Dungeons & Dummies: Breeding Perfection (4 Races + 1 Occult Profession)

Arnold K among others gave me the first insight into what makes a good traditional RPG race. So first and foremost, if you want to understand why I made what I made, you should read that. It’s much better than any essay I could hope to write on the matter.

I'm pretty sure you don't need Dungeons & Dummies to use these races. Feel free to use them anywhere, and let me know if I did an halfway decent job and they're actually interesting.

I've got 3 main rules when designing races:

1. They are not going to give numerical bonuses. Nothing should give numerical bonuses at all actually, make everything an incomparable (not just races).
2. They should have strong synergy with themselves. They should have the power to radically change the playstyle of the whole group. Imagine if nobody ever needed to breathe anymore? Or could fly? Now that's a very different way to tackle challenges.
3. They should be useful as one offs. The party should never force a playstyle on each member just because they don't feel like buying rations anymore. A single member of an exotic race can and should still be a useful addition.

I'm going to standardize a little my format here, since I want this to be a quick-access race dump:

Race name:
Race ability.
Little physical description.
A little lore because I love coming up with that stuff.

Digression: because I love explaining myself and I think it helps me better understand what is going on in my head.

Typical humans doing typical human stuff.
Frame from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Humans:
Fuck humans. Humans are boring.
Humans live in clean cities and pursue the goals of Civilization. Fuck those guys, they have nothing to do with adventuring.
Humans’ mothers are hamsters and their fathers stink of elderberries.

Digression: fuck humans. Be an interesting dude instead of a +1 Skill Points dude.

A typical orc doing a typical Orcish greeting.
Fel Orc by Blizzard Entertainment.

Orcs:
Orcs never need fresh food and are immune to poison and disease; they can eat anything remotely organic and be fed without complications.
Orcs are reddish pig-men, with thick hair on their heads and faces and white fangs always popping from their mouths. They are slightly shorter than a man, and in the middle of their faces a big mole-like nose with 4 nostrils is their most recognizable feature.
Orcish nature is defined by loss and war. That's their link with the Divine. Legends say that the first Orcs were spawned from the blood left behind by the first war. The nomadic clans value loss in battle over everything else. They are a bloodthirsty plague, always scouring the land where they walk. Only young Orcs have name: true warriors lose pieces of their names in battle, until they either die or become War incarnate. Orcish legends have no names, and their songs have no words.

Digression: Orcish culture is one of my favourite things I have ever wrote. It's a giant pastiche of warrior culture tropes, actual philosophical theories and my own psychosis. I will make a post only about it someday. I'd love to see a scenario about Orcish sieges and wars, since their supply lines can't really be broken.

Portrait of a Dwarf.
Image from default tileset of Dwarf Fortress.

Dwarves:
Dwarves don't breathe at all. They can never pass out from lack of air, and are immune to any airborne toxin.
Dwarves are much shorter than a man. They are completely covered in thick hair, both males and females. They have no nose, and their hands have only 4 fingers, much thicker than those of a human. Thick hair grows all over their bodies.
The perfect underground dweller is not someone who can see in the dark, but it's someone who shall never suffer from the sulfuric fumes exhaling from the depths. A dwarf is the perfect underground dweller, building his home in a bioluminescent spot and his city in the Fungal Dome. Dwarves enjoy the cramped spaces of their mines-cities, but enjoy the thrill of the unknown much more. Nothing beats Dwarven pride in reaching new places, both physical and spiritual. Some say they made themselves as they are now from clay, to reach the Stars, but the Gods pranked them by stealing just enough dirt to make Mankind, leaving them short of reaching a stool.

Digression: mostly Tolkenian dwarves here, nothing too new. I just figured that underground, fresh air is not really very available, and so I thought that one of the most important things about an underground race would be the ability to breathe anything  (or no need to breathe at all). If I ever run a full underground campaign, expect a lot of pockets of poisonous gas around being opened by a careless guy with a pickaxe.

A typical Goblin reciting typical Goblin poetry.
Randomly found on the Internet.

