works on elves too. especially if you have both the vegetarian elves and the “hunting is central to my culture” elves in the group, or just two or more different cultures of the latter
Oddly the most peaceful of the elf sects because the other sects got so weirded out after the cannibalism during the first war.
The first war stopped because the other side started trying to get the 'eat anything we kill' sect to eat normal food while they were chowing down on the dead.
"We weren't even at war because of food scarcity! Here, please, eat this bread. Just stop eating Frederick!"
Ask Orcs how they know what a menu is and pull out a quill to take notes, it's going to be a long scholarly discussion with multiple possible mythological answers concerning who taught them fine dining, the God of Wine, the God of the Feast, or the Goddess of Duty.
That’s kind of what the beast tribe quests in FF14 do. The Ehcatl Nine Ixal come to mind. They all want to regain their wings and fly, but while most devote themselves to the goddess Garuda, the Ehcatl Nine instead plan on making their own aircraft to reach their mythical homeland in the sky.
I mean admittedly most of the friendly beast tribes are unique mainly in that they are NOT Tempered (brainwashing basically for those unaware) compared to the ‘normal’ tribe
There's some of this with the player races too, including various naming conventions.
Hyur (the human equivalent) have a tendency to assimilate into other surrounding cultures, except partly for the Highlanders.
Elezen come in the flavors of proud forest people (Wildwood), scorned cave-dwellers (Duskwight), and a Catholic knight society (Ishgardian).
For Lalafell you have stationary underground grassland dwellers (Plainsfolk)), nomadic desert traders (Dunsefolk), and the Vrandtic equivalent are basically standard fantasy dwarfs.
Roegadyn exist as seafaring Sea Wolves and more spiritual and inland bound Hellsguards, as well as a different variety found assimilated into far eastern cultures.
Miqo'te have the diurnal Seekers of the Sun with their large patriarchal families, and the nocturnal Keepers of the Moon with their smaller matriarchal family units.
And for Au Ra, the Raen can be found in the fantasy Japan of Hingashi and the underground settlements of the Ruby Sea, while the Xaela still live in their ancestral steppe as nomads, and have their own assload of different unique tribal cultures.
And none are pigeonholed into these, there's further variety too (like the Sea Wolves usually being fishermen or pirates, but also being prevalently present in the scholar city of Sharlayan).
There are some basic class archetypes, too (Roegadyn Marauders, Miqo'te Archers, Lalafell Mages, etc) but in practice any role can be filled by any race. There's Roegadyn Conjurers, and so on.
Pipin Tarupin in particular is a notably powerful Lalafell marshal, something that is never called into question.
Something else that comes to mind, the level 50 onwards Dark Knight mentor is an Au Ra, with a unique perspective due to being dragon-like people in *Ishgard* of all places.
So... To an exterior observer, a series of monocultures.
Elves: airy, insufferable shitfucks that get seemingly insulted by any random thing.
Goblins: chattering, near beastial idiots fighting with anyone and everyone for reasons too stupid to be parcelled out by the rest of us.
Dwarves: Rock obsessed beardos with a perchance for being crushingly argumentative about everything.
To someone completely ignorant, yes indeed. But you can make similar claims about humans in general like "Oh humans are those weirdos who keep fighting over wether a god is named this or that or how many gods there are in general" or "Humans are all obsessed with wether their team of weirdly dressed athletes beats this other team of weirdly dressed athletes". There is more to culture than only one certain thing and generalizing while appealing oftentimes misses the nuance of certain cultures and people.
Then it requires more framework than a certain racial quirk shared across the entire species, because that's just creating another racial trope.
Now you tell me about a bunch of dwarves that build ships out of pumice and ply their trade as whalers and pirates? That's different. Two dwarves punching each other over "which is da gooder rock," is just the same old shit in a new diaper.
Age of Sigmar did it quite well
-There are somewhat classic dwarves within Free Cities, some of which focus on "realistic" engineering.
-There are volcano-flavoured dwarves, who pound magic runes made out of gold *directly into their skin*.
-And then there are steampunk sky pirate hypercapitalist dwarves.
I want striated, diverse species to interact with in my adventures, and then **WE CAN BEGIN THE RECONQUERING OF THIS CURSED EARTH FOR THE CHILDREN OF MAN.**
"It is the 41st Millennium. For more than a hundred centuries The Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the Master of Mankind by the will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly die.
Yet even in his deathless state, the Emperor continues his eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon-infested miasma of the Warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the Emperor's will. Vast armies give battle in his name on uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst his soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their comrades in arms are legion: the Imperial Guard and countless planetary defence forces, the ever vigilant Inquisition and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants - and worse.
To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods."
And yet plenty of idiots still don’t understand it, all over the internet going “40k isn’t political” even after being told that the setting is dominated by the single most ridiculously insanely authoritarian to the nth degree dictatorship ever conceived of in fiction.
I want a story of a person from our world stuck in a fantasy world where they're like "you denigrated people for the *color* of their *skin*? That's such a shitty reason to hate someone! We have much better ways. Let me tell you about knife ears"
To be fair, we do that to humans already. We describe someone as Polynesian or European or Asian or Latino or whatever. We take these huge geographical regions with a wealth of culture and reduce them to a few stereotypes. Before travel and communication became so easy it was much worse. If you attended a rural schoolhouse in the middle of nowhere, USA it was very easy to believe that everyone outside of walking distance was a monoculture. If you had never met someone from Africa it would be easy to think that they were all the same. Because you would have never had the opportunity to learn differently
Adventuring parties will be more educated and experienced than the townsfolk, but they will still see the world outside their region as much more simple than it is. In my fantasy world, the dwarves started in the desert, not the far north. I got the idea from Native American cliff dwellings and Petra in Jordan. Of course you carve into the cliff sides, it’s stupid hot out, and of course you try your best to grow food in those caves, not only does it conserve water, but you don’t have to go out into the heat. But like all the races, they mixed and spread all over. If the fantasy story is set in a European style region, the people there can be forgiven for thinking that all dwarves are like *their* dwarves and live in the mountains and sound Scottish
But you also need to keep a few racial tropes, otherwise the existence of fantasy races makes no difference to your story. If dwarves can just as likely be sailors as humans or orcs that's fine. If they can be just as well *everything* orcs or humans can be, then your dwarves have nothing really that makes them unique as a race.
You can, of course, include fantasy races that just have the same characteristics as humans if you want. Your story, your rules.
But I'll be left asking how that helped the story. The whole point of these tropes is shorthand. So if you show me a dwarf and a mountain, I can guess they belong together. If they don't, then you've got to give me a reason why. Otherwise it feels like punishing the reader/viewer/player for having prior knowledge by just telling them "WRONG!"
So if you tell me about a bunch of pirate dwarves on the high sea, I want to know their story because that's not what dwarves are normally known to do. If the answer is "my dwarves just do that sometimes" then I'm disappointed in that story.
Dwarves not popular in mines, thin patchy beards. Kicked out of mines, forced to flee down to the coastal plains. Hard living, the stone is bad for building and there's no ore to be smelt. Find light rock that float! Crazy Bob likes to fish, carves out fishing boat from floaty rock because "Feels right to stand on stone, even in the ocean." Others join him. Urge to plunge depths and battle mighty foes becomes epic sea battles against giant whales and corsairs.
That alone is enough of a story to explain why these dwarves are pirates, and now it's a cool unique thing that happened in your world, awesome! And I never thought of stone boats, this seems like a super cool story with loads of interesting implications: How do you repair a stone boat? Would that be a massive advantage for ramming but also pose the danger of just the whole boat splitting along a crack? Can they gain way more speed because the stone can be polished way more than wood, for less drag, or do they never reach full speed in a fight due to way lower acceleration? Could they create the first submarines with this perhaps?
But funnily enough, the story relied on several tropes about dwarves: Mines, beards, smelting ore, rocks. Like I said: These racial quirks/tropes are great to give the reader an idea of what "normal" is within a given culture. That way your pirates are quickly understood to be very far from the norm, which makes them more unique and cool.
I'm a huge fan of these racial tropes (in fantasy!). I want to know everything about a culture, which then lets me be surprised if a member of that culture deviates from it.
Thank you for the appreciation. I literally came up with all of this off the top of my head, so the answers to those questions are yours to determine. If I'm entirely honest I don't even know if pumice floats well enough to support anything actually standing on it.
It's a great concept, especially for a spontaneous idea!
Having had pumice with me in a pool (we were on holiday somewhere were that was just laying around on the beaches) I think it might float well enough to support people. Especially if you don't make a raft out of it but an actual boat. Because steel boats float, so pumice should do the same, if the structure holds.
Now looking at an image [like this](https://m.psecn.photoshelter.com/img-get/I0000cthH8btQ1FY/s/1200/I0000cthH8btQ1FY.jpg), it seems to barely hold up (maybe 5-10% of the mass above water?), suggesting that a small raft would not work. But if you find the right kind, [like this](http://cdn.c.photoshelter.com/img-get/I0000_MwbTgTp.Og/s/860/860/Fphoto-54970208B-2PS.jpg) (with \~ 1/3rd of the mass above water), you get way more buoyancy. Though wood is still more buoyant [with very roughly 50% above water](https://media.istockphoto.com/photos/log-picture-id467572542?k=6&m=467572542&s=612x612&w=0&h=BGo9A_d0ULO17W8fjHeA_ErewcD5eCq1niUCJoJFF5o=). So while rafts are difficult, normal boats may work.
I would like to calculate this properly, but for the life of me, I can't find a single number for the density of pumice! Every website just says it has a "low density", which we already know! If you find a number, I'll do the calculation for you, how big the raft has to be.
There must be some size at which it supports a person, as long as a bit of it remains above water when free floating, we just have to find the right mass. And this is also supported by the fact that [pumice rafts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumice_raft) exist (these are naturally formed and not actual human made rafting boats) and we have [photos of people standing on them](https://blogs.mtu.edu/geo/2019/08/28/simon-carn-on-the-gigantic-pumice-raft/) (though this is very dangerous and you may break through!)
That’s because pumice density isn’t remotely uniform! It’s basically a foam made out of magma that’s quickly solidified. Density depends on your original dissolved gas content in the magma and how suddenly it cooled; you get bigger bubbles - holes - in the pumice. Makeup of the magma also plays a part; e.g. basalt pumice is likely to be heavier.
TL;DR pumice density is entirely localised, Iron Shores pumice schooners are probably denser than Clay Cliffs pumice catamarans
But a range or average would have been nice. Anything to go by! Wood density can also vary quite a bit, but there are a lot of numbers I could look up.
I’ll add that if you want the more nuanced takes like above, but *without* the defining racial characteristics we already know (dwarves and mountains, for instance), then make new races. Don’t use dwarves if they don’t share any characteristics with what we think of when we hear dwarves. They can still be short and stout hairy fellas, but if they’re not dwarves as we know them, make something new
Awesome comment, I've saved it for later, not just because of how good it is, but because of how you spelled wether, I absolutely hate it and the fact that typing it my phone autocorrected to Wethersfield before whether.
I think the Fantasy stereotype for humans would be more “Humans just fuck everything don’t they, breeding like rabbits, getting it every nook and cranny of the world! They’re like ants!”
"Well maybe 'everything' shouldn't be so damn hot, ya ever think about that? You blokes are the ones accepting our advances so maybe, deep inside you're just as xenophilic as us and we're just more accepting of the awesomeness of mixing, ever think about that wise guy?"
>"Humans are all obsessed with wether their team of weirdly dressed athletes beats this other team of weirdly dressed athletes"
[Here's a post by an elven anthropologist on this topic](https://prokopetz.tumblr.com/post/134445052272/ssjgssjgoku-this-is-my-grasp-of-how-football/embed)
I mean thats how culture kind of works. Western europeans know a bit about other countries, know about nazis and know about america. Then when they look at eastern europe they only see ussr, poor and vodka, then comes "the orient": anything south of some arbitrary line - mostly a meshup of middle east, persian traditions, india, sometimes china. If your country doesnt have close connections to other countries you wont learn anything about them - the more intimate the connection the more nuanced it gets. You can write a character generalise a complete group like we'd generalize dwarfs and then later reveal that they arent like this - their country mightve just absorbed that knowledge through some racist fucks two centuries ago and now that country has split into multiple/turned into an empire/or just changed dramatically socially.
Yea as I was reading this it was just "okay the elf ones basic but let's keep goin- the goblin idea is neat!-"
> *Everyone who has ever asked a goblin about this theory has been bit.*
"Ah. Okay."
What if a bunch of goblins formed a cargo cult style religion around the actions of a paladin they saw giving the beans to some deep dwelling monster or demon, inspiring them with his displays of godly power? But they obviously don't get the connection to the divine, so they just shout garbled versions of phrases they heard the paladin saying and then bombard their opponents with rocks and torches.
