In my last post on this topic I meant to go deeper into the non-player creatures of the setting, be they animal or monster, but ran out of time.  Life is hectickal.  But I’m just gonna move on.  So.  Playable races.  Gonna run thru some thoughts on them.  First, some other elements of character design that can have relevance to playability and fantasy race design.

LGBTQIAism.  The first book was conceived as being the gay male chauvinist RPG, just to be an old school shock jock.  But also because Frank Frazetta buttocks, the extent anything sufficiently macho wraps around to being gay.  It’d be a bit of artistic fun.  My in-universe excuse was that people think of adventurers as gay, which becomes self-reinforcing as gay dudes flock to adventuring, like IRL with men’s choirs.  When done with that exercise in exclusion, what atonement should I make?  There are already lesbian TTRPGs, like Thirsty Sword Lesbians, f’rinstance, but I’m like, might be fun again, artistically, to re-do the book with more or less the same content, same universe, but turn it into the lesbian chauvinist RPG – and ditto with the transes and aces and so on.

It is a serious risk of getting stepped on by hostile discoursers, but it’s probably a non-issue because this game is very much unlikely to ever happen.  To facilitate my spectrum of foolery I had it something like this:  GayDude RPG The Cockatrice, Lesbian RPG Les Puissantes, Bisexual/Pansexual RPG The Amphisbæna, Trans/Queer/Questioning? RPG AsYetUntitled, and A-spec RPG AsYetUntitled 2.  The in-world stereotypes that result in milieus dominated by given orientations / genders / levels of attraction etc are as follows: Adventurers are gay dudes, Champions of settled places are lesbians, Courtiers in the halls of power are bi, Stars in the performing arts are trans, and Mystics who have the magickalest pursuits are ace.

The Old, the Young, and the Disabled.  It’d be cool to have rules that accommodate playing children or the elderly or people with significant disabilities.  Some games address some of these things, but the rules are often absurd or inadequate to purpose.  Some general thoughts:

Giants are too big / buff to be reasonably balanced in a game, and I once came up with rules to play giant children, as a solution to that.  I liked the idea enough I used it as a core concept in a book I’ve begun for the Les Puissantes setting – a lesbian couple adopts a giant baby who gets into misadventures.  But outside of that, young characters can be cool because everything’s new for them, they have stories inherent to where they are in life that compel people of any age, make us remember being young.  And if one was compelled by horrible dark secrets in their past that nobody wants to hear about, to play young sorcerers in an educational setting, that can be forgivable, as long as literally everything about it in no way shape or form speaks to that player’s unspeakable personal history with such subject matter.

I recall some edition of D&D handling old people by subtracting from their physical attributes and adding to their Wisdom scores.  Don’t you wish that’s how it worked?  In fantasy it can, why not?, but I’d still like to see it at least a bit more realistic.  Particularly an issue of age is that we all become unbelievably frail.  I don’t wanna tell people they gotta do it like that, but having adventures that speak to the challenges of that part of life, while also feeling empowering and having cool drama, well, it can be done.  Likewise disability in general.  Some games give you bonus points for making your guy have one eye and take a penalty on shooting guys, but I think this could be handled better than what I’ve seen thus far.

Immortals.  D&D doesn’t have elves as immortal, just having them live for hundreds of years.  What would be the material difference between that and just having them be immortal?  OK, immortality requires a bit more thought, but I’ve put in the thought, and I think my take works.  Of main player races, elves, dwarves, and nymphs are all going to be immortal.

Demigods.  I had a notion people aiming for high-powered play could run demigods as characters.  They could be related to gods, have inborn divinity like nymphs, or just be a different kinda cat.  Able to do the impossible, at least in some limited way.  Choke the Nemean Lion.  Clean out some stables like Sgt. Slaughter in that one GI Joe episode.

Hybrid children watch the sea, pray for father roaming free.  Why only half-elves and half-orcs?  Come up with rules to mix any and everything.  I don’t love everybody coming up with the most specialest freaks ever, so the party looks like a pizza with anchovies broccoli and marshmallows, but it just makes sense to allow it, so there it is.  I had ideas for two heavily mish-mashed races that became their own thing: Goblinish, who combine human, halfling, and various goblinoid ancestries, and Feyish, who do the same thing with faerie ancestry.

Half-Undead?  My husband was coming up with a character for a fantasy game and I mentioned dhampirs / half-vampires as a possibility, and he came back with half-mummies.  That is brilliantly ludicrous and I loved it a lot, so I’m gonna include them, plus half-zombies, half-skeletons, and half-ghosts.  The fun is in trying to make it make sense.

Changelings.  This idea that a weird enough person might be a substituted faerie child amuses me.  Not sure how I’d play it.

Straight-up Animals.  It’s fun to imagine what an animal thinks like.  You can get good at it, too.  Well, if an animal has thoughts and feelings and agency and ability, why couldn’t it adventure?  I’m not about giving creatures with baby-level intelligence character classes, and thereby burdening myself with adapting a ton of rules to account for non-humanoid form and lack of speech, etc etc, but they could gain levels and travel with a party, sure.

Anyway, the playable race big list as it’s taking shape thus far, with more random thoughts on some:

Humans (Human, Gayan, Mammal).  If I was in a prickish mood and had groveling submissives for players, I might insist on everyone playing humans, so the magical races could seem more interesting and cool by comparison.  Like, to enforce a sense you are the normal person in a world of exciting strangeness.  Mostly no.

Halflings (Halfling, Gayan, Mammal).  D&D genericized this epithet for hobbits to avoid trouble with the Tolkien estate, I’m sure.  I like ’em.  They’re in.  I despise how D&D 3e made them skinny.  Guess what?  They’re all fat now.  Skinniest one is as fat as me.  Put on some weight Frodo.  It’s a race of Samwises.

Dwarves (Dwarf, Celestial, Mammal).  Here is where I come to a challenge, which is establishing the aesthetics of the supernatural in my world.  Fantasy dwarves ain’t just humans with diminutive stature from a congenital condition.  In the fantasy genre some conventions have been established, and one is that this is a race of beefy warriors.  This is a very popular idea now and I’m not one to buck the trends that completely.  There is also an image I like of them from older mythology, as gnarled and wizened blacksmiths.  I suppose if you’re built meaty and you lose the meat, you’ll end up with knobby joints.

On the other hand, I favor making these guys closely associated with giants and gods like they are in Norse mythology, and that, to me, says they should be immortal.  How to be wizened without senescence?  I think… they do get old, but not infirm – just weaker and wrinkled and wise – and that it takes a few thousand years to happen, and that it does not progress unto death.  So in kingdoms that have had a very long time in safety, much of the population will be lil knobbies.

Bearded women?  That was me yesterday at work.  I used to not be hip to the queerness so much, but now i’m like, bring it on.  So, dwarves.  The aesthetic as established by shit like Warhammer.  Done.

Giants (Giant, by Race, Celestial, Mammal).  Lot of issues as to whether or not these should be playable, but they should at least be present.  They are so bound with gods and angels in Western mythology that I make them the Celestial type.  Giants of a scarier nature will be called ogres.  D&D has a dozen or so types of giant.  I don’t want that many, but there’ll probably be a few.  No strong ideas, except that the smallest should be around ten feet tall, largest over twenty feet tall.

