Worldbuilding Talk Thread

[Yora]

What kind of relationship do you consider typical?

[redwizard007]

How conceivable/realistic do you guys think the typical relationship between Dragons and Kobolds are? I've been toying with the idea of Orcs fulfilling the same role, due to being overall stronger and smarter than Kobolds, thus meaning they'd fit better with Dragons.

The kobolds have a couple things going for them here. First, they are sort of reptilian as are dragons. Second, they are smaller and lower CR which means they are more suitable for younger dragons without becoming a significant threat to them or PCs. Kobolds are also tunnelers and trappers which is a nice way to flesh out a Dragon's lair. Finally, Kobolds are lawful.

Having said all that, I have used orcs, goblins, ogres, and more as Dragon minions both with and without templates. It all depends on your vision and the party's ability to overcome challenges. It can be a stretch to justify why a powerful orc tribe with pc character levels throughout the leadership doesn't kill the Dragon and loot his hoard but you can pull it off.

[Solaris]

The kobolds have a couple things going for them here. First, they are sort of reptilian as are dragons. Second, they are smaller and lower CR which means they are more suitable for younger dragons without becoming a significant threat to them or PCs. Kobolds are also tunnelers and trappers which is a nice way to flesh out a Dragon's lair. Finally, Kobolds are lawful.

Having said all that, I have used orcs, goblins, ogres, and more as Dragon minions both with and without templates. It all depends on your vision and the party's ability to overcome challenges. It can be a stretch to justify why a powerful orc tribe with pc character levels throughout the leadership doesn't kill the Dragon and loot his hoard but you can pull it off.

I agree with all of the above, and add this: The very fact that the kobold is small and weak is what makes it such a good match for the bullying dragon. Orcs prefer to be the top dog. Answering to something powerful enough to wipe 'em out isn't a long-term arrangement they enjoy, and dragons loathe short-term things.

***

So I'm developing a low-magic, prehistoric setting built with the premise that the dinosaurs never went extinct, and darn near nothing really goes extinct thanks to the actions of certain primeval spirits. Evolve, yes, but nothing dies off without leaving some kind of descendant. Think those cheesy dinosaurs-vs-mammoths-vs-barbarian movies written by someone who has access to modern thinking about the involved critters and knows neanderthals weren't seven-foot cavemen, although the technology level is more uniformly Stone Age (except for the one Bronze Age civilization, and the possible hints of an ancient, advanced civilization that worked steel). I've also done away with the standard fantasy races, and replaced them with various species of Homo (and different tribes thereof, though at this point only H. s. sapiens is broken up into different tribes). In the more northern reaches of the setting (think "Europe" and "Northern Asia"), the creatures are drawn primarily from the Age of Mammals thanks to the dinosaur decline at the end of the Cretaceous and the Ice Ages. In the south, ("Africa"), they're drawn primarily from the Cretaceous (although I've shamelessly stolen a few that went extinct earlier in reality, such as stegosaurs because not having a stegosaurus is just criminal). Overall, I'm driving for realistic depictions of the animals as much as possible so that when something magical appears, such as the dragons (Skyrim-type, not D&D-type), it really feels different. This leaves me with a conundrum, though:

Should I have the dinosaurs evolve at all, and delve into speculative evolution, or should I leave them as they were in the Cretaceous and claim the dinosaurs in the northern continents went extinct a lot sooner? Would you prefer a setting that had ultra-realistic dinosaurs, or something a little more fantastic?
If they evolve at all, should I have the dinosaurs evolve into an intelligent race something like lizardmen?

[VoxRationis]

I agree with all of the above, and add this: The very fact that the kobold is small and weak is what makes it such a good match for the bullying dragon. Orcs prefer to be the top dog. Answering to something powerful enough to wipe 'em out isn't a long-term arrangement they enjoy, and dragons loathe short-term things.