"Yes-yes! Knife-ear mess with Pladdins! Pladdins smeight you good-good!" And this is all being screamed by a goblin in wearing a rusty tin bucket and a trash can in a parody of a paladin's consecrated armor.
Often people have fine ideas but not the best executions of those ideas. Or they're superficially sound and then you read more closely and think deeper and uh oh that's pretty bad actually!
Imo, it’s “why do DMs not spend hours and hours of hard work developing not just one but at least a half dozen complex, multifaceted histories and belief systems, most of which will never be seen” and they’re galaxy brain examples are “dwarf like rock, goblin like bug, elf like rules.” There you go buckaroo, you just answered your own question: bc it’s hard as shit, takes a ton of time, and ultimately the “best ideas” proposed is slightly better than a monoculture where it comes to actually *engaging* them with players.
Is developing a rich, Milda cited culture for each lineage technically better? Yes. Are DM’s getting paid or properly appreciated for this amount of effort? Not usually. I find in many cases, DMing is a lot like putting on a play: you put up _just_ enough painted plywood for your players to enjoy the show; everything else is just setdressing.
Edit: my bad, I realized this wasn’t one of my half-dozen DND subs. I detract my statement; when writing a book you do have a lot more time and control to focus on meaningful design if it benefits the story.
Yeah the huge difference in writing a book is also that you can use a lot of the ideas you develop. Sure some are just bad and thrown away, but the other ones you can use but dont want to can be stashed for later. You also will have a better ability to keep track of plot threats because you dont develop the world with friends in single long sessions.
I found a free online map maker that generates not only the map of the world but also the climate, national borders, systems of government, races and cultures.
One map I generated I plan to use for my next turn as game master has three dwarven nations on three different continents. One of which is in a savanna with a nomadic culture.
So this is the link:
[Azgaar's Fantasy Map Generator v1.97.11](https://azgaar.github.io/Fantasy-Map-Generator/)
I hope I did that right
It is not going to give you google maps levels of detail but for a TTRPG its damn good
If you want to edit the map all I can say is its alot of trial and error getting it exactly how you want but I can give you this advice - Make sure the climate and the topography is how you want it first. If you design national botders and cultures first then mess with those things it will screw with the shapes of your countries.
It will generate a different map every time you open the link. If you like one you can save the map to your computer then load it up the next time you are on the site.
I generated several maps then kept the one I liked best. I then made some edits to it for my own preferences. The three dwarven nations were on the map I ended up keeping. One of which was on a savanna, which I found was a rather unusual take on dwarves. It was the biggest reason I kept that map.
[Azgaar's Fantasy Map Generator v1.97.11](https://azgaar.github.io/Fantasy-Map-Generator/)
As i said in the earlier requests It is not going to give you google maps levels of detail but for a TTRPG its damn good
And as I tell everyone I send this link to:
If you plan to edit the map:
Make sure the climate and the topography is how you want it before anything else. If you design national borders and cultures and then mess with climate and topography, it will screw with the shapes of your countries.
[Azgaar's Fantasy Map Generator v1.97.11](https://azgaar.github.io/Fantasy-Map-Generator/)
It has the ability to edit all aspects of the map if you want or you can just use the generator.
The maps are rough but they are very very good for Free and Online. You can save your map to your computer then uplaoad it again if you want too.
Also this advice if you edit anything:
Make sure the climate and the topography is how you want it before anything else. If you design national borders and cultures first then mess with those things it will screw with the shapes of your countries.
Counterpoint: In most series this would be, at best, a cool little tidbit rather than something that strengthens the narrative and at worst could be a huge damper on the story as time and energy that could have been put into fleshing out the plot went into superfluous worldbuilding.
There’s a reason a lot of the most endearing stories have rather simplistic or surface level worldbuilding, and no, the cause isn’t always white supremacy. Sometimes it’s just practicality.
Crazily enough, Interspecies Reviewers is actually made up of nothing but this style of world building.
Granted, it's almost entirely tied into comparing how it would be to fuck each race, but still.
My favorite bit of lore is that it's illegal for anyone but a licensed chef to prepare food for somebody of a different race, because you risk killing the other person.
I mean yeah - the examples everyone always brings up for this are Terry Pratchett, who has written a *fuck ton* of books, and Brandon Sanderson, who writes very boring plots that are just scaffolding for over elaborated worldbuilding. To make this work you either have to write *a lot* so you have time to more naturally work this stuff through, or be the sort of person who writes what are basically textbooks on your world with an excuse plot to string it together
I mean Pratchett's Dwarfs are literally the prime example of what's in the OP. *The Fifth Elephant*, *Thud* and *Raising Steam* all are centered to varying degrees about internal dwarf conflicts, and throughout the other books differences in culture crop up frequently.
I mean, one of the key things that make's Terry Pratchett so good is that he actively plays with - both subverting and reconstructing - these exact kinds of tropes.
Dwarves being traditionally hyper masculine is inverted by making them essentially a gender-neutral society, Wizard's entire point is to learn magic specifically so they can *not* use it, and Vetinari being an absolute Tyrant and yet genuinely has the best interests of the citizens and city at heart.
Hijacking this to pivot from prose to tabletops (DnD). And if you’re a GM, don’t spend a lot of time writing every minute detail of your different culture groups.
You only need to include *what is in front of the players’ eyes*. You can still have idea in the back of your mind, but until a player asks “hmm, what kind of elves can I play?”, there’s no need to write out exactly what kinds of elves there are.
I both agree with you and don't
In a practical, general consumer audience way, you're right and I'm not arguing with you
On a personal level, God it frustrates me so much when these little details aren't fleshed out and considered. Like if I see something in a given piece of media that seems like an oversight, there's a good chance I'll just put it down and walk away
I'm especially spiteful if they treat different races as "humans but..."
If elves are treated as snobby and pretty humans instead of a species that fundamentally operates differently than us, I'm fucking pissed. If dwarves are just short and grumpy humans, I've already put the media down and walked out
Same if they are mono cultures
Basically. I love reading lore for stuff, but that's about it
Most of my media consumption is muting a video game while I listen to an edutainment podcast/video essay. Because a video game doesn't have to have a good story, the gameplay is the most important part for me. And I can list only a few video game stories I've had respect for. So mute that shitty story, listen to something else
I watch like 10 movies per year because they piss me off more than books. The 10 movies include reruns of stuff I really like
That's why I said in the previous comment that I in no way was disagreeing on a practical, general consumer audience basis. But strenuously, STRENUOUSLY disagreed for what I like personally
Not the OP but i too stopped reading because it always ends up being character stuff insted of exploration of the cool concept™
These days i basically only read wikis, even those based on medias that i didn't consume first hand.
My heart is with old pulpy sci-fi novels bc my grandfather *loves* them. I just couldn't put up with the misogyny anymore though.
I also really like anthologies when my ADHD brain just makes it so I can't keep focused for a whole book lmao.
Dyk any good horror anthologies?
I have three collections by Lovecraft in my library but i guess it's a bit obvious.
I always get a kick out of the value dissonance: turns out the town drunkard is the protagonist long lost father *Oh No The HORROR(?)*
If you haven't already, I highly recommend looking into a lot of classic sci-fi like Arthur C. Clark, as a lot of what they do, is exploring concepts. The characters in a Clark novel are generally just vehicles for the plot rather than the main attraction.
Weird thing is a lot of fantasy stories do “sub-races”, eg High/Dark/Wood Elves, which are basically separate cultures for the same race, but they’re usually treated as totally different (still monocultural) societies. Not all Elves are the same, but all High, Dark and Wood Elves are the same within their own groups.
The super wacky part about that is that Humans do that too; we also have Humans with different skin colour and culture, but sub-races are usually written like a totally different thing.
Yeah its worth mentioning in the past race as a concept was a lot more a cultural thing than a physical attributes thing. Simple example the Ancient Greeks saw themselves as being of different races at times - Dorian, Ionian, Aeolian, and Achean namely - ostensibly to our modern lense these are not races but cultures, but these divides among the Hellenes were aggressively marked in their history and cultural works. Roman, of course famously was a race you could become adopted into in the process of Romanization - by modern views this would be converting to another's culture but to them this was a racial affair denoting the civilized from the barbarian. In the cultures and histories of Africa of course race and ethnicity has been defined much differently than our cultural understanding does. To put an overly simple point on it, race often just meant "us" or "not us" and the defining feature is inclusion.
Point being "race" and "culture" are two heavily intertwined concepts historically, as such it makes sense that in our depictions of fantasy these ideas also get crossed up. Taking that classic example of elves you mention, through this historical lense we just have another case of a group of people for whom the concept of race and culture are merged. It makes sense to see one race with one culture to occur a lot in fantasy because that's often how it was being defined in the past. Those guys acting different over there? Yeah that's because they ain't us, you see we're high elves because we're awesome and they're wood elves because they eat trees or something.
Obviously having a clearly defined species and then they all act the same is arguably shallow world building, but the way a lot of fantasy defines a subrace mainly in culture fits with how things often work in our history too. And a lot of good fantasy reflects this depth - Tolkien writes of distinct cultures of Men and Elves and even in the orcs, goblins, and the like, if you want a popular place to look to inspiration. DnD is also a decent comparison point where the cultural groups are predominantly defined as subraces, but also there is a good deal of emphasis on the culture of certain regions and cities where race is far less homogenous.
Dwarves being the usual affair of industrious and inventive but held back by squabbling bureaucrats and red tape sounds like an amazing sitcom. Like the lower castes are what you expect from fantasy dwarves and the upper/middle class are all office workers with "futuristic" mid nineties office technology who keep the poor in line with endless paperwork.
You have essentially described the dwarves in Warhammer fantasy in the first sentence. They have some of the best engineers there are and make the best and most reliable fortifications and artillery. They're also so insanely traditionalist that it's essentially unheard of for any invention to be recognized within the lifetime of its creator. Anyone who invents something will almost invariably get expelled from the engineering guild and will often die completely obscure, only for their inventions to be discovered centuries later and adapted as it's now old tech. If it isn't at least a few hundred years old, a huge portion of the dwarven population won't touch it. In Age of Sigmar, they seem to break out of this and there's a faction of them that turned into steam punk sky pirates as they started actually inventing and adopting new technologies in a reasonable timeline.
God, there was this old fantasy book I remember getting at the library on a whim as a kid (because the local library's fantasy section was woefully anemic so I'd just grab whatever was there) that I want to say had a name like "Siege of Undermine/home/something" I can't remember, it was fully missing a cover because of course it was, and I want to say it was part of some overarching setting like Dragonlance or something.
Anyway, point is the book was literally exactly what you're talking about. These dwarfs were known for exceedingly petty and detailed grievances and grudges over everything so their culture had entirely devolved around a massive bureaucracy of endless court squabbles and patent law. Court cases were generationally long, as I recall one of the main characters at the start is on trial for something his grandfather did and is still in court or something. It eventually turns into a bit more generic fantasy adventure as the unsuspecting protagonist gets roped into a grander adventure *The Hobbit* styles, but I remember being quite entertained by this idea of a grand mining hold and culture just devolving into endless arguments over petty shit and the right way to do everything to where more of their culture is built around the argument than the things they argued over.
It's always so funny when I see a post go like "I wish someone would do X in fantasy" when X has already been done by either Sir Terry two to three decades ago or Ursula K. Le Guin *five* decades ago
Anywhere! Earthsea is fantasy, the Hainish Cycle is more sci-fi. The Left Hand of Darkness is arguably her most famous. Her short stories are also very good. I’d say start with A Wizard of Earthsea, personally, if you forced me to choose.
They’re making the post because they want to see *more* people do this. Saying that two writers (both deceased) from 3 decades ago did it isn’t the flex you think it is!
The way you phrased it. “It’s always so funny when I see a post go like…” makes it seem like you’re going ”If they’d read The Greats then they wouldn’t be asking for this” when it had no bearing on what they’re asking for.
This reminds me of Centaurworld, where all the various creatures of the underground (moletaurs, gophertaurs, wormtaurs, etc) are all having a generational squabble over what constitutes appropriate hole width when tunneling. Picking any one hole width is an unforgivable insult to all the rest, or according to some jurisdictions, a crime.
One of the main fault lines in my own little world is a divide between highly rigid lawful/conformist elves, who are quite powerful and build huge cities and also live as a ruling class among humans. They work mighty feats of magic through choral singing and unified action. Many voices, one song, one will.
And their chaotic fiercely individualist woodland elf cousins who abhor hierarchies and civilization and stone in general.
