"I guess that by being born a dwarf I know how to talk about rocks, even though I've lived all my life alone in a desert." * shrugs * Also, alignment. Just, alignment...
Let my guess.. race is overly focused on one gimmick and as result has no real means of survival or even demographics future? At the same time it is both too human and lack any human sensibility, what in case of being too human is a issue?
@@WorldAnvil Speaking of being "born evil", it is why I absolutely love so called "evil light", "good darkness" and "eldritch entity" tropes. If executed well they could work narrative miracles! But that is something for own dispute.
I miss something to distinguish "races" and spezies. like in D&D you have moonelves, sunelves, woodelves, wildelves... And they differ not only in their culture but also physically. But they belong to the same species. That's what I would call a race.
The controversy is old. Do dogs and wolves belong to the same specie? Race =/= Specie. Living beings from different species can't reproduce between them. Living beings from the same race can reproduce between them. However, there are exceptions. For example, dogs and wolves. They belong to different specie, however, they can reproduce between them.
Sometimes, there are more differences between light elves and dark elves....than between light elves and humans. Also, in some works certains supernatural beings (onis, demons, angels, vampires etc) are living beings who can reproduce, create a family...like many animals do.
Working on a story where the wolf-people have a reputation for being noble warriors and masters of tracking and survival. The first one to actually appear is an electrical engineer who only ever left the city on weekend camping trips, and whose idea of outdoor cooking is steak on a charcoal grill.
@@WorldAnvilI don't actually speak dutch, but I speak Norwegian, have Dutch family and have had German at school for 4 years, but even so I'm surprised I understood what you said.
I'd say my elves are similar to the german/dutch/etc or french/Spanish/etc split than actually the same language. They all clearly come from a parent language, but are diverse enough to be seen as separate languages. A wood elf and a drow could talk to each other in their own native language, but it would have to be done slowly, and with clear dictation and enunciation.
I have a counterpoint that works to answer your dislike of shared languages and less language barriers. I have a highly detailed world with lots of characterizations and lots of stuff going on. That said, I made the choice many years ago to note that languages would be racial despite the fact that it makes no sense given how the world itself is 4x bigger than earth and many civilizations will have never heard of each other. The reason is similar to simplistic, but has a very notable difference and that is being "intentionally overly simplistic". At a certain point it dawned on me that if I was going to be running rpg campaigns that skill slots would as a mandatory requirement need to have every character speak 8 languages just for a party to have the ability to communicate in their travels just to not have to hire an interpretor constantly, or give them a magic stone of translation or whatever (which is also bad because then I can never use a language barrier problem again). So I defaulted instead to "video game logic" it works that way because it's easier for the enjoyment of the game, so unless there is a specific reason there is a language barrier, it stands to reason you can reasonably communicate with others as a form of simplistic adaptation of the rules. If you want you could extend that to mean that taking a language means the character is proficient in several dialects etc, but at that point you're just justifying something and making it more complicated when the whole point is to KISS. I guess what I'm saying is I think there is a place for actively choosing not to develop something if you don't think it's important to the story at hand. It's the same reason we don't RP scenes with characters brushing their teeth and taking a poo. It's just assumed that stuff is taken care of through "video game logic". That isn't to say language (or brushing your teeth) can't be super influential to a story the same way the movie "american beauty" makes a plastic grocery bag blowing in the street a potent theme for the story, but not every story can or should focus on the same aspects and elements.
I notice that in some series, worlds, and such that fantasy races have the same general ideology. For example, some worlds and series state that all elves believe in the same general cultural concepts and religions etc. Yet, I find this too "unified" in a world of conflicting ideas. Great video!
Definitely! I guess that ties a bit into Race as a monolith, which drives me nuts... and feeds into an earlier comment about races being "born evil".... I just find that really sad....!
Well it can make sense, if the elves are long lived, and litterally cannot escape their ancestors. Sure some would try, but they wouldn't succeed if you really think on it. Not once, never for long, and not ever.