***

So I'm developing a low-magic, prehistoric setting built with the premise that the dinosaurs never went extinct, and darn near nothing really goes extinct thanks to the actions of certain primeval spirits. Evolve, yes, but nothing dies off without leaving some kind of descendant. Think those cheesy dinosaurs-vs-mammoths-vs-barbarian movies written by someone who has access to modern thinking about the involved critters and knows neanderthals weren't seven-foot cavemen, although the technology level is more uniformly Stone Age (except for the one Bronze Age civilization, and the possible hints of an ancient, advanced civilization that worked steel). I've also done away with the standard fantasy races, and replaced them with various species of Homo (and different tribes thereof, though at this point only H. s. sapiens is broken up into different tribes). In the more northern reaches of the setting (think "Europe" and "Northern Asia"), the creatures are drawn primarily from the Age of Mammals thanks to the dinosaur decline at the end of the Cretaceous and the Ice Ages. In the south, ("Africa"), they're drawn primarily from the Cretaceous (although I've shamelessly stolen a few that went extinct earlier in reality, such as stegosaurs because not having a stegosaurus is just criminal). Overall, I'm driving for realistic depictions of the animals as much as possible so that when something magical appears, such as the dragons (Skyrim-type, not D&D-type), it really feels different. This leaves me with a conundrum, though:

Should I have the dinosaurs evolve at all, and delve into speculative evolution, or should I leave them as they were in the Cretaceous and claim the dinosaurs in the northern continents went extinct a lot sooner? Would you prefer a setting that had ultra-realistic dinosaurs, or something a little more fantastic?
If they evolve at all, should I have the dinosaurs evolve into an intelligent race something like lizardmen?

Eh, I wouldn't show up with lizardmen. In my opinion, most settings are too crammed with intelligent species as it is. Besides, it's not necessarily a given that a clade evolves towards bipedal tool-using sapience; based on what happened with us, it takes a very particular set of base qualities and conditions to get a single species out.
Speculative evolution could be interesting, though. There was a great picture in the back of a dinosaur book I have (I think it was published by Scientific American) that speculated on the evolution of Cretaceous dinosaurs had some more clades survived the KT event. The scene had tyrannosaurs with functionally no arms, recapitulated ceratopsians, and hadrosaurs adapted for a grass diet, "while geese fly south for the winter."

[redwizard007]

*snip*

I'm loving the way your world sounds.

It would be awfully tempting to populate the south with lizardfolk, kobolds, saurials, draconians, and yuan-ti and have a north/mammal vs south/reptilian(avian?) dynamic. If you are going the default kitchen sink approach with races then this could be a nice way to keep things separate. You could even kick in an insect heavy region somewhere to boot.

But...

That level of diverse humanoids evolving from dinosaurs and similar stock when you are making such an effort to limit things in the north seems contradictory. Maybe a single reptilian race with an offshoot would fit better.

Evolving dinosaurs a bit sounds awesome but I'd be hesitant to do so if it results in descriptions like "it's a tyranosaur but..." Or "its basically a..." At that point you are probably better off just leaving them.

Kudos on the Stego by the way. Good call including the icons. Please do me one HUGE favor. Remember that velociraptor was only about 30lb.s if you need something like JP raptors use deinonychus. It's perfect.

[Stellar_Magic]

I'm quite curious to know the equation or formula used to estimate populations. Would you be willing or able to provide the playground with that knowledge?

I found it in an article online somewhere, and saved the calculation. If I remember right, it was partly derived from studies in Africa (Which means it will throw up numbers for a mid-productive environment like the African Savannah). Anyway... here are the two main calculations.

For Herbivores:
Nh = 100 * Mh ^ -0.75

Nh = Number of Herbivores per 1000x1000 meter area (1 square km).
Mh = Average Mass of each Herbivore

For Carnivores:
Nc = 1.97 * Mc ^ -0.88

Nc = Number of Carnivores per 1000x1000 meter area (1 square km).
Mc = Average Mass of each Carnivore

[Solaris]

Eh, I wouldn't show up with lizardmen. In my opinion, most settings are too crammed with intelligent species as it is. Besides, it's not necessarily a given that a clade evolves towards bipedal tool-using sapience; based on what happened with us, it takes a very particular set of base qualities and conditions to get a single species out.

I'm of two minds about the biological likelihood.