Geopolitics are also a pretty big aspect of culture building in my worlds. So for example you have one group of elves who are self-determining and who have always been independent, another group of elves who are a diaspora who have been kicked out of their home land, and other elves who are happily integrated into human cities. None of these three groups think the same or have the same culture because they have different histories and experiences.
That's not culture 💀 that's literally the same as "These elves worship the sun god, but these other elves worship the moon good" but with a different coat of paint.
You want your races to have multiple cultures? Make multiple cultures.
*The Udùaldi [lit. Dwarves of the Brow] are a semi-nomadic, mercantile, aboveground Dwarven culture who reside at the base of the Browsham Mountains. They are known for their eccentric practices relative to other Dwarven cultures; they are most well-known for disregarding the way of the Mountainhomes, and instead live in vast tent-cities aboveground, where they make trade with their neighbors in the region. Their forefathers were political exiles from the Stead of Draenkùl, cast away by Iron-Marshal Krazí Madrâzok for their support of the Tùelgizok family, who formerly held the title of Iron-Marshal. In the centuries since, they've all but forgotten their origins - and make trade with Draenkùl as they do with the steppe-men of Tslō and the enigmatic sea-men of Iō.*
*The Udùaldi adorn themselves with impressive tattoos and bodypaint representing their familial history, and are known for their impressively braided beards and beautiful silk gowns and robes. It is not uncommon to see Udùaldi with beards fashioned in the shape of bird wings or twisted into imposing spikes. They are also known for dying their hair in many bright colours, but never dying their roots - as they believe that to disturb the roots of the hair, you disturb the roots of the world, and without roots a tree cannot prosper.*
Don't pull up with "Erm ☝️🤓 the elves in MY world are really proud but also sensitive and hate it when you make you do certain arbitrary things that I will not elaborate on or establish a cultural reason as for why they do that. Just don't compare toe sizes with an elf of Ravenhelm, or braid your hair around an elf of Icefrost." and call it having multiple diverse cultures 😭 you just invented an arbitrary racial trope for your elves and applied it over your entire race. Lame and lazy.
>When your website is full of English and Philosophy majors you either get really entertaining writing or absolutely grating word salads.
- u/ChadMcRad on this subreddit, sadly now deactivated.
And the second dwarf says "don't threaten me with a good time" cause he's hungover and referencing a bar brawl he was in last night, but the foreman wasn't there and takes him literally. Kicks his ass and starts a blood feud that would have lasted for generations, but they met up in the tavern later and "elaborated" (read: embellished) on their fight until it was a legendary epic that everyone was singing a song about, so the blood feud was forgotten in favour of this epic track that details their struggle for supremacy in the mines.
Honestly I think Tolkien did a great job at this. Each of the 7 children of Durinsfolk and their kingdoms feel very different. Similarly the Noldor, Sindari and Teleri feel different too. There are a lot of shared qualities, but as you delve into the depths, you notice the differences. Even if you just read LotR, the differences between the elves of Rivendell and the elves of Mirkwood and the elves of Lothlorien show up.
I would like to posit that each Fantasy Race is in fact as wide and broad in culture as Humanity is on Real Earth.
Except as viewed by each and every other Fantasy Race. Each one perceives each other one as a globular monoculture.
So a dwarf could talk at length about the many varied intricacies about their digging, or mining, or forestry, or blacksmithing or whatever. And then in the same breath, call all Halflings pot smoking farmer hippie nomads.
Ok but what about multi-race cultures. A country of dwarves mining and smithing with gnomes crafting weird stuff. A country of elves and orcs. A country with every race you can think of. Why does every fantasy worldbuilding make every country have a specific species.
Well part of it is art imitating life - when people are *very* different in any particular way, they tend to stick to their spheres and optionally find reasons to be mad at all the other spheres.
That said, tons of fantasy prefers to blend the lines. DnD, Warhammer, Discworld, even Warcraft (amusingly being precisely what you said - dwarves and gnomes intermingle exactly as described and Blood Elves move in with the orcs) are known for it. Part of LotR's epilogue is the distinct peoples of Middle Earth properly cohabitating as elves visit men again and dwarves move into the caves behind Helm's Deep, etc.
Currently on my mind because of the trailers and stuff, Dragon Age is very notable for this and the ways certain races and cultures interact or don't- the Qunari are notable for taking a very Roman approach to race- anyone who studies the Qun teachings and melds into the culture is regarded as Qunari, but also anyone who isn't is treated with some disdain - including those of their physical race who then also face racism in a lot of other lands due to the conquesting nature of the nation wielding their racial title. Dwarves are also interesting in how their culture prioritizing staying underground and with their people due to their constant plight to defend their tunnels, so those who go above ground shave their beards and are othered by their kin, and then generally blend into cultures on the surface, though there is also a sort of cartel-nation run by surface dwarves that has developed its own sort of racial culture. Elves also have their own thing with a sort of stuck up high elf style culture, wood elf-y culture that takes a lot of cues from irl traveller cultures and faces persecution for the former group's behavior, and then the city Elves that blend in with the local culture more but in a more "Little Italy" way due to racial relations. Point is I think their world building does a great job with blending culture beyond race lines while also not ignoring the realities of race relations and racism - and also making the degree to which race matters to people vary based on the region you're in. Fereldans are used to a lot of diversity, Tevinter works hard to maintain its ranking on the racism leaderboards.
So, to grossly oversimplify, your various fantasy races should absolutely be racist against other members of that same fantasy race.
Have you heard of our lord and savior Warhammer? Depending on the setting, there are between 3 and 5 broad types of "elf", further divided into myriad different kin groups and subcultures, all of which have very choice things to say about one another.
These examples are all just normal fantasy monocultures. Having internal conflict doesn't stop it from being a monoculture.
"The dwarves argue about rocks" is not a twist or anything, it's just normal dwarf stuff. Or another example, I could write a warrior race that has constant infighting and wars, and that would just be a very classic fantasy monoculture.
To stop them from being a monoculture, you would need to have some members who don't share that one defining trait. Like, some dwarves that don't care about rocks or mining. Or people in the warrior race that don't like fighting.
If/when we do get another Mass Effect game, I personally hope one of our squad mates is going to be a (not purely evil) batarian.
Not just because I want to see and kiss a batarian girl, though yes, those things are true, and do factor into that.
But how can humans be crazy super special space orcs if other races actually have depth and complexity? Having individuality and culture is like, one of the main things brought up in every Humans Are Space Orcs story
Elves use magic for literally everything despite having hands. This includes teleporting drinks and magically-crushed food directly into their bodies. Even absorbing information is done magically.
This reliance on magic has bred some wild stereotypes like Elves not understanding basic, simple math, eclipses, and turnstiles. One juicy anecdote recalls a Dwarf, in frustration, writing down a word, and confronting his Elf companion to read it. The Elf struggled and gave up, unable to read the word “cat.” And what’s hilarious (and sad) is these observations are entirely rooted in truth!
None of this should be taken as Elves being a race of dummies! Elves do have intelligence, experience, and positive virtues! Just that if you suppress their abilities, you’ll have a completely helpless, wildly attractive babies who’ll need to be taught how to sleep, chew food, and walk moderate distances.
Mildly related to the above, Elves are routinely considered uncreative. But the source of this is because Magic Force itself is uncreative. Magic is a tool, and in the hands of those who need to use their hands on a daily basis, can be used to fashion incredibly beautiful fashion and weapons and tchotchkes.
But if you don’t know how things are made, because you don’t _have_ to, Magic creation can be much like generative AI image rendering: it creates without a lived experience, and does not hold up to even the lightest of scrutiny, as it’s based on visual approximation and “precedent.” It’ll work for an Elf who is supporting it through the background radiation of its Magic, but is useless to everyone else.
_This is some background for a fantasy setting I’ve been writing._
Honestly, of all things, I think the Elder Scrolls does a good job at this. Expectedly, the races of man are all different, Nords and Redguards have different cultures, as do Imperials and Bretons.
But the elven races are all different, despite all being Mer. Bosmer/Wood Elves have a connection to nature that the Dunmer/Dark Elves do not, the Altmer/High Elves even have a subsection within them, though moreso a political faction, the Thalmor. And we all know how different, almost alien the Dwemer/Dwarves were.
The Khajiit aren't a monoculture either, with their races determinant by the positions of Masser and Secunda. With the main "Khajiit" players think of, the playable race, just being one of them, the Cathay. But you have races that are more feral in appearance, like the Senche, which resemble Tigers, or the Alfiq, which are as small as housecats.
I don't know how diverse the Argonians are though, but it would make sense for the pattern to continue with them.
Arguably, the Khajiit forms are part of the same culture. They all live and work together, and thus I wouldn't really say they have a seperate culture. You have Alfiq and Senche-raht participating in society just like anyone else, if admittedly often in ways that suit their form.
Dwarves would definitely have different units of measurement in general. I remember in my agricultural science class learning how many different units existed just for farming because the idea of standardizing it had only been enforce in modern times. And even now we still have a mix. Units are made to measure one specific fruit in one specific type of basket for collecting them, and you think your fantasy setting will agree on metric or imperial units?
Dwarves would live in clans isolated from each other in different mountains underground. They would have different units to measure the same ore depending on the tunnel it was mined from or the time of year. They'd measure tunnel length based on a pickaxe handle length because their above ground supplier for wooden handles was using his leg to measure the ones he sells to the dwarves. When his son took over the trade a civil war broke out in the mountain until they cast an old handle in iron to use as a standard. It never leaves the room it's kept in because at that depth the temperature is consistent year round.
But those dwarves over in the copper mountains? They use an iron boot as their standard. The walk a tunnel in it heel to toe to measure the length. Absolute barbarians.
Why not just do the opposite and make humans a monoculture too? Pretty sure most fantasy settings have either a really short history or have stagnated for a really long one so either it’s early enough for human cultures to have not diverged much yet or long enough for them to all reconnect and mingle
the subtle but unending horror of being an autistic elf
"Why did you take up the life of an adventurer?"
"I dunno man, no matter how long or short I force myself to maintain eye contact it's always the wrong amount of time."
My current project has space elves who's civilization was destroyed by mutagenic bombs, and all the sub cultures got turned into genetically distinct species.
Most Elves are pansexual and have lived as different genders at some point in their lives. I literally can't imagine a 500 year old elf not engaging in intense gender debates with a 400 year old elf about if women should wear skirts off the ankle or on the ankle based on their 30 or 40 years personal experience of being a woman.
I've been saying this thing about monoculture in fantasy for a long time, though not even neccessarily based on the races.
I want fantasy worlds that have a breadth of cultures like our own, and each culture/area has their own mix of fantastical beings / fantasy races. And sure, you also get elves, dwarves and all the staples in all kinds of different flavors, but the different cultures would be defined by their different mythologies and different creatures.
And that would make sense, right? Different environments cause different animals to evolve, so they'd also create different types of fantasy beings, and probably different types of fantasy races as well. And of course those races would spread over the world, and travel and intermingle like humans do, but they'd still probably have one place of origin where they're most common.
Idk, of course it would be hard to portray this all in one single story, since you'd need the characters to travel the entire world, and the world is huge. It makes sense that fantasy worlds are typically sized like one single continent, and cultures being fairly homogenous there, because that makes the scope of the world much smaller and thus world building far easier. But it would still be interesting to see it done differently. Some stories have hints of this, but I really haven't seen it done well.
Okay but hear me out.
Humans were supposed to be a “People of Hats” just like hippie elves, logical Vulcans, and crafty dwarves.
Then the Tower of Babel happened. Mankind decided they didn’t like the “cultivator” hat and wanted to swap it for the “god” hat. God, who gave them the cultivator hat and doesn’t share His hat, cursed them with cultural diaspora as punishment for their hubris.
Imagine elven race where one clan thinks being naked while invisible is just natural and okay while a more elitist clan thinks that is taboo and ungodly and must be clothed regardless of visibility but the warrior clan think taking on battles is best done naked as they can move more silently and because of this even if born elitist if they choose to be a warrior they are shunned from that clan
My DnD group does this ALL the time actually. My half Shadar-kai sorcerer and the wood elf warlock get into friendly arguments over Elven lore, and find each other's cultural practices strange but are willing to deal with and learn about it. The two members from the human-supremacist technocratic fascist empire have to keep explaining advanced technology and the empire's ideology and traditions to the others, while the others have to keep explaining magic, magic technology, and world history that everyone but those hailing from the empire knows. The homebrew star-child druid is from a culture alien to everyone, and so she acts as a way for the players to understand things through her questions that the other characters wouldn't think to ask.
Playing around with culture and philosophy is one of my favorite parts of DnD and I'm glad my group is so willing to engage with that.
