Race Me!

[Cognisant]

Title is click bait.

I need some ideas for races for a fictional setting, generic fantasy in the age of sail, don't worry about evolution or culture this setting has gods and they're assholes so about 20% of the population gets randomly transformed around sometime in their early teens to late twenties.

Imagine you're just walking to the general store one day and you get an itch, a really bad itch, so you scratch and scratch and your flesh starts falling off so you go to the local priest/physician and he's like "does it hurt?" and you're like "no?", so he says "probably fine then" and it turns out you're a skeleton now. A living skeleton, your bones are warm and alive, when someone touches you it feels like you have skin on your bones even though you don't, when you eat food disappears when it passes through your jawbone and crap magically appears out of your pelvis when you go to the toilet, you can see just fine despite a lack of eyes, you still need to breathe and you still can somehow, there's nothing stopping you living a perfectly normal life except you're a skeleton now.

That's just one "race", I need more races.
Go my monkeys go!

 

[Rook]

Desilikor: Perfectly normal humans, except they can somehow psychically view the entire history of a painting, from the first stroke of brush. Natural Artists, Critics... decent detectives if circumstances are optimal.

Blankun: Simply put, this thing is a crawling mass of assorted rodents that somehow constitutes a single being....... all eyes tails fur paws, hundreds of the things ... but one dude ... copulation among members of this race is .... strange.

 

[Cognisant]

Desilikor: Perfectly normal humans, except they can somehow psychically view the entire history of a painting, from the first stroke of brush. Natural Artists, Critics... decent detectives if circumstances are optimal.

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It wasn't real but what a concept, it also reminds me of Admiral Thrawn from (the now largely defunct extended universe of) Star Wars and how he would use art to psychoanalyze a species/culture in order to find weaknesses to exploit. Unfortunately the problem is that it's not very clear what the limits are, does this include all art or just paint on a canvas, what about paint on a wall, what about a sculpture and if a sculpture counts what about a ring or a glove or a chair, essentially what isn't art?

Blankun: Simply put, this thing is a crawling mass of assorted rodents that somehow constitutes a single being....... all eyes tails fur paws, hundreds of the things ... but one dude ... copulation among members of this race is .... strange.

Well fundamentally living cells are very much like organisms unto themselves, similarly these rodents could "reproduce" by division, one fat rat suddenly splits lengthwise and becomes two smaller rats. So a male Blankun would be comprised entirely of male rats likewise a female would be comprised entirely of females and reproduction would happen as one would imagine and only some of the genetically identical rats get pregnant which is still more than enough to get a new Blankun started.

 

[Niclmaki]

The Cognoscenti
Sentient clockwork people. Essentially immortal, if their bodies are destroyed, the parts can still move, and likely reassemble, but probably smaller as some parts may have been lost. Little sense of self-preservation is the consequence. Likely to be very reckless.

Working any raw material into new ‘parts’ for themselves imbues it with their consciousness. They have a very weak linked consciousness, and its true nature is unknown to them. If any individually “expressed” personality is completely destroyed, any of the others can rebuild them a new body - or even sacrifice parts of their own.

They do not remember their own origin.

Scientifically inclined, but with little / no ethics to their methods most are quite fearful of them.

Moderately intelligent, older ones are slightly smarter, but as they learn new things, they all do on a subconscious level. So even brand new constructs are not entirely blank slates.

A new virgin construct is roughly human height and shape. But most are several generations old, and are likely half that size. No gender, but interactions with gendered races have them assume genders as a way to have easier interactions.

No need to eat, but will sleep as they do have exhaustible stamina.

 

[Niclmaki]

There you go, one inspired by your username.

 

[Cognisant]

Working any raw material into new ‘parts’ for themselves imbues it with their consciousness.

I really like that, so it's not like their consciousnesses is the result of a mechanistic processes but rather the mechanisms are a representational embodiment of the consciousness, they're like artists making bodies for themselves. But it's not just a vessel is it, the Cognoscenti is literally embodied by their creation so there would be this interplay between art and artist, between life and imitation. When a Cognoscenti gives itself a gender is it pretending to be that gender or is the act of deciding its gender for itself actually more meaningful than having a gender at birth?

