The Campaign Builder's Guild

I've run into a bit of a conundrum with the descriptions for my setting. To prevent the feeling of a 'race of hats,' I've relegated most of what you would normally see under a racial description (relations, culture, names, etc.) into the articles for nations, where they belong.

This leaves me with the problem of how to incorporate a race article in the setting which consists mostly of physical description and the basest of personality norms which is a) interesting to read, and b) can be fitted to humans without sounding like a blithering idiot.

Any thoughts?

do a species description...

- Basic Appearance
- Physiology
- Mentality
- Etc

Well, as much as culture comes from your, well, culture, it can ALSO come from race... maybe a little in each could be the solution?

For example, you could have a setting where, say, Halflings, make up a significant ethnic minority of most nations, and are even in the majority in one or two places. Many of these nations have very different cultures, so you can't just say "all Halflings have culture X" because a Halfling from Pseudochina is gonna be very different from a Halfling from Vikingland.

However, they are all Halflings... which means that AT SOME POINT in the past they may all have originated from the same region, and then spread to the other nations as part of the Great Halfling Diaspora. Now, if this happen recently (say, within the last 2,000 years) it is entirely feasible that elements of a shared Halfling culture could still exist. Therefore, the mead-quaffing Vikinglander Halfling and the the zen-monk Pseudochinese Halfling may both have gone through variations of the same coming-of-age ritual, and may both sit down to variations of the same traditional Festive Casserole with their families every Equinox.

Could be something to think about, anyway...

EDIT: another suggestion, if that doesn't appeal, would be to just have a very very brief section on races. There's no reason to go on too long with it, even a paragraph on each, briefly detailing appearance and physiognomy might suffice. Give only the necessary information: what they look like and how they work.

Would an entry for humans even be necessary?

I don't see a problem with a setting designer creating a specific race-in-country-X article as well as a broad race-across-the-seas article.

The essentialy elements for the generic pan-race article would be to emphasize shared history (i.e. where they came from, who they worshiped, why they parted ways) and shard culture (religion, traditions, names, etc.).

Quote from: SteerpikeWould an entry for humans even be necessary?

Well, probably.

As human readers, we all know what a human being is (at least, I should hope so), but we don't necessarily know about their role in the context of Fantasy World X. There's probably a lot to be said about their history, demographics and dispersion, contrast with the other sentient races there (if any), important human individuals, families, or bloodlines (perhaps), and little trivia: like why ogres consider humans' tender, delicious flesh to be an extra-special delicacy (maybe).

I can see a lack of need for a page on humans if you're writing a world where they're the only sentient race, or where they don't exist, or where they do exist but in a pretty inconsequential capacity ("Play OgreWorld, where the humans are just currency, chattel, and tasty treats!") Most of the rest of the time, though, I'd say that any distinct race is important enough as a concept that you should probably say something about it.

For what it's worth, the questions I'd try to answer in the "race" article are:

- How do they look, generally?
Even for humans, this is important. Do they look "European"? "African"? "Asian"? Some combination of traits that isn't a defined "race" in real-world terms?
- Where (geographically) did they come from?
Each sentient race probably had an original "homeland," and they don't necessarily all have to be the same place-- though look at the number of hominid species that came out of Africa.

- Where (evolutionarily) did they come from?
Did they evolve from something? If you want some sort of "natural history" to the setting (instead of being happy with just the gods creating everything) then you can also talk about whether there are lower animals around that are an earlier form of whichever sentient species. Or maybe one of them evolved from another one.

You might also consider a list of cultures for that race, if cultures are tied to races and nations. If every nation has almost every race, and these nations are not deliberately divided into subcultures, then this wouldn't be necessary, though.

LC, I agree that those details concerning humanity are all important when building a world, but it sounds as if the majority of those details would fall under the "culture" category Stargate is talking about.

I can see your point about different human ethnicities though, sparkletwist...

Right. Good ideas everyone, thank you. From what I've managed to gather and synthesize, I think I know what I'm doing.

While a national culture would cover the broad aspects of what makes up a cultural description, a person's race would provide greater depth to certain areas based on what's been kept. Certain traditions, customs, and turns of speech would have staying power due to their applicability to the specific race, and a personality type can be generalized for an entire race while being modified by the nation in which they live. For example, if I had a race of dwarves who were the classical gruff stoic prideful warriors, ones who live in a country whose personality is that which places great value on humor would combine these two traits to make a perfect straight-man. That's a bit of an over-the-top example, but I hope it makes sense of the concept at least.

So, if I've got the following in the racial description, do you think that's enough?

Physiology (this would include general appearance, as well as anything necessary to add as far as special biology)

Psychology (ingrained 'nature' personality. Dwarves tend towards stoicism, gnomes towards individualism, etc.)

History (Primarily, these would be migration patterns, as well as anything affecting the entire species as a whole, such as plague and major splits into sub-races)

Variations (This would describe how the race adapts to the environment, both physically and psychologically. Tans, height differences, and similar would go here.)


Am I missing anything obvious?

Possibly a section with a title like "traditions" or some such, to detail those cultural, rather than psychological or historical, factors which differentiate them from other races.

By the way, I love the idea of the "Variations" heading, it gives a fantastic way of letting people know very clearly and simply whether this Orc is a Southern Desert-Orc or a Northern Mountain-Orc or whatever, which is great.

If it doesn't fall under history you should possibly consider a Relations heading in that the race might universally be viewed with prejudice or superstition. Maybe orcs have long had a feud with the gnomes and consider them nothing special while humans believe that rubbing the head of a gnome makes you lucky. Or maybe one of the races is viewed as inferior and often forced into slave labour.

I was going to lump generalized culture into the psychology heading, but I think that's an astute point; if the analogy is that fantasy races are as real-world cultural groups, there would be certain similarities in cultural events and celebrations.

As for relations, aside from the most basic of prejudices (which don't warrant their own article, I think), most relations are national rather than racial.

Quote from: Cataclysmic Crowhumans believe that rubbing the head of a gnome makes you lucky.

you don't rub gnomes, you rub elves, duh! ;)

@topic: while differentiating between race and culture is definitely right, those two should be connected. e.g. a race with a very active metabolism would give a lot of significance to eating (banquets or hunts), while a race with large sensitive ears would set much importance into cleaning/grooming (themselves, each other, ritually), etc.

This thread has been a big help for me. I have long wanted to separate racial stats from cultural stats, and I started to write my descriptions with the two being separate. The only difficult part has been when describing a culture in such a way to include non-native races, as part of the mechanics was supposed to allow someone to play a dwarf who grew up in human lands, for instance.

I have been looking for ways to shave down my entries. Any thoughts on a restricted number of topic headings for culture entries in a Character chapter? I need to limit them to something small so new players can read over them quickly.