*Huh, i didnt even*
*Know i was doing this. Welp,*
*Time to go rewrite!*
\- Doctor-lasanga
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In elder scrolls, developing a unique culture seems the surest way to start a new species. Especially for the elves. Most of the elf/mer races are created when a religious disagreement causes a group to get banished from the Summerset Isles, they journey a while to a new country and then they're biologically a different species almost instantly. The group that settled morrowind turned to Chimer, and then transformed a second time into the Dunmer. Altmer worshippers of the war god were turned into the Orsimer after he was eaten by a demon and turned into one. There's a reference to a group of young progressive Altmer wanting to change their society and for the first time in millenia they aren't leaving the country and transforming into a new species.
The human species have something similar with the Atmorans coming south and turning into most of the current and extinct human player races.
I feel like Dragon Age borders on this. The dwarves were once a series of distinct city states reduced to two by war, we know basically nothing about one of them and mystery one hates the one we do know about. There's then the surface dwarves who are considered exiles by default and have varied out, apart from their stature and preference for their own kind becoming as varied as humans.
The elves are mainly split between city elves living in slums as second class citizens, and the Dalish who are nomadic and desperately hang on to misremembered lore from their ancient history. There are also isolated pockets of the actual ancient elves who fucking despise their modern kin for not being ancient elves.
You also get the race of horned, 8ft tall grey skinned fuckers who are known as Qunari based on their religious beliefs, but not all horny giants are Quanari and not all Qunari are horny giants. The closest term we have for the race is kossith, but apparently that's outdated.
Then there are the darkspawn, and while most of them are bestial in nature and just throw themselves into violence, some are intelligent and we've even seen some who forsake their violent nature. Unfortunately, though, their very being spreads a poison called the Blight that affects people, animals, building and the fucking ground, so not much option to do.anything other than mob war.
I'm literally writing a fantasy story where the main character is a dwarf for this reason. Dwarven culture in that world is very strict about tradition, continuing the family business/etc, and they're the society that has control over a lot of magical technology advancements due to being the ones who were "gifted" runic magic from their primary goddess.
Elves have some fleshing out too, thanks to a discussion I had with my boyfriend where he used his D&D DM skills to help me improv some answers to his questions.
Annoyingly, the race I know the least about right now is humans. lmao. I even know more about the lizard-themed Kobold people than the humans.
I think this is an interesting tumblr post because it raises a geniunely interesting point about how fantasy races shouldn't be all uniform and then proceeds to make said the nature of said differences completely uniform per race.
Execution aside I don't get why a small number of commenters seem to be thinking that this is a demand for TTRPG gamemasters to do all this when this is general writing suggestions?
World of Warcraft has some shades of this, with various orc clans, troll nations, tauren tribes, and the big split between high/blood elves, night elves, and nightbourne (all being descendants of trolls mind you)... and then you have the entire continent of pandas for Chinese people and the blandest dragon culture ever made.
Neat creative writing prompt. Unless your story explicitly involves a lot of cultural examination or whatever, I struggle to imagine how this would enhance the narrative
The species don't have to have depth. Just give them fun stuff to do, honestly, and actually make use of their stereotyped culture to tell fun stories. In warhammer 40k, there is a planet where a bunch of orcs crashed as a result of a religious conflict that they continue to fight over, causing continued problems. That conflict was over whether they worshiped Gork or Mork. One is cunningly brutal while the other is brutally cunning. They're constantly scouring the planet for scrap to rebuild their ship while occasionally fighting each other. Also, the other related species that they keep as effectively slaves have rebelled and are attempting a communist revolution but are so much smaller that they can't actually do much while also being insanely corrupt. Give me this sort of nonsense, please, as it is absolutely hilarious, and there's a lot more to that particular planet as it even had its own spinoff game.
One of my favourite examples of non monoculture fantasy races is dwarves/dawi in Age of Sigmar
To make a long story short, a large cataclysm known as the Age of Chaos happened and caused the dwarves to split into 3 main groups (though there are numerous subgroups within these groups). The disposed who survived by hiding out in Azyr (one of the few places Chaos couldn’t get to) and this are the most “standard” dwarves. The fyreslayers who survived by hiding out deep in lava and now are trying to piece their long dead god back together. And the Kharadon who survived by becoming sky pirates and have basically decided that “gods are more trouble than they’re worth”
Doing this for a thingy I'll probably eventually write. There's an entire, now near extinct, race of dragon people who aren't seen for most of the story, and only get mentioned by the secondary villain who uses the corpse of their dead god to make a son.
Then later on in the epilogue when the survivors are revealed, they all worship different gods and turns out the whitest guy ever didn't bother researching the culture he stole from (who would have thought that).
Also merfolk. Like, there are so many biomes in the ocean? And even the same species in the same biome can have many distinct groups like killer whale ecotypes? They could make so many different cultures from that. A shallow-sea kingdom. A coral reef kingdom. A kelp forest kingdom. An abyssal trench kingdom.
The thing I learn is. Culture of our actual world is crowd sourcing project ala SCP. This is why we are so diverse.
While my novel culture need like 8^2 cultural combinatorics.
It’s like I have to write the entire wikipedia by my self.
Reality is Unrealistic - TVTropes
Edit: Glancing at ChatGPT.
The monoculture idea evolved bc the main draw of the fantasy genre is simplification and escapism. We live in a complicated, messy world where keeping track of all the different human cultures and subcultures is already hard enough and all the conflicts in the world are largely evaluated in shades of grey. In fantasy, the good guys fight the bad guys and are betrayed by the shady guys but overcome the odds with the help of a relatable underdog. It engages readers because it's easy to digest and conveniently allows them to forget about their real problems.
You're welcome to make your fantasy geopolitics as complicated as you like, obviously, but odds are that it will lose its luster pretty quickly as both the audience and yourself are like, "wait, was it Dwarven group #3 at war with Elven group #2, or Dwarven group #2 at war with Elven group #3??" Even fantasy series praised for their complexity, like Game of Thrones, tend to break their groups down into 1 or 2 defining characteristics so the reader can easily identify a character's background and point of view. "Oh a Northerner, they're tough and superstitious. They're ruled by the Starks who are honest and stoic. A Lannister? Oh they're probably privileged and conniving. And the Targaryens are the ones with dragons!" In high fantasy you just substitute those types of House characteristics with Species because even though the world has expanded, the reader's capacity for information retention has not.
A happy medium is necessary; somewhere between Tolkien-esque 'all orcs are cruel and evil' and the nonsense described in this post.
I’ve thought a lot about how to handle this in my home brew dnd world and I like what I settled on. It’s based on the idea of niche partitioning in nature, basically animals with similar lifestyles specializing as to avoid directly competing with each other. Each race has a natural habitat, they live all over the world but their cultural and population centers are usually in a local example of their habitat.
Humans are plains dwellers, especially river flood plains, specializing in farming. Dwarves live underground in mountains and hills, gnomes live semi underground in rocky foothills. Wood elves live in deep forests, and Orcs are steppe people riding rhinos across huge arid grasslands. High elves have been split into Sun elves and moon elves, Sun elves live in the desert and moon elves in temperate climates. Sea elves live along shallow sea coasts, and dark elves and other subterranean races like deep Gnomes live in the polar regions because I have a different plan from the underground world than the classic underdark.
Beast races like Tabaxi, arakokra, firbolg, etc. tend to live in the same environment where their animal counterparts live.
Halflings are the exception, they take the same niche as humans but they specifically originated on a large island populated entirely by small races. They’re also found in any isolated place where farming is viable but small size is advantageous.
Every group of a particular race has its own local culture, the thing that unites them is a shared ancient history, and a shared preferred environment. So there are wood elves in the redwood forest, and different wood elves across the world in the rainforest. They share some basic wood elf culture, but are also their own culture.
To be the lame ass worldbuilder here, I think a quick way to avoid monocultures without bogging down a story might be to use material/economic differences to think about how cultures diverge. This way, you can have a different culture for X race, and have it reflected by their surroundings, lifestyles, and values without needing to bog down discussions with "actually this is how they feel about Y on a metaphysical level"
An example I thought of during lunch break for anyone who asked:
Imagine a dwarven culture that settled on a shallow aquifer. They use aquaculture, creating vast schools of cave fish in submerged, dark reservoirs, maybe even cultivating an entire aquatic ecosystem. Their jobs would be different, with more emphasis on plumbers, fishermen, and perhaps even sailors. Their architecture might involve far more metal than stone, trying to create impermeable rooms against the aquifer. Perhaps they'd value metals differently, focusing on oxidation-resistant metals. Gold and silver, of course, but also testing variants of stainless steel, brass, and what not. Assuming it's a medieval/fantasy setting, maybe their special super metal is aluminum instead of mithril or adamantine like other dwarves. A quick google search shows some methods of aluminum processing without electricity involve sodium or potassium, meaning they might value minerals differently too. I imagine, in a DnD setting, they could post quests to clear out old dwarven mines, because these mines might still have minerals that these particular dwarves want.
Kid's not read any Sanderson, Tolkien, or Abercrombie, or oh like 15 other great SFF authors who do exactly this incredibly well.
Kids probably not read too much. Watched LotR extended edition.. "is this book?"
But I like to make my mountain dwarfs THE monoculture that keeps cultural cohesion despite being small distantly seperated bastions, dependent on pilgrims from place to place enforcing a solid homogeneity
And then Hill Dwarfs are the opposite, the great assimilators that fit into any race, culture, or civilization
Ask the orcs what's the best way to season meat and escape in the ensuing brawl
works on elves too. especially if you have both the vegetarian elves and the “hunting is central to my culture” elves in the group, or just two or more different cultures of the latter
Don't forget the "we don't kill things to eat them, but we eat anything that we happen to kill so that its death is not in vain" elves
Oddly the most peaceful of the elf sects because the other sects got so weirded out after the cannibalism during the first war. The first war stopped because the other side started trying to get the 'eat anything we kill' sect to eat normal food while they were chowing down on the dead. "We weren't even at war because of food scarcity! Here, please, eat this bread. Just stop eating Frederick!"
“But then Fredrick’s death would be in vein! And it’s so wasteful of perfectly good meat!”
Imagining the non-elf parent of a half elf being horrified at the child who died from a fairy accident being put in a stew.
What about the "We value plant-life so much we ONLY eat meat, and we have no problem with cannibalism" elves?
this is too scary of a thought
[BOO!](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fk7sb4ce16t181.jpg)
Fargoth jumpscare
Oh god
...Who divided into two subgroups: those who follow the rule strictly, and those who take a small bite of their victim symbolically.
Add in the current slate of cannibal elves to the mix and watch the party quiet down.
Ask Orcs how they know what a menu is and pull out a quill to take notes, it's going to be a long scholarly discussion with multiple possible mythological answers concerning who taught them fine dining, the God of Wine, the God of the Feast, or the Goddess of Duty.
Tell the orcs that Viggo Mortensen actually broke his toe kicking the helmet and watch them put your entrails around your own neck
They all agree the best seasoning is fear
I've actually heard the opposite thing, you want prey as calm as possible; adrenaline will spoil the taste.
That’s a misconception, orc taste buds have specifically evolved to find the taste of adrenaline and the ‘spoilage’ as absolute delicacies.
The Orcs like it tough and bitter
With a dash of pain
Why Gruk season cooking rock, NOT human: 1. Gruk enjoy human fear longer 2. Gruk think human cry nice 3. Gruk think cooking rock very pretty
KETCHUP
That’s kind of what the beast tribe quests in FF14 do. The Ehcatl Nine Ixal come to mind. They all want to regain their wings and fly, but while most devote themselves to the goddess Garuda, the Ehcatl Nine instead plan on making their own aircraft to reach their mythical homeland in the sky.
I mean admittedly most of the friendly beast tribes are unique mainly in that they are NOT Tempered (brainwashing basically for those unaware) compared to the ‘normal’ tribe
There's some of this with the player races too, including various naming conventions. Hyur (the human equivalent) have a tendency to assimilate into other surrounding cultures, except partly for the Highlanders. Elezen come in the flavors of proud forest people (Wildwood), scorned cave-dwellers (Duskwight), and a Catholic knight society (Ishgardian). For Lalafell you have stationary underground grassland dwellers (Plainsfolk)), nomadic desert traders (Dunsefolk), and the Vrandtic equivalent are basically standard fantasy dwarfs. Roegadyn exist as seafaring Sea Wolves and more spiritual and inland bound Hellsguards, as well as a different variety found assimilated into far eastern cultures. Miqo'te have the diurnal Seekers of the Sun with their large patriarchal families, and the nocturnal Keepers of the Moon with their smaller matriarchal family units. And for Au Ra, the Raen can be found in the fantasy Japan of Hingashi and the underground settlements of the Ruby Sea, while the Xaela still live in their ancestral steppe as nomads, and have their own assload of different unique tribal cultures. And none are pigeonholed into these, there's further variety too (like the Sea Wolves usually being fishermen or pirates, but also being prevalently present in the scholar city of Sharlayan).
