windswept, and well fitted hats and hoods are very fashionable and common. Their eyes are usually some shades of dark or light brown, but amber and green are also common.

Naxians share much of their pantheon with the other Ohridian peoples. There is the supreme Panno, the blind God of justice carried on the winds. Iona, the wife of Panno, the Goddess of wisdom carried in the waters. Their only child, the son Ohrid, was lost at sea and rendered in two upon a great rock —  the rock was shattered into countless pieces that became all the islands of the Ohridian Sea. Panno and Iona each took half of Ohrid's body. Panno imbued his half with the power of justice and created the sun, Iona filled her half with the power of wisdom and created the moon. As with the other Ohridian peoples, the rest of their pantheon is more localized, with a war god for each city-state and a kitchen god for each household. The war God of Naxos is also the namesake of the island —  Izmir being the legendary warrior of native Izmiran folklore who had long ago thrown off Pharthigian rule and become deified. The Pharthigians would come to once again possess the Island of Izmir, but they found themselves ruling over an always rebellious people who would sabotage them at any chance. The Patrian temples across the island are particularly fortified for this reason, and often doubled as impromptu shelters from native raids. The War God Izmir is to this day revered by the Naxians, who hold martial festivals in his honor, and build shrines to him in their barracks. To give an offering to Izmir you must prick yourself and draw blood and then cast an olive branch into fire, then sprinkle water onto the fire.

So, this is the same setting I was referring to in my thread "Non-Racist Interesting Boring Fantasy Races etc", so for a preface on what I'm trying to do with this setting as a whole I'd suggest you see that. Basically its a detailed but just for fun generic medieval worldbuilding fantasy kind of deal.

Izmir

https://imgur.com/a/7nsjB

   Izmir is a small island among the countless larger and smaller islands and archipelagos of the Ohridian Sea that lies between the northern and southern continents. Though Izmir is small, it is located along vital trade routes granting access to the great cities of Ankara, so several powerful factions vie for control. Ankara, just to the west across a channel, is the largest island in the Ohridian Sea and the homeland of the Parthigian Empire that fell an era ago but reshaped much of the world. Ankara is now a complicated landscape of nations and city-states, bustling commerce, bitter wars, and political intrigue amongst the aqueducts and amphitheatres of the Parthigians and the chaparral crags and parched pine forests that have thwarted civilizing before even them.
In this way Izmir is like a microcosm of Ankara. It is a dry island with craggy mountains and cliffs dominating the sparsely populated north and south ends, the southwest and northeast portions both pleasant and cultivated lowland plains divided by a highland wilderness forested with dry spruce and scrub oak. Politically, the imperial ambitions are those of Karaman, which lies to Izmir's east across the channel on the western coast of Ankara, and those of Sune, which lies farther to the south on the southern continent. Karaman controls much of Izmir's east coast and Sune controls much of the west coast.


The Free City of Naxos

https://imgur.com/a/RUt2q

   Naxos is an independent city-state by virtue of its infrastructure, which has been maintained (and updated) from Pharthigian times, its location atop several silver and marble mines, and from being only a few hundred miles south down the Prespas Channel trade route to the Sana'a Cities, the unrivaled metropoli oases along the northwest coast of Karaman. It is, much like the other countless city-states scattered across the islands of the Ohridian Sea, proudly cosmopolitan, with all sorts of goods and peoples flowing through and often settling, and also viciously independent, with a high level of civil involvement (though certainly not equality). A heavy tax on the city's considerable commerce and a policy requiring military training for all male citizens has historically served as a deterrent for any foreign powers that may have otherwise claimed it as their own. Though Naxos is formally a Republic, it is very much an oligarchy in practice, and a few major factions compete every five years for public offices as district administrators or Senators. The nobility claim to be descended both from the Pharthigian royalty and the native chieftains of the island, the mercantile faction is made up of Guildmasters and renowned merchants, and the military faction is made up of high ranking officers and occasionally war heros or respected admirals. Naxian families feud frequently and have a reputation for being as hot-blooded as they are cultured. Feuds can last for generations and often result in deaths, and those who have lost family to a feud are legally considered Feudbound —  they are legally permitted (and socially all but required) to engage any military age men of the opposing family in lethal combat, so long as it is open combat and there are witnesses representing either side of the feuding families. The Guilds are known for their mockery of this rule, and have passed legislation that allows one to legally change their binding from that of a blood family to that of a guild family —  and socially this is more or less accepted, or at any rate far less dishonorable than a refusal of a Feudbound duel. These sort of internal cultural battles occupy most of Naxian interest, and they are loathe to address the problems of the "wilderness", which includes all of the island outside of the Free City of Naxos. But the inheritance of the lands bordering them by the powerful Karamiites and the strange new presence of the Venedian Hordes have spurred an increased interest for politics beyond the city, and a concern for the future of the city's independence.