Goblins:
Goblins vomit a seed each week. The seed can be planted, and after a week it grows into a level-less Goblin. Morale check to see if it is loyal to its parent.
Goblins are very tall, genderless, very thin and green. Their skin is actually a very compact moss that grows over a bark exoskeleton. They have no bones beside this bark. They have long pointy noses, mouths as big as their oversized heads, and two very small ears that look like broccoli on the top of their heads (really on top, like carrot stalks).
Goblins seem to be the personification of bad ideas: obnoxious,  fast-reproducing and hard to exterminate. Goblins are more akin to plants than to other humanoids. Goblin culture is genetically inherited: they have imperfect fragments of their parent's memories and thoughts; this mostly means they remember how their grandfather's farts smell and where is their home. There is speculation about them being an experiment by the Gods to make soldiers out of plants, but no real evidence of this has ever been found.

Digression: they sound like Yoblins, not gonna lie. However, I actually stole the idea from a friend years ago. Not from Arnold, at least this time. Apart from that, I like Goblins. They are disposable, and you are going to have a steady supply of retainers whenever you have a Goblin in your party. This is probably the only race which doesn't abide to my second design rule, but I don't have the heart to cut them from being a core race in my presentation. Big little green rascals, basically the Monty Pythons' version of a Xenomorph. I've got descriptions of goblin cities and ecology somewhere, they'll be a full blown post like Orcs someday.

A Troll lurking in the shadows, waiting for his prey.
Zul'Jin splash art from Heroes of the Storm by Blizzard Entertainment.

Trolls:
Trolls have incredibly fast healing. They recover 3 Affliction with a good night’s rest and recover a full Injury by resting a full day.
They are tall, muscular and their hue is mostly dark blue or not black; most are taller than 2 meters but all of them are visibly hunchbacked. They have big tusks coming out of their mouths.
Trolls are natural born stalkers, with little need for rest and no need for complex operations to patch themselves up. Their tribes mostly live in swamps and islands. Trolls usually don't enjoy the company of others, but have a predilection for practical jokes that end up with grievous injuries (usually that’s no big deal for a Troll). They are considered the greatest masters of ambushes and hit and run tactics, fueled by their stubbornness and their unnatural resilience that allow them to keep pestering their enemies for days as long as they can get a little respite to lick their wounds.

Digression: Trolls are probably the least useful race as a one-off. A whole party of Trolls has an incredible potential in optimizing time, since as long as they have supplies they can basically never take more than a day off. This will probably be much less true if the whole party isn’t composed exclusively of Trolls; the fewer the Trolls the less their ability will come in play (unless they are systematically the only ones taking Injuries, but that’s not very likely). I haven’t written much on Trolls, except for a few jokes and a few notable individuals, so I don’t think they will get their own cultural post anytime soon (but I still plan to do it). Yes, they are basically Warcraft Trolls. No, I regret nothing.

I feel like adding something here. Have an Occult Profession, they are very nice.

Soulcatcher:
Soulcatchers harness the lingering conntection between the soul and the freshly left corpse not yet tainted by decomposition and time, to gather the powers of those that are not anymore for use by those that are not ready to depart yet.
They can consume a fresh corpse (dead by no more than 30 minutes) and a full hour to create an Occult Fetish. They can also take 10 minutes to keep a corpse fresh for 6 hours. This can be done at will, resetting the 6 hours each time.
Occult Fetishes are eternal prisons to the earthly link between Soul and Body, keeping the soul anchored to this world and allowing to call for it when the need arises. Occult Fetishes can be invoked to harness their powers. Anyone can invoke an Occult Fetish if they know its true nature. Invoking an Occult Fetish can either grant an extra Skill Point for 10 minutes, grant a Spell Point to be used within 10 minutes, or allow communion with the original creature to ask a single question.
Occult Fetishes weight like 1 Item, and have -1 Durability. They get Wear every time they are invoked. They can take many forms, from talisman to totem, but they are almost always made from the perfectly clean bone, leather and flesh of the original corpse.

Digression: these are basically spooky pokemon trainers that deal in death, corpses and eternal suffering. I guess you now know why I don't think my work is suited for children anymore.

A Soulcatcher asking a dead enemy about his favourite colour.
Witch Doctor by Kashuse Nuage.