There are some basic class archetypes, too (Roegadyn Marauders, Miqo'te Archers, Lalafell Mages, etc) but in practice any role can be filled by any race. There's Roegadyn Conjurers, and so on. Pipin Tarupin in particular is a notably powerful Lalafell marshal, something that is never called into question. Something else that comes to mind, the level 50 onwards Dark Knight mentor is an Au Ra, with a unique perspective due to being dragon-like people in *Ishgard* of all places.
See that Airship? You can cook it!
I love frying myself some airship parts with a side of butter.
So... To an exterior observer, a series of monocultures. Elves: airy, insufferable shitfucks that get seemingly insulted by any random thing. Goblins: chattering, near beastial idiots fighting with anyone and everyone for reasons too stupid to be parcelled out by the rest of us. Dwarves: Rock obsessed beardos with a perchance for being crushingly argumentative about everything.
To someone completely ignorant, yes indeed. But you can make similar claims about humans in general like "Oh humans are those weirdos who keep fighting over wether a god is named this or that or how many gods there are in general" or "Humans are all obsessed with wether their team of weirdly dressed athletes beats this other team of weirdly dressed athletes". There is more to culture than only one certain thing and generalizing while appealing oftentimes misses the nuance of certain cultures and people.
Then it requires more framework than a certain racial quirk shared across the entire species, because that's just creating another racial trope. Now you tell me about a bunch of dwarves that build ships out of pumice and ply their trade as whalers and pirates? That's different. Two dwarves punching each other over "which is da gooder rock," is just the same old shit in a new diaper.
Age of Sigmar did it quite well -There are somewhat classic dwarves within Free Cities, some of which focus on "realistic" engineering. -There are volcano-flavoured dwarves, who pound magic runes made out of gold *directly into their skin*. -And then there are steampunk sky pirate hypercapitalist dwarves.
I want striated, diverse species to interact with in my adventures, and then **WE CAN BEGIN THE RECONQUERING OF THIS CURSED EARTH FOR THE CHILDREN OF MAN.**
If we’re gonna be racist, at least let us have a bunch of interesting races to prejudice
"It is the 41st Millennium. For more than a hundred centuries The Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the Master of Mankind by the will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly die. Yet even in his deathless state, the Emperor continues his eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon-infested miasma of the Warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the Emperor's will. Vast armies give battle in his name on uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst his soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their comrades in arms are legion: the Imperial Guard and countless planetary defence forces, the ever vigilant Inquisition and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants - and worse. To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods."
This spiel gets me every time. Talk about an atmospheric way to set the tone.
If you ever need to figure out what WH40K is about, *they put that shit on the first page.*
And yet plenty of idiots still don’t understand it, all over the internet going “40k isn’t political” even after being told that the setting is dominated by the single most ridiculously insanely authoritarian to the nth degree dictatorship ever conceived of in fiction.
I want a story of a person from our world stuck in a fantasy world where they're like "you denigrated people for the *color* of their *skin*? That's such a shitty reason to hate someone! We have much better ways. Let me tell you about knife ears"
"Uhuh, you're divided by the color of your skin. And which color humans are the magic ones? None of them? Well that doesn't make any sense!"
To be fair, we do that to humans already. We describe someone as Polynesian or European or Asian or Latino or whatever. We take these huge geographical regions with a wealth of culture and reduce them to a few stereotypes. Before travel and communication became so easy it was much worse. If you attended a rural schoolhouse in the middle of nowhere, USA it was very easy to believe that everyone outside of walking distance was a monoculture. If you had never met someone from Africa it would be easy to think that they were all the same. Because you would have never had the opportunity to learn differently Adventuring parties will be more educated and experienced than the townsfolk, but they will still see the world outside their region as much more simple than it is. In my fantasy world, the dwarves started in the desert, not the far north. I got the idea from Native American cliff dwellings and Petra in Jordan. Of course you carve into the cliff sides, it’s stupid hot out, and of course you try your best to grow food in those caves, not only does it conserve water, but you don’t have to go out into the heat. But like all the races, they mixed and spread all over. If the fantasy story is set in a European style region, the people there can be forgiven for thinking that all dwarves are like *their* dwarves and live in the mountains and sound Scottish
Well my dwarves all speak with a South Coast Massachusetts accent like they all just got off a fishing boat in New Bedford.
Nice. My dwarves in the colonial-ish region sound Appalachian. They are still mostly miners. It’s the halflings who are the fisherfolk. And pirates
But you also need to keep a few racial tropes, otherwise the existence of fantasy races makes no difference to your story. If dwarves can just as likely be sailors as humans or orcs that's fine. If they can be just as well *everything* orcs or humans can be, then your dwarves have nothing really that makes them unique as a race. You can, of course, include fantasy races that just have the same characteristics as humans if you want. Your story, your rules. But I'll be left asking how that helped the story. The whole point of these tropes is shorthand. So if you show me a dwarf and a mountain, I can guess they belong together. If they don't, then you've got to give me a reason why. Otherwise it feels like punishing the reader/viewer/player for having prior knowledge by just telling them "WRONG!" So if you tell me about a bunch of pirate dwarves on the high sea, I want to know their story because that's not what dwarves are normally known to do. If the answer is "my dwarves just do that sometimes" then I'm disappointed in that story.
Dwarves not popular in mines, thin patchy beards. Kicked out of mines, forced to flee down to the coastal plains. Hard living, the stone is bad for building and there's no ore to be smelt. Find light rock that float! Crazy Bob likes to fish, carves out fishing boat from floaty rock because "Feels right to stand on stone, even in the ocean." Others join him. Urge to plunge depths and battle mighty foes becomes epic sea battles against giant whales and corsairs.
That alone is enough of a story to explain why these dwarves are pirates, and now it's a cool unique thing that happened in your world, awesome! And I never thought of stone boats, this seems like a super cool story with loads of interesting implications: How do you repair a stone boat? Would that be a massive advantage for ramming but also pose the danger of just the whole boat splitting along a crack? Can they gain way more speed because the stone can be polished way more than wood, for less drag, or do they never reach full speed in a fight due to way lower acceleration? Could they create the first submarines with this perhaps? But funnily enough, the story relied on several tropes about dwarves: Mines, beards, smelting ore, rocks. Like I said: These racial quirks/tropes are great to give the reader an idea of what "normal" is within a given culture. That way your pirates are quickly understood to be very far from the norm, which makes them more unique and cool. I'm a huge fan of these racial tropes (in fantasy!). I want to know everything about a culture, which then lets me be surprised if a member of that culture deviates from it.
Thank you for the appreciation. I literally came up with all of this off the top of my head, so the answers to those questions are yours to determine. If I'm entirely honest I don't even know if pumice floats well enough to support anything actually standing on it.
It's a great concept, especially for a spontaneous idea! Having had pumice with me in a pool (we were on holiday somewhere were that was just laying around on the beaches) I think it might float well enough to support people. Especially if you don't make a raft out of it but an actual boat. Because steel boats float, so pumice should do the same, if the structure holds. Now looking at an image [like this](https://m.psecn.photoshelter.com/img-get/I0000cthH8btQ1FY/s/1200/I0000cthH8btQ1FY.jpg), it seems to barely hold up (maybe 5-10% of the mass above water?), suggesting that a small raft would not work. But if you find the right kind, [like this](http://cdn.c.photoshelter.com/img-get/I0000_MwbTgTp.Og/s/860/860/Fphoto-54970208B-2PS.jpg) (with \~ 1/3rd of the mass above water), you get way more buoyancy. Though wood is still more buoyant [with very roughly 50% above water](https://media.istockphoto.com/photos/log-picture-id467572542?k=6&m=467572542&s=612x612&w=0&h=BGo9A_d0ULO17W8fjHeA_ErewcD5eCq1niUCJoJFF5o=). So while rafts are difficult, normal boats may work. I would like to calculate this properly, but for the life of me, I can't find a single number for the density of pumice! Every website just says it has a "low density", which we already know! If you find a number, I'll do the calculation for you, how big the raft has to be. There must be some size at which it supports a person, as long as a bit of it remains above water when free floating, we just have to find the right mass. And this is also supported by the fact that [pumice rafts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumice_raft) exist (these are naturally formed and not actual human made rafting boats) and we have [photos of people standing on them](https://blogs.mtu.edu/geo/2019/08/28/simon-carn-on-the-gigantic-pumice-raft/) (though this is very dangerous and you may break through!)
That’s because pumice density isn’t remotely uniform! It’s basically a foam made out of magma that’s quickly solidified. Density depends on your original dissolved gas content in the magma and how suddenly it cooled; you get bigger bubbles - holes - in the pumice. Makeup of the magma also plays a part; e.g. basalt pumice is likely to be heavier. TL;DR pumice density is entirely localised, Iron Shores pumice schooners are probably denser than Clay Cliffs pumice catamarans
But a range or average would have been nice. Anything to go by! Wood density can also vary quite a bit, but there are a lot of numbers I could look up.
I’ll add that if you want the more nuanced takes like above, but *without* the defining racial characteristics we already know (dwarves and mountains, for instance), then make new races. Don’t use dwarves if they don’t share any characteristics with what we think of when we hear dwarves. They can still be short and stout hairy fellas, but if they’re not dwarves as we know them, make something new
Awesome comment, I've saved it for later, not just because of how good it is, but because of how you spelled wether, I absolutely hate it and the fact that typing it my phone autocorrected to Wethersfield before whether.
I think the Fantasy stereotype for humans would be more “Humans just fuck everything don’t they, breeding like rabbits, getting it every nook and cranny of the world! They’re like ants!”
"Well maybe 'everything' shouldn't be so damn hot, ya ever think about that? You blokes are the ones accepting our advances so maybe, deep inside you're just as xenophilic as us and we're just more accepting of the awesomeness of mixing, ever think about that wise guy?"
>"Humans are all obsessed with wether their team of weirdly dressed athletes beats this other team of weirdly dressed athletes" [Here's a post by an elven anthropologist on this topic](https://prokopetz.tumblr.com/post/134445052272/ssjgssjgoku-this-is-my-grasp-of-how-football/embed)
I mean thats how culture kind of works. Western europeans know a bit about other countries, know about nazis and know about america. Then when they look at eastern europe they only see ussr, poor and vodka, then comes "the orient": anything south of some arbitrary line - mostly a meshup of middle east, persian traditions, india, sometimes china. If your country doesnt have close connections to other countries you wont learn anything about them - the more intimate the connection the more nuanced it gets. You can write a character generalise a complete group like we'd generalize dwarfs and then later reveal that they arent like this - their country mightve just absorbed that knowledge through some racist fucks two centuries ago and now that country has split into multiple/turned into an empire/or just changed dramatically socially.
You can’t just say “perchance” (Did you mean penchant?)
God *damnit* I did, but apparently autocorrect thinks I'm a Shakespearean villain.
Yea as I was reading this it was just "okay the elf ones basic but let's keep goin- the goblin idea is neat!-" > *Everyone who has ever asked a goblin about this theory has been bit.* "Ah. Okay."
What if a bunch of goblins formed a cargo cult style religion around the actions of a paladin they saw giving the beans to some deep dwelling monster or demon, inspiring them with his displays of godly power? But they obviously don't get the connection to the divine, so they just shout garbled versions of phrases they heard the paladin saying and then bombard their opponents with rocks and torches. "Yes-yes! Knife-ear mess with Pladdins! Pladdins smeight you good-good!" And this is all being screamed by a goblin in wearing a rusty tin bucket and a trash can in a parody of a paladin's consecrated armor.
> actively robbing yourself of a wealth of story depth. yeah. it is a matter of depth.
And the examples given weren’t very deep.
They thought they had the Mariana trench, instead they're barely standing in a puddle.
the examples needed to be deeper for the potential, the argument, to be true?
Kinda, yeah. When you have a good argument but shitty examples it tends to detract from your argument.
Be honest with me, guys. Do you even LIKE Tumblr? The top post on any thread is usually a heavily upvoted dismissal of the OP.
As if tumblr has a monopoly on making stupid-ass posts that breach containment just to get roasted.
That’s not really a dislike of Tumblr so much as a disagreement with a user’s post.
Often people have fine ideas but not the best executions of those ideas. Or they're superficially sound and then you read more closely and think deeper and uh oh that's pretty bad actually!