Troodon is about as close to some permutation of an intelligent tool-using biped as an ape ancestor - and in this setting, located on very nearly the same continent. Just replace the mammalian megafauna with something a little more feathery and scaly, but the climate and much of the selection pressure remains the same. Arborealism is fairly common in the dromaeosaurs (it's speculated that, because they weren't all that great for disemboweling but are for climbing, raptor claws were used to help small raptors and juveniles climb trees), as is bipedalism, and 'small scavenger that tries to avoid bigger predators' is a niche shared both by hominids and troodontids. It's similar - not identical, of course, but similar - to the situation which saw the development of apes into humans. Given the circumstances, it's not impossible for something intelligent and tool-using to arise.

On the other hand, the dinosaurs had 150 million years to do it in reality and didn't (it gets less likely if we consider that birds are dinosaurs, and while they've produced some clever tool-users, none of them are really smart enough to be PCs), and mammals accomplished it in 65 million years (not counting the time mammals were limited in their niche exploitation by, y'know, dinosaurs).

Even without the "If I could", there's the question of "If I should". While I'm a real big fan of dinosaurs and would like to put it in, it's an introduction of an element that may be a bit too fantastic for the setting, as it's a speculative evolution plopped down into the middle of a bunch of things that are at least based on something from the real-world. While I don't mind at all taming and domesticating certain dinosaurs (I'd like to blame Eberron, but Baker's really just an enabler for my dino addiction), it's something more of a leap to put a big-brained tool-using dino in a setting trying to be grounded in reality. Moreover, I already have several cultures (read: D&D 'race') of H. sapiens in addition to H. neanderthalensis, H. floresiensis, a very speculative Denisova hominid, the seven-foot-tall population of H. heidelbergensis, and some proto-human that I haven't really decided on yet but will be a pre-erectus species. It's not like the setting needs dino-men.

Speculative evolution could be interesting, though. There was a great picture in the back of a dinosaur book I have (I think it was published by Scientific American) that speculated on the evolution of Cretaceous dinosaurs had some more clades survived the KT event. The scene had tyrannosaurs with functionally no arms, recapitulated ceratopsians, and hadrosaurs adapted for a grass diet, "while geese fly south for the winter."

Are you thinking of Dougal Dixon's The New Dinosaurs?

I'm loving the way your world sounds.

Thanks. I've been banging on it a while now. It's inspired as much by my interests in prehistory and megafauna as it was by Yora's setting.

It would be awfully tempting to populate the south with lizardfolk, kobolds, saurials, draconians, and yuan-ti and have a north/mammal vs south/reptilian(avian?) dynamic. If you are going the default kitchen sink approach with races then this could be a nice way to keep things separate. You could even kick in an insect heavy region somewhere to boot.

But...

That level of diverse humanoids evolving from dinosaurs and similar stock when you are making such an effort to limit things in the north seems contradictory. Maybe a single reptilian race with an offshoot would fit better.

The way I'm thinking of the intelligent ones, there'd be one species evolved from dromaeosaurs. Multiple races/morphs/tribes, maybe, but just the one species. As I picture them, they're competitors to the proto-human ape-men (Paranthropus? Australopithecus? H. habilis? I haven't really decided yet, though I know I'm going to be playing fast and loose with their intelligence) and the more modern humans (culturally a mashup of Mesoamerican and Sub-Saharan African) in the locale.

To my knowledge, there really isn't much else in Earth's history that was as likely to develop smarts if it hadn't been wiped out in a mass extinction event.

Evolving dinosaurs a bit sounds awesome but I'd be hesitant to do so if it results in descriptions like "it's a tyranosaur but..." Or "its basically a..." At that point you are probably better off just leaving them.

That's pretty much exactly my concern. We're talking about an ecosystem that remained essentially stable for millions of years, so while the particulars may change up somewhat the broad details are going to remain essentially the same. That's not conducive towards critters that are terribly novel, even if the hadrosaurs are going to be eating grass and the sauropods perhaps not so common as they once were.

If I stay too closely to the original stock, I might as well not have bothered. If I stray too far, then I'm not using dinosaurs at all and instead am using fantasy monsters (no matter how well-grounded I think they are in sound biology).

Kudos on the Stego by the way. Good call including the icons. Please do me one HUGE favor. Remember that velociraptor was only about 30lb.s if you need something like JP raptors use deinonychus. It's perfect.

The JP raptors were Deinonychus in all but name (Crichton went with velociraptor 'cause it sounded cooler), although the big one in the first movie was a bit closer to a Utahraptor. They're definitely going to be in there, and their little Velociraptor cousins are a candidate for a domesticated dinosaur.

