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Yora
2013-01-04, 09:55 AM
I could easily count down 10 or even 20 settings which do follow the standard Tolkien/D&D races, but I can't really think of many that don't.

The world of Guild Wars comes to mind, but that's where it already stops for me.

Elderand
2013-01-04, 11:01 AM
Arcana evolved, Black company, planescape to a point (more likely to run into planetouched races than orcs), the conan setting, thieves world

I'm sure there are more

Rakmakallan
2013-01-04, 11:42 AM
Tolkien races are a fantasy staple which tends to disappear in settings that include other planets. In my homebrew I make heavy use of "Our X are different" so as to conform with fictional phylogeny, and sometimes ending up with completely altered species. So we have:
Humans

Kusotii (from the greek ksotiko, meaning elf): Standing at over 2 meters tall, dark and thick-skinned, with freakishly long limbs and adaptations for sylvan habitation. They used to be overly religious and pioneers in arts such as sculpture and calligraphy, until they were torn apart by civil war and conquered by the Exori. They are believed to have a common ancestor with many other races, and tend to exhibit regional morphologies through positive selection of non-fatal mutations.

Exori (from the greek exoristos, meaning exiled): Having diverged from the Kusotii around 8000 years ago, they can still reproduce with each other in rare cases, but their build is slightly shorter and heavier, almost black of skin, and show great tolerance to cold climates and ability to survive with very limited nutrition. Their culture revolves around an almost obsessive study of science and development of technology which culminated recently to the first attempts in space exploration.

Tenshi (angels in japanese): Another Kusotii offshoot, more ancient and unable to reproduce with the main population any more. For as yet unknown reasons they developed overly long (around 60 cm each in width) scapulae and most graft permanently wires inside their bones to form a kind of improvised wings. They are either albino, if living in low altitudes, or tan for the higher populations (probably an adaptation to increased UV radiation for altitudes above 6000 meters).

Hemii (from the greek hemi, meaning half): Human-like, of height around 1.20 m, though to have originated from insular dwarfism. Their skulls are somewhat elongated and flat at the top and parietal bone, with protruding canines and robust forearms. Currently living throughout the world, and considered prodigious explorers and peddlers.

Lemori: Resembling overgrown (about 1 m main body and 80 cm tail) lemurs, isolated in the south provinces of Forest Ancestral, numbering a few hundred thousand at most. Animistic, excellent botanists, and wardens, their lands were for most of the recorded history a Kusotii protectorate, the latter actually believing they were doing them a service.

Oruk: Possibly close relatives of humans, they stand at around 2 meters in height with skin hues in the tan range, with robust builds, especially mandibles and canines and overgrown lower canines and pointed developed wisdom teeth. Their hair is usually in shades of red, and backs slightly hunched. They revere the natural phenomena as spirits and are famed tamers of wild beasts, poets and historians.

Kanjiyar (from the greek kalikanjaros, meaning goblin): The sibling-species of Oruk, lacking a homeland, but rather scraping a living wherever they can, picking up the best of both worlds, from Oruk and Exori alike. Pale, to greenish, due to viridin, a green compound of unknown properties concentrated in their skin, and slightly shorter than humans. In the distant past, they were almost wiped out to extinction by the Nanin, but these differences have been reconciled since.

Nanin (from the greek nanos, meaning dwarf): Generally keeping to themselves, and probably of a common ancestor with the Oruk, the Nanin have reigned west of Eonetalessa from time immemorial from the seat of their vast empire, having gone through periods of rise and conquest to decline and famine alike. Shorter than the Oruk, broad, with bony chests, and robust feet, they tend to willingly propagate the myth that holds them as vicious warriors with long braided beards and cannibalism of their enemies' corpses. Beyond that, they were pioneers in Analysis and Loreweaving, and seafaring.

Lord Il Palazzo
2013-01-04, 12:19 PM
There are a fair number of video game series that used the Tolkeinian races in early games but either shied away or created races of their own to take the spotlight in later games.

The Legend of Zelda series has mentioned at least dwarves and possibly elves at times (mostly in early on) but is far more likely to use its own original races like gorons and zora.