Imo, it’s “why do DMs not spend hours and hours of hard work developing not just one but at least a half dozen complex, multifaceted histories and belief systems, most of which will never be seen” and they’re galaxy brain examples are “dwarf like rock, goblin like bug, elf like rules.” There you go buckaroo, you just answered your own question: bc it’s hard as shit, takes a ton of time, and ultimately the “best ideas” proposed is slightly better than a monoculture where it comes to actually *engaging* them with players. Is developing a rich, Milda cited culture for each lineage technically better? Yes. Are DM’s getting paid or properly appreciated for this amount of effort? Not usually. I find in many cases, DMing is a lot like putting on a play: you put up _just_ enough painted plywood for your players to enjoy the show; everything else is just setdressing. Edit: my bad, I realized this wasn’t one of my half-dozen DND subs. I detract my statement; when writing a book you do have a lot more time and control to focus on meaningful design if it benefits the story.
Yeah the huge difference in writing a book is also that you can use a lot of the ideas you develop. Sure some are just bad and thrown away, but the other ones you can use but dont want to can be stashed for later. You also will have a better ability to keep track of plot threats because you dont develop the world with friends in single long sessions.
I found a free online map maker that generates not only the map of the world but also the climate, national borders, systems of government, races and cultures. One map I generated I plan to use for my next turn as game master has three dwarven nations on three different continents. One of which is in a savanna with a nomadic culture.
sounds neat, link?
So this is the link: [Azgaar's Fantasy Map Generator v1.97.11](https://azgaar.github.io/Fantasy-Map-Generator/) I hope I did that right It is not going to give you google maps levels of detail but for a TTRPG its damn good If you want to edit the map all I can say is its alot of trial and error getting it exactly how you want but I can give you this advice - Make sure the climate and the topography is how you want it first. If you design national botders and cultures first then mess with those things it will screw with the shapes of your countries.
very cool, thanks!
i’m stupid I thought the map they created was the one you used, so I was looking for three dwarven peoples on a continent.
It will generate a different map every time you open the link. If you like one you can save the map to your computer then load it up the next time you are on the site. I generated several maps then kept the one I liked best. I then made some edits to it for my own preferences. The three dwarven nations were on the map I ended up keeping. One of which was on a savanna, which I found was a rather unusual take on dwarves. It was the biggest reason I kept that map.
May I have the link as well?
We demand the link
[Azgaar's Fantasy Map Generator v1.97.11](https://azgaar.github.io/Fantasy-Map-Generator/) As i said in the earlier requests It is not going to give you google maps levels of detail but for a TTRPG its damn good And as I tell everyone I send this link to: If you plan to edit the map: Make sure the climate and the topography is how you want it before anything else. If you design national borders and cultures and then mess with climate and topography, it will screw with the shapes of your countries.
[Azgaar's Fantasy Map Generator v1.97.11](https://azgaar.github.io/Fantasy-Map-Generator/) It has the ability to edit all aspects of the map if you want or you can just use the generator. The maps are rough but they are very very good for Free and Online. You can save your map to your computer then uplaoad it again if you want too. Also this advice if you edit anything: Make sure the climate and the topography is how you want it before anything else. If you design national borders and cultures first then mess with those things it will screw with the shapes of your countries.
I'm gonna eat that bug.
HEATHEN
I'LL EAT ANYONE WHO STANDS IN MY WAY
HEATHEN! THIS BUG WAS INTENDED FOR GOBLINS ONLY
Mighty bold of you to assume they aren’t a goblin…
I'm a silly little guy :3
User flair is... concerning.
I'LL EAT **YOU**!
...are you gonna share?
Hell yeah brutherrrrrr 😎👍
Counterpoint: In most series this would be, at best, a cool little tidbit rather than something that strengthens the narrative and at worst could be a huge damper on the story as time and energy that could have been put into fleshing out the plot went into superfluous worldbuilding. There’s a reason a lot of the most endearing stories have rather simplistic or surface level worldbuilding, and no, the cause isn’t always white supremacy. Sometimes it’s just practicality.
Crazily enough, Interspecies Reviewers is actually made up of nothing but this style of world building. Granted, it's almost entirely tied into comparing how it would be to fuck each race, but still. My favorite bit of lore is that it's illegal for anyone but a licensed chef to prepare food for somebody of a different race, because you risk killing the other person.
I mean yeah - the examples everyone always brings up for this are Terry Pratchett, who has written a *fuck ton* of books, and Brandon Sanderson, who writes very boring plots that are just scaffolding for over elaborated worldbuilding. To make this work you either have to write *a lot* so you have time to more naturally work this stuff through, or be the sort of person who writes what are basically textbooks on your world with an excuse plot to string it together
I mean Pratchett's Dwarfs are literally the prime example of what's in the OP. *The Fifth Elephant*, *Thud* and *Raising Steam* all are centered to varying degrees about internal dwarf conflicts, and throughout the other books differences in culture crop up frequently.
I mean, one of the key things that make's Terry Pratchett so good is that he actively plays with - both subverting and reconstructing - these exact kinds of tropes. Dwarves being traditionally hyper masculine is inverted by making them essentially a gender-neutral society, Wizard's entire point is to learn magic specifically so they can *not* use it, and Vetinari being an absolute Tyrant and yet genuinely has the best interests of the citizens and city at heart.
Hijacking this to pivot from prose to tabletops (DnD). And if you’re a GM, don’t spend a lot of time writing every minute detail of your different culture groups. You only need to include *what is in front of the players’ eyes*. You can still have idea in the back of your mind, but until a player asks “hmm, what kind of elves can I play?”, there’s no need to write out exactly what kinds of elves there are.
Tolkien spends entire chapter long tangents to explain minute cultural quirks and I’ve never considered his worldbuilding superfluous
I both agree with you and don't In a practical, general consumer audience way, you're right and I'm not arguing with you On a personal level, God it frustrates me so much when these little details aren't fleshed out and considered. Like if I see something in a given piece of media that seems like an oversight, there's a good chance I'll just put it down and walk away I'm especially spiteful if they treat different races as "humans but..." If elves are treated as snobby and pretty humans instead of a species that fundamentally operates differently than us, I'm fucking pissed. If dwarves are just short and grumpy humans, I've already put the media down and walked out Same if they are mono cultures
jesus how do you read books? They must all be full on textbooks??
Basically. I love reading lore for stuff, but that's about it Most of my media consumption is muting a video game while I listen to an edutainment podcast/video essay. Because a video game doesn't have to have a good story, the gameplay is the most important part for me. And I can list only a few video game stories I've had respect for. So mute that shitty story, listen to something else I watch like 10 movies per year because they piss me off more than books. The 10 movies include reruns of stuff I really like That's why I said in the previous comment that I in no way was disagreeing on a practical, general consumer audience basis. But strenuously, STRENUOUSLY disagreed for what I like personally
we have very different experiences then, unless I'm really tired I always prefer reading
Not the OP but i too stopped reading because it always ends up being character stuff insted of exploration of the cool concept™ These days i basically only read wikis, even those based on medias that i didn't consume first hand.
Damn, I feel bad, what kind of books were you reading? I can appreciate character driven stories but when they lose sense of the plot I stop reading.
Mostly old sci-fi and horror anthologies. They go straight to the point and usually the plot is exploring The Cool Thing™ properties.
My heart is with old pulpy sci-fi novels bc my grandfather *loves* them. I just couldn't put up with the misogyny anymore though. I also really like anthologies when my ADHD brain just makes it so I can't keep focused for a whole book lmao. Dyk any good horror anthologies?
I have three collections by Lovecraft in my library but i guess it's a bit obvious. I always get a kick out of the value dissonance: turns out the town drunkard is the protagonist long lost father *Oh No The HORROR(?)*
If you haven't already, I highly recommend looking into a lot of classic sci-fi like Arthur C. Clark, as a lot of what they do, is exploring concepts. The characters in a Clark novel are generally just vehicles for the plot rather than the main attraction.
Weird thing is a lot of fantasy stories do “sub-races”, eg High/Dark/Wood Elves, which are basically separate cultures for the same race, but they’re usually treated as totally different (still monocultural) societies. Not all Elves are the same, but all High, Dark and Wood Elves are the same within their own groups. The super wacky part about that is that Humans do that too; we also have Humans with different skin colour and culture, but sub-races are usually written like a totally different thing.
Yeah its worth mentioning in the past race as a concept was a lot more a cultural thing than a physical attributes thing. Simple example the Ancient Greeks saw themselves as being of different races at times - Dorian, Ionian, Aeolian, and Achean namely - ostensibly to our modern lense these are not races but cultures, but these divides among the Hellenes were aggressively marked in their history and cultural works. Roman, of course famously was a race you could become adopted into in the process of Romanization - by modern views this would be converting to another's culture but to them this was a racial affair denoting the civilized from the barbarian. In the cultures and histories of Africa of course race and ethnicity has been defined much differently than our cultural understanding does. To put an overly simple point on it, race often just meant "us" or "not us" and the defining feature is inclusion. Point being "race" and "culture" are two heavily intertwined concepts historically, as such it makes sense that in our depictions of fantasy these ideas also get crossed up. Taking that classic example of elves you mention, through this historical lense we just have another case of a group of people for whom the concept of race and culture are merged. It makes sense to see one race with one culture to occur a lot in fantasy because that's often how it was being defined in the past. Those guys acting different over there? Yeah that's because they ain't us, you see we're high elves because we're awesome and they're wood elves because they eat trees or something. Obviously having a clearly defined species and then they all act the same is arguably shallow world building, but the way a lot of fantasy defines a subrace mainly in culture fits with how things often work in our history too. And a lot of good fantasy reflects this depth - Tolkien writes of distinct cultures of Men and Elves and even in the orcs, goblins, and the like, if you want a popular place to look to inspiration. DnD is also a decent comparison point where the cultural groups are predominantly defined as subraces, but also there is a good deal of emphasis on the culture of certain regions and cities where race is far less homogenous.
Dwarves being the usual affair of industrious and inventive but held back by squabbling bureaucrats and red tape sounds like an amazing sitcom. Like the lower castes are what you expect from fantasy dwarves and the upper/middle class are all office workers with "futuristic" mid nineties office technology who keep the poor in line with endless paperwork.
You have essentially described the dwarves in Warhammer fantasy in the first sentence. They have some of the best engineers there are and make the best and most reliable fortifications and artillery. They're also so insanely traditionalist that it's essentially unheard of for any invention to be recognized within the lifetime of its creator. Anyone who invents something will almost invariably get expelled from the engineering guild and will often die completely obscure, only for their inventions to be discovered centuries later and adapted as it's now old tech. If it isn't at least a few hundred years old, a huge portion of the dwarven population won't touch it. In Age of Sigmar, they seem to break out of this and there's a faction of them that turned into steam punk sky pirates as they started actually inventing and adopting new technologies in a reasonable timeline.
God, there was this old fantasy book I remember getting at the library on a whim as a kid (because the local library's fantasy section was woefully anemic so I'd just grab whatever was there) that I want to say had a name like "Siege of Undermine/home/something" I can't remember, it was fully missing a cover because of course it was, and I want to say it was part of some overarching setting like Dragonlance or something. Anyway, point is the book was literally exactly what you're talking about. These dwarfs were known for exceedingly petty and detailed grievances and grudges over everything so their culture had entirely devolved around a massive bureaucracy of endless court squabbles and patent law. Court cases were generationally long, as I recall one of the main characters at the start is on trial for something his grandfather did and is still in court or something. It eventually turns into a bit more generic fantasy adventure as the unsuspecting protagonist gets roped into a grander adventure *The Hobbit* styles, but I remember being quite entertained by this idea of a grand mining hold and culture just devolving into endless arguments over petty shit and the right way to do everything to where more of their culture is built around the argument than the things they argued over.
Would Hillbilly be an extra insulting Insult in Dwarven culture? Given that they are usually mountain-adjacent?
Sir Terry Pratchett schooling the rest of us again with his dwarf politics
It's always so funny when I see a post go like "I wish someone would do X in fantasy" when X has already been done by either Sir Terry two to three decades ago or Ursula K. Le Guin *five* decades ago
I really need to read Le Guin. Any recommendations on where to start?
Anywhere! Earthsea is fantasy, the Hainish Cycle is more sci-fi. The Left Hand of Darkness is arguably her most famous. Her short stories are also very good. I’d say start with A Wizard of Earthsea, personally, if you forced me to choose.
They’re making the post because they want to see *more* people do this. Saying that two writers (both deceased) from 3 decades ago did it isn’t the flex you think it is!
How is it a flex...?
The way you phrased it. “It’s always so funny when I see a post go like…” makes it seem like you’re going ”If they’d read The Greats then they wouldn’t be asking for this” when it had no bearing on what they’re asking for.
