I think people need to actually read Tolkien before they try to use his style of elves/dwarves/orcs, for a start. But all of those have been used too much by people who've never even heard of the Silmarillion, so I'd definitely say all of them. And humans, for that matter. If you want a truly fantastic world, make no true humans. Make all the animals more magical, at that rate, since they've evolved around magic.
I don't think any race is overplayed. It all comes down to writing and there's plenty of room for writers to put their own unique spins on them just like any creature in folklore. I've recently seen Delicious in Dungeon which has a dwarf chef as one of the main characters and Friren which explores elven immortality from an elf's perspective.
@@LoreGeist Whereas you don't get many kelpies, and absolutely nothing with, say, manananggal. Or even many fun combos, like vampiric dragons or half-elf dwarves.
Im starting to write some of my ideas down! They are a bit nuts, but no one has done them yet, it is definitely a process. I started over 20 yrs ago and just got back into writing and drawing again about 2 yrs ago!
Good tips, I have ideas for a fantasy world with dwarves, elves, goblins and humans. I now don't know if I need dwarves anymore as they don't really have a place in the plot.
Good to consider, but what about in the future? If you make another story set in this fantasy world, that story may have a perfect place for your dwarves, then you'll be happy they were established in the first story. Once your first story I done then it is set in stone, it becomes much harder to add things in following stories without raising questions or contradicting the initial story.
Honestly, adapting classic fantasy races to a future setting may be a good way to add some spice to them. Thinking of why would there a dwarf race in the future for example? Maybe it was created by some genetic modification or geographical isolation because of an apocalypse? Should they mine minerals in different planets?
the singers from brandon sandersons stormlight archive is a very cool race. they have different forms for different jobs that change their thinking and their physiology that they can change between by inviting different types of small spirits into their bodies called spren (another cool race)
I once had an idea for a DnD-esque parody where everyone buys into the stereotypes of the classic fantasy races, including the ones stereotyped, but they all dream of having different lives. So when the party of intrepid heroes march up to the vampire's lair to claim the princess back, it turns out he's living in a tiny cottage, is unshaven and dirty cause it's his day off, and is just your regular carpenter who repaired a fence in the king's garden, and Princess is the king's chihuahua (or something) who thought his bag was a nice place to snuggle and the vampire wasn't paying attention and accidentally brought it home. And he's vegetarian. Lives off blood oranges. The drow wanted to go to art school, but the parents thought it was a typo and sent him to "dark arts" school, and the reason he's all gloomy and depressed is because he didn't get to live out his dream. There was also a granny with cookies and unparallelled granny magic😂 And a few other things, but I don't remember it all.
My elves are corrupt and mechanical based, The Half-Elves are the ‘good’ ones but there’s most definitely evil ones, My orcs are humans that were turned into weapons for the elves but they don’t all follow brutality. And my dwarves are just shorter people
I can tell you’re tying the lore of each race together to make their interactions have plot relevance. It’s a solid way to generate conflict for the story
My orcs are a hardened tundra-living people and my dwarves live as much on the mountains as under them (think Switzerland, Austria, Incans and Georgia). They aren't part of my current story, since they live on another continent and humans won't arrive there for another thousands of years.
You mention avoiding making all members within a race stereotypes, followed by essentially listing the stereotypes that Tolkien attributes to his elves, orcs, and dwarves. Then later you highlight Tolkien's races for each having their distinct culture as a collective race, essentially further emphasising their racial stereotypes. This seems contradictory?
My idea with the examples that I gave and the footage that I used from Tolkiens source material wasn’t to criticise him as an example of an author who relies on monolithic races and stereotypes. There is nuance for sure in his worldbuilding and he can’t rely on stereotypes when he himself developed a lot of the archetypes. My goal was to talk about more modern authors that rely on the Tolkienesque tropes, but maybe I didn’t make it clear enough on the essay so thanks for pointing it out 👌
@LoreGeist Makes sense, thank you for clarifying! In my opinion, the so-called stereotypes are derived from their Norse Mythology origins, and Tolkien shaped and popularised it into its modern form. Other writers take from this, perpetuating the stereotype.