Sunese Izmir

https://imgur.com/a/4Is9T

Sune has been present on Izmir for hundreds of years, the island colonies representing the northernmost extent of Sunese control. But recently they have been trying to utilize its climate and soil (not present in their mainland provinces) to push their way into production of the extremely valuable Capsiuum pepper and the Capsiuum spice made from it, whereas before the Sunese Izmiran holdings were not used for much more than the assertion of a place in the markets of the Sana'a Cities on the northwest coast of Ankara, which, though an important trade route, was only supplementary to trade with the other kingdoms of the southern continent. But now, if Sune maintains a degree of control over the Izmiran trade routes while managing to cultivate its own spice fields, it will be able to sell spice cheaper and compete with the Kinshasan Confederacy's near monopoly on spice. Sune is threatened by the ravaging Venedian Hordes that have been sacking their southern provinces, and if they can't undercut the growing influence of Kinshasa they could find themselves with powerful enemies to the north as well —  maintaining a hold on tiny Izmir, with its pepper appropriate climate, is a key to the Sunese Empire maintain its power. They now control the southwestern coastline and the river floodplains just inald from it. Their old city of Dialafara is an impressively defensible stronghold of stone and marble that was repurposed from the ruined Patrian temples that once stood there. Dialafara is home to a centuries old royal family and Sunese community for whom Izmir and the Dialafara Province encompassing the Sunese controlled areas of Izmir is the only home they've ever known.



Kinshasa in Izmir

https://imgur.com/a/33wJX

Kinshasa is a dozen or so mostly independent mercantile city states along the coast of the southern continent's northernmost peninsula, to the north of Sune and isolated (as well as protected) from the rest of the southern continent by a great mountain range. They have long been economic competitors with Sune, but the extent of their ambitions has been checked by Sune's military might, a might now threatened or at the least distracted by the Venedian Hordes sacking settlements across Sune's southern provinces. Kinshasa, far from united, thrives economically from its inter-competition and lack of centralized authority, but politically there is only a loose alliances of navies. Some figures seek to establish a Kinshasan Empire, and if the fleets of the independent city-states were combined they would be a formidable naval force indeed. But the cities of Kinshasa enjoy only an uneasy peace amongst themselves, and one that is often only a formal peace, as privateer raiding and pirate guilds are an integral part of the cities' economics. Many factions are skeptical that a true empire would serve them better at all, and would prefer they retain the dynamism of an influential mercantile confederation. But as long as Kinshasa's city-states and trade companies continue to independently provoke the Sunese and formalize their control of Ohridian Sea trade routes, they will find themselves in a position where it may be necessary to join together or perish separately.



Karamiite Izmir

https://imgur.com/a/tMNqk

The Karamiites, hailing from Karaman on the great island of Ankara across the channel, inherited the east coast and farmlands of Izmir along with the rest of the minor kingdom of Dyah that a century ago sat landlocked  beside Karaman on the mainland of Ankara. The Dyah Emirate had come to possess land in Izmir through ambitious, expansionist diplomacy that recognized the petty noble natives of the island that ruled over only olive groves and shrubland, married into their nobility and inherited arable land alongside the Prespas Channel. The Dyah Emirate was overambitious, and through a careless series of royal marriages with the far more powerful Karamiites found their homelands and their piece of Izmir absorbed into Karaman. The Dyah managed to make their mark on history, however, as Karaman is now utilizing the east coast of Izmir that had previously been informally under the domain of Naxos who did not want any mainland powers establishing themselves on the island. The pine forests to the northwest of Naxos provide a direct source of lumber much needed for the desert kingdom of the Karamiites, and the marble mines provided additional income to be shipped off up the Prespas Channel. Karaman is a cautious power, but a significant one. It commands an army not much smaller than Sune's, and commands a kingdom less rich but more stable. The Karamiites hold fast to the traditions of their great-grandfathers, living in a pious martial society in which a monastic educated class oversees commerce as well as public relations under the command of a Sultan with a mandate from the war god. They do not necessarily seek expansion or to grow in power, but certainly seek to ensure their place as a stable power for the coming ages. With the rivalry between Sune and Kinshasa on the horizon, and the unprecedented cross-sea movement of the Venedian Hordes that have begun to establish themself south of Karamiite Izmir, Karaman must ensure that their acquisition of Izmiran clay was not a mistake —  and if they do decide it was a mistake, they must proceed carefully in transferring or abandoning it.