High Elves (Elf, Faerie, Wild, Mammal).  Elves present the biggest aesthetic issue of core races.  Should they just look like humans with pointed ears, as they did in most of the painted art from D&D past, or should they look like the Communion alien with knife ears from 3e, or the bulb-headed stick insects with weird horizontal ears from anime, or what?  I do not want them to look like humans.

But my husband insists they should be capable of looking sexy, and too inhuman is a dealbreaker for the likes of him.  No monsterfucker he.  OK, ears are less important to the extent one looks human, so he’s more flexible on that, tho not down with total fennec fox ears.  I was thinking, narrow frames, largish but not inhumanly large eyes with long lashes, and my dude said maybe they could have deer or cow -like eyes.  I sez, if they’re full on like that, they will look creepier than you’d prefer.  Compromise in intraspecific variability.  Elves will have eyes that range from lashy human to fully cattle-like, ears that vary from region to region but are at least a bit large and pointy.

Lastly, on subject of bod and build.  I like the idea they can be fat, but it’s on a narrow frame.  If you have a practiced eye for the details of human anatomy, you know what I’m talking about.  Some people are genuinely large-boned, some narrow-boned, and people of either type can be slim to muscular to fat – it just looks different.  Most elves will be spindly but some can get beeg as one pleases.  However, I will brook no broad-bodied elves, like Halsin in Baldur’s Gate 3.  That was bullshit.

My husband sez they should be short, many prefer them tall.  My compromise is that the “royal” populace of high elves are as tall as tallish humans, while the rest are short.  High elves would be nearly the rarest and exist in mixed population with other kinds.  Essentially the royal family from time immemorial, they do blend with other races and gradually fade from the world, but still exist, usually as leaders of other elven kinds.  As many modern people lose interest in inherited authority, some have become isolated in small communities of their own –  sometimes among the wealthy of humankind.  Skin color range from human-like to greige, ears longer and pointier than some.  Probably I’ll have more specific ideas at some point.

Light Elves (Elf, Faerie, Wild, Mammal).  In an unknown eon, the law of Heaven and chaos of Hell infected the shining host, sowing division.  While high elf rulers remained more or less the same, their subjects divided between light and dark elves.  Light elves can be dark skinned in the south, even very dark skinned, but have some particulars in common.  They tend to live exclusively in settlements, sometimes full cities, and have a sense that society requires some sense of law and obedience to hierarchy.  They have skin tones in the local human range, and hair that ranges to lighter, less natural colors.  Light colored eyes?  I’m undecided.

Dark Elves (Elf, Faerie, Wild, Mammal).  Dark elves have something of the chaos of hell, most notably on their skin, where they have a great variety of hues – all of them unnatural for humankind, whether light or dark.  Their faces are much more expressive than light elves, sometimes lined from big smiles or wacky eyebrow moves, despite their eternal youth.  Some live in settlements but many are nomadic, and they mostly prefer the most rustic places, far from big cities.  Despite the influence of Hell, few would enter into pacts with or worship beings from there.  Mostly their hexing magic takes agnostic forms.

Garbage Elves (Elf, Faerie, Wild, Mammal).  At some point, certain populations of light elves spent so long living in squalor at the fringes of other race’s cities that they developed their own characteristics.  They look slightly more human than other light elves, with more pronounced noses and facial features, and can develop male pattern baldness in their early hundreds.  Inspired by Einstürzende Neubaten, they are interested in art and radical politics.

Murder Elves (Elf, Faerie, Wild, Mammal).  Some faerie folk live to murder the innocent – mostly by drowning but sometimes by knives or fists or poison or strangling.  Murder elves may have bred with these beings in the past, or just developed a cultural affinity with them.  Were they originally light elves or dark elves or even high elves?  Unknown.  Skin shades slightly unnatural / greyish sometimes, unique among elves they have hairy legs.  They have a talent for looking beautiful to victims up until the moment of truth.  Also unique among elves, they live like solitary predatory animals.  No tribes.

Glamer Elves (Elf, Faerie, Wild, Mammal).  A few tribes of dark elves went hard for magic, turning themselves into more magickal creatures than most elves.

Goblinoids (Goblin, by Race, Faerie, Wild).  I am fairly undecided what my goblinoid races should be.  I don’t wanna just crib the D&D set.  Minimum there’ll be goblins and orcs; no idea why D&D felt the need to not have orcs be goblinoid.  Warhammer FRP had a tiny race called snotlings that were kinda fun.  Again tho, there’s an aesthetic issue.  Gotta commit to some particulars.  Well, orcs have, like dwarves, become hard codified by geek culture.  Gotta be buff, have a fanged underbite, small but pig-like nose maybe.  I could probably consult with some dorks about what look is the most fuckable and run with that.

As for goblins, they should look silly.  A lot of depictions these days have mini-noses, but what about long noses?  Not like that jowling kowling antisemitism that was inherited from Christina Rossetti, but like human-faced tengu from Japanese art, or Cyrano de Bergarac?  I like it, but it does make them look less like relatives with orcs.  I’ll work it out later.

How about spriggans or red caps, other naughty faeries?  Goblinoid?  Maybe.

Goblinish (Faerie, Goblin, Human &/or Halfling, Wild, Mammal).  Some goblinoid communities are very open to breeding with whoever, and end up blended with humans and halflings as well.  This is the “goblinish” race, which has extremely varied appearance, but a shared culture wherever they are found.  Usually on the smaller side of human height, gangly, unusually colored, and fangy.

Feyish (Faerie, Human &/or Halfling &/or Elf, Wild, Mammal).  Likewise some faerie communities are mixed up, becoming the “feyish” race.  Like goblinish they can range from very short to very tall, lots of low-key unnatural skin or hair colors, but unlike goblinish they almost always have pointed ears and no fangs.  Often on the shorter side of human height, but well-formed.

Faeries (Faerie, by Race, Wild).  What of leprechauns, clurichauns, brownies, banniks, domovoi, pookas, pixies, sprites, gnomes, etc etc?  I’ll include at least several, probably by less culturally specific names.  The key issues of these weirdos are:  How magic are they?  How small are they?  And keeping their flavor distinct, that no two races would be overly similar.

Murder Faeries (Faerie, by Race, Wild).  As I said before, I don’t wanna make two hundred variants of murderhorse, but I do want to cover at least some amount of the faeries that live for murder.  Kelpies, rusalka, whateva.

Oread (Nymph, Earth, Gayan, Divinity, Mammal).  Nymphs get into that question again of aesthetics.  I was really really torn on how to make them different from humans and elves, still feel special and distinct.  Like the makeup crew on Star Trek: The Next Generation making up new aliens and always putting a lil putty on the bridge of their nose.  It’s rough.  Settled on some ideas.  They are shorter than human but proportioned like young adults (try to get away from pedo fantasies which the original nymphs, to some extent, were), and can grow thin facial and body hair, unlike most elves.  Low key self-illuminated, where light and shadow don’t affect them as strongly as they should.  Usually they have one or more additional strange features by type, and odd supernatural properties.

Their flesh is meat-like and bleeds, but is much less internally distinct than mortal tissues, not driven by the furious pump of a heart – thus they bleed weakly.  Their blood is considered magic and they are poached for it.  They have less body variety than humans, never getting very large from muscle or fat, never getting very thin.  They do not require food or water, only consuming it for pleasure.  This allows them to be even lazier than other immortals that can die of starvation, and sometimes they go dormant for centuries at a time.

Most are born from spontaneous generation though they can reproduce the usual means.  When they do, it’s usually because of the desires of a mortal lover, so not true nymphs at that point.  Being able to appear in the middle of nowhere and possibly never be found by other nymphs, they have no true culture of their own except that which they improvise when they are fortunate enough to meet.

Oreads are born out of stony terrain, usually mountains or valleys, and look something like living marble – moreso the closer you get to their hands and feet.  Their hair is in earth tones.  They have the ability to slowly sink into or move through earth and stone.

Aurae (Aura, Nymph, Air, Gayan, Divinity, Mammal).  Aurae are born in the sky at random, usually from high clouds in blue skies.  Then the babies fall with no parachute and grapple with Patrick Swayze until he pulls the ripcord a little too low, and they land hard, and then Patrick calls them a “radical sunuvabitch.”  They aren’t the only nymphs born from the sky, but they are the floatiest, drifting over the ground more than they plant their feet on it.  Their hair is white to blue and always seems to be moving in a stiff breeze.

Dryads (Dryads, Nymph, Gayan, Divinity, Mammal).  Dryads are strongly associated with trees.  Rumor has it they’re bound to a specific tree, that their life will end if it’s cut down, but that’s more a matter of habit.  They can pass through wood and often take residence in a favored tree.  They can be mistaken for human more easily than many nymphs, but when encountered in groups their similarity heightens the subtle oddness of them.  In the right light, whorls can be seen in their skin like wood grain.

Naiads (Naiads, Nymph, Water, Gayan, Divinity, Mammal).  Naiads are spontaneously born in streams, rivers, lakes, and tide pools.  This has them more exposed than some other young nymphs, and they are sometimes eaten by predatory animals before they can grow.  Their ability to move through the water is not properly swimming – water moves around them, pushing them where they want to go.  This ability also lets them walk on water.  Naiads have pearlescent sclera and teeth, tho in some it is more subtle than others, and their hair seems perpetually wet, floating in the air as if they were underwater.  Some have fish-like coloration in skin, hair, or eyes, but more often they are conventional human colors.

Lampades (Lampades, Nymph, Gayan, Divinity, Mammal).  Lampades are spontaneously born from artificial fire, especially very large furnaces, ovens, kilns, or fireplaces.  Very rare, but often born in groups of two to five, which makes up for that a little.  They are often favored as pets or assistants by unscrupulous sorcerers, and so are culturally associated with magic, tho they aren’t inherently more magic than any nymph.  Lampades are elementals of the night itself, and the fear which fuels the fires mortals use to keep it at bay.  But the ones born to bakers are just happy muffin-makers, so it’s a mixed bag of goths and foodies.

They are immune to fire.  They are very pale or very dark for the area where they are born – no in-between – and have hair with no highlights, just a black void.  When exposed to fire their hair can collect embers which take a longer time to burn out than normal.

Hyades (Hyade, Nymph, Air, Water, Gayan, Divinity, Mammal).  Hyades are born in the sky like Aurae, but only on the greyest and rainiest days.  They quickly wash to earth, collecting in puddles, which makes them vulnerable again to predatory animals.  Born in groups of three to seven, this balances that mortality somewhat.  Hyades are elementals of tears, loss, and inescapable emotion.  Their happiness is always bittersweet.  They can move like water over the land, sliding or rushing, and have shining grey eyes.  Many favor sleeping in lakes, a few in mixed flocks with Naiads.

Maenads (Maenad, Nymph, Gayan, Divinity, Mammal, Wild, Vice Elemental).  There are places where the elemental planes and the outer wilds intrude on Gaya, and through these the vice elementals (such as satyrs, sileni, and centaurs) of the Wild acquire more human-like company.  Maenads are born into the wilderness wherever vice elementals pass into the material world, and are adopted into the party.  It’s a strange existence.  Because they look very much like regular humans, vice elementals develop an unfair reputation for kidnapping or tempting children to join their drunken revelry, but these creatures are far from human.  Not every satyr is a vice elemental, a member of the rampaging bacchanals, but every maenad is.  Their minds are possessed, and they can be very violent to any who stand in their way.

They are born of Gaya the same as all Nymphs, but corrupted by birth in the borderlands of the Wild, and can travel freely between those worlds when in wild places.  A large gathering of maenads has the power to transport a whole group of revelers into or out of the Wild, even from the heart of a city.  They have typical human colors, those with fairer skin often flushed at the cheeks.  Often have heavy eyelids and bits of debris stuck in their hair.

Hesperides (Hesperide, Nymph, Gayan, Divinity, Mammal).  Hesperides are born from agriculture, from the most perfectly cultivated plants bearing the most perfect fruit.  While this could lead to them being adopted by poor families, far more often they are stolen and hoarded by the rich – to the extent their culture is bound up with royalty and the halls of power.  They are held as prizes by humanity, sometimes as mates but more often as living works of art in the castles of kings.

Hesperides can move through wood like Dryads but are less accustomed to it.  Their hair is the color of wood but glossy like it was deeply lacquered, almost always perfectly coiffed.  Their sclera and fingernails have a golden or silver sheen.  The golden hour has a special lure for them, and they can be seen late in the day in silent communion with the sky.

Asterides (Asteride, Nymph, Gayan, Divinity, Mammal).  Asterides are born to clear night skies and fall to earth as shooting stars.  Like Hyades this is in groups, which offsets the high mortality rate of being exposed to predatory beasts.  Their hair is the color of night sky, black but sometimes colorful with nebulae or aurorae.  Motes of light like tiny stars develop in their hair.  Sometimes they drift free, moving like cottonwood pollen in the breeze.  Their eyes are very deep black and very sparkly.  They can float and fly, but less adroitly than aurae.  They enjoy the parties people throw to while away long nights, rarely becoming swept up with maenads.  Mortals like to claim them as spooky night guardians, especially sorcerers, but they are seldom caught as young as hesperides, and are more willful and vengeful.

Heliads (Heliad, Nymph, Gayan, Divinity, Mammal).  Heliads are born from morning sunlight, which falls most fully on broad surfaces like cliff faces and large walls and houses.  Those that dwell in nature like to visit roads and break bread with mortals there.  Those that are born to the habitations of mortals are often adopted and held like prizes.  Something about heliads seems more powerful or commanding to them, and so their bondage is usually less like gilded cage slavery than that of some other nymphs.  They can levitate less adroitly than asterides and aurae, but doing so also causes their skin to glow brightly, near bright as the sun the longer they keep it up, so they only use the power when they’re ok with blinding bystanders.

When heliiads go dormant it is often on the rooftops of lofty human structures, among gargoyles.  They are never pale, and the darker skinned have a thin golden sheen wherever their melanin is the most dense.  Their skin has more internal light than other nymphs, which can still seem subtle in bright daylight, but at night makes them stand out like animate candles.  They cannot be blinded by light, and find solace looking directly at the sun.

Animal-Headed People (Mammal-bodied, by Animal-head, Gayan).  Animal-headed people are said to be cursed humans, and their bodies more closely resemble those of humans than of elves or orcs, in proportion and variety.  Those with the heads of animals that are typically giant are taller than humans by a few feet, but not so huge as a buffalo or elephant.  They are a true race, breeding easily with each other regardless of animal type, and, oddly, their offspring can be any animal type at all, only a slightly higher chance of being the same as one of their parents.  When they breed with other species of humanoid, the child will always have some features of the animal-headed parent’s animal type.  Scholars argue about it all.  Culturally, while they mostly keep to their own, they act much like humans and have much cultural exchange with them – more evidence of ancient kinship with them.

Animal Races (by Race, by Animal types, Gayan).  I like the idea of more animal-like species existing, but each being more consistently this or that type of animal.  I drew a scribble of a lizard dude I liked once, put me in mind of a lizard species where all the members could look like different types of lizard.  Another idea I liked was a lizard race of viviparous lady clones, I called lizard madonnas.  Cat people and dog people have an obvious appeal.  I dunno.

Lycanthropes (by Race, by Animal types, Cursed, Gayan, Demonic).  Had some notions on werewolves, werehawks, wereserpents, weregoats, and werejackals.

Talking Animals (by Animal types, Wild).  Emeffs on some Narnia shit, hang out with faeries.  Maybe I should do a Pliny and have cranes be at war with dwarves.

Magical Animals are not a playable race, or at least, unlike everything in this list, cannot have character classes.

Ogres (Ogre, by Race, Demonic).  These are demonic mirrors of the celestial giants.  Generally not as large at the upper limit, but more likely to have strange or monstrous features and savage demeanors.  One type of ogre are the læstrigons, which have scaly torsos, black serpent-like hair, one to three small horns, and goat-like legs with black hair from about the mid-thigh down.  They are renowned for smelling bad, but if one has decent hygiene their strange reptile musk is tolerable, even pleasing to a person who holds affection for one.  However, no small amount of them are nightmarish unlovable cannibals, so that makes such affection rare.

Lamias (Lamia, by Race, Demonic).  Demonic mirrors of the various animal people of the Wild, lamias are a host of chimerical monsters that sometimes share cities in the Screaming Realm with ogres.  They are usually human sized or larger, but not large for giants.  Most of them are female, and as immortals who are capable of giving birth, they are known to regulate their population by cannibalism of their own children.  The main run of their cultures are cruel and brutal, but there are outliers and escapees from that world who seek a better life.

Cambions (Demonic, by Race).  The first generation children of hell’s demons with mortals, usually the product of a succubus or incubus.

Nephilim (Celestial, by Race).  The first generation children of heaven’s angels with mortals, usually the product of fallen angels who are at odds with their former masters.

Bastards (Demonic, by Race).  Subsequent generations born to cambions are closer to being mortal, with few obvious tells of their ancestry.

Perfecti (Celestial, by Race).  Subsequent generations born to nephilim are closer to being mortal, with few obvious tells of their ancestry.

Draconics (Dragon, by Race).  Some few dragons are shapeshifters that like to get with mortals.  The offspring that aren’t killed in infancy by horrified midwives grow up scaly, and in rare places, there can be entire communities of such people.

Silver-Eyed (Astral, by Race).  People who lived on the Astral Plane or those descended from them, who may have had ancient ancestry among the greys or other astral weirdos.  They mostly look like regular Gayans, but with moony silver eyes and a psychic powers.

Hybrids (Grey, Astral, by Race).  Alien-human hybrids!  Buzzing implants!  The government doesn’t want you to know that the greys sometimes intentionally have children with mortal races, producing these weirdos that lurk on the fringes of their societies, or are taken into the astral plane to serve unknowable purposes of their alien parents.

Greys (Grey, Astral).  Greys are big-eyed but otherwise weak-featured bipeds from the outer reaches of the Astral Plane, who sometimes visit Gaya in shining silver vessels to scare humans with light shows.  Play those big notes.  Blow out the glass on your pickup truck.  Hide your cattle, and watch for the probe.

Satyrs (Satyr, Wild, Mammal, Human, Goat).  Goat people.  Like pipes.  Many join the roving bacchanals and become vice elementals, but not all.

Sileni (Silenus, Wild, Mammal, Human, Ass).  Donkey people.  Many join the roving bacchanals and become vice elementals, but not all.

Centaurs (Centaur, Wild, Mammal, Human, Horse).  Horse people.  Some few join bacchanals as vice elementals, but more live in small tribes with slightly less rambunction.

OK, I’m running out of time to do this anymore.  I’ll just list out some more shit, ask me if any of it sounds interesting.

Koneira, Crowten, Shroomen, Fleurs, Nightshades, Rudewood Golems, Cactals, Half Vampires, Half Ghosts, Half Zombies / Ghouls, Half Mummies, Half Skeletons (sans undertales lol), Undeen, Sylpheen, Salymeen, Gnymeen, Molecules, Shellbound, and Robots.

Jellies (no idea).  I’m given to understand this is a popular internet fetish, so maybe I should include ’em.

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alright i go sleep now

You can still join the RP by comment, open for two more players.  Catch up from the beginning here, just look at the most recent post, or whatever.

More thunks on the bestiary of my probably-never-going-to-exist big gay rpg.  This is mostly random free-form stuff, but I’ll lead off answering the question I asked at the end of the last post on the topic:  what animals do I want to see here?  Like what mundane animals live there, and how do they interact with magical monsters and people?  Easy to imagine unicorns and griffins and cockatrices ruling all lesser beasts with their unnatural ways.

Maybe not tho.  Maybe those beasties just exist in balance with everything else in the ecosystem, doing their own distinct niches.  It’s easier to come up with the magickal monsters when the baseline fauna is decided on.  Wouldn’t have half eagle half lions in a world with no lions, right?  To that end, creatures I’d like to see:  The standard Eurasian fare, since this is another RPG inspired by the world of knights in shining armor.  They need horses to ride.  They could have similar distributions, but maybe more lions and tigers in the europey West than there were by medieval times in our world.  But besides that, it would be nice to have some more cool animals.

How can you have an Africa-inspired south without Afrotherian animals like elephants?  Maybe the seaside could have dugongs and manatees, southern rocks could be crawlin’ with hyraxes.  Or would those be outcompeted by marmots?  Other cool African animals that have a bit of representation elsewhere include mongooses and hyenas and crocodiles, cobras, leopards… I should have regional variations on these.  Like maybe male lions in the west have manes that look like mohawks, or leopards in the north have no spots, just… whatever.  If loxodonta could roll up on the Europe-like area without needing a Hannibal to drive them, they surely would.  How weird could that be?  Should I make up my own oddball members for this clade, with funkier tusks?  How about rhinos?  Europe used to have rhinos too.