I think it depends on the ethnicity. An ethnic group is a group that share the same territories (climate, fauna, flora, etc), languages, races, religions, gastronomy, clothes, technology, etc. If all ethnicities only have horses and carriots...people shouldn't expect big diversity. In the real world, we are living the era of globalism, mass production, mass inmigrantion....Why? Because technology (cars, airplanes, ferries, cruisers, etc) made travels (of people, objects and information) easier, faster, bigger and more frequent. Everything in nature has a reason behind it. Race is not different, each race is adapted to a certain climate, a certain fauna, a certsin flora....It's the consequence of the natural evolution.
You know, "Elvish" qnd "Dwarvish" may be interpreted as a language grouping Like Latin based languages irl Qnd from a human perspective they sound similar enough that they were given one name before people realized that it wasn't one language But like "common" those who know "elvish" know enough to get their point across because at least they know the root words
About point 5. My "elves" aren't exactly elves, but more like forest spirits that possess different hosts. The humans don't like being possessed and the elves don't like having their trees/homes cut down, so there started a war between the two. Is that a good explanation?
pretty cool "why" to a conflict, but creates an even cooler "how" (as in the warfare itself) and all the potential aftermaths. Hope you fleshed it out further, sounds good
What do you think about having a world where a group of races has their individual languages as well as a common language that is spoken between them, worldwide?
That's awesome to hear! Remember to join the Discord so you can use the Help channel as you're getting started (and stay for the awesome worldbuilding community, of course!).
One fantasy setting that handles this really well, is the randomly generated world's of Dwarf Fortress. Characters move around for all reasons. Maybe there's a traveler, maybe there's a master to learn from in a different civilization. There's even big migratory events, like when the rulers of one civilization persecutes a religion within their borders, and the believers flee to safer lands.
But what if races in my fantasy world are the equivalent of human ethnicities on Earth? What if each of them embodies a different aspect of our culture and nature?
I use the terms "ancestry" and "ethnicity" in my campaign. The elves have multiple vernacular dialects, but much like Latin, Classical Elven is still commonly used in academia, diplomatic correspondence, scientific research (including magic), and scholarship. In most human-dominated countries, they're second-class citizens, thought of and treated something like European Jews. Use history, file off the serial numbers, and have fun with it.
An example of a biological reason two races might not ever cohabit: a race of mermaids that can only live in saltwater, and a race of dwarfs that have difficulty breathing in humid climates. Those two races would find it very, very difficult to reside in the same settlement.
Aelfi ("elves" of my world) are a sentient speicies that evolved along humans and formed symbiotic relatinship with them. They are carnivorous and have supperior physical attributes then humans (better eyesight, smell, hearing, more strenght,...). They have weaker emotional reactions (accepting empathy), and do not understand some human concepts (such as certain words being considered offenzive). They evolved alongside humans and formed a symbiotic with them where humans made them tool and they protected humans from predators. After creation of civilization this relationship continued, however instead of deffence against predators it us against other humans. They live in small groups in forests and tend to speak languges based on local human languages.
Interesting! These remind me a little of the elves from Terry Pratchett's Discworld (WHICH ARE TERRIFYING!) but turned good! Do they have different ethnicities and cultures?
I dunno, racial languages for extremely long-lived races as opposed to regional languages makes a certain amount of sense. Assuming that 10 generations of elves might be alive at any given time, that's going to discourage linguistic drift as the youngest elves learn to speak like their ancient revered elders. They have something like 10 times a human lifespan (assuming we're talking about D&D/standard fantasy elves), so that culture isn't going to change at anything like the speed of human culture. Where humans or other similarly short lived species develop whole new languages incomprehensible to their linguistic forerunners in a matter of a few hundred years, it might take a similarly sized elven population 2000 years to see minor regional differences in language.
the second mistake is made a lot in The Elder Scrolls games, with a country for each culture and race, but it's well done, explained and written so I'd rather think that's the way you put one country for one race that will make ur world bad or good on that point.