The Venedian Hordes in Izmir

https://imgur.com/a/Hc72J

The Venedian Hordes are a nomadic horse rearing people from the vast savannas and steppes of the southern continent. For reasons unknown they have recently imposed themselves more and more on the southern Sunese provinces that are situated well to the north of what had been for centuries the established Venedian territories, but now Venedians are pillaging the countryside and raiding even well defended settlements. Though the Sunese forces have pushed the hordes back, they still mount raids and continue to grow in number. Considered a barbaric people by most of the other southern continent civilizations, the challenge they suddenly pose to the formidable Sunese Empire is for the Sunese a bad omen, for the Venedians destiny, and for other powers on the southern continent a sign of opportunity in the weakening of the Sunese as well as a new threat to be reckoned with. The Venedian Hordes, though far from unified, owe their success to a new policy established by their elders in which clans are now forbidden from fighting amongst one another. This was established in a time of great drought when one clan held the only watered land —  and that was also the clan that called a meeting of all clan elders and all prophets and found that the Gods had established a new edict in which the clans could not fight amongst themselves. Though this temporarily assuaged the hostility in the old Venedian territories, it soon became clear that this drought did not have an end, and the remaining oases dried up and the rivers became streams. There was a civil war of clans that held to the new edict of the Gods and those who wanted to honor the old ways of warlike competition, and the alliance of clans in favor of mutual respect won after a long and bloody affair. The veterans of this war were moved north across the savannas to more fertile lands, but also lands where they will have to vie with a great empire that they would not have dare challenged before. But with a newfound cooperation between chieftains, and a population in which man, woman, and child have been baptised in a bloody war, they may yet have a chance to wrest control of greener lands from the Sunese.
Stranger than this, however, is the now unmistakably established presence of Venedian horsemen on the southern coast of Izmir. The Venedians are not known as a seafaring people —  in fact, they are known as a people without significant transportation infrastructure aside from the boots, the horse, and the elephant. They do not use wagons or trade caravans or even pack animals, but have suddenly climbed upon the southern crags of Izmir out of the sea in unfamiliar longboats. Many suspect that they are mercenaries, but no one knows for whom, and everyone suspects one another —  meanwhile they establish camps and raid local towns, growing in numbers and eagerness for battle.

(Below: Venedian Clan Wars)

https://imgur.com/a/v0ups

more spitballing, no permanence to any proper names, even they're generic they're more than likely a placeholder

Cultural Group:Tir Leau

Tir Leau is a group that encompasses the various peoples whose languages and customs originate with the Old Elfar of the northern continent and the Human settlers who adopted and adapted the languages and practices of those Old Elfar, either as the conquered or the conquerors. For a long while these Human and Elfar nations and peoples fought and allied amongst themselves all across the eastern forests, mountains, and fjords of the northern continent, with many of their own distinct cultural groups, religions, and languages within what we now collectively refer to as the Tir Leau, a category which would have then had no meaning. But later Human expansion into the northern continent, spurred on by the climate change desertification of the southern continent and the flooding of heavily populated flood plains, led to the slow domination of the migratory southern continent Human kingdoms who would come to assimilate Humans and either destroy or outbreed the Elfar. This isolated the once dominant peoples a couple thousand miles apart from each other so that there is no contact or identification between them, and they are linked only in the common origins of their many cultures and languages. Despite the success of the conquering peoples to eliminate identification with and use of the previously used languages and beliefs, even some of those more successful of the conquering peoples assimilated into their own cultures something of the Tir Leau cultures as a result of the assimilation of the Tir Leau peoples.

There are two main subgroups of Tir Leau: the Tyr-Vel Irien region, which remains largely Elfish, a vast forested wilderness spanning from one sea to another between two mountain ranges, and containing its own variety of cultures and competing kingdoms and tribes. Far to the north from there, also belonging to the Tir Leau cultural group is the primarily Human Donnaichvaile region that encompasses all of the fjords, forests, and marshlands of the northernmost island, and much of the northern sections of the Manchesthin Peninsula, the southern half of which is Chestish. The Chestish Kingdom of Manchesthin has been trying and having various levels of success in subjugating the Donnish peoples of the northern half of the peninsula, and they now exert effective military control over it and suppress Donnish cultural and religious practices.

https://imgur.com/a/BzGJk

Oh, very cool, thanks. I do like the take on elves and dwarves as having been bred for different roles, elves being basically engineered as administrative overseers puts their haughty attitude (that I assume is present here as well) in an interesting light in that it's a nobility they gained only from past servitude. And dwarves in contrast almost seem more noble because I imagine they were more salt-of-the-earth, genuine "servantlike" servants of the dragons. I like this as an origins for elf and dwarf animosity.

Thank you all for the responses, they're very helpful.

Quote from: sparkletwist
So, of course, the most direct fix for this is to not have nonhuman races as a stand-in for anything, because you've got sufficient diversity within the human population. It's also more fun to write about and play in, and this allows you to build in more real-world inspirations, too, so it's pretty much a win all around. "Fantasy Europe" can combine with "fantasy Africa" and "fantasy Asia" and whatever else. Granted, if you try to throw in too much, it becomes a little bit of a kitchen sink, but the threshold is pretty high as long as things plausibly flow from one to another.