[Milo v3]

I've been toying with the idea of Orcs fulfilling the same role, due to being overall stronger and smarter than Kobolds, thus meaning they'd fit better with Dragons.

Wait... when did kobolds become dumber than orcs? Kobolds are as smart as humans.....

[BootStrapTommy]

Wait... when did kobolds become dumber than orcs? Kobolds are as smart as humans.....

In 3.5, kobolds are smarter.

In 4e and 5e, it is not really clear cut. The average Orc is dumber (4e) or the same (5e), but in both editions Orc chieftains are smarter than kobolds.

And in 4e, the kobold skirmisher apparently struggles to tie its own shoes...

In earlier versions I have no clues, as I lack the source material currently.

[VoxRationis]

In 3.5, kobolds are smarter.

In 4e and 5e, it is not really clear cut. The average Orc is dumber (4e) or the same (5e), but in both additions Orc chieftains are smarter than kobold.

And in 4e, the kobold skirmisher apparently struggles to tie its own shoes...

In earlier versions I have no clues, as I lack the source material currently.

Well, if I had claws instead of nails, I too would struggle with knots.

[Milo v3]

Question do people normally flavour races like goblins and kobolds as dumb in their settings? It seems to be in a lot of media like the D&D-based Videogames and Adventure Paths.

[VoxRationis]

In my current setting, kobolds are extinct due to over-adventuring. There used to be billions of them, and we thought they'd never run out... The last one, named Martha, died in a zoo. That said, they were intelligent, as are goblins.

[Solaris]

Question do people normally flavour races like goblins and kobolds as dumb in their settings? It seems to be in a lot of media like the D&D-based Videogames and Adventure Paths.

I don't in my settings, but I do believe I can see why they do it. I think it helps people avoid troublesome questions about morality if the things they're killing for the crime of standing between them and shiny things are stupid on top of being ugly.

[Mechalich]

Question do people normally flavour races like goblins and kobolds as dumb in their settings? It seems to be in a lot of media like the D&D-based Videogames and Adventure Paths.

Races of this nature are usually presented as primary antagonists to the civilized races of any given setting - because they are evil.

They are also usually presented as breeding very rapidly - because that's an excuse to prevent them from having been exterminated and to allow them to rise to 'overwhelming horde' threat level in game-related time frames.

This produces a need for a requirement to justify their failure to achieve dominance over the other races. If they are just as capable and yet more numerous, how have they not overrun the world?

The tradition answer, traced to Tolkien, was that they simply weren't as smart as humans, dwarves, elves, etc. It was a workable justification and was integrated into early D&D rules. Orcs, also, still have that nasty intelligence penalty in place. The intelligence penalty was later removed from Goblins, Hobgoblins, and Kobolds which creates problems, since there's no longer quite so-obvious a justification for their sustained primitive, second-tier race status.

Much of the accumulated fluff simply hasn't caught up to portraying these particular races (especially goblins who have absolutely been typecast as victims of 1st level PCs for eternity) as human-equivalent intelligences. Pathfinder, for example, still characterizes goblins as mentally deficient in the Advanced Race Guide.

Possible justifications for the low-tech and limited cultural depth of these races:
Goblins: boom-and-bust cycles, goblins are extremely fecund, but quickly overrun their environment. they constantly expand into a Malthusian trap (easy they have a culture bias against agriculture) and they their society crashes, a goblin kingdom that could reign this in somehow, could develop rapidly.

Hobgoblins: ruthless military focus, hobgoblins are constantly engaged in struggle for conquest with essentially all other races. As such their focus is ridiculously short-term, and no resources are set aside for the long-term. In Civ terms, they move to conquer the world with an endless stream of warriors from turn 1, and never try anything else.

Kobolds: minion-ism, the kobold race has been shaped into ideal servants by dragons. This has stunted their own development in the extreme, and every time an advanced kobold community develops, some dragon takes over and deliberately stagnates it.

[Stellar_Magic]

I agree with all of the above, and add this: The very fact that the kobold is small and weak is what makes it such a good match for the bullying dragon. Orcs prefer to be the top dog. Answering to something powerful enough to wipe 'em out isn't a long-term arrangement they enjoy, and dragons loathe short-term things.

***

So I'm developing a low-magic, prehistoric setting built with the premise that the dinosaurs never went extinct, and darn near nothing really goes extinct thanks to the actions of certain primeval spirits. Evolve, yes, but nothing dies off without leaving some kind of descendant. Think those cheesy dinosaurs-vs-mammoths-vs-barbarian movies written by someone who has access to modern thinking about the involved critters and knows neanderthals weren't seven-foot cavemen, although the technology level is more uniformly Stone Age (except for the one Bronze Age civilization, and the possible hints of an ancient, advanced civilization that worked steel). I've also done away with the standard fantasy races, and replaced them with various species of Homo (and different tribes thereof, though at this point only H. s. sapiens is broken up into different tribes). In the more northern reaches of the setting (think "Europe" and "Northern Asia"), the creatures are drawn primarily from the Age of Mammals thanks to the dinosaur decline at the end of the Cretaceous and the Ice Ages. In the south, ("Africa"), they're drawn primarily from the Cretaceous (although I've shamelessly stolen a few that went extinct earlier in reality, such as stegosaurs because not having a stegosaurus is just criminal). Overall, I'm driving for realistic depictions of the animals as much as possible so that when something magical appears, such as the dragons (Skyrim-type, not D&D-type), it really feels different. This leaves me with a conundrum, though:

Should I have the dinosaurs evolve at all, and delve into speculative evolution, or should I leave them as they were in the Cretaceous and claim the dinosaurs in the northern continents went extinct a lot sooner? Would you prefer a setting that had ultra-realistic dinosaurs, or something a little more fantastic?
If they evolve at all, should I have the dinosaurs evolve into an intelligent race something like lizardmen?

Interesting, reminds me a bit of one of my settings, anyway...

My first suggestion is to go high realism... because actually doing that will result in things seeming to most players to be more fantastic, unless they're really familiar with Dinosaur evolution.

Keep in mind that if you're doing a 'prehistoric' campaign that people don't move that much normally... in order for their to be contact between the intelligent dromaeosaurs and H. sapiens, then they'll have to live in close proximity or be forced to move into the other's territory for some reason. My suggestion would therefore be to abandon the North-South axis of spread idea.

Secondly, I'd suggest really embracing some of the newest information on dinosaurs. There is Troodon sp. (species pending) was an arctic species, and the largest Troodon known at 50% larger size then those found in Montana and Alberta. I've seen some really interesting paleoart where the artist gave some arctic species a full coat of bristles (fossils show bristles along the spine in some of the family).

Ah... here's the picture:


Troodon remains are mostly found in temperate or arctic locations... whereas humans evolved inside the tropics. Maybe an inversion would be an interesting idea, tropical humans pitted against sapient arctic dinosaurs.

A better choice may just be to choose an environment and look at what lived in that sort of environment at different points in history. Spinosaurus in the Amazon River, Troodon in the arctic highlands of Alaska down and stretching all the way down to Montana, Dromaeosaurs of various descriptions everywhere outside the tropics.

If it's typical caveman type ice-age cold and rugged. Why not use the various arctic dinosaur species alongside ice-age mammals?

Nanuqsaurus hoglundi:

6 meters (~20 ft.) long Tyrannosaurus species just discovered. Height at the shoulder and overall mass would actually make it viable as a mount (both are around that of a draft horse). Imagine that as a mount used by a band of dromaeosaur derived hunters on an arctic plain, chasing down mammoths, ceratopsians, wolly rhinos, elk, deer, and so forth.

Dromaeosaurus albertensis:

2 meters long and a mere 15 kg (30-35 lb), I see Dromaeosaurus in the arctic filling a role kind of like the arctic fox does today, preying on small animals like rodents.

Pachyrhinosaurus perotorum:

Can anyone say a dinosaur yak?

Troodon sp:

3-4 meters long in the arctic and a massive 100-200 kg in weight, Troodon actually is bigger then its Dromaeosaur cousins in a cold environment. In an ice-age environment it would compete directly with the niche of the dire-wolf, cave lion, and sabre-tooth cat... and not necessarily loose to them either.

Troodon overall is a good starting point for evolution into a sapient species. I imagine that Troodon, being an extremely successful animal, would evolve into a plethora of forms. One of which would be arboreal, promoting the evolution of better grasping limbs for holding smaller branches, and ultimately an opposable claw on the hand. They may have also evolved in a similar fashion to microraptor and developed some limited flight feathers on the forelimbs (gliding at best, but a monkey would kill to be able to glide if he missed a branch).

Then, like with human evolution, the trees went away leaving the Troodon descendants to travel across open plains. Bipedal motion wasn't that big of a deal, as theropods have always been bipedal, but opposable claws and exceptional vision would make it an even more capable hunter. Add the ability to throw stones at bigger predators and prey... and you have a recipe for the replay of human evolution.

I doubt they'd ever go fully upright, as that would actually reduce their mobility, but living in the trees would force an increase to the range of motion of the foreclaws and legs. They'd develop shoulders and wider hips for this purpose. They may develop a prehensile tail, or they may not... as it would interfere with their ability to glide in case of a fall, while a stiff tail would work fine.

Ultimately intelligence would be forced to emerge more, probably due to population pressure from predation (possibly by other evolutionary descendants of Troodon).

[Mechalich]

With evolving dinosaurs, an important consideration is vegetation change. The development of flowering plants and their subsequent dominance (and the subsequent mass adaptive radiation of insect pollinators) represented a huge change in how terrestrial animal life functioned in all ecosystems. Only the very last groups of dinosaurs from the latest Cretaceous lived in a world with dominant angiosperms and, in particular, dominant grasses.

If you want to retain ancient fauna, therefore, you may want to also retain variants on ancient flora - such as vast fern prairies, monkey-puzzle tree forests, and some of the other oddities of the Cretaceous world (if you've seen Walking with Dinosaurs, you can note that a large portion of the series was shot in the living anachronism ecosystem of New Caledonia for precisely this reason).

[VoxRationis]

Troodon overall is a good starting point for evolution into a sapient species. I imagine that Troodon, being an extremely successful animal, would evolve into a plethora of forms. One of which would be arboreal, promoting the evolution of better grasping limbs for holding smaller branches, and ultimately an opposable claw on the hand. They may have also evolved in a similar fashion to microraptor and developed some limited flight feathers on the forelimbs (gliding at best, but a monkey would kill to be able to glide if he missed a branch).

Then, like with human evolution, the trees went away leaving the Troodon descendants to travel across open plains. Bipedal motion wasn't that big of a deal, as theropods have always been bipedal, but opposable claws and exceptional vision would make it an even more capable hunter. Add the ability to throw stones at bigger predators and prey... and you have a recipe for the replay of human evolution.

I doubt they'd ever go fully upright, as that would actually reduce their mobility, but living in the trees would force an increase to the range of motion of the foreclaws and legs. They'd develop shoulders and wider hips for this purpose. They may develop a prehensile tail, or they may not... as it would interfere with their ability to glide in case of a fall, while a stiff tail would work fine.

Ultimately intelligence would be forced to emerge more, probably due to population pressure from predation (possibly by other evolutionary descendants of Troodon).

While I get that this is supposed to be a justification for the development of a sentient species, I must say I think it far-fetched. There were numerous arboreal maniraptorans (and there still are today), but the development of an opposable thumb (reversing the trend of reduced metacarpal flexibility in maniraptorans) and a shoulder and wrist setup even remotely suitable to throwing rocks has not appeared in them.

[Yora]

We're talking about fantasy settings. Far fetched counts as a high level or realism.

[zabbarot]

We're talking about fantasy settings. Far fetched counts as a high level of realism.

This is the truest statement to come out of this whole thread

Really I think that being internally consistent is more important than being realisitic if you want to get that suspension of disbelief anyways.

[ShadowFireLance]

Question do people normally flavour races like goblins and kobolds as dumb in their settings? It seems to be in a lot of media like the D&D-based Videogames and Adventure Paths.