Yes, so glad to have this mentioned. The world I'm working on is for a D&D campaign, which does the simplistic language model, but given the specifics of my setting, I've got some complications to add in. The continent the PCs live on is united in a Concordancy where everyone all gets along (or else!) so having common languages makes sense. However, the campaign takes place on a recently discovered continent. They might have been in contact long enough to develop a trade language that works, but there's going to be some language barrier issues.
Yeah, for dnd I would get around the simplistic language by introducing dialects - like, you can totally understand each other but it takes a bit of effort.
I have a species of races fictionally that have their own languages. Although dont know how to make the language so would need someone thats experience to make that happen in order to organised the ideal exudating the whole language thing itself
For me, I suffered from this, but I attempted to tamper with my race but I couldn’t do much, since one reason.... It is a race of humanoid bee creatures, who share a hive mind.... so oop
World Anvil Worldbuilding Thank you so much btw, I didn’t mention this but this video did allow me to form a sub culture of those who have broke free of the hive mind, and live in small camps scattered across the world, so thank you!
I tend to create races who are superior(or think that are superior) to others, but with possibility that roles can change in time 180 degrees, with a lot of social gradiation, like aristocracy, rulers, slaves, priesthood, supernatural groups inside those races. Superior in various meanings - military, intelectually, culturally, biologically or sometimes all this things at once. :)
Monocultures especially bug me when its one side of humanity played up X20. I get there's some exceptions, like if their hormones or brains made them simple, they might... just be primitives. But then there's "we just all love nature" and the "we're arrogant." races. Just why? There's got to be some larger exceptions, different ideas playing around in their history, accidents, etc. I'm double as bugged when those same races further lose creativity by not even being much of a race in the species sense, but more of an extra modified human race that just has... pointy ears. We can move beyond elves and budget-constrained aliens. That said, I also wonder how far the exceptions to the norm go based on weird roots. For example, if the species doesn't 'speak' like us at all, would they maybe all speak the same language in a sense of agreed sign communications? Like if *arm wiggle* was easy to read to an instinct, would that be universal, or would there be a split in those that try to speak the same message in toe wiggles instead?
I am rather thankful in my current campaign I made a 100% commitment to no "Orcs are evil" and "Racial Homelands" so far I have just been handwavy with the noodly details for my players, but the there was a great magical cataclysm at the end end of the last war that basically turned power levels waaaay down. People still have abilities, and its no more rare, but a lot of the old powerful magecraft has been lost. Everyone was like "yeah, lets not do that again" and we've basically had a good long chunk of peace. I currently waiting for my gang to need to cross the water, so I can work in my fishing boat with its long suffering Dwarfish captain and a fastidious Orc first mate.
Interesting, as long as you're thinking iron age and after. If you have more of a bronze age world, before cities and large scale commerce, having races living in distinct settlements with their own language makes more sense. And more primitive cultures can still coexist with an iron age world, eg the classic lizardfolk village isolated in a swamp, who's people are still hunter-gatherers and don't really mix with other cultures.
In my opinion, all of these common worldbuilding "mistakes" could be deconstructed and/or justified in at least 2 ways: 1. The setting's knowledge of the world is limited to local geographic settings (like, say, all of Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa during the Dark Ages). For all we know, some distant cultures of the same races as Elves, Dwarves, Orcs, etc. that speak different languages, have different customs, and are far more tolerant of minority groups than their counterparts within the setting's world could've existed outside of the setting (like comparing Germans to Mongolians for example, despite their different cultures, they're both the same species of human). 2. The mono-cultural, mono-linguistic, xenophobic race of Elves, Dwarves, Orcs, etc. is the result of decades or centuries of Fascist practices of promoting cultural and linguistic homogeny, even if it must've come at the cost of repression of non-conformists (like in Nazi Germany, or present-day China). Probably the best example of such a race that I could've thought of is the Daleks from Dr. Who.
Interesting you should mention the "living in different countries and colonies" bit. In my homebrew world, Elves are a parody/allegory for the British Empire, so while they originated from a (rather rainy) temperate region, there are Elven colonