Tag Archives: reinventing fantasy races

Arrested Development: My Troglodytes are Different

Some time ago I brought up the issue of technological progress and magic. The gist of post was a contemplation on why most of “fantasy” settings seem to stuck in perpetual middle ages. The obvious in-universe answer is of course … Continue reading

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Project Ravenflight Part 5

This will likely be the last post of the series, so before I begin I wanted to wrap up some lose ends and respond to the constructive criticism I have gotten so far. Firstly, here is a size comparison chart … Continue reading

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Ravenflight Part 4: My Centaurs, Gnomes and Angels are Different

Guys, it is time to start wrapping up the Ravenflight series. Here are the three final races: Centaurs, Gnomes and the Celestials. They are all markedly different. Centaurs are mostly good guys and kinda awesome. Gnomes are neutral but strange, … Continue reading

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Ravenflight Part 3: My green dudes are different

The three green skinned races of Raven Islands are not directly related, and unlike various human ethnic groups they cannot interbreed. However they are frequently lumped together because of their skin color, and because they have all arrived on the … Continue reading

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Ravenflight Part 2: My Humans are Different

If you feel lost, I highly recommend starting with Part 1 of this series which provides some background information with respect to goals and scope of this project. And now, formalities aside, lets talk about humans. To be frank, humans … Continue reading

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Ravenflight Part 1: My Halflings, Elves and Dwarves are Different

For a while now I have been running my Reinventing Fantasy Races series of posts in which I try to come up with unusual and unconventional approaches to common fantasy tropes. Over the last few months several people mentioned that … Continue reading

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My Unicorns are Different

Remember my Reinventing Fantasy Races series? I haven’t done this in a while, haven’t I? So, lets do it, and lets do it hard. I’ve been focusing on anthropomorphic races in the past, so lets try something different. I’m going … Continue reading

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Gender Representation in Fantasy Settings: Single Sex Race Trope

I think that gender representation problems in popular fantasy settings is a topic that is too broad to cover in just one post. There is a lot to be said about the problematic way in which a lot of settings … Continue reading

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My Undead are Different

What is the difference between a modern day zombie and a walking corpse from a fantasy universe? On the surface they are both undead killing machines, but the underlying mechanics of how they came to be and how they can … Continue reading

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My Wizards are Different

In the previous installments of this series I tackled all kinds of fantasy tropes – now it is time to re-invent magic users. I want to come up with a slightly different, off-beat magic interpretation tying it to my old … Continue reading

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My Dwarfs are Different

In most fantasy settings Dwarfs are brave trustworthy and honorable but a wee bit greedy and selfish. They are known for never breaking their oaths, and always making good on their promises and also for holding life-long grudges against those … Continue reading

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My Zombies Are Different

Zombies are not strictly a fantasy concept. In fact, they tend to be heavily under-utilized in that setting, perhaps for a good reason. In modern day or futuristic settings when the living dead show up, you can pretty much guarantee … Continue reading

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My Trolls Are Different

I’m having a lot of fun doing this whole reinventing fantasy races thing lately so I decided to do Trolls this time. What do we know about these creatures? Well, in most settings Trolls are big, dumb and extremely dangerous. … Continue reading

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Reinventing Fantasy Races: My Goblins are Different

The other day I stumbled upon a pair of articles titled The Ecology of the Goblin and The Ecology of the Kobold on the Blog of Holding. It reminded me that once upon a time I had this thing going … Continue reading

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Reinventing Fantasy Races: My Elves are Different

I think I mentioned it once or twice, but last week I had pretty bad case of writers block. Nothing I hated pretty much everything I drafted up, and struggled to actually release content on my self imposed schedule. Naturally … Continue reading

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How to think like an Orc

I often rag on Fantasy for being a genre populated solely by novels derived almost directly from either the writings of Tolkien, Robert E. Howard or hybridized from both. The fact that I am critical of it, does not mean … Continue reading

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The Familly Life of Orcs

Recently I realized that traditionally evil races such as Orcs, Goblins, Kobolds and etc. in RPG games rarely have fleshed out social backgrounds, or detailed descriptions of daily lives. It’s as if every member of each respective evil race was … Continue reading

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