02-06-2021, 08:34 PM
And a bit about races...
I'm not going to make any illusions that many of these races have not been used in fantasy games many, many times before.
I've never been a fan of the games where they try to make every race an original; I do tend to like me some tropes...
So, call me derivative, I won't deny it. :p
So, having said that, here's a list of races I plan on having. They fall into three groups, based on sureness of that race being in the final game: Pretty Sure, Maybe, and Who Knows
Pretty Sure:
Dwarves - Warriors Crafters, live in mountains and hills
Elves - Archers and Wizards, live in forests
Halflings - Farmers, tradesmen, sneaky, live in plains and hills
Humans - more than one kind; Wildmen[Barbarians/Vikings], Horse Lords [think Rohan] (more under Maybe)
Just Plain Humans (lol) - of course need a better history, but these are the humans with no advantage or disadvantage, the baseline
Orcs - Live in any environment, live by raiding other races and hunting (see note under Maybe)
Unnamed as yet race of Lizardmen who trace ancestry back to Dragons, at home in swamps
Felar - Cat-people who are at home in the Jungle and are adept at Fire magic
Unnamed Rat-people who live in almost any environment except plains and mountains, skilled at subterfuge and Void magic
Unnamed Insect-People - There are many examples of insect-people in fantasy games, my take on them is that they are a hive-mind, and as such, have no individual fear of death. This will exempt them from any rules affecting Morale and almost all mind-magic. However, it will also make them uncreative, and researching new spells, skills, and techs will be harder for them.
Maybe:
High Men[Human] (never really liked the idea, but these are the preist-y, paladin-y people that seem to recur in fantasy lore. Maybe give them a better history of being a remnant of a powerful church, before the Godwar; maybe these were the church of the (now absent) All-Father)
Goblins - not sure if they need to be a race of their own... Idea - the Orc/Goblin race is really one race, sometimes you have an Orc, sometimes you have a Goblin. Perhaps the diet of an Orc/Goblin as they are raised determines what they grow up to be... Perhaps an Orc/Goblin baby, raised on mostly vegetables/fungi/bugs/etc grows up to be a Goblin. However that same baby raised on meat grows up to be an Orc... And perhaps if you raise an Orc child on something more exotic, you get an Ogre... (Maybe Dragon meat?)
Undead - I want to have undead in the game, of various types, but I'm not sure if I want a race of Undead. If you want your hero to become a necromantic master, and raise an army of undead, you should be able to do that without having a race of Undead.
Bird-people - maybe just flying humanoids, what would be the disadvantage that would make up for flight?
Who Knows:
Unnamed Octopus-people - Amphibious thick-skinned octopus like beings, capable of walking on land or swimming. good at Water magic
Gnomes - 'Tinker Gnomes' Skilled at making amazing devices, needless to say masters of Artifice magic
Other notes - I need some sort of ice race, AoW used 'Frostlings,' which I suppose were intended as a fantasy analogue of Inuit people... Maybe Ice Dwarves? Some sort of more directly 'elemental' creatures?
I've also had plenty of really bizarre ideas for races, but the problem becomes integrating/balancing them.
For example, lets say I have a purely aquatic race, that builds cities on the bottom of the sea.
They can never win a conquest game because they can't take over more than a coastal city.
Nobody else can really touch them, without the aid of powerful magic; it just doesn't fit well...
I do plan to have a number of 'minor races' that you will be able to enslave/encourage to join/hire... This would be the place for things that are intelligent enough to be troops in an army, but are not one of the 'major' playable races. Things like Trolls, for example.
Would be good to implement races whose way of life might make it hard to model mechanics for their obviously very different way of living/building, like some sort of living plant creatures. You just have some of them living over there doing what they do, and you can go get some of them to join your army, if you are able.
They'd basically be groups of indigenous people, 'barbarians' until you come along and teach them 'civilization'.
I'm not going to make any illusions that many of these races have not been used in fantasy games many, many times before.
I've never been a fan of the games where they try to make every race an original; I do tend to like me some tropes...
So, call me derivative, I won't deny it. :p
So, having said that, here's a list of races I plan on having. They fall into three groups, based on sureness of that race being in the final game: Pretty Sure, Maybe, and Who Knows
Pretty Sure:
Dwarves - Warriors Crafters, live in mountains and hills
Elves - Archers and Wizards, live in forests
Halflings - Farmers, tradesmen, sneaky, live in plains and hills
Humans - more than one kind; Wildmen[Barbarians/Vikings], Horse Lords [think Rohan] (more under Maybe)
Just Plain Humans (lol) - of course need a better history, but these are the humans with no advantage or disadvantage, the baseline
Orcs - Live in any environment, live by raiding other races and hunting (see note under Maybe)
Unnamed as yet race of Lizardmen who trace ancestry back to Dragons, at home in swamps
Felar - Cat-people who are at home in the Jungle and are adept at Fire magic
Unnamed Rat-people who live in almost any environment except plains and mountains, skilled at subterfuge and Void magic
Unnamed Insect-People - There are many examples of insect-people in fantasy games, my take on them is that they are a hive-mind, and as such, have no individual fear of death. This will exempt them from any rules affecting Morale and almost all mind-magic. However, it will also make them uncreative, and researching new spells, skills, and techs will be harder for them.
Maybe:
High Men[Human] (never really liked the idea, but these are the preist-y, paladin-y people that seem to recur in fantasy lore. Maybe give them a better history of being a remnant of a powerful church, before the Godwar; maybe these were the church of the (now absent) All-Father)
Goblins - not sure if they need to be a race of their own... Idea - the Orc/Goblin race is really one race, sometimes you have an Orc, sometimes you have a Goblin. Perhaps the diet of an Orc/Goblin as they are raised determines what they grow up to be... Perhaps an Orc/Goblin baby, raised on mostly vegetables/fungi/bugs/etc grows up to be a Goblin. However that same baby raised on meat grows up to be an Orc... And perhaps if you raise an Orc child on something more exotic, you get an Ogre... (Maybe Dragon meat?)
Undead - I want to have undead in the game, of various types, but I'm not sure if I want a race of Undead. If you want your hero to become a necromantic master, and raise an army of undead, you should be able to do that without having a race of Undead.
Bird-people - maybe just flying humanoids, what would be the disadvantage that would make up for flight?
Who Knows:
Unnamed Octopus-people - Amphibious thick-skinned octopus like beings, capable of walking on land or swimming. good at Water magic
Gnomes - 'Tinker Gnomes' Skilled at making amazing devices, needless to say masters of Artifice magic
Other notes - I need some sort of ice race, AoW used 'Frostlings,' which I suppose were intended as a fantasy analogue of Inuit people... Maybe Ice Dwarves? Some sort of more directly 'elemental' creatures?
I've also had plenty of really bizarre ideas for races, but the problem becomes integrating/balancing them.
For example, lets say I have a purely aquatic race, that builds cities on the bottom of the sea.
They can never win a conquest game because they can't take over more than a coastal city.
Nobody else can really touch them, without the aid of powerful magic; it just doesn't fit well...
I do plan to have a number of 'minor races' that you will be able to enslave/encourage to join/hire... This would be the place for things that are intelligent enough to be troops in an army, but are not one of the 'major' playable races. Things like Trolls, for example.
Would be good to implement races whose way of life might make it hard to model mechanics for their obviously very different way of living/building, like some sort of living plant creatures. You just have some of them living over there doing what they do, and you can go get some of them to join your army, if you are able.
They'd basically be groups of indigenous people, 'barbarians' until you come along and teach them 'civilization'.