Yup, exactly! I'll have a somewhat isolated human culture based on a sort of imagined progression from mesoamerican antiquity if there hadn't been european contact, a coastal federation of mercantile city-states built from coral, based on the 15th century Mogadishu/Zanzibar/Mombasa as described by Ibn Battuta, as well as some human cultures without real world parallels like a black skinned eskimo/zulu arctic people who live in ice complexes, a light featured people based aesthetically on the early romans but as a horde culture on a tropical savannah, etc.

Glad to hear others agree this is a good way forward. And yeah I definitely agree it's more fun from a playing and world-building perspective for sure.

Quote from: sparkletwist
The main pitfalls with a system like that is that without a hard skill list you might end up with subskills that have the same cost but are of very different overall effectiveness, and that players aren't really sure what sort of activities the game's crunch is going to focus on. I can certainly sympathize with the difficulty of reducing all of the different sorts of personality traits and abilities that someone might have into numbers, but I'd recommend a more abstracted skill system that still had a definite (or at least, base) skill list, lest you run into all sorts of game balance issues. One thing I've done in my own systems is made most core tasks in the game doable with two or three different skills, allowing characters to be competent in a lot of things while still being able to be built in a way that feels like it matches their character concept.

This is a good point. I'm tempted to just push the barebones roleplaying base as far as the d20 system can bear, and then see what needs to be filled in as it's used in game, but the lack of specificity of what subtraits are available and how they would differ from skills seems like it would be something that comes up immediately and should be addressed beforehand. So at the least I'll go in with a fully fleshed out list of examples and try to make them generally consistent in usefulness.

Quote from: Hoers
First off, thanks for joining us, and for taking the time to write that out. I made a small edit to your post regarding the elves, but only for the sake of keeping things a little more strictly child-friendly. I don't think it will affect what you are trying to convey, however.

No problem at all, didn't realize that was the standard for posting but I'll remember for the future.

Quote from: Hoers

I think you have touched upon an aspect of fantasy settings that many others struggle with as soon as they delve into the logic of their settings, and you've made some good progress on trying to make sense of them. I like the idea of making reproductive capabilities and/or strategy a bigger part of a racial identity, as this is a nice way to divide the fantasy races socially and spiritually without necessarily requiring significant differences in physical statistics, and I think you should keep trying to run with the implications of the racial differences, e.g. what only being fertile in a certain period of the year actually means for the elves, who'd likely keep very different calendars and social gatherings.

Yeah I started with thinking about making the common androgynous elf cliche having a more prominent and better explored role in distinguishing the race, and it seemed like a very natural way to define how a different humanoid species would behave, considering how determinate of behavior and cultures reproduction and how it's perceived/portrayed are, even within the boundaries of only human sexuality, so it makes sense that demihumans in a similarly biological world would have noticeable differences in reproductive habits. 

Your idea of constructing a culture from the ground up is very appealing to me, but just a little too much micromanagement, and ideally I think I'd like to imply that level of depth and association between culture and environment without necessarily building it from the ground up. I mean, ideally I would have the time and energy to build it from the ground up, but it would be tough to do now, lol. But yeah I see what you're saying, no shame in drawing from cultures as a point of reference as long as it's done tastefully. I am a little over paranoid about it, and not for any practical reason, just perfectionism about wanting to "fix" generic fantasy's more embarrassing holes.

Quote from: LoA
I made a Small Talking Animal Fantasy setting (Redwall, Secret of NIMH, etc), and I tried to base the entire thing around there physical attributes. Badgers were big and strong, Weasels were slippery, Otters were swimmers, etc etc.

I've seen some of your setting, it's very cool. I am more or less going for the traditional conception of the races, elves as agile compared to humans, dwarves as tough compared to humans, etc. Just trying to justify those differences better than most generic DnD fantasies do, and by better I mean of course in a way that I prefer

oops, heres the image



https://imgur.com/a/CRaZs

Tangentially relevant, the system we'll be using will use 4 main traits, something like "Strength", "Agility", "Awareness", and "Presence." My goal with these is to try and make a system that doesn't reduce the many different kids of charismas, intelligence, and wisdom into something that can be numerically represented. It'll be d20 but something like point buy where you start with 10 score in each main trait and each point above ten allows for a subtrait.
There would probably be something like 25 point buy that would be allocated to those main Traits as well as to "Skills" which would be specific knowledge and training, how to use a waraxe or ride a horse, and "Features" which can be helpful, unhelpful or neutral, but are constructible by the PC and are where things like "Battle Rage" or "Magic-User" would be chosen for an appropriate amount of points.)

So for Agility with an 11 you could add "Balance", which isn't to say that you wouldn't be capable of balancing otherwise or that you have extraordinary Balance, but rather that that is one part of the otherwise unhelpfully broad category of Agility. With 12 you could have Balance and Aim, and you now have a +1 to Agility checks related to Balance or Aim. These will be dynamic and intersect, so that climbing a ladder requires an Athletics or Stamina subtrait of Strength if you are carrying an exceptionally heavy load, but if you have better Agility and only average Strength you make up for it with being well balanced while ascending. Or, as a positive combination, you can try to roll a Strength check in addition to an Agility check for Aim while using a longbow for a more steady shot.  Presence is probably the weakest and I'd like something to replace it with, some other vague, non-physical trait preferably allowing for a bridge to traditional charisma as well as other interpretations, such as high Awareness would be highest stat of someone who wanted traditional intelligence and/or wisdom, but also could be the highest stat of an absentminded dipshit who nonetheless is incredibly observant of surroundings so is good at finding traps and treasure.

So attached here is the environmental map representing the "contemporary" age. The biggest problem with it is that my tropical rainforest and hot desert are almost identical colors but not that crucial for right now. This is going to be a broad and informal overview not a fluffy write up, just trying to throw ideas around and see what people think.

General idea for the logic of the races: evolution happened more or less how it did in our timeline however that happened, and the world follows basically biological and materialist rules. Magic is a natural force as far as it exists and its mysterious laws could theoretically be accounted for but will never be due to the scale of the task of even constructing instruments to measure magic in a meaningful enough way. It's understood by most as otherworldly and unnatural tho it does have considerable presence in most places in some way or another and is a focal point of most cultures.

Some million or so years ago, there were something resembling homo sapiens and something resembling homo neanderthalis. The climate in general was far more permitting. Magic existed in ancient phenomena like will-o-wisps and similar oddities, but if it was ever manipulated by humanoids it was in incredibly rare circumstances. The most familiar instance of magic in these times, and well as for most in contemporary times, is the presence of ghosts and the undead, the heightened presence of ghosts and phantoms during certain times of year, the cultural trend of properly disposing of a body, which tho hardly ever necessary has been terrifying enough in the times it was to warrant a tradition.

The "neanderthals" were mountain and cave dwellers, mostly on the northern continent and with the largest population on the large island in the middle sea. The sapiens occupied nearly everywhere else. Again, these are working names and I'll later come up with in-character legends with fluff names when I get the out of character stuff ironed out. Neanderthals were less fertile and physically smaller than the sapiens, so were out-competed in terms of land use and hunting grounds. They took to the fringes of fertile lands, mostly the mountains, passes and high plateaus, and followed herds of mountain goats and giant cold weather tortoises, over a time becoming the first herdsmen as they were able to direct flocks themselves, the landscape making it easier to defend such flocks against wolves, cave-bears, and megalania. They were also the first to build permanent architecture in the form of altered caves. Most sapiens, occupying all those plains and forests, river deltas and coastlines, did fine as hunter-gatherers following herds as nomads, making camp and tools out of their furs and bones, but where the environment permitted some did adopt the lives of herdsmen or cave-dwellers -- certainly in many places influenced by neanderthal cultural exchange, but also likely arising independent of such exchange when sapiens found themselves in similar conditions.

At some point, maybe 500,000 years ago, some event or shift happens, something magical in conjunction with something natural like a solar flare or comet,  so that for some few hundred thousand years significantly changes the rate and manner in which evolution occurs. I'm not sure exactly what this should be because I really don't want the setting to contain the implication that an actual cosmic world shattering event is on its way, I would rather those sorts of predictions and myths be specific to societies and precipitate the ends of particular societies. Drawing on my layman's understanding of Jeremy England's ideas about energy dispersal as the mechanic of evolution (https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-new-thermodynamics-theory-of-the-origin-of-life-20140122/) and linking it to magic as natural force that seems to behave nonetheless inconsistently, a sort of expedient natural selection with magic as an 'x' factor creating strange deviations in life that are viable as a species but don't exactly line up with our understanding of natural selection as predictably contingent on environment and ability to pass on genes. (This is more applicable for bestiary creatures than to humanoids, like intelligent but hermetic dragons that love gems for no particular reason, or creatures like bullettes that developed a strange, biologically inexplicable need to both burrow underground incredibly quickly and retain their size and diet)

But this also had a profound effect on the evolution of the then two species of humanoids.

The most immediately obvious was the manifestation of magical powers in seemingly random individuals of the sapiens species, some overt and some discovered later in life. The neanderthals developed no such powers.

Animal and plant life began to in many places and ways diverge from sensible adaption and gave rise to strange and alien forms, some very dangerous -- some populations of the natural wyverns, venomous flying reptiles that nonetheless had the intelligence of wolves, branched off into the species of dragons with the intelligence of crows and the temperament of wasps.

The fertile sapiens, spread across both the northern and southern continents and the many islands and archipelagos among them, began to have a non-immediate but noticeable over six or so generations if one were able to see the change across them -- exaggerated epigenetics led to quicker and more "efficient" natural selection. Within a few hundred thousands years this rate of change peaked and then declined until it has vanished, but it left the world populated by a variety of separate humanoid species.

K'umeti, Humans

On the plains and prairies that made up much of the southern continent, the Human developed, a foot taller than their sapien predecessors to see above the high grasses, and with a stamina that allowed for chasing herds that could not be so easily snuck up on, as well as helping to flee from the new beasts now prowling. They have better eyesight than other races and are less disturbed by transitions from dark to bright light and vice versa. They retained the high birth rates of the sapiens, and due to their increased ability to hunt across the plains soon drove the herds of many areas to extinction and experienced early plagues and famines that encouraged the adoption of agriculture and the first permanent human settlements, and established early sails to replace the prior raft/canoe seafaring, allowing them to settle among many islands and archipelagos. Humans have the highest degree of polarized genitalia and the physical experience corresponding to it, perhaps related to their high birth rate, or only an accident of genetics, but it has led most human cultures to a brutal hierarchy between gender roles, which perhaps precipitated the tendency for humans in particular to put great stock in their heritage and legacy, as evidenced by the ridiculous and doomed campaigns of conquests and obsession with royalism as a form of governance.

Nosiros, Halflings

Many islands and archipelagos were settled by humans in full just before the onset of a few thousand years of that early humanity being racked by plagues and famine, and by the time contact and trade was reestablished, it was established by the natives of the islands and archipelagos who now resembled humans exactly in nearly all ways save for their smaller size. These were the Nosiros, or Halflings, who developed to a life amongst the islands and on the sea. They don't get motion sick, are well balanced, and have a good sense of direction and the weather, but besides that hardly differ from humans beside that their average height is about four foot.  


Elfar, Elves

The northern continent, largely covered in dense forests of both plants and fungi, incubated the Elfar, who became extrasensitive to sound and light, hiding from jaguars in the understory and giant falcons in the canopies. They became skinnier and lost weight from their sapien predecessors due to the tight spaces and limited nutrition of their forests, but maintained roughly the same height as their sapien predecessors, an average of five feet give or take five inches. They remained primarily hunter-gatherers, but became such efficient hunters and gatherers in the rich forests that large food surpluses built up and allowed for more architecturally complex and hierarchical settlements. Elfar, for reasons unknown, became increasingly unfertile until the only period in which they were able to become pregnant was during the month surrounding the Spring Equinox. This happened in conjunction with the increasing androgyny of Elfar bodies -- the presence of facial hair, wide hips, muscle growth, and height became much less associated with the genitalia, and the genitalia themselves became more vague as a larger portion of the population was born with ambiguous genitals. This led to a more monist than dual conception of gender, and in tandem with the low fertility rate led to a veneration of birth and life moreso than in the sapien predecessors and humans who are able to take for granted a surplus population and for whom the state of pregnancy was a mark of weakness easily separable from the ability to impart the state of pregnancy onto another. The spectrum of genitalia growth present in the Elfar makes such a distinction between the pregnant and impregnator more difficult, and this combined with the rarity of pregnancy and birth has led in most Elfar cultures to a deep respect for everything involved in the process of birth, and also has made the concepts of genders and exclusive sexuality hard to translate. The Elfar have words for those with reproductive organs of a single sex, and have words for most things in between, but they are generally used in a practical sense to determine what someone's role will be in the process of birth. Some Elfar cultures have historically had hierarchies based on the extent in which someone represented a "more perfect conjoining" of features, with high priests those with both functioning organs allowing for both pregnancy and impregnation, but these were exceptions and now exist as fringe movements if at all.

Dwarves, Abankurri???
Dwarves I'm having a little more trouble with. I would like them to be similarly "alien" as with the elves, in that they are a humanoid species that has some relatively minor physiological difference (in elfar for example males and females look similar enough and there are enough intersex people that those categories disappear) that results in the creation of very different cultures but doesn't prevent mutual recognition and understanding between races, i.e. an elf and a human don't necessarily think entirely different just because they have very different assumptions. As in, an elf that is raised in human culture would not be incapable of understanding their gender role within it and could easily embrace it, these aren't hard wired differences in the brain so much, and if there are any such hard wired differences there's a large degree of plasticity in how they express themselves.