Likewise they may not technically be mortal (or even individual entities) but they (it?) might play out moral lives with families and children and elders who decline with age and ultimately, supposedly, succumb to it. Perhaps as a race they're the lingering remains of a mad god with a profound case of MPD, or perhaps something more eldritch for which MPD isn't a disorder rather it never had anything we would recognize as consciousness in the first place (much less a concept of self). Perhaps it remains in a state of dreaming, dimly aware of itself but preferring to remain ignorant so as to avoid the loneliness of being an eldritch being in a foreign universe where there's nothing its totality could relate to as a peer.

Scientifically inclined, but with little / no ethics to their methods most are quite fearful of them.

They act out individuality but perhaps on some level they believe the other races are like themselves, fundamentally a collective, so they don't understand what it actually means to kill someone, they play along of course, after all people murder them sometimes and the murderers seem to think so long as there's no living witnesses then no murder has occurred.

Imagine a Cognoscenti Sherlock Holmes, he already knows who the killer is and how to prove it but that's not how the game works, he has to figure out how to justify finding the evidence, all the while people of other races are praising his brilliance and he's like "Oh no thank you, I'm really bad at this but thanks for humoring me".

 

[Niclmaki]

Working any raw material into new ‘parts’ for themselves imbues it with their consciousness.

I really like that, so it's not like their consciousnesses is the result of a mechanistic processes but rather the mechanisms are a representational embodiment of the consciousness, they're like artists making bodies for themselves. But it's not just a vessel is it, the Cognoscenti is literally embodied by their creation so there would be this interplay between art and artist, between life and imitation. When a Cognoscenti gives itself a gender is it pretending to be that gender or is the act of deciding its gender for itself actually more meaningful than having a gender at birth?

Likewise they may not technically be mortal (or even individual entities) but they (it?) might play out moral lives with families and children and elders who decline with age and ultimately, supposedly, succumb to it. Perhaps as a race they're the lingering remains of a mad god with a profound case of MPD, or perhaps something more eldritch for which MPD isn't a disorder rather it never had anything we would recognize as consciousness in the first place (much less a concept of self). Perhaps it remains in a state of dreaming, dimly aware of itself but preferring to remain ignorant so as to avoid the loneliness of being an eldritch being in a foreign universe where there's nothing its totality could relate to as a peer.

Scientifically inclined, but with little / no ethics to their methods most are quite fearful of them.

They act out individuality but perhaps on some level they believe the other races are like themselves, fundamentally a collective, so they don't understand what it actually means to kill someone, they play along of course, after all people murder them sometimes and the murderers seem to think so long as there's no living witnesses then no murder has occurred.

Imagine a Cognoscenti Sherlock Holmes, he already knows who the killer is and how to prove it but that's not how the game works, he has to figure out how to justify finding the evidence, all the while people of other races are praising his brilliance and he's like "Oh no thank you, I'm really bad at this but thanks for humoring me".

Oh yeah, I should have added, I imagined them being quite the mimics. Either consciously or unconsciously, they are copying the environment and societies around them. “Well these humans come in two varieties, guess I/we will too” “Sometimes they produce more of themselves, we will too!” “They build houses / settlements / nests we will too”

If anyone were to walk through one of their “towns” I would imagine it to be a very eerie place.

They wouldn’t exactly object to you destroying / stealing what they make, but they also wouldn’t just stand by. “Oh this is interesting, let’s see what they’re doing! Maybe they’re trying to learn something about that object!” Of course, doing so could cause them do the same to you in their mimicking ways.

Perhaps their goal is to learn and create. Perhaps it is to eventually replace everything with copy versions of themselves. Perhaps they’re just there to observe and learn.

They are not entirely emotionless automatons either, but are their emotions fabricated or genuine? Are they just mimicking a person they once saw have that reaction long ago?