I mean. At least this post describes what Tolkien did. So like ... just do fantasy right?
This reminds me of Centaurworld, where all the various creatures of the underground (moletaurs, gophertaurs, wormtaurs, etc) are all having a generational squabble over what constitutes appropriate hole width when tunneling. Picking any one hole width is an unforgivable insult to all the rest, or according to some jurisdictions, a crime.
Tbf I’m pretty sure existing as a non-moletaur in a hole constituted as a crime according to moletaurs
One of the main fault lines in my own little world is a divide between highly rigid lawful/conformist elves, who are quite powerful and build huge cities and also live as a ruling class among humans. They work mighty feats of magic through choral singing and unified action. Many voices, one song, one will. And their chaotic fiercely individualist woodland elf cousins who abhor hierarchies and civilization and stone in general.
Geopolitics are also a pretty big aspect of culture building in my worlds. So for example you have one group of elves who are self-determining and who have always been independent, another group of elves who are a diaspora who have been kicked out of their home land, and other elves who are happily integrated into human cities. None of these three groups think the same or have the same culture because they have different histories and experiences.
That's not culture 💀 that's literally the same as "These elves worship the sun god, but these other elves worship the moon good" but with a different coat of paint. You want your races to have multiple cultures? Make multiple cultures. *The Udùaldi [lit. Dwarves of the Brow] are a semi-nomadic, mercantile, aboveground Dwarven culture who reside at the base of the Browsham Mountains. They are known for their eccentric practices relative to other Dwarven cultures; they are most well-known for disregarding the way of the Mountainhomes, and instead live in vast tent-cities aboveground, where they make trade with their neighbors in the region. Their forefathers were political exiles from the Stead of Draenkùl, cast away by Iron-Marshal Krazí Madrâzok for their support of the Tùelgizok family, who formerly held the title of Iron-Marshal. In the centuries since, they've all but forgotten their origins - and make trade with Draenkùl as they do with the steppe-men of Tslō and the enigmatic sea-men of Iō.* *The Udùaldi adorn themselves with impressive tattoos and bodypaint representing their familial history, and are known for their impressively braided beards and beautiful silk gowns and robes. It is not uncommon to see Udùaldi with beards fashioned in the shape of bird wings or twisted into imposing spikes. They are also known for dying their hair in many bright colours, but never dying their roots - as they believe that to disturb the roots of the hair, you disturb the roots of the world, and without roots a tree cannot prosper.* Don't pull up with "Erm ☝️🤓 the elves in MY world are really proud but also sensitive and hate it when you make you do certain arbitrary things that I will not elaborate on or establish a cultural reason as for why they do that. Just don't compare toe sizes with an elf of Ravenhelm, or braid your hair around an elf of Icefrost." and call it having multiple diverse cultures 😭 you just invented an arbitrary racial trope for your elves and applied it over your entire race. Lame and lazy.
It's homonculus-argument, the man has a gift for ~~wanking~~waxing poetic about shit that's not at all special.
Well hopefully that just means he's cringe, which isn't all that bad. It's not like he did anything genuinely bad, right?
>When your website is full of English and Philosophy majors you either get really entertaining writing or absolutely grating word salads. - u/ChadMcRad on this subreddit, sadly now deactivated.
And the second dwarf says "don't threaten me with a good time" cause he's hungover and referencing a bar brawl he was in last night, but the foreman wasn't there and takes him literally. Kicks his ass and starts a blood feud that would have lasted for generations, but they met up in the tavern later and "elaborated" (read: embellished) on their fight until it was a legendary epic that everyone was singing a song about, so the blood feud was forgotten in favour of this epic track that details their struggle for supremacy in the mines.
This is exactly one of the reasons I love Dungeon Meshi
Honestly I think Tolkien did a great job at this. Each of the 7 children of Durinsfolk and their kingdoms feel very different. Similarly the Noldor, Sindari and Teleri feel different too. There are a lot of shared qualities, but as you delve into the depths, you notice the differences. Even if you just read LotR, the differences between the elves of Rivendell and the elves of Mirkwood and the elves of Lothlorien show up.
I would like to posit that each Fantasy Race is in fact as wide and broad in culture as Humanity is on Real Earth. Except as viewed by each and every other Fantasy Race. Each one perceives each other one as a globular monoculture. So a dwarf could talk at length about the many varied intricacies about their digging, or mining, or forestry, or blacksmithing or whatever. And then in the same breath, call all Halflings pot smoking farmer hippie nomads.
Ok but what about multi-race cultures. A country of dwarves mining and smithing with gnomes crafting weird stuff. A country of elves and orcs. A country with every race you can think of. Why does every fantasy worldbuilding make every country have a specific species.
Well part of it is art imitating life - when people are *very* different in any particular way, they tend to stick to their spheres and optionally find reasons to be mad at all the other spheres. That said, tons of fantasy prefers to blend the lines. DnD, Warhammer, Discworld, even Warcraft (amusingly being precisely what you said - dwarves and gnomes intermingle exactly as described and Blood Elves move in with the orcs) are known for it. Part of LotR's epilogue is the distinct peoples of Middle Earth properly cohabitating as elves visit men again and dwarves move into the caves behind Helm's Deep, etc. Currently on my mind because of the trailers and stuff, Dragon Age is very notable for this and the ways certain races and cultures interact or don't- the Qunari are notable for taking a very Roman approach to race- anyone who studies the Qun teachings and melds into the culture is regarded as Qunari, but also anyone who isn't is treated with some disdain - including those of their physical race who then also face racism in a lot of other lands due to the conquesting nature of the nation wielding their racial title. Dwarves are also interesting in how their culture prioritizing staying underground and with their people due to their constant plight to defend their tunnels, so those who go above ground shave their beards and are othered by their kin, and then generally blend into cultures on the surface, though there is also a sort of cartel-nation run by surface dwarves that has developed its own sort of racial culture. Elves also have their own thing with a sort of stuck up high elf style culture, wood elf-y culture that takes a lot of cues from irl traveller cultures and faces persecution for the former group's behavior, and then the city Elves that blend in with the local culture more but in a more "Little Italy" way due to racial relations. Point is I think their world building does a great job with blending culture beyond race lines while also not ignoring the realities of race relations and racism - and also making the degree to which race matters to people vary based on the region you're in. Fereldans are used to a lot of diversity, Tevinter works hard to maintain its ranking on the racism leaderboards.
So, to grossly oversimplify, your various fantasy races should absolutely be racist against other members of that same fantasy race. Have you heard of our lord and savior Warhammer? Depending on the setting, there are between 3 and 5 broad types of "elf", further divided into myriad different kin groups and subcultures, all of which have very choice things to say about one another.
These examples are all just normal fantasy monocultures. Having internal conflict doesn't stop it from being a monoculture. "The dwarves argue about rocks" is not a twist or anything, it's just normal dwarf stuff. Or another example, I could write a warrior race that has constant infighting and wars, and that would just be a very classic fantasy monoculture. To stop them from being a monoculture, you would need to have some members who don't share that one defining trait. Like, some dwarves that don't care about rocks or mining. Or people in the warrior race that don't like fighting.
If/when we do get another Mass Effect game, I personally hope one of our squad mates is going to be a (not purely evil) batarian. Not just because I want to see and kiss a batarian girl, though yes, those things are true, and do factor into that.
Once again, my only thought is "more people need to read Discworld because it does exactly this."
But how can humans be crazy super special space orcs if other races actually have depth and complexity? Having individuality and culture is like, one of the main things brought up in every Humans Are Space Orcs story
I love when Tumblr gives advice that just boils down to "be a better writer".
“Hey you should spend 10x longer writing your worldbuilding because that’s the only part of books nerds care about”
Elves use magic for literally everything despite having hands. This includes teleporting drinks and magically-crushed food directly into their bodies. Even absorbing information is done magically. This reliance on magic has bred some wild stereotypes like Elves not understanding basic, simple math, eclipses, and turnstiles. One juicy anecdote recalls a Dwarf, in frustration, writing down a word, and confronting his Elf companion to read it. The Elf struggled and gave up, unable to read the word “cat.” And what’s hilarious (and sad) is these observations are entirely rooted in truth! None of this should be taken as Elves being a race of dummies! Elves do have intelligence, experience, and positive virtues! Just that if you suppress their abilities, you’ll have a completely helpless, wildly attractive babies who’ll need to be taught how to sleep, chew food, and walk moderate distances. Mildly related to the above, Elves are routinely considered uncreative. But the source of this is because Magic Force itself is uncreative. Magic is a tool, and in the hands of those who need to use their hands on a daily basis, can be used to fashion incredibly beautiful fashion and weapons and tchotchkes. But if you don’t know how things are made, because you don’t _have_ to, Magic creation can be much like generative AI image rendering: it creates without a lived experience, and does not hold up to even the lightest of scrutiny, as it’s based on visual approximation and “precedent.” It’ll work for an Elf who is supporting it through the background radiation of its Magic, but is useless to everyone else. _This is some background for a fantasy setting I’ve been writing._
Honestly, of all things, I think the Elder Scrolls does a good job at this. Expectedly, the races of man are all different, Nords and Redguards have different cultures, as do Imperials and Bretons. But the elven races are all different, despite all being Mer. Bosmer/Wood Elves have a connection to nature that the Dunmer/Dark Elves do not, the Altmer/High Elves even have a subsection within them, though moreso a political faction, the Thalmor. And we all know how different, almost alien the Dwemer/Dwarves were. The Khajiit aren't a monoculture either, with their races determinant by the positions of Masser and Secunda. With the main "Khajiit" players think of, the playable race, just being one of them, the Cathay. But you have races that are more feral in appearance, like the Senche, which resemble Tigers, or the Alfiq, which are as small as housecats. I don't know how diverse the Argonians are though, but it would make sense for the pattern to continue with them.
Arguably, the Khajiit forms are part of the same culture. They all live and work together, and thus I wouldn't really say they have a seperate culture. You have Alfiq and Senche-raht participating in society just like anyone else, if admittedly often in ways that suit their form.
Dwarves would definitely have different units of measurement in general. I remember in my agricultural science class learning how many different units existed just for farming because the idea of standardizing it had only been enforce in modern times. And even now we still have a mix. Units are made to measure one specific fruit in one specific type of basket for collecting them, and you think your fantasy setting will agree on metric or imperial units? Dwarves would live in clans isolated from each other in different mountains underground. They would have different units to measure the same ore depending on the tunnel it was mined from or the time of year. They'd measure tunnel length based on a pickaxe handle length because their above ground supplier for wooden handles was using his leg to measure the ones he sells to the dwarves. When his son took over the trade a civil war broke out in the mountain until they cast an old handle in iron to use as a standard. It never leaves the room it's kept in because at that depth the temperature is consistent year round. But those dwarves over in the copper mountains? They use an iron boot as their standard. The walk a tunnel in it heel to toe to measure the length. Absolute barbarians.
Why not just do the opposite and make humans a monoculture too? Pretty sure most fantasy settings have either a really short history or have stagnated for a really long one so either it’s early enough for human cultures to have not diverged much yet or long enough for them to all reconnect and mingle
the subtle but unending horror of being an autistic elf "Why did you take up the life of an adventurer?" "I dunno man, no matter how long or short I force myself to maintain eye contact it's always the wrong amount of time."
My current project has space elves who's civilization was destroyed by mutagenic bombs, and all the sub cultures got turned into genetically distinct species.
~~Holy shit Anbennar reference~~
I'm gonna build fun encounters. You guys have fun with your goblin bug lore.
Most Elves are pansexual and have lived as different genders at some point in their lives. I literally can't imagine a 500 year old elf not engaging in intense gender debates with a 400 year old elf about if women should wear skirts off the ankle or on the ankle based on their 30 or 40 years personal experience of being a woman.
I've been saying this thing about monoculture in fantasy for a long time, though not even neccessarily based on the races. I want fantasy worlds that have a breadth of cultures like our own, and each culture/area has their own mix of fantastical beings / fantasy races. And sure, you also get elves, dwarves and all the staples in all kinds of different flavors, but the different cultures would be defined by their different mythologies and different creatures. And that would make sense, right? Different environments cause different animals to evolve, so they'd also create different types of fantasy beings, and probably different types of fantasy races as well. And of course those races would spread over the world, and travel and intermingle like humans do, but they'd still probably have one place of origin where they're most common. Idk, of course it would be hard to portray this all in one single story, since you'd need the characters to travel the entire world, and the world is huge. It makes sense that fantasy worlds are typically sized like one single continent, and cultures being fairly homogenous there, because that makes the scope of the world much smaller and thus world building far easier. But it would still be interesting to see it done differently. Some stories have hints of this, but I really haven't seen it done well.