So the dwarves are the direct descendants of the neanderthal race, so have different starting origins than humans, halflings, and elves. They also had earlier civilizations, as they had had herding and sedentary agriculture before the sapien-races, and therefore also metalworking and fortified towns. Unlike the sapien-races, none of them manifested the ability to manipulate or conjure magic themselves. They did however gain a higher sensitivity towards magic, as well as a resistance to its effects. They were also effected similarly by the surge in epigenetic inheritance, and became better suited to the extremes of their environment. Over the many generations they came to need to eat and drink less, across their bodies their skin hardened into perpetual callous, and they developed a sensitivity to vibrations through stone and soil that allows for something like a crude sensing of the size and speed of what is approaching.  I am thinking that from contact with human diseases they may have early on been crippled and severely reduced in number, but reemerged from the deep cave networks with an extraordinary immunity to disease, as well as no negative effects ever resulting from incestuous births. This last point is certainly alien, but I'm thinking it needs to be made stranger to have an effect as profound as the elves, so perhaps the baby dwarf develops in a sort of fleshy egg outside of the mothers body after a very short gestation period, almost something like a kangaroo? And then is raised in a carefully maintained nursery by the community? This would explain the "clan loyalty" of dwarves and their less than sentimental attitudes, should I choose to keep those characteristics.

That sounds good and I'll sit on it and see what I think, but I'm more concerned about the dwarf cultures. Elfar-centric cultures will be based very broadly around Celtic and Icelandic culture, with some Hindu research for the mythology/ritual practice of the Indo-European religions practiced by Celts that we otherwise don't have too much record of. As both modern insular Celts and Icelandics admire elves historically and presently. Different from what Tolkien did with his Welsh-Aryan elves, I'd like these to embody some of the negative stereotypes typically associated with Celts, but in a way that is fully fleshed out and doesn't reduce them to savages. Instead has them as possessing admirable cultures based on OOC north european history but the admirable qualities, instead of high haughty civilization, would be those of the cultures white supremacists now consider savage but were nonetheless present exactly in those places the people considered the whitest come from. Not all Elfar would be white either, they would have various ethnicities and many belong to human-centric cultures or heavily human influenced cultures. I am just very broadly drawing from the Roman-era "savage northern barbarian" in the depiction of elves, so as to intentionally not make them incomprehensible alien forest people based on American Indians. That would be cool as well and I believe it could be well done, but to have the origin of the transplanted Amerindian culture and mythology to come from an inhuman people that embody naturalistic noble savage stereotypes isn't going to work. The Halflings (who are only short people anyway) will be inspired by Mediterranean Greece or Ireland depending on the population, and as well as the elfar based on broad celtic-norse influences, neither of these groups have had problems with being dehumanized in mass media recently. There will also be human ethnicities based on or heavily influenced by the cultures with origins in other races as well, and there's more humans in general anyway, so it's not to say "in this setting the elves are celts", I'm just using broad terms to indicate direction.

And so my problem with the dwarves is that I would like to draw on ancient middle eastern and egyptian culture for them, "Abankurri" something like Babylonian. My problem here is that all of these have semitic or related implications and I would like to get rid of jew dwarf implication entirely. I considered Byzantine-era Greek culture, but its too Roman for my taste. I considered some kind of merging of Babylonia and China, maybe? Maybe I'm too paranoid? I think an East Asian influenced dwarven culture would be fine, I'm just worried about having a world where a non-white culture was introduced by non-humans, if only even because in the course of play people normally go to their nearest stereotype when you describe a real life cultural association, so tho maybe it's not inherently racist as part of the setting, it doesn't lend itself to fleshing out the cultures in game if people don't know so much about Chinese culture and then a non-human race in the practice of the game becomes associated with the stereotypes of Chinese culture.

Hope that makes sense, not trying to be particularly hung up on and paranoid about the connection to real life racism, not asking for good boy points, but as I said in my stated intentions, it's about making the generic fantasy assumptions something of our own to better enjoy them, and it's more immersive and enjoyable for me to create and play in a world where the other sentient species aren't badly imposed human ethnicities.

Hi friends, been lurking here for a while and really love this community, really an oasis of genuine friendliness and maturity out here on a very polarized and impatient internet.

To clarify the title, all my fantasy world-building revolves around what were originally DnD games and still broadly are in theme and setting but have been refined based not on any unified concept of a created
setting but just what me and my buddies like to play in. So while I fully understand that it's not such an intriguing idea for a setting or game, the purpose isn't to innovate and rethink the fantasy form. While I absolutely appreciate
and would love to at some point try my hand at rethinking the form and insist on the potential to do so (recently saw https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeelen and read about though haven't yet read A Wizard of Earthsea, both definitely did a lot to temper my cynicism about fantasy, as well as ASOIAF doing good things with pseudo-historicism), as of now my fantasy efforts and world-building are purely creative downtime fun that I'll do on my time off from work and serious writing and reading.

