The Campaign Builder's Guild

One way to try something unique is to take the typical stereotypes and throw them out!  Dwarves are always lawful cave dwellers; instead, make the dwarves the master sailors of the world, with beautiful cities that float on oceans and seas.  Elves are always essentially tree-hugging hippies and goodie-two-shoes.  Instead, have the elves be feral deity-worshipers who build huge temples to try to reach into the sky and sacrifice trespassers to their gods.  The thing is to mix things up so that when someone hears the word "dwarves," they don't just immediately think, "Oh great, another group of xenophobic master craftsmen."

Or try making the dwarves for instance actually mythological in some way, like the maggots of Ymir's corpse, twisted little creatures that are also rather sly and can be mischeivous, who turn to stone in the light of day.

You can only twist the stereotypes so far before you've got a completely different concept. At that point, calling them "dwarves" and "elves" is just deliberately confusing.

For example, in my setting the elves are only semi-civilized. Seen as cruel and primitive, and sometimes rumored to be evil or cannibalistic. Having reversed that element of the stereotype, I feel compelled to keep the other elements - nature-oriented, archers, fairly magical - in order to justify still calling them elves. So you end up with a race of primitive barbarian elves, all the more fearsome for their amazing nature sense and ability to use magic to enhance that. But the magic is going to be cruder and more animistic in form. Instead of being accomplished swordsmen, they may have a warrior order of berserkergang (D&D barbarian class). Etc.

I agree with both ends. Stereotypes are bad, but they can only be thrown out to a certain point. I will think about ways to make some nations that aren't stereotypes. I really like the way that the dwarves are going right now. Maybe I'll twist the halflings or gnomes in some ways. Or the half-orcs, since they are a new race to the world (orcs had a late arrival). Or better yet, I'll change the orcs which will affect the half-orcs as well. I'll think about it.