Kobolds aren't as intelligent in Ageon as Orcs, due to the fact that they're not meant for the same ecological niche, nor same tactical genius the Gatar were designed for.
Orcs are, bar few, the strongest species within the world. They're not dominant due to a 'glitch' in their system resulting in food being inefficient, thus meaning war efforts for the Orcs have to be over fast. If it's a single battle, they'll never lose. Orcs in Ageon are highly regenerative supersoldiers.
I'm not saying that The Eru and Iss are stupid, I'm just saying that they're not meant to be intelligent at the things other species are meant to do; The Iss are known for keeping an extensive catalog of poisons and friendly creatures.
/infodump

[Stellar_Magic]

While I get that this is supposed to be a justification for the development of a sentient species, I must say I think it far-fetched. There were numerous arboreal maniraptorans (and there still are today), but the development of an opposable thumb (reversing the trend of reduced metacarpal flexibility in maniraptorans) and a shoulder and wrist setup even remotely suitable to throwing rocks has not appeared in them.

A lot about arboreal maniraptors is fairly controversial. Outside of microraptor, most maniraptors don't have the forearm construction for it. One thing that many reconstructions get wrong is there... studies of dromaeosaur and troodontid fossils suggest that their forearm articulation was really quite limited. They can't curl claws like you see in most movies, and their wrists are very limited in their movements. If they were arboreal they would be limited to climbing by hooking their claws into the tree trunk, instead of grasping the tree branches like modern primates. The emergence of more angiosperm trees with complex branching limbs would probably be the impetus for evolving different forearm gear.

[Jendekit]

Can anyone point me to information on the behavior patterns of any animals that have a female-to-male gender ratio of 8-1?

I want to get some ideas for the culture/society of a homebrew race with such a ratio.

[Yora]

Best example I can think about would be bees. Bee DNA has the interesting trait that a queen bee can create offspring by herself any time, but these will always be male. To lay eggs that will become female bees she has to mate.
Male bees have almost no function in the hive. Occasionally the queen will lay some eggs that will hatch into males, which will then fly off to mate with a newly hatched queen from another hive. And then they die pretty quickly. After the mating the queen has enough fertilized eggs to last pretty much forever and she doesn't need to mate again. She just keeps laying those eggs she got from that mating. Because of how bee DNA works, female worker bees actually have a higher genetic match with their sisters (75%) then they would have with their own offspring if they had any (50%). Though not all insect species with that genetic structure have queens, and there are some others that do have queens even without that genetic quirk. But might be useful to know when creating a humanoid species where most females help their mother to have more daughters than having children themselves.
For bees, males really only have the purpose of exchanging DNA between queens. Since queens are all female and can't mate directly, they simply produce male clones of themselves which can mate with other queens. Purely biologically speaking, males have very little value. They have a single purpose which they can perform in very small numbers and even assuming the queens have to mate regularly to create new females they can create a couple of males to trade with another queen at any time. If we want to have a particularly mean society, males could be regarded as currency which you need to buy new males from other queens. If they are humanoid, they probably need many years to mature, which would allow lots of opportunities to kill all the sons of a rival queen to disrupt the creation of new female workers and soldiers.

[Jallorn]

The tradition answer, traced to Tolkien, was that they simply weren't as smart as humans, dwarves, elves, etc. It was a workable justification and was integrated into early D&D rules. Orcs, also, still have that nasty intelligence penalty in place. The intelligence penalty was later removed from Goblins, Hobgoblins, and Kobolds which creates problems, since there's no longer quite so-obvious a justification for their sustained primitive, second-tier race status.

Actually, in Tolkein's world, Orcs are quite cunning and the greatest Orcs in Mordor are excellent engineers, and the reason they aren't dominant is more social, that is, because Orcs are Chaotic Evil to the point of sabotaging their species' success in the long run. Also because Elves are magic as all hell, and humans are the chosen race in a weird sort of way. Even then, Gondor declined over the years since Sauron's defeat at the hands of leaderless Orcs, while the Dwarves and Orcs sort of went back and forth, and the Elves retreated into their cities.

[VoxRationis]

If they were arboreal they would be limited to climbing by hooking their claws into the tree trunk, instead of grasping the tree branches like modern primates.

Some "limit." Lots of arboreal animals function like that. And angiosperm branching structure makes things easier for claw-based climbing, not harder; you've got more diagonally oriented branches, rather than having to stretch between parallel limbs or climb a completely vertical shaft. You've got a preconceived notion that arboreality leads to primate arm structure and function, but it doesn't.

[BootStrapTommy]

Purely biologically speaking, males have very little value.

If what you say about bees is true, than purely biologically speaking, without males the whole society would collapse.