No Americas means no sloths or New World monkeys or armadillos, no capybaras or guinea pigs, no cougars or jaguarundis or ocelots, no coyotes or raccoons or opossums or toucans or condors… Who would I miss the most?  Who would I want to steal?  Jaguars could just be stocky semi-aquatic leopard species, and I could use other cheats to get similar weirdos in.  Coyotes and golden jackals are very similar.  I guess in lieu of armadillos we could have more varied pangolin species.  That’d be cool.  Condors are pretty neat but mostly I prefer Old World vultures.  Maybe capybaras could get replaced with micro hippopotami or semi-aquatic hyraxes – some holdover intermediate form on the grade to sirenians.

I do love Australian and New Zealand animals but for this I can lose ’em.  Did we lose any animals in the Pleistocene that would be cool to snatch back for this..?  I don’t feel the need.  Stick some wool on the iciest boys.  Going further prehistoric, I do think non-avian dinosaurs are fun to combine with high fantasy, but for simplicity’s sake I’ll lose them here.  Ooh lemurs and fossas…  No Madagascar…  Yeah, sorry lemurs.  You can get your revenge in Gun Lemurs.

I like the idea of making large animal fauna very different from inner sea to outer ocean.  Fish could be sorta samey by evolving before the sea was enclosed, but all the large mammals emerged after that.  Maybe the inner sea could have abundant nautiloids because all the pinnipeds are on the ocean side, maybe it could have a whole separate radiation of whales that split from the ocean whales when the last common ancestor still had hooves.  Or they got outcompeted by giant crocodiles or sharks or sea cows.  Maybe hoofed whales could still exist, or other protowhale variants, niches something like a cross between a peccary and a capybara on crack.

Whence magical beasties, like unicorns and such?  They’d be created by gods or wizards or the magic of the Outer Wild, but establish breeding populations on Gaya.  I might crib some ideas from Pliny, but it would be cool to just make up my own that match the vibe.  Was just randomly reminded of the “leontophone” recently, sounds fun.  I think griffins would be specialized predators of pegasi.  Take that, u majestic creatures.  I was calling the RPG The Cockatrice because dicks but the poison roosters should be here too…  No special thoughts on these for the moment.

In looking at the story Puss in Boots (before the most recent time I was messing with it), I was struck by the absurdity of these helpful animals in fairy tales, and wanted to include something like that in my RPG.  I wrote a first draft novel once in this world, called The Death Knight.  It can’t be published anytime soon, but it’s a hoot.  I made a Puss-type character for it, which was real fun to write.  Just a cat that likes you for cat reasons, but is also magical and talking.  Teddy bear picnic havers.

So magic animals are cat-sized, whether they’re a bullfrog or a raven or a snake, and they talk, and they can do some random impossible thing as part of their gimmick. Sub-type “Divinity.”  My husband was saying he thought the game should have Watership Down type characters, like a goose in a bonnet, that live in treehouse villages.  That would be a different, less magical category.  Call them talking animals?  Probably the ones to hang out with faeries.

I should probably ask a furry how they’d prefer to see a game handle humanoid animal people.  I had a few thoughts on that.  One, just more hate for the splatbook tendency of D&D to produce redundant concepts.  There were like a dozen plus lizard races in those books!  I don’t wanna do like that.  My initial idea for an animal-themed character race was animal-headed people, like the minotaur, like characters from Bojack Horseman, as a singular race that had random animal heads that said something about their personalities.  Like a beaver-headed dude and a crow-headed woman could give birth to twin babies where one had a chicken head and one had an alligator head.  But furries always want their fursonae to have more animalistic features to the body as well, to have tails and paws and shit.  Merely having an animal head will not satisfy them.

So animal races that are more like, furry bod.  Like wolfen from Palladium’s fantasy RPG, or the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, or those ducks from Runequest.  But do I have it be one race that can have any kinda animal type, like the animal-head thing I originally conceived, or just animal races that are all that animal type, like the aforementioned examples?  If I start making races based on animals, where do I draw the line?  Which ones do I include?

More importantly, if I make content with a nod toward trans girls someday, shouldn’t I include anime catgirls?  How cat should they be?  How about puppygirls?  Where does pony play fit into all this?  The head spins.  I’m not trying to make the furriest RPG.  That’s somebody else’s job.  Incidentally, if you know of furry RPGs you wanna recommend in the comments, I’d like to hear about ’em.

Moving on, other things I’ve thought about.  Greek mythology, like, the freaks at the bacchanal.  Satyrs, maenads, sileni.  I never knew about sileni until I saw the movie Šileni by Jan Švankmajer.  It didn’t have anything to do with them, just that the mythological creatures symbolize madness and that movie was about insanity, in its own theatrical (stock ableist) way.  I enjoyed that film a lot.  But what are sileni?  Some sources have them as an old man or satyr on a donkey, some don’t distinguish between them and satyrs, etc.  It varies.  Point is, they’re in the retinue of Dionysus partying with deadly abandon, along with maenads and satyrs and centaurs.  I liked the donkey connection and made them into donkey people, similar mix of animal and human features to that of satyrs.

Maenads brings me back to nymphs.  For some reason, most of the interesting ideas I’ve come up with for player races are centered on nymphs.  There were a lot of nymphs in mythology by a lot of names, and no real official canon to it all.  They were always pretty ladies with some kind of supernatural origin or power (in this maenads may have been outliers), but I’m like, no way.  They can have whatever gender, in my book.  So what will they be?

Immortal pretty people that form out of nature by spontaneous generation, but rarely.  That got me thinking about immortality.  In RPGs you always level up the longer your alive, which produces the unrealistic phenomenon of old people being the most powerful.  Granny has a hundred hit points.  Watch out.  What about immortals tho?  How can you play a character like that, who might have a billion zillion experience points?  My solution was that they lose their skills and memories if they don’t practice them, and they sometimes go dormant for long periods of time.  This came to me as a mental image of people in the foam of a wave, of in the rocks of a mountain, or floating in clouds, or tangled in tree branches.  What if you found a guy in the woods who went to sleep four-hundred years ago, and was half-buried in soil and roots?  Kinda cool.  This could allow people to play an old character as a 1st level guy who has to work his way back to the skills he once had, who has memories of bygone lives that could have been glorious or mundane.

Didja know the Cyclops wasn’t the only giant Ulysses met on his journey?  On one island his crew met a city of giant people who just started gobbling them up like chicken wings.  It was a horrifically evocative idea, actually, if you get a mental picture of it.  The Laestrygonians.  The times I’d seen reference to them in the past weren’t quite the same as what I’ve turned up more recently, and I have been cobbling together a race of giants pretty different from the original notion.  Still, gotta have big chompers.