Go crazy, have fun with it!

 

[washti]

How about scammy writters who fishes for troops on dorky dank forums to have materials for their amazon next book?

 

[Cognisant]

How about scammy writters who fishes for troops on dorky dank forums to have materials for their amazon next book?

Thanks that's a great character concept

 

[Hadoblado]

I think that while this is a decent approach, if you're trying to populate a diverse world you probably want a system for generating race "stems" which you then expand from. That way you can set the bounds but not have to exhaustively invest yourself in each idea.

Places I'd start for generation tables:

1. Modifier (e.g. cartilage, additional, missing, grafted, symbiotic, phased, spasmic, enhanced)
2. Bodypart (e.g. limb, organ, shape, size)
3. Modality (e.g. digging, flying, driving)
4. Sensory array
5. Life cycle and span
6. Sexual dimorphism
7. Suited environment

You roll, see what you get, then try and flesh out the concept. You can always roll more dice or less, or ignore the results if it isn't compelling. This is also good for substantiating characters because you start to think about what strengths and weaknesses they'd have and where this might put them in society/how this would affect their outlook.

I do something similar for other aspects, though I haven't done it for races before. I tend to focus on how I could shape a race sociologically or ecologically from a simple stem but it sounds like this wouldn't work in this situation given your goals.

 

[Cognisant]

I've actually got ideas for a management sim game, there's an emerging genre of games which are a part visual novel, part RPG, part tycoon sim, where the game is played almost entirely by reading text and selecting options, not unlike the old text adventure games like Zork. Of course these days they're often porn games, horror games, porn & horror games or simply porn that's so horrific it might as well be a horror game. Turns out when any idiot that can string words together can make a game because there's all these fantastic new game development software packages coming out and nothing could be simpler than text and menus, the results are debased to say the least.

I want to go more in depth with the management/tycoon sim side of things, because I'm a massive nerd, not that I'm shy about making a game with erotic and/or horror elements I just think making that the primary focus detracts from everything else whereas if I can really succeed at the "game" part of the game it elevates the other aspects of it.

So the gist of it is that you're the captain of a ship traveling from port to port trading goods, hiring crew by paying a retainer then subcontracting them to employers at each port, essentially running an on the go temp agency and retail store out of your ship. This is pretty par for course for these sorts of games, where my ideas differ is that you don't own the ship outright you have to pay off a significant business loan that accrues interest.

Further complicating matters is that as your crew work their wealth level increases (they're contractors after all) and they become more demanding of better terms and accommodation. Again fairly standard and having the option of upgrading your ship/mansion/tower/whatever is common but in most of these games that's all you need to do, you never really fire anyone except to free up a slot for someone better. I want to make it so that the player has to find a balance between having employable contractors and replacing the ones that are too valuable because the terms of employment no longer work in their favor. The player can't stop the wealth/experience levels of their crew remembers increasing, these aren't your prisoners/slaves/serfs/homunculi you have to let them go.

Of course when you regularly have to fire your best employees that makes your business very unstable, furthermore your hiring opportunities are limited and the crew members you hire have various stats/traits that make them better or worse at various jobs and the availability of that work is whatever subcontracts are on notice at that time, you may have someone who is a fantastic chef but tough luck if there's no cooking contracts available.

Speaking of contracts there's also the time element to consider, while a crew member is subcontracted you're making money but what you're really banking on is the end of contract completion bonus but the availability of work at each port is seasonal so you don't want to stick around too long AND you're not selling trade goods to the local merchants (you can but they'll rip you off) you're selling to the public which takes time and is affected by supply & demand. Furthermore some of these trade goods are perishable so if you have a cargo hold full of bananas it's a race against time to get from one port to the next to sell these bananas where the market isn't over-saturated and before they expire.

And just to be an asshole lets say you can't sail out of port on low tide so not only are you juggling potentially dozens of time dependent factors you also have to be mindful of how the time of day relates to the tide in this particular port and that's assuming you can leave, if there's a storm you might be stuck in the harbor for days.