Which makes the claim that they are of little value dubious.

[Mechalich]

Haplodiploidy - which is the chromosomal condition found in Hymenoptera, does some unusual things with the reproductive mathematics of genetic exchange that promotes eusociality and reduces the utility of male individuals within the eusocial construction of the superorganism - at the extreme they are essentially flying sacks of sperm utilized for mating purposes (the average adult male ant, for example, cannot eat).

There's a lot of variation in this sort of thing and the precise evolutionary pressures on geneflow can vary from one clade to the next.

Males retain vast reproductive value in societies that continue to undergo sexual reproduction - but they have effectively zero non-reproductive value. They cannot contribute any form of work to the superorganism in any way. In the largest, multi-queen supercolonies - as in argentine ants and some others - the males may never leave the nest. They metamorphose into adults, mate with young queens (once) and then die. During most of the superorganism's life cycle males will not be found present at all, being produced only at very specific times.

Generally, Formians and Thriae are the only major D&D-creations that engage with eusociality in any substantial way. Formians do so through the 'hive mind' concept, which bears more or less no relation to how ants and bees actually function, and resemble ant-borg more than any biological relative. Thriae require males of another species to mate and reproduce - which is technically a form of hybrid speciation but is fantastical enough that trying to utilize conventional evolutionary genetics to understand it is a fool's errand.

[Jendekit]

Haplodiploidy - which is the chromosomal condition found in Hymenoptera, does some unusual things with the reproductive mathematics of genetic exchange that promotes eusociality and reduces the utility of male individuals within the eusocial construction of the superorganism - at the extreme they are essentially flying sacks of sperm utilized for mating purposes (the average adult male ant, for example, cannot eat).

There's a lot of variation in this sort of thing and the precise evolutionary pressures on geneflow can vary from one clade to the next.

Males retain vast reproductive value in societies that continue to undergo sexual reproduction - but they have effectively zero non-reproductive value. They cannot contribute any form of work to the superorganism in any way. In the largest, multi-queen supercolonies - as in argentine ants and some others - the males may never leave the nest. They metamorphose into adults, mate with young queens (once) and then die. During most of the superorganism's life cycle males will not be found present at all, being produced only at very specific times.

Generally, Formians and Thriae are the only major D&D-creations that engage with eusociality in any substantial way. Formians do so through the 'hive mind' concept, which bears more or less no relation to how ants and bees actually function, and resemble ant-borg more than any biological relative. Thriae require males of another species to mate and reproduce - which is technically a form of hybrid speciation but is fantastical enough that trying to utilize conventional evolutionary genetics to understand it is a fool's errand.

This is fascinating! Thanks a bunch for the info.

While helpful for the Kzzkt (the new bee inspired race), are there any mammals that have a 7-8 females per male gender ratio? The race that led me to asking the original question physically resemble anthropomorphic snow leopards.

I have no idea what the gender ratios for real snow leopards, but I'm giving this as of yet unnamed race that gender ratio.

[Mechalich]

Generally, unless you dramatically alter the reproductive nature of a species (which is what eusociality does, among other things) sex ratios approach 1:1 as an equilibrium condition in pretty much all species that undergo sexual reproduction at all.

If you want to increase the number of females without drawing on a magic-based (or a nasty infanticide-based) explanation, you could have the species primarily reproduce parthenogenically - in which case the females can produce clones of themselves either without mating, or following mating but without having their eggs fertilized. Males might be produced only extraordinarily or in times of stress (like maybe only in El Nino years or something).

Parthenogenesis is not known to occur naturally in mammals, but it can be induced with advanced technology, so it's certainly something a god could arrange a species to do.

[Jendekit]

I definitely don't want to go the infanticide route, so since in most cases I dislike going "F*** it, magic!" it is sounding like there would need to be some sort of environmental factor involved.

Two possibilities come to mind: the first is that the sperm of the males naturally have a low y-chromosome count for reasons, and the second is that if the mother doesn't ingest Nutrient X during pregnancy the male embryo fails to develop beyond the first few weeks.

A related question, this one not as deeply rooted in biology, is whether or not I should have the females have a menstrual cycle like humans or an estrous cycle ("go into heat"). My concern is for the PCs playing the race and the possible issues that a race that goes into heat could bring up.