Yes! I totally agree with the part about making races diverse and avoiding stereotypes. I am into Dungeons and Dragons (DND). I recently learned that there is this horrible conservative backlash. People are whining about DND being woke. I think the changes that DND went through are overall very good and very reasonable. I will die on this hill. Removing alignment and ability score requirements from races is a good thing. It is more respectful to races, and it streamlines the game. Ideally I would have race not affect mecahanics. It should be purely for aesthetic and roleplay. Races should be diverse. It is so much more interesting, realistic and human. I don't want to strictly playing a race a certain way because the mechanics say so. This video explains racial diversity. This is exactly the kind of thing I had in mind. Even better this advice is comming from a white guy. The thing about white men is that they usually lack experience with being disciminated against. So they can fall into the trap of being ignorant or worse be bigoted themselves. This can be avoided with reaserch about the issues. Without life experience, white men may have to reaserch more in order to understand things. Being around minorities a lot also helps. I am glad this RU-vidr is a white man and also a really good one. That is so refreshing and so cool. Good gosh, I am sick of the white men RU-vidrs that are ranting bigots. I do live in the United States. Don't get me started on the Republican presidental candidate right now. That guy is yikes. Another change in DND is adding more women and colored people. That is good too. There is more diversity, and it isn't intrusive at all. This is good for more diversity. Oh there are more things in this video. Ooh la la. Fantasy races can have distinct cultures. They can even tie into the theme. Wow! We can have our cake and eat it too. In real life, different cultures have different values. Different individuauls in the same culture will have different personalities. Both cultures and individuals vary like this. This leads to a multitude of possibilities. Ideally the same situation should happen to fantasy races.
I mostly agree, but I disagree on the game mechanics. I think races should have gameplay features. Plasmoids are made of slime, so they should be very different from humans who have nothing special to them. And tieflings and aasimar should get some powers from their fiendish and celestial heritages. And dragonborn should have dragon powers. Edit: Holy crap that rant edit
Having races/species effect mechanics is fun from a worldbuilding and lore perspective because it shows how they are different from humans from a biological standpoint. For example, elves having better eyesight because they evolved to be stealthy hunters or dwarves being strong because they have thicker bones than humans. If all sentient species were just humans with different flavor there would be no reason for them to be non-human and they would probably go extinct.
Thanks for adding your perspective here! I never really understood why is so threatening to add some diversity to these environments. It is proven that working with fresh perspectives and different backgrounds can increase creativity. A similar thing you described happened in Magic the Gathering as well, one ethnically / sexually / gender identity diverse character here and there was enough to make people mad about it. To me it just adds more elements the author can play with and make the stories richer
I agree with you that some races should be tied to specific game mechanics because it adds “flavour” to how the gameplay fits the lore, but you can also add diversity within the race. For example, elves tend to be slimmer and more agile than orcs, but you can add a range of how agile they can be, and maybe the most agile orc of the race could compete with an elf that scores lower in agility. This way you have enough variation within the race to keep things interesting
Lot of the Rings is an amazing series. I love it. One of it's biggest contributions to the fantasy genre is the races. It takes creatures from European folklore and really fleshes out the culture. The video makes a great point about races representing ideas like agriculture and industry. That is awesome. There is a downside though. This book is a product of the time. There wasn't CRT back then. So the idea of evil races is very problematic. This is the case with the orcs. Tolkien probably didn't do something offensive on purpose. I give him the benefit and say he didn't know better. In modern times, fantasy authors should not make that same mistake. There are ways to improve things. DND improves by removing alignment restrictions. So there isn't technically such a thing as an evil race anymore. The new books have some nice touches. Orc is a playable race now. There are pictures of them looking more happy and friendly. That is a refreshing change. World of Warcraft has another nice change. The idea of orc as an evil race is subverted in the lore. Orcs have been playable since the start. They are generally good guys, even if they are still hostile to humans. Thrall is the main orc leader to overcome