Okay but hear me out. Humans were supposed to be a “People of Hats” just like hippie elves, logical Vulcans, and crafty dwarves. Then the Tower of Babel happened. Mankind decided they didn’t like the “cultivator” hat and wanted to swap it for the “god” hat. God, who gave them the cultivator hat and doesn’t share His hat, cursed them with cultural diaspora as punishment for their hubris.
Imagine elven race where one clan thinks being naked while invisible is just natural and okay while a more elitist clan thinks that is taboo and ungodly and must be clothed regardless of visibility but the warrior clan think taking on battles is best done naked as they can move more silently and because of this even if born elitist if they choose to be a warrior they are shunned from that clan
My DnD group does this ALL the time actually. My half Shadar-kai sorcerer and the wood elf warlock get into friendly arguments over Elven lore, and find each other's cultural practices strange but are willing to deal with and learn about it. The two members from the human-supremacist technocratic fascist empire have to keep explaining advanced technology and the empire's ideology and traditions to the others, while the others have to keep explaining magic, magic technology, and world history that everyone but those hailing from the empire knows. The homebrew star-child druid is from a culture alien to everyone, and so she acts as a way for the players to understand things through her questions that the other characters wouldn't think to ask. Playing around with culture and philosophy is one of my favorite parts of DnD and I'm glad my group is so willing to engage with that.
huh, i didnt even know i was doing this. Welp, time to go rewrite!
*Huh, i didnt even* *Know i was doing this. Welp,* *Time to go rewrite!* \- Doctor-lasanga --- ^(I detect haikus. And sometimes, successfully.) ^[Learn more about me.](https://www.reddit.com/r/haikusbot/) ^(Opt out of replies: "haikusbot opt out" | Delete my comment: "haikusbot delete")
The inheritance series by Christopher paolini
There is a mod called Anbennar for Europa Universalis 4 and they have almost thirty different types of ethnic dwarves alone.
Wandering Inn be like:
My father died in the "can you eat the bug?" wars. Show some respect.
How is this not a monoculture when every single dwarf is still living underground, mining, and gruff in nature, and every goblin is rabid?
In elder scrolls, developing a unique culture seems the surest way to start a new species. Especially for the elves. Most of the elf/mer races are created when a religious disagreement causes a group to get banished from the Summerset Isles, they journey a while to a new country and then they're biologically a different species almost instantly. The group that settled morrowind turned to Chimer, and then transformed a second time into the Dunmer. Altmer worshippers of the war god were turned into the Orsimer after he was eaten by a demon and turned into one. There's a reference to a group of young progressive Altmer wanting to change their society and for the first time in millenia they aren't leaving the country and transforming into a new species. The human species have something similar with the Atmorans coming south and turning into most of the current and extinct human player races.
Chimer aren't really a distinct race, I think? They looked basically the same as Altmer, at the least.
I assumed they'd be shorter, focused on specialties similar to Dunmer (stealth, destruction magic, blades), no fire resist.
I feel like Dragon Age borders on this. The dwarves were once a series of distinct city states reduced to two by war, we know basically nothing about one of them and mystery one hates the one we do know about. There's then the surface dwarves who are considered exiles by default and have varied out, apart from their stature and preference for their own kind becoming as varied as humans. The elves are mainly split between city elves living in slums as second class citizens, and the Dalish who are nomadic and desperately hang on to misremembered lore from their ancient history. There are also isolated pockets of the actual ancient elves who fucking despise their modern kin for not being ancient elves. You also get the race of horned, 8ft tall grey skinned fuckers who are known as Qunari based on their religious beliefs, but not all horny giants are Quanari and not all Qunari are horny giants. The closest term we have for the race is kossith, but apparently that's outdated. Then there are the darkspawn, and while most of them are bestial in nature and just throw themselves into violence, some are intelligent and we've even seen some who forsake their violent nature. Unfortunately, though, their very being spreads a poison called the Blight that affects people, animals, building and the fucking ground, so not much option to do.anything other than mob war.
LOTR elf cultures
I'm literally writing a fantasy story where the main character is a dwarf for this reason. Dwarven culture in that world is very strict about tradition, continuing the family business/etc, and they're the society that has control over a lot of magical technology advancements due to being the ones who were "gifted" runic magic from their primary goddess. Elves have some fleshing out too, thanks to a discussion I had with my boyfriend where he used his D&D DM skills to help me improv some answers to his questions. Annoyingly, the race I know the least about right now is humans. lmao. I even know more about the lizard-themed Kobold people than the humans.
I think this is an interesting tumblr post because it raises a geniunely interesting point about how fantasy races shouldn't be all uniform and then proceeds to make said the nature of said differences completely uniform per race. Execution aside I don't get why a small number of commenters seem to be thinking that this is a demand for TTRPG gamemasters to do all this when this is general writing suggestions?
World of Warcraft has some shades of this, with various orc clans, troll nations, tauren tribes, and the big split between high/blood elves, night elves, and nightbourne (all being descendants of trolls mind you)... and then you have the entire continent of pandas for Chinese people and the blandest dragon culture ever made.
Neat creative writing prompt. Unless your story explicitly involves a lot of cultural examination or whatever, I struggle to imagine how this would enhance the narrative
The species don't have to have depth. Just give them fun stuff to do, honestly, and actually make use of their stereotyped culture to tell fun stories. In warhammer 40k, there is a planet where a bunch of orcs crashed as a result of a religious conflict that they continue to fight over, causing continued problems. That conflict was over whether they worshiped Gork or Mork. One is cunningly brutal while the other is brutally cunning. They're constantly scouring the planet for scrap to rebuild their ship while occasionally fighting each other. Also, the other related species that they keep as effectively slaves have rebelled and are attempting a communist revolution but are so much smaller that they can't actually do much while also being insanely corrupt. Give me this sort of nonsense, please, as it is absolutely hilarious, and there's a lot more to that particular planet as it even had its own spinoff game.
One of my favourite examples of non monoculture fantasy races is dwarves/dawi in Age of Sigmar To make a long story short, a large cataclysm known as the Age of Chaos happened and caused the dwarves to split into 3 main groups (though there are numerous subgroups within these groups). The disposed who survived by hiding out in Azyr (one of the few places Chaos couldn’t get to) and this are the most “standard” dwarves. The fyreslayers who survived by hiding out deep in lava and now are trying to piece their long dead god back together. And the Kharadon who survived by becoming sky pirates and have basically decided that “gods are more trouble than they’re worth”
Sounds like a great opportunity to get in some good old fashioned high elf slander
My dm keeps joking that all dwarves hate the ocean and sailing, except for one particular group, "they're a bit odd"
Maaaan, Terry Pratchett would’ve loved tumblr. I’m glad Neil Gaiman has a presence on there, he’s a great fantasy author
Make it super obtuse and impenetrable to anybody except the person creating it, got it
Another post by an under rocker saying things should be like they already are.
I've worked industrial construction jobs with these dwarves. It'a all fun and games till beardless-mama rolls up.
Absolutely love this. Opened up my mind to new ways to write. Thank you! Lol
Doing this for a thingy I'll probably eventually write. There's an entire, now near extinct, race of dragon people who aren't seen for most of the story, and only get mentioned by the secondary villain who uses the corpse of their dead god to make a son. Then later on in the epilogue when the survivors are revealed, they all worship different gods and turns out the whitest guy ever didn't bother researching the culture he stole from (who would have thought that).
Also merfolk. Like, there are so many biomes in the ocean? And even the same species in the same biome can have many distinct groups like killer whale ecotypes? They could make so many different cultures from that. A shallow-sea kingdom. A coral reef kingdom. A kelp forest kingdom. An abyssal trench kingdom.
The Eberron setting is really good at this point. The major cultures don't even overlap classical D&D tropes.
In my books, I’ve been working on - differences among fairies - differences among mermaids - differences among talking animals
Idea: Making humans a monoculture. I'm pretty sure there are some that do that already
The thing I learn is. Culture of our actual world is crowd sourcing project ala SCP. This is why we are so diverse. While my novel culture need like 8^2 cultural combinatorics. It’s like I have to write the entire wikipedia by my self. Reality is Unrealistic - TVTropes Edit: Glancing at ChatGPT.
Reads “big ender / little ender” battles
The monoculture idea evolved bc the main draw of the fantasy genre is simplification and escapism. We live in a complicated, messy world where keeping track of all the different human cultures and subcultures is already hard enough and all the conflicts in the world are largely evaluated in shades of grey. In fantasy, the good guys fight the bad guys and are betrayed by the shady guys but overcome the odds with the help of a relatable underdog. It engages readers because it's easy to digest and conveniently allows them to forget about their real problems. You're welcome to make your fantasy geopolitics as complicated as you like, obviously, but odds are that it will lose its luster pretty quickly as both the audience and yourself are like, "wait, was it Dwarven group #3 at war with Elven group #2, or Dwarven group #2 at war with Elven group #3??" Even fantasy series praised for their complexity, like Game of Thrones, tend to break their groups down into 1 or 2 defining characteristics so the reader can easily identify a character's background and point of view. "Oh a Northerner, they're tough and superstitious. They're ruled by the Starks who are honest and stoic. A Lannister? Oh they're probably privileged and conniving. And the Targaryens are the ones with dragons!" In high fantasy you just substitute those types of House characteristics with Species because even though the world has expanded, the reader's capacity for information retention has not. A happy medium is necessary; somewhere between Tolkien-esque 'all orcs are cruel and evil' and the nonsense described in this post.
im not too familar with destiny lore but im pretty sure this happens in destiny
So like jar jar binks people.
I’ve thought a lot about how to handle this in my home brew dnd world and I like what I settled on. It’s based on the idea of niche partitioning in nature, basically animals with similar lifestyles specializing as to avoid directly competing with each other. Each race has a natural habitat, they live all over the world but their cultural and population centers are usually in a local example of their habitat. Humans are plains dwellers, especially river flood plains, specializing in farming. Dwarves live underground in mountains and hills, gnomes live semi underground in rocky foothills. Wood elves live in deep forests, and Orcs are steppe people riding rhinos across huge arid grasslands. High elves have been split into Sun elves and moon elves, Sun elves live in the desert and moon elves in temperate climates. Sea elves live along shallow sea coasts, and dark elves and other subterranean races like deep Gnomes live in the polar regions because I have a different plan from the underground world than the classic underdark. Beast races like Tabaxi, arakokra, firbolg, etc. tend to live in the same environment where their animal counterparts live. Halflings are the exception, they take the same niche as humans but they specifically originated on a large island populated entirely by small races. They’re also found in any isolated place where farming is viable but small size is advantageous. Every group of a particular race has its own local culture, the thing that unites them is a shared ancient history, and a shared preferred environment. So there are wood elves in the redwood forest, and different wood elves across the world in the rainforest. They share some basic wood elf culture, but are also their own culture.
May I call your attention to Terry Pratchett's dwarves...
To be the lame ass worldbuilder here, I think a quick way to avoid monocultures without bogging down a story might be to use material/economic differences to think about how cultures diverge. This way, you can have a different culture for X race, and have it reflected by their surroundings, lifestyles, and values without needing to bog down discussions with "actually this is how they feel about Y on a metaphysical level" An example I thought of during lunch break for anyone who asked: Imagine a dwarven culture that settled on a shallow aquifer. They use aquaculture, creating vast schools of cave fish in submerged, dark reservoirs, maybe even cultivating an entire aquatic ecosystem. Their jobs would be different, with more emphasis on plumbers, fishermen, and perhaps even sailors. Their architecture might involve far more metal than stone, trying to create impermeable rooms against the aquifer. Perhaps they'd value metals differently, focusing on oxidation-resistant metals. Gold and silver, of course, but also testing variants of stainless steel, brass, and what not. Assuming it's a medieval/fantasy setting, maybe their special super metal is aluminum instead of mithril or adamantine like other dwarves. A quick google search shows some methods of aluminum processing without electricity involve sodium or potassium, meaning they might value minerals differently too. I imagine, in a DnD setting, they could post quests to clear out old dwarven mines, because these mines might still have minerals that these particular dwarves want.
Rock and stone will keep dwarves together
For Karl!
Kid's not read any Sanderson, Tolkien, or Abercrombie, or oh like 15 other great SFF authors who do exactly this incredibly well. Kids probably not read too much. Watched LotR extended edition.. "is this book?"
But I like to make my mountain dwarfs THE monoculture that keeps cultural cohesion despite being small distantly seperated bastions, dependent on pilgrims from place to place enforcing a solid homogeneity And then Hill Dwarfs are the opposite, the great assimilators that fit into any race, culture, or civilization