http://www.goodreads.com/series/43493-the-malazan-book-of-the-fallen

Hard to describe that one really. Its epic and build with layers within layers within layers within layers. Because of Eriksons writing style is bit different it took me some time to get used. He doesnt really explain "common" stuff for the reader, afterall -everyknows- why Bridgeburners are so famous, what Houses are, what a Jaghut looks like or why "Hoods breath" is supposedly ironic curse etc... but chapter by chapter and book by book all this stuff gets revealed one by one and ohboy there were "some" surprises.

Anyways, just to put it short its definition of word epic. A song of fire and ice with more magic and fantasy put on steroids. ...also it was supposedly pnp setting the writer had originally created for his friends :)

Edit: note - interestingly enough, orcs are fungi in WH setting...

I agree that I'd rather have no races, except maybe a completely hositle race, than the usual stuff. I don't think I would've loved Gothic half as much if for example the new camp was the elven camp, and the swamp camp half-orcs or something. Plus it reall ymade up for the humans and orcs only thing with having pretty unusual things to fight like Snappers and Swampsharks.

And I don't like TES either, it's so blatant that those two races are just humans with scales and fur, and nothing else that separates them from the rest.

Are you a believer in science - in the ability of science to discover the truth - then ? You are reluctant to use the word "wisdom", preferring rather to use the word "superstition". For your information, science is pure superstition : the old philosophies and religions are infinitely deeper, infinitely truer and infinitely more "rational". Anyone involved in science who believes that it is capable of arriving at the truth is just the kind of idiot the world could do without at the moment. Keep science for its practical application, yes, but when it comes to absolute questions science ought to keep its mouth firmly shut. People are too confident these days and not cautious or intelligent enough. You ought to read the Presocratic thinkers, Plato, Aristotle, Nietzsche and Heidegger : that's all you need really. But since you are Russian you also ought to read Dostoyevsky and consider why Heidegger called him one of the two "masters of spirit" of recent times. Science, in comparison with these great thinkers and artists, is an utter joke.

And don't mix mythology, religion or philosophy up with "politics" either : it is FAR above such pettiness. Myths, philosophies and religions are not the slaves of mere "politics".

I also enjoy it when a game - e.g. Age of Mythology - includes races which are not so-called "fantasy cliches", i.e. elves, dwarves, goblins, dragons etc. But why do people consider these figures to be "cliches" - do they think their intellects and imaginations are better than Tolkien's or Homer's or Virgil's ? The Elder Scrolls games are very good in their own way but the races are totally ludicrous.

@OP, you might enjoy the World of Aden games (both on GOG). Thundescape has the usual fantasy races, but your team can also include lizardmen, various animal hybrids, a skeleton and a steam golem. Entomorph has none of the usual fantasy races. You only have one character and he's human, at first, but over the course of the game he slowly transforms into a mantis hybrid. Also, the enemies in the game are all giant insects, which are intelligent and have their own cultures, so they're not just the usual mindless horde.

Well I can't really speak for PC games, but I know with AD&D 2nd edition there was a plethora of races to choose from. In fact there was a sourcebook that let you convert a monster into a playable character race. There were a few issues. For starters most monsters have way more hit dice (hit points) then a regular base character. Another issue was some of the monsters had a list of abilities that would make them way more powered than an "ordinary" race. A band aid measure to make things a bit more playable was to lock out certain monster options based on the average party hit dice (say the party was 8th level, you could then play a 7 hit die minotaur, with 1 level in any class you wanted). Needless to say this created a few broken characters.

With a bit of work you can make any sets of races playable for any game be it tabletop or mouse/keyboard however, keep in mind for balancing sake, your probably going to make some fantastic creatures, a bit less fantastic.

One more thing. If the party is made up of exotic races you get an effect in tabletop gaming called, the "traveling circus". The characters are so disparate in race and motivations, it's hard to imagine them working together on a common goal outside of one or two major events. It sort of suspends belief from a storytelling standpoint.

Seriously?
I can understand liking philosophy and mythology, but to think that just because people lived a long time ago they had more insight into "truth" (whatever that might be) than us is entirely wrong-headed.

Oh, and LOL at the idea that philosophy, religion and myths are unaffected by politics. You might want to read about the history of the Catholic Church, or even about how many myths came into being, before writing such ridiculous things.

The rest of your post is so inane as not to be worth responding to, especially since I don't want to derail this thread.



Back on-topic, personally I care far more about setting consistency and whether characters are fleshed out and interesting, than what specie they are. A well-written human or orc NPC is far superior imo to a flat "exotic" character like a mInotaur.
And the problem with exotic races imo is that writers often use the very fast that an NPC belongs to an exotic race to avoid giving him any characterization. You sometimes get good writers who give us really interesting original characters, PS: T being the best example, but that's really rare, simply because good writers are pretty rare in the games industry.

On the contrary, I think we moderns believe that we have somehow surpassed the ancients and left them behind, whereas the truth is the opposite : today, with our "scientific" perspective, we are in a much better position practically speaking than the ancients were, but as regards closeness to the truth we are quite lost ... There is a certain definition of "truth" - derived from earlier philosophy - which is at work in this "scientific" world of ours and which goes unquestioned and unchallenged. I won't go into what it is, except to say in Heudegger's thought it is accorded a thorough examination and is found wanting. We interpret the ancients through the lens of modern thinking and in so doing we trivialize and debase ancient thought.