Final Fantasy seems to have done this, though I haven't played any of the main series past VI. Final Fantasy Tactics Advance has about 4 non-human races to choose from, none of which are Tolkeinian. (Besides humans, there are human-like females with bunny ears, lizard-folk (though don't call them lizards), short furry gadget-loving moogles and short, gray-skinned, big-eared, magically talented... things.) I think the same setting was used in Final Fantasy XII, but don't hold me to that.

Suikoden (a great series of JRPGs that practically nobody's heard of) had elves and dwarves in early installments, but slowly built a world with a wide variety of (mostly animal-themed) races including dog-, cat-, duck-, lizard- and even beaver-folk as well as aquatic humanoids (merfolk) and winged humanoids (wingers).

I don't thin Fire Emblem ever used elves and dwarves (prefering a mostly human cast) though a few games have had a shape-shifting race called the laguz that's divided into tribes based on animal forms; the beast tribe is mostly big cats, the bird tribe is various raptors and some ravens and herons and the dragon tribe is self explanitory. Laguz have some animal features in human form such as ears and skin markings for the beast tribe and wings for the bird tribe.

Chilingsworth
2013-01-04, 01:02 PM
Well, at least some animes are non-Tolkeinian:

Inuyasha
Fullmetal Alchemist (I'd call it fantasy, even if it is in a quasi-modern setting.)
Does Bleach count as fantasy?

I'm sure there are more, but my anime experience is somewhat limited.

Also, the Thunder Cats. At least the recent version is definately fantasy-ish.

Also, video games:

Eternal Sonata
Chrono Trigger (though that might be scifi-ish, it does involve magic and much of the game does take place in premodern times, so I think it counts.)

Stubbazubba
2013-01-04, 01:15 PM
Brandon Sanderson's works-

Mistborn, Warbreaker, The Way of Kings, Elantris, etc.

I don't think he ever uses standard fantasy races. What's interesting is that when I've read his books, all of his races seem to be on the border between species (like Tolkien races, inter-breeding aside), and just different ethnicities, to the point that I don't even recognize them as 'fantasy races' until I sit down and start categorizing things.

TheThan
2013-01-04, 01:23 PM
No reason why you can’t make your own, There’s plenty of fantasy races out there besides humans, elves and dwarves. Or borrow from other mythos such as Greek/roman mythology, Nordic mythology, etc, Chinese mythology etc.

Yora
2013-01-04, 01:47 PM
Mythology often includes a lot of spirits, but only very rarely other nonhuman civilizations.

Joe the Rat
2013-01-04, 01:47 PM
The most common aversion, obviously, are those without any other races, or the others being few, and rare if not outright unique cases, strictly NPCs, or monsters. Anything (supposedly) set on Earth - Most folklore and mythologies, and a lot of pre-Tolkein stories tend to have this. Wheel of Time also falls here, kinda.

What clicks with me in this type of story is that the Race distinctions and narrative issues we are used to occur between different cultures. Blackdog is an interesting exercise in world-building, with some very clear analogs to real-world cultures, and not a pointed ear to be seen, not even on the shape-shifting half-demons. You get hints of this with Moorcock's work as well.

Yeah, that's sort of a cop out, isn't it?

Most of the real non-human oddities I can think of involve going off-world - John Carter, Skyrealms of Jorune (which is more sci-fi, yeah). Going post-apocalyptic can get you nonstandard races - mutate yourself some offshoots and uplifts. The trick is finding such settings with clear racial groups as opposed to roll-your-own mutant medley.

You can also go completely other way with this - Fudge da Humans. Filling that gap (or attempting not to) can shake up your race selection (at least on the surface). Talislantia falls in here. Going anthopomorphic (Mouse Guard) should get you there as well.

Rogue Shadows
2013-01-04, 01:55 PM
Legend of the Five Rings, of course, and the OA splatbook in general, presumed that only humans would be the main race. All the other races were unique creations meant to fit in with the oriental setting (nezumi, hengeyokai, spirit folk, vanara, etc), with the only notable exception being korobokuru, which were specifically identified as a dwarf subrace (but really, are so different from dwarves that they probably shouldn't count).

