Better Orcs, Better Fantasy
Something I've got on my back burner right now is an attempt to develop a fantasy setting. Unsurprisingly, one of the main ideas is for the setting to be usable in homebrew D&D games, but other fantasy games could be played there, or I could write a book, etc. Whatever the eventual usage, the point is that I want to create a new fantasy world that would be familiar to gamers while offering something of value beyond being "generic fantasy land". To be a familiar fantasy world, there are some key tropes that need to be present: prevalent magic, low tech level, and fantastic creatures — including various flavors of humanoids. That last bit is what I'm getting into today, as fantasy gaming has a bit of a history with playable races. I'm not doing a deep dive right now into the racism and sexual violence built into "classic" notions of fantasy races, as mine is not the best voice to listen to on those fronts. Suffice it to say that fantasy races need at...