That puts me in mind of ogres.  From Europe to Japan there is a concept of an ogre, with a lot of variety over that range.  Generally it’s a wild man, giant and club-wielding, an eater of men.  There’s blurred boundaries with the idea of the Green Man, but I feel like ogres are more universally large and bullying.  This puts me in mind of child abuse, and they aren’t the only monster that do so.  Lamias are famous for eating children.  With these two archetypes in mind, I once had an idea for an RPG where the characters are all children of lamias and ogres, in high school, some question of whether it’s a metaphor or a dream or reality within the setting, blah blah blah.  The point tho.  Big scary monsters can be scary &/or psychologically interesting.

When I was thinking on playable races I had an idea that could be reserved for high-power adventures where the characters could be demigods.  They’d have similar stats to regular characters, but have some limited ways they could break the rules.  Like in Jason and the Argonauts when Hercules chucks a rock out to a distant island and another guy who is not as strong sez “I can do that,” and achieves it by skipping the stone.  Home boy, that is not possible.  But as much of a headache as that could be to adjudicate in game terms, the flava would be sweet.  I’d like to see if I could make it work.

I mention this in an article about monster ideas because I realized I’d already embraced a similar idea for magical animals, and that implies they are a kind of divinity, doesn’t it?  So in this conception, they’re like nymphs, naturally emerging from nature, possibly on a path to becoming gods themselves, or just fucking around and living as an interesting little part of the world, until their time is over.  Angels and devils should likewise have some kind of powers not available to anybody in the material world unless they somehow also are born with or achieve divinity, on a spectrum leading up to gods of heaven and hell.  Less interesting to me, but a natural extension of that line of thought.

Elfs.  I don’t know why elves gotta have multiple types, some kinda Tolkien damage, but I couldn’t shake it off.  My husband thinks elves should be short but other partisans are sayin’ they should be tall.  Some should be lofty and live in silver light, some should be wild boyz.  The idea of duality in dökkálfar and ljósálfar call out to my ass as well, and we’ve had a few others I wanted to squeak in.  The list is currently at high elves, light elves, dark elves, garbage elves, glamer elves, and murder elves.  Garbage elves are downtrodden of urban realms, glamer elves have extra magickalism, murder elves have affinity for other murder faeries like kelpies and rusalka, and the other are the usual shmusual.  My idea on dark elves is that they can have unnatural skin tones which may or may not be dark, and they have a more lively / informal / chaotic culture.  Light elves more ordered and prim with human-like skin tones that can also be very dark depending on where in the world they come from.  Gettin away from evil / good as well as light / dark skin tones as having implications, I hope.

I hinted at some of my other thoughts in the last post on this topic without getting into them properly, and running out of time on this post, so I’ll let it stand at this.

I really let my queue get dry.  I have an idea for a post and I queue it before it’s actually done, and as I rush this out eight hours before I’m required to wake up for work tomorrow, I marvel at how it came to this.  I guess I had a little glut of high-effort posts all come due around the same time.  Whatever.  Check out more excessive word count tomorrow, with Dead Milkmen Part II.

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As part of my notion of building all my monsters and playable races at the same time, making them feel part of a creative whole, I’m establishing ways to categorize or group them…

COSMOLOGY
Where the monsters be at.  I don’t want the spread or ambition of some big-ass multiverse.  One world will do.  Center of the universe, it is.  It’s got its own heaven and hell et cetera, and this is the breakdown.

GAYA
The physical world where every ridiculous thing comes together, where most adventures would take place.  Situationally any and all monsters can be found there.  Some, like humans and sheep, are native to the plane, with the Gayan type.  This realm is associated with Body magic, as it is the place where incarnation happens – where flesh is truly flesh, not some spiritual illusion of the same.  Also associated with Drama magic, as the stage where the greatest stories play out.

THE ABYSS
Around every plane of existence, seeping into them, breaking them gradually down to nothing, is the big realm of Death and the dead.  Fools that imagine they’ll live forever in the afterlife don’t know.  The afterlife’s days are numbered.  No small amount of undead dwell there, but creatures born of the plane are called Abyssal.  The realm is of course associated with Death magic.

THE SKEINS
Everything is bound together by threads of meaning, of relationship.  For example, all humans would be bound by a “human” thread.  This is the basis of Binding magic.  The metaphysical manifestation of this is a spiritual web that, like the Abyss, connects to everything.  Unlike the Abyss, one with the right magic can travel on the Skeins directly.  The few strange creatures native to this interstitial space are called Ideal.

THE DEEP WILDS
In the wild places of Gaya, go far enough and the map may lose you.  The Deep Wilds are where wild creatures like sileni, satyrs, and faerie folk come from.  The realm is a spiritual reflection of nature, but taken to great extremes.  Some creatures of the Deep Wilds have been incarnated on Gaya or even been born on Gaya, to where they lose some connection to their ancestral home, but are still considered to be of the Wild (or Wild and Faerie) types.  This realm is associated with Wild Magic.

THE ELEMENTAL REALMS
Pretty stock biz.  Fire, Earth, Air, Water.  Realms of ’em, easier to reach from the Deep Wilds than from Gaya itself.  Associated with Great Magic, Alchemy, and creatures of the Elemental or individual element types.

HEAVEN
Associated with Holy magic, Heaven is where order and obedience reign supreme, where harmony creates something resembling eternal bliss.  Sometimes that may be genuinely beneficent, but beings from this realm, whether god or angel, can be as evil as anything.  Tread carefully, and take the actions of their followers on Gaya over the words in their hymns.  Most easily accessed by dying while sworn to serve a deity there, or from the Singing Realm.  Creatures of Heaven are called Celestial.

THE SINGING REALM
The Singing Realm is a strange place somewhere between Heaven and Gaya, stairway to the gods in the form of an endless city of ever ascending ziggurats and temples.  Souls of the dead who didn’t quite get to Heaven are found here, playing out a lesser paradise until they get so bored the Abyss takes them, or they change into something new, ascend to Heaven or incarnate again on Gaya.  Other creatures live here as well, and like those in Heaven, they are considered Celestial.  Many communities of dwarves and giants have dwelt there so long as to not remember their own origins, and those that dwell on Gaya descended from these.

THE SILVER VOID
Associated with Mind magic, the Silver Void is a place of seemingly endless mental energy.  It plays out there like an unending amusical tone, like psychic tinnitus.  This is soul energy devoid of the Law of Heaven or Chaos of Hell, just alien and buzzing.  Creatures that live in the Silver Void include the greys, flying in their silver discs, some few gods and their servants, and myriad spiritual reflections of the ways that thinking beings exist.  Those that are born here are considered to be the Astral type.

THE SILENT REALM
As the Singing Realm is to Heaven, the Silent Realm is to the Silver Void.  It’s a desolate reflection of Gaya, turned in on itself in endless mazes where souls play out their struggles over and over, until they disintegrate, ascend, or reincarnate on Gaya below.  Some natives of this realm include oneiroi, who play the roles of “supporting cast” in the psychodramas of lost souls.  Like those in the Silver Void above, they are considered to be Astral.

HELL
Associated with Hexing magic, Hell is a twisted reflection of Gaya steeped in chaos and torment.  There is also a kind of vitality there, tho it doesn’t hold a candle to that of the Deep Wilds.  It’s the vitality of freedom, of accepting the pain and difficulty of existence, of living it to the utmost before willing oneself the rest of the way out the door, into the Abyss (or going unwillingly of course).  Some creatures of Hell are surprisingly kind, more are as capriciously cruel as the reputation would suggest.  The type is Demonic.

THE SCREAMING REALM
In a sense this realm is worse than Hell itself.  As the Singing Realm is to Heaven, as the Silent Realm is to the Silver Void, so the Screaming Realm is to Hell.  This is the purgatory where those who died in great strife or iniquity must face their personal demons until they either escape to a gentler place (most often the Silent Realm), reincarnate, disintegrate under the weight of their suffering, or fall fully into Hell proper.  There are other things to be found here besides a labyrinth of personal hells, including great cities of lamias and ogres.  The lamias and ogres of Gaya descended from these.  Like other creatures from here, they are considered Demonic.

RANKS
Categorizing creatures by their relative power and station in the world.

ANIMALS
Self-willed organisms whose limited cognitive abilities prevent from engaging in civilization. Can’t learn more than a very limited vocabulary, unable to learn a character class, although they can advance in levels and abilities.  You don’t wanna meet that 16th level Mosquito.  Your blood will be sucked.

RACES
The species that can engage in technological society on roughly equal footing, typically bipedal with stereoscopic vision and opposable thumbs, tho not necessarily.

HOSTS
A species or group of species that are united by a theme or hierarchy, like faerie folk, giants, devils, or angels.

LEGIONS
A species or group of species that more directly serve a higher power or purpose, typically more powerful than Hosts.

LEGENDS
Demigods and monsters, these are unique creatures whose status transcends the mundane.  Some are elevated from common creatures, others came into their current incarnation by other means.

GODS
Unique creatures like Legends but much more powerful, sometimes alone, more often part of a pantheon of related beings.

OVERGODS
Gods that have become so powerful they are often presumed to be foundational to the cosmos in some way, which is not true.  Some have pantheons in their service or arrayed against them as enemies, others hold themselves above those interactions.

TYPES
Lifting this concept from D&D, tho anyone could have come up with it and probably did.  Categories of creature.

Gayan – Native to Gaya, or naturalized there.

Divinity – In game terms, these are creatures that can do things that transcend game rules.  The weakest are magic animals, who usually have one abnormal reality-breaking power, like performing a great labors in moments, but only when nobody is watching, or telling absurd lies that can somehow fool anyone.  The most common are nymphs and demigods, who can on rare occasion perform heroic feats that defy reason.  Intermediate are legions, and the most powerful are gods themselves.  Divinities can come from any realm in the spirit worlds or from Gaya.

Spirit – All creatures not of Gaya.  Some creatures whose ancestry is not Gayan, but who have descended from generations of Gayan residents, can replace this type with the Gayan type.

Spirit Realm Types – Abyssal, Astral, Celestial, Demonic, Elemental, Fire, Water, Air, Earth, and Wild.

Animal Types – Animal is a type (for animals not of the races), and all animals, including those who are members of the intelligent races, have animal types.  These aren’t necessarily natural clades, can be polyphyletic or just make no sense beyond folk sense.  Amphibian, Bird, Bug, Dragon, Fish, Jelly, Mammal, Mollusc, Reptile, and Worm are the broadest types, and there are dozens that are slightly more narrow.  Some notable types include Ape, Serpent, Rodent, Swine, Dog, Cat, Cattle, Frog, Spider, Fly, Raptor, and Fowl.  There are creatures with less grand places in the imagination of intelligent races, which therefore lack a narrower type, like raccoons, skunks, and kinkajous.  Creatures that blend features of more than one animal type have both animal types.  Simply being a biped with opposable digits isn’t considered a type here, as that is quite varied.  The average person doesn’t recognize the kinship of humans and monkeys, and the most monkey-like races imagine themselves the true heirs to the title, so no over-arching term unites them.

Plant – Not all ancestrally photosynthetic organisms are sessile in Gaya, but those that get around are uncommon enough they are lumped by animal types into one perhaps overly inclusive type.  This type even includes non-photosynthetic fungus, because the beliefs of the masses are what form conceptual threads.

Race Types – Elf, Dwarf, Human, Gnome, Ogre, Lamia, Koneira, Crowten, Nymph, Centaur, etc etc…

Host Types – Faerie, Lycanthrope, Giant, Vice Elemental … I don’t have as many ideas for these as I’d prefer.  Maybe Furry?  For all the obligatory animal people.  Maybe Undead should be here.

Legion Types – Seelie Court, Unseelie Court, Angel, Devil, Oneiroi, etc.

Animated – Normally inanimate matter, made life.  Rudewood golems don’t count because the carved wood in them is still alive in some respect, and so they have the Plant type.

Types I’m Not Using from D&D – No Alignments.  I’m not even a partisan on that hoary debate, and kinda like D&D’s alignment system, for that game.  Feels more interesting to not have it in this one, personally.  I don’t see myself making Aberrations or Oozes, or not enough to where there’d be need of a type.  Mind flayers and beholders are the most iconic of those and they’re not included in the open game license, plus I’m just not that into them, or most other things that would be classified this way.

Physical Properties – Amorphous, Immortal, Intangible, Flying, Aquatic, Undifferentiated (lacking weak spots such as organs), etc.

Magical Properties – Enchanted, Cursed, Blessed, Transformed, etc.

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How do I use this guff?  Probably in a different post.  Before I move on tho, I wanna contemplate that notion I had of trying to make it all feel like it hangs together, like it’s unified conceptually.  I want to include a huge amount of playable races because players like to have that selection.  Ditto classes, later in my process.  But what kind of world has that many intelligent species hobnobbing?  A physically large one?  Henry Darger had a sci-fi setting with a world massively larger than Earth in geographical size and population, but subject to an encyclopedic variety of horrible weather phenomena that could kill millions at a time.  Kinda fun to see what people come up with when unfettered from expectations of physical feasibility.  I don’t feel that liberated at the moment.

Just deciding in advance I’m gonna go X far and no farther, that’ll help keep it from feeling like a whack-ass pile of random.  Be nice to have a bit more drilled down…  I should decide on animals and such as well.

I like the idea of racial diversity not being all orientalist or awkward.  Had an idea this world has a mega-continent like Pangaea, so everyone is together, but there’s a massive sea in the middle that somehow isn’t pulling a messinian salinity crisis on us.  Peoples from one area grade into each other culturally and physically, with people to the south having dark skin and curly hair, people to the west going pink for lack of melanin, people to the north olive skinned with eyes that get more epicanthic fold and hair that gets generally straighter to the east.  This applies to elves, dwarves, humans, etc, so we aren’t saddled with excuses for being racist about what they’re allowed to look like.  Locations can vary – a random enclave of unusual-looking people here or there – and with world travel possible, anybody of any color could reasonably show up anywhere.

The IRL disadvantages of the global south are too depressing.  Gotta wakanda this shit out at least a bit.  There are high- and low- tech places all over, the low-tech compensating with more powerful magic or other advantages.  There should still be injustice enough to motivate heroism, but I think, for me, the pattern of it should be less obviously tied to specific races and cultures being globally dominant or oppressed.  Thematically we could have technologically advanced kingdoms trying to oppress their neighbors or fight each other for territory, and getting beaten back by heroes.  But the techno-kingdoms could be run by black people oppressing black people, the barbarians could be white people being oppressed by white people.

This world structure carries implications for flora and fauna as well.  Aquatic life in the big sea could be long separated from out in the big ocean, and very very different.  With few barriers to overland travel, there wouldn’t be as many isolated ecological regions with suites of unusual animals.  Like no Australias or Madagascars.  Sorry kangaroos.  Unless I want everywhere to have kangaroos.  The continents pushing and pulling apart and pushing back together again can result in clades of animals coming together that would not have evolved together, without the entirety of one area’s unique beasts wiped out, necessarily.  South America was raided in a way that caused lots of cool interesting beasts to draw the big ace, but they still have lots of distinctive characters, like caviomorph rodents, maned wolves, weird marsupials, cool monkeys…

I don’t want to dream up the paleobiogeography of this motherfuckin’ globe.  I’m not quite that species of nerd.  Close, but not all the way there.  So I’ll just pick the animals I wanna see.  Let’s see…

Next post!

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I was spending some time with demonology a few years ago, motivated by the observation that grimoires listing demons had enough in common that they presumably derived from an original source – that you could find that source, and get the “real” details on demonic characters like Belial, Samigin, Asmodeus, and Glasya-labolas.  I even found the name of this source: The Book of the Offices of Spirits.  The Lesser Key of Solomon and other texts purport to be transcriptions from that source, and yet, there are no extant copies that could be regarded as having high fidelity to the original – assuming it ever existed.  The copies of copies of copies change things up, so much so that the oldest version I could find, in the Fasciculus Rerum Geomanticarum, had a very different list and information from the later books.

And it was all hooey anyway.  If I could find the original Liber Officiorum Spirituum, I’d just be finding older hooey.  The trappings of systematic and encyclopedic information in the copies are enticing to that pokedex mentality.  I wanted to catch them all.  Once again, I find myself tempted to a similar end.  I’ve been trying to come up with the list of monsters for my big gay rpg, and the lure of finding the “authentic” or “original” monsters of fairy tales and mythology and legends is there.  But it’s all hooey.  Why do enough research to write a new entrant to the libraries of compilations that already exist?  Why not just make up my own hooey?

So I probably will.  But I’d still like to include the big iconic monsters of fantasy and folklore.  Pinning down at least that much, a useful thing to do.  Some campaign settings from 20th century RPGs went for the classic D&D list of playable races, plus or minus, and then tried to include some iconic new weirdos for flavor.  Others tried to reinvent the wheel with an all new list, or went for a more low-magic concept where all the players are human.  I’m pretty well decided on the first option.  As much as this is a TTRPG, I’m also inspired by video game RPGs, like the older Final Fantasy games.

Backing this idea up a bit, an anecdote that may inform my motivation.  In the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition dayz, when Monstrous Compendium pages were hole-punched so you could put them in your own three-ring binders, my Tech Support Guy had a good solid binder going.  I’d look at the intelligent species in it and think, that’s a character.  Why couldn’t it be a playable character?  So I used the monster stats to reverse engineer playable stats for a bunch of them – particularly satyrs, nymphs, and fairy folk.  Were they balanced?  No, but they were accurate to where a player version would be functionally the same in combat as a “monster” version, until they started gaining levels.  I might have even spaced out supernatural abilities by level, like they did for some creatures in 3rd Edition’s Savage Species, don’t remember.

What this illustrates is my annoyance with systems not being fully thought out from go, being constructed piecemeal.  If I ever get this thing going, I will try to get it as close to perfect as possible first time, so I don’t have to fuck around with revisions.  Part of that is the monster and class lists themselves.  I don’t want to make people buy a zillion “splatbooks” to get the full package.  Those kind of products weaken the original game as an artistic expression, because they result in numerous duplicated concepts.

Like there will be several character classes that are functionally identical to paladins, or separate stats for a creature from folklore by several different names, which were always meant to be synonymous.  Or so many “subspecies” of elf you wonder how one world could sustain all of those isolated populations, like why they wouldn’t grade into each other more like humans do.  It all just feels poorly conceived, which is what you don’t want art to be.  I know, they didn’t want to be artists, but I can’t help but be an artist, so this is my thinking.

And being this goofy combination of analytical and fussy, broad and abstract, I find myself torn between building a pokedex out of every source of monsters fairies etc that I can dig up from everywhere forever, and trying to get away from that altogether, because a half-measure would not be satisfying.  As I have rolled through all these kinds of thoughts, while wiki-surfing mythological beings, I’ve come to a perhaps tenuous conclusion that I want to make up my own guys, that can be representative of various guys from IRL mythology and folklore.  That is, I want to make up my own fairy that could be a stand-in for multiple types, like clurichauns and leprechauns and kobolds and duendes and gnomes could all possibly be the same species by different names.  Make sense?  But at the same time, not be so broad that my monsters can just be anything wilson-nilson – so variable that the core idea is lost and they become a conceptual mush.

I’m a victim of the same mentality as all those old school TTRPG makers, thinking I’m going to do it right, where all who have gone before were inferior minds.  I’ll make the one game to find them and in the darkness bind them, muhahaha.  But like many with these tendencies, I’m OK with never really getting recognized for that magnum opus.  It can remain the humble home brew.  I’m doing it for myself.  I will share it if it ever gets to a publishable state, but that’s not the aim.  The aim is to make something that works for me in all my particulars.

(I’ve been told having one’s work stolen by AI is the worst.  Publishing anything at all, well, it definitely makes that possible.  All my bloggy thunks will one day be grist for the Bébésque Machinélange, likewise my “magic system.”  There is nothing truly original here.  Steal it, somehow magically convert it into money, then come back and laugh at my foolishness.  I’d like to see it.)

So playable species should look like a natural part of the world they live in, should be conceived at the same time as the monsters.  It shouldn’t just be ooh, thought of a random cool thing, I’ll ram it in there.  Make the tree of life, fill it out, and then go into the individual branch ends and do all the random cool thingening there.  I’m jacking for beats.  D&D 3e had monster types, which was useful for game effects – a sword +2 against dragons affects all creatures with the dragon type – but also appeal to my interest in taxonomy.  There was another way of classifying creatures they didn’t get into much, an idea I gathered from their Planescape Monstrous Compendiums: by social structure.  In Planescape there are groups of creatures from the Outer Planes of the D&D cosmology that group naturally, like demons & devils (tanar’ri & baatezu lol), angels (devas), modrons, yugoloths, slaad, etc.  That was another layer of flavor I found interesting.

I’ve already come up with a lot of the basic material I’m about to explain here, but it was before I settled on my guiding principles elucidated above – don’t try to make stats for rusalkas and zmeys and banshees, make something that could be any similar creature by a different name.  Like, I don’t need five hundred slightly different spooky horses that will drown you, even if Europe did feel the need for that.  Resist completionism.  Proceeding with all that shit in mind…

is enough material for another post.  I break this up.

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