On topic : I think that too many gamers admire originality for the sake of originality. Someone earlier in the thread (might have been the OP but I'm too lazy to check) said that elves, dwarves and orcs are all just based on human beings and are therefore (he seemed to imply) boring, unoriginal and not "cool". But EVERYTHING which the human mind can imagine is inevitably a humanization, including Khaajits and Argonians ! I have never understood two recent and quite-prevalent prejudices amongst gamers : prejudice against "fantasy cliches" and prejudice against D&D rules-based combat. For me, Baldur's Gate (I mean both games combined) is the perfect RPG. I love Planescape : Torment and I could hardly believe what I was experiencing when I first played it - especially since I had studied philosophy at uni and wasn't expecting such depth to ever appear in a computer game - but ultimately Baldur's Gate is marginally the better experience for me. I love the characters in P:T but, nah, I'll take Minsc over any of them any day of the week.

For "cool" races (In my opinion) check out the CIv 4 mod Fall from Heaven 2 : a strategy game rather than an RPG. I don't really understand what "cool" is supposed to mean when it comes to fantasy races though, I must admit.

Yep, that was me, but I might have to explain that a bit further. What I mean is that, yes fantasy races do in some way resemble or at least interact in a way can understand, otherwise they would just be mythological beasts. What I don't like about video games right now is that the 3 main races are just humans from different historical periods lumped into a single setting:

Orcs are tall strong barbarian warriors, sometimes they are the proud but tribal race other times just plain savages. You could replace them with any barbaric tribe from almost any nation and you'd get the same thing, except with some rather interesting local cultural variations.

Elves are now almost always the late decadent Byzantine Empire, a race that once was proud and in charge, but what little remains from those old days vanishes more every day, mainly because of their own stubborness to adapt to a new way. The one thing that makes them different from humans is the fact that they can co-exist with a forest.

Dwarves are just short stoic guys forever stuck in the very early industrial age.

Every fantasy race has humans features or characteristics, but to make a good one they have to be exaggerated in such a way to make them more than humans, or less or something very different. Giving them different heights just doesn't cut it.




And furthermore, I don't dislike these races in classic works or if done well, it's just that nowadays videogames rarely do them any justice.

Well, assuming that your analogies are accurate, can you name a race in a computer game which doesn't already have an equivalent / analogue in human history ? I'm not sure that ANY race from an RPG / computer game to date isn't merely a "rehash" of all the others.

I'm quite content with my elves, dwarves, orcs and dragons - and with all the other fantasy races which have been created too - because to me they are not so boring yet that they have become "cliches". I don't understand why people get bored so easily - what are they looking for exactly ?

On the subject of mythology and races which aren't Tolkienesque "cliches", vampires (VTMB) just occurred to me. The notion of these mythical creatures is supposed to owe itself to real, historical examples of individual human beings who have behaved in a particularly heinous way, e.g. Vlad the Impaler. This may or may not be the genuine provenance of the idea of vampires but I think it would be a mistake to believe that the notion of every single mythical race has arisen in the same way. I do not, for instance, believe that the characters and races in Greek mythology are entirely based on examples from human history. I think this notion is one of the ways in which we trivialize mythology. The word for this habitual (and these days very widespread) tendency to trivialize mythology is, I think, "euhermism". There is a reason why this word was coined : basically, it is not the only possible way to view mythology, as some people seem to think it is. In order to even stand a chance of understanding the significance of mythology you need to delve deeper, and this means exiting so-called "history" and entering into philosophy.

My personal favourite are the Undead, when not simply done as the EVIL vvillain but as a group of people who wanted to defy the gods, bring the afterlife into their own hands or simply cheat death. Even if done supericially or for laughs I always find their stories incredibly fascinating. The best part about them is that they aren't usually a homogenous block that all think the same way, for ecample some enjoy their new way of being while others regret it.

Isn't that one of the fundamental misteries of the universe that will never be solved?

I think it has allot to do with who is buying the games, who might buy the games, and who they (the developers) want to buy the games.

For instance hearing people talk about TES: Skyrim, (I use this as my example because it's the latest and biggest RPG to date) they don't call the Argonians... well argonians but "lizard men" and "cat people" for the khajiits. The developers obviously want to make money (that's their goal as a buisness) and they see that if they want to get into the mainstream markets (not the niche market) they need to re-think their strategies.

Sadly one of those is streamlining races. It's common knowledge that elves are magic users, orcs are heavy hitting tanks and humans are the equalizers. Than in the case of TES, the beast races are for those niche people. But if you start going big with races and have 16 different kinds like Everquest 1 you confuse people and make hte game seem dense and... well only the niche market buys it...

That's all speculation but it seems to make sense to me. And I know for myself, if I was given 16 options for a race I probably wouldn't play the game because... it does seem dense to me... but that's just me.

Okay, but I don't think even the Undead, as a race, falls outside the definition of "humanized" fantasy races. There are plenty of the undead in Tolkien, for example, and also in Homer (i.e. in Hades). I agree the Undead is a "cool" race but it's not really original. They feature in the Civ 4 mod i mentioned - Fall from Heaven 2 - and are done very well there in my opinion. I sort of understand the prejudice against so-called "fantasy cliches", or more precisely TOLKIEN fantasy cliches, but personally I like them. I suppose that when anything is done to death it will turn people off eventually, but I don't see that the races in, for example, the Elder Scrolls games are in any way "original".

I think theyre' pretty much different from humans, since depending on how you look at it they either ascended humanity by eliminating thei rnatural mortality, or have thrown their humanity away.

And as for you second point, copying classics is completely fine. Many videogames have copied Tolkien, and i'm completely fine with that. What is pretty shitty is videogames not copying the original authors but copying already diluted versions from other games of it without even attempting to do an original spin on it (or even worse doing it badly). There's only so far you can go without just ending up with plain water.