the evil corruption of the orcs. He is my favorite character in the lore. He is so cool and so awesome. I even think of Harry Potter as an improvement. It doesn't have orcs per se. However it does have a Dark Lord just like Lord of the Rings. Orcs as an evil race are a parallel to some colored race like Africans or Mongols. Another interpretation is that Lord of the Rings is like WWII and the orcs parrerllel the Nazis. Tolkien hated this comparison, because he didn't intend it. He explained that this was application, and even made up the concept of application in story critique. Nazis are people that treat foreign races, especially Jews, like canon fodder. So giving them the same treatment can be done with a lot less guilt factor. Nazis can be treated as evil, and that is fine for the most part. It doesn't make all Germans evil though. Some of them actively opposed the Nazis. After WWII the German government passed laws to suppress Nazi activity. I do like the parallel of orcs to Nazis better than the parrerllel to colored people. It makes villainizing them a lot less problematic. What Harry Potter does is make the Dark Lord and his group a lot more similar to the Nazis. So the better situation is made clearer. The main similarity is the bad guys making a big deal about wizard blood purity. There are some striking similarities in the movies. Draco Malfoy is the main bully character in Hogwarts. He is a rich pureblood wizard. So that is like an elite snob or even like a nepo baby. In the movie, Malfoy is blond, so that is like the ideal Aryan image. There is a more obscure connection. There is some bits of backstory footage of the Dark Lord back when he was a school boy at Hogwarts. At first he seems like a regular school boy. Then I recently realized something. This guy looks a lot like what a young Hitler would have looked like. This is especially true for the footage in the Half Blood Prince movie. I did come up with a brilliant idea to fix the Lord of the Rings situation. Any authors out there, feel free to use this in your stories. The orcs in the Lord of the Rings may look like a separate race. However they are actually elves that were corrupted by the Dark Lord. So maybe that could come across better. Elves in Lord of the Rings are generally considered good guys. So variation would be good for them. Some elves could be solders for the Dark Lord. They are distinguishable by wearing the uniform for the evil army. This variation would be more realistic. It is like how in real life some Germans are good guys and some are bad guys. Maybe Legolas is a parallel to the antifascist German that existed back in WWII. I got the uniform idea from a video by Extra Credit on the topic. The uniform gives a clear visual signal. The clarity is the main reason why armies and sports teams wear uniforms in the first place. It reduces a lot of confusion. So one can treat the soldiers like canon fodder. However this doesn't have the same bad implications as an evil race. A uniform implies that someone was evil by choice and not by birth. So they deserved to be fought and killed. That is a nice way to have things both way. One can even indulge in hack and slash without the guilt factor. One can add orcs in the story. However there should be orcs on both sides of the war. There should be good orcs and evil orcs. This video did remind me that the orcs are associated with industry. Tolkien had concerns about the environment. That part is totally brilliant and done in such an amazing way. It shows the importance of taking care of the environment without being too preachy. Avoiding prechienes is good. It is very subjective though. Fern Gully and James Cameron's Avatar are more overt with this theme, and I am totally fine with that. Both movies are amazing. I did think of ways to improve orcs with theme. Industry can be bad, but it isn't always. Orcs could become the industrial and technological race. That is a lot like gnomes. Maybe the good orcs can find ways to use technology to benefit civilization and nature. They find a sense of balance and harmony. Maybe there are good orcs that even build clean technology like solar panels and wind turbines. That would be so cool.
My orcs are a hardened tundra-living people and my dwarves live as much on the mountains as under them (think Switzerland, Austria, Incans and Georgia). They aren't part of my current story, since they live on another continent and humans won't arrive there for another thousands of years.
Tying the races to specific geographic area is a good tool as well to add depth. For example, if you think about the traditions of real life people living on the mountains in the Alps, Incas etc you can add some of their cultural / food / clothing peculiarities to your dwarves. It’s a easy solid way to make the race feel more fleshed out
To add something else, at some point one Orcish tribe will get Elves living among them. The Elves can also change skin colour to fit social needs, environment (camouflage) or personal reasons (one group of Elves admire the Sun and its colours), but only once - second skin change got a high risk of death. Got articles about my world on worldanvil.