Jim Henson's The Dark Crystal has no humans whatsoever, just lots and lots of muppets, with the main races being gelflings, podlings, and the urSkek (who were sundered into the urRu (Mystics) and Skeksis). For that matter, The Labyrinth is the same (but for the specifically-displaced-girl; also although Jareth may look like a human (specifically he bares a striking resemblance to David Bowie), he isn't).

The Aidyn Chronicles: the First Mage was a horrible, horrible game, but it didn't have any of the standard fantasy races, either, except goblins, but they were enemies.

Eldan
2013-01-04, 02:03 PM
I can mostly think of books (Miéville, of course, since he's aiming for this; Leiber, as far as I can remember, as well as some other Sword and Sorcery; Martin, unless the Children of hte Forest count as elves, which they might turn out to be; Zelazny; Butcher has goblins, svartalfar and fey; Sanderson; Rothfuss; Hobb; just from a quick look at my bookshelf. Actually, pretty much everything Fantasy I read other than Tolkien).

But there don't really seem to be a lot of RPGs like that. Interesting.

Morty
2013-01-04, 02:55 PM
Riddle of Steel uses a setting where the non-human sapient species are fey of various stripes. They're rare and reclusive, so a human can easily go through his or her entire life believing them to be fictional. I think Harnmaster also has no non-human races, Tolkienesque or otherwise. In general, low-magic settings as well as Sword & Sorcery ones - apart from those already mentioned there are the stories of Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser - seem to deviate from the Tolkienesque mold in terms of races.

snoopy13a
2013-01-04, 03:09 PM
The Wheel of Time might qualify. It depends on whether one considers "Trollocs" to be "Orcs with a different name." They appear to be human/animal hybrids.

A Song of Ice and Fire has the "Children of the Forest"--which are pretty much run-of-the-mill wood elves. But they are only in the later Bran chapters--which are already weird, strange and skippable.

Sipex
2013-01-04, 03:50 PM
If you overlook the strategically renamed 'Hume' and 'Elvaan' then Final Fantasy 11 provides you with a small assortment of non-human races like Tarutaru, Mithra and Galka.

There's also Final Fantasy's Ivalace setting (FF Tactics, Tactics Advance and FF12) which brings back the ever popular renamed Humans and mashes them together with Viera, Seeq, Bangaa, Garif, Baknamy, Urutan-Yensa and Moogles.

EccentricCircle
2013-01-04, 04:42 PM
I ran an ancient greek pathfinder game out of the book, simply by refluffing all of the core races.

Elves as Demigods,
Half elves as Athenians
Humans as Amazons
Half orcs as Spartans
Halflings as Pygmies

It worked pretty well.

Ravens_cry
2013-01-04, 05:35 PM
Feels almost more like science fiction than fantasy in many ways. Not a bad thing, but certainly a change in tone.

1337 b4k4
2013-01-04, 07:13 PM
Talislanta / Omni System

Their slogan is "No Elves" and it's free.

hiryuu
2013-01-04, 08:37 PM
Tolkien races are a fantasy staple which tends to disappear in settings that include other planets. In my homebrew I make heavy use of "Our X are different" so as to conform with fictional phylogeny, and sometimes ending up with completely altered species. So we have:

Hemii and Lemori are pretty sweet.

My own setting has (paraphrased) Humans, bird/dinosaur people who use their mouth as a manipulator, a sentient language that looks like a bacteriphage, a memtic demon virus from space, aliens based on the southwestern American "sky brothers" and the Aboriginal wondjina, a race of memetic parasites, Opabinia people, 1950s pulp robots as golems, and shapeshifting underground reptilians.

Greenish
2013-01-04, 08:42 PM
Mythology often includes a lot of spirits, but only very rarely other nonhuman civilizations.Depends on where you draw the line. Giants (and, for that matter, gods) of Norse mythology for example formed non-human civilizations, and the ancient Finnish mythology had the folk of earth, the folk of water, the folk of forest etc.


I can mostly think of books (Miéville, of course, since he's aiming for this; Leiber, as far as I can remember, as well as some other Sword and Sorcery; Martin, unless the Children of hte Forest count as elves, which they might turn out to be; Zelazny; Butcher has goblins, svartalfar and fey; Sanderson; Rothfuss; Hobb; just from a quick look at my bookshelf. Actually, pretty much everything Fantasy I read other than Tolkien).