Finally all of this, all of it, is really just something to keep the player's mind occupied while they experience the story which is why this genre of game exists in the first place, there's many visual novel games out there (very popular in Japan) but they're usually short on visuals and even when they aren't just engaging with a story passively can be rather boring whereas giving the player stuff to do and think about immerses them in the game's world and thus the story.

 

[Cognisant]

I think that while this is a decent approach, if you're trying to populate a diverse world you probably want a system for generating race "stems" which you then expand from. That way you can set the bounds but not have to exhaustively invest yourself in each idea.

To be honest I wasn't actually planning on using any of the races given to me here, my expectations were low but I've been pleasantly surprised.

The races that I've got are essentially human nationalities (different hair/eye/skin color, different build, some cultural aspects to their personality) with some people having limited animal traits because cat/fox eared girls are incredibly marketable and the whole skeleton idea in the OP has become something more like a medical condition.

Some people die before their time and become undead, there's no real way of knowing when somebody's time is or isn't so there's not way to intentionally become undead and once undead there's no telling when you're going to suddenly die for good. There's really no rhyme or reason to it, some people become undead in combat, from wasting away from illness or they have a sudden heart attack or die in their sleep, likewise as undead they could just fall over at any time, die from being stabbed (though there's no organs to puncture) the only real consistency is that even the undead can reliably be "killed" by having their head crushed. Consequently skulls are considered to be the vessel of the soul and destroying one even after the owner is truly dead is considered sacrilegious by most cultures. People can become undead at any age, sometimes it lasts as little as a day, sometimes it can last centuries, rather than being seen as immortality it's more like having one foot in the grave.

People of any race/nationality can become undead and most animal traits they might have only last as long as their flesh does unless it's something skeletal, an undead skeleton with a viper's fangs for example is possible but quite a rarity. Many people are wary of the undead or simply consider them to be unclean (the newly undead are often smelly) however it's a well known thing and being undead doesn't make someone evil or anything so as I said it's more like an unfortunate medical condition

The whole Cognoscenti thing is pretty cool though.

 

[Words]

I think this is fun and I am dying of boredom and wanting to showcase my diminutive imagination. hmmm how about... a race of object possessing magnetic fields. So you know those stories of djinns possessing people. well now you have quadrants of objects getting possessed lol. i get a sense that i have to apologize here.

 

[Cognisant]

No that's cool, like a poltergeist sort of thing?
Creepy puppet people

 

[Cognisant]

I'm looking for character art with transparent backgrounds so I can prototype this game idea but every image I find has a character in some INCREDIBLY DYNAMIC pose.

Oh well beggars and choosers.

 

[Words]

No that's cool, like a poltergeist sort of thing?
Creepy puppet people

Oh. Is that what they are. I guess one difference would be that they are not ominous and relatively harmless and even a clumsy collection of objects. I'll try to come up with another one. A race of proud, human-sized, bipedal, Phasmids. They have a large library of their history that they're extremely protective of.

 

[Niclmaki]

Many people are wary of the undead or simply consider them to be unclean (the newly undead are often smelly) however it's a well known thing and being undead doesn't make someone evil or anything so as I said it's more like an unfortunate medical condition

Cool, like a mix of the non-feral ghouls from Fallout, and undead in darksouls.

Ghoul

Ghouls are mutated humans or animals affected by the phenomenon of ghoulification. In the case of humans, ghouls are sometimes referred to as necrotic post-humans in the Capital Wasteland, but this term does not seem to have been adopted outside of it whatsoever. Despite their zombie-like...

fallout.fandom.com

Undead

In Dark Souls, to be Undead means that the victim has died, but has been reanimated. Most Undead were sent to the Undead Asylum and imprisoned to await the end of the world. Undeath is seen as a curse or a disease by the living. The curse of undeath was created when Gwyn, Lord of Cinder refused...

darksouls.fandom.com