With "whatever me and my friends find fun and cool and appealing from the archetypal pseudo-medieval fantasy game" as the backing philosophy, one of the things that we find really silly is the way race is handled. If we were talking about serious approaches to rethinking fantasy as a genre, I don't think there's a way to do the old Tolkien-derived fantasy races in a way that is satisfying unless it is a really creative deconstruction of those Tolkien-derived fantasy races, which is hard for me to imagine without it devolving into another shitty and awkward transplant of human ethnic tensions onto conflict between literal different species of humanoids. So my goal here is to try and reconcile what I like about these generic fantasy races with a more consistent world.

Though obviously Tolkien's setting incorporated a lot of xenophobia and racism, ultimately it is enough of an ascientific mythology that the mystically fair elves and savage corrupted orcs overshoot any realistic racial parallels to such an extent that it's easy to acknowledge that subtext and move on with enjoying it. But the DnD & friends settings that are like 12 times removed from Middle Earth have become more gritty and realistic, and that as well as the many attempts to create new interpretations of the Tolkien races while still keeping a ton of their essence and signifiers (haughty elves, gruff dwarves) is such a fucking mess it's hard to know where to start. I wouldn't even say the problem so much is racism in relation to actual human ethnicity anymore, tho there's still awkward stuff like drow and flat-nosed-slant-eyed-savage orcs, but moreso the silly assumptions made about these races in general. One that bugs me the most is the entire race having a unified culture, and in the case of a different culture, there is always a physiologically separate sub-race even tho the differences seem to only be stuff like skin color and environment but then humans with the same differences are different ethnic groups with the same physical capabilities as you would expect. Tho this clearly seems like an effort to dodge racism, it's inconsistent and an awkward avoidance. Beyond that, the explanations for cultural and physiological differences are never distinguished. We get something like, "dwarves are naturally tough due to their harsh environment and strong because of their militant culture", or "elves are lithe and agile, xenophobic and mysterious in their forest homes". This is just free form word and trait association taken for granted in such a way that the inherent +2 to Dexterity elves get can be equally attributed to their graceful cultural ways or their ancestors traversing of the forest. Which returns us to, then why do the various human cultures never have significant differences in stats? If dwarves' bonus to constitution and toughness is even partially related to their culture established around those things, wouldn't humans from very cold environments have racial cold resistance, etc etc?

This is the kind of inconsistency I'm trying to avoid. So, to move forward, I want:

1. Inherent physical differences in fantastic humanoid species have a major influence on culture but culture never influences the inherent differences between species. (No bonus to Charisma for half-elves because they find themselves in positions as diplomats, but elves having infrequent periods of fertility has a major effect on their culture of sexuality -- a culture that influences and will be adopted and altered by humans without that physiological difference in fertility.)

2. Statistical differences (whatever those may be when I get around to doing what will be very barebones crunch) can only be invariably tied to a race if they are based on aforementioned physical differences. Cultural differences may manifest themselves in statistical differences, but must be a further part of character creation dependent on character backstory. (Something like "elven bow proficiency" can be taken by an elf, but is not automatically granted, as opposed to an agility that comes from being physically lighter and coordinated.)

3. Cultures are not tied to specific races and all cultures present in the world are the result of exchanges hostile, friendly, or otherwise, that take place between both different humanoid species and the different ethnicities within them. Culture and ideology do not directly correlate to or shape reality but are imperfect interpretations of a reality none have access to.

I like this idea -- does any technology come over with the world war era humans, or just rudimentary knowledge of it? How many people/different kinds?

Reminds me a little bit of Conan Doyle's Lost World's "researchers and explorers making sense of a small fantastic pocket of the world", except that they are that pocket. Very interesting. Would the setting thematically orbit around the Earthlings, or would they be more of a conduit for explaining/exploring the more traditional fantasy elements?

Very cool, good stuff. As far as trying to add some variety to the old-west feel maybe look at Chinese "westerns" and draw on American Indian mythology for inspiration. I'm not thinking so much in a blatant way, i.e. you meet a stoic old guy in the desert and go on a spirit quest, but you could have something like a skinwalker cult that plays into the intrigue in the town. Some kind of rattlesnake or gila monster inspired lizardfolk monsters/race. Lots of turquoise. Don't know if you're looking for adventure/dungeon crawl ideas, but maybe the company town discovers a sort of tunnel complex built by the original empire that settled there, and it matches up with the accounts as of yet unconfirmed of a massive treasure being hidden underground by the original empire, but also one that was cursed and brought about their ruin, something like that. You could have some kind of twist where there isn't a literal curse but the treasure is some exotic natural resource that has an effect on the groundwater supply so interfering with it could dry up the wells and lead to massive unrest and drought. Just spitballing some ideas