But there don't really seem to be a lot of RPGs like that. Interesting.Bas-Lag has been adapted as a D&D setting, I seem to recall.


[Edit]: Worth mentioning is also Butcher's Carna, with humans, canim (think marrulurk of Sandstorm, or 10' Anubis-lookalike), icemen (yeti), marat (human-like barbarians who bond to animals), and vord (insect-borg).

Chilingsworth
2013-01-04, 10:31 PM
Hemii and Lemori are pretty sweet.

My own setting has (paraphrased) Humans, bird/dinosaur people who use their mouth as a manipulator, a sentient language that looks like a bacteriphage, a memtic demon virus from space, aliens based on the southwestern American "sky brothers" and the Aboriginal wondjina, a race of memetic parasites, Opabinia people, 1950s pulp robots as golems, and shapeshifting underground reptilians.

That sounds like it could be fun! What system do you use for this world?

hiryuu
2013-01-04, 11:57 PM
That sounds like it could be fun! What system do you use for this world?

Various. I've used Mutants & Masterminds, 3.5/P, and even WoD at one point. I just picked up SilCORE and I want to try that one. I can post the d20 stats over on the World-Building board if people like.

CaptainLhurgoyf
2013-01-05, 11:07 AM
Depends on where you draw the line. Giants (and, for that matter, gods) of Norse mythology for example formed non-human civilizations, and the ancient Finnish mythology had the folk of earth, the folk of water, the folk of forest etc.
Norse mythology also had elves and dwarves, but for obvious reasons that isn't that applicable here.

Also, some mythologies are actually quite rich in nonhuman races. Hindu mythology has quite a few (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exotic_Tribes_of_Ancient_India), and I've included many of those in my setting in an attempt to create an Asian-influenced world that isn't based on Japan. Some of them actually already have DND stats - Varana are in Oriental Adventures, and it should be easy to create Yaksha (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yaksha) by simply reskinning dwarves.

Kiero
2013-01-05, 11:12 AM
Exalted. Yes the native system is complete ****, but the setting is good.

Terraoblivion
2013-01-05, 12:07 PM
Spice and Wolf is about as low fantasy as you can get while still having fantasy at all, but the presence of animal spirits often taking the role of gods makes it still count. These are also the only sapient, non-human beings in the setting of the series.

Orderic
2013-01-05, 12:29 PM
I would like to mention Nobilis. Not only is it mostly set on or near earth, you are also more likely to be beaten at chess by a pumpkin spirit, than to meet an elf. Unless, of course, You want to meet an elf or are an excellent chess player.

Arbane
2013-01-06, 12:26 AM
Exalted. Yes the native system is complete ****, but the setting is good.

Well, it's got 'elves' - at least that's what some people call the soul-sucking conglomerations of chaotic whims from beyond the edge of reality that like to be called 'The Fair Folk' when they pretend to be humanoids with emotions and identities.

It's got 'dwarves' - they're Neanderthals in magitek power armor, shorter laborers, or tall immortal supergeniuses, but they do live under a mountain and are great at building things.

It's also got gods, elementals, and demons that are Just Plain Weird, reincarnating dinosaur-people who only become intelligent with training, and beast-men.

And yeah, it's a great setting.


I think Harnmaster also has no non-human races, Tolkienesque or otherwise.

Doesn't Harn have some sort of orc-equivalent?


In general, low-magic settings as well as Sword & Sorcery ones - apart from those already mentioned there are the stories of Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser - seem to deviate from the Tolkienesque mold in terms of races.

Yep. Conan's world has humans, the occasional degenerate ghoul-like creatures, and the prehuman Serpent Men, but that's about it.

Scowling Dragon
2013-01-06, 08:53 AM
Dark sun mostly has different races, and the ones who are left are highly altered.

Morty
2013-01-06, 07:22 PM
Doesn't Harn have some sort of orc-equivalent?

It might have, I'm not sure. I know of it, but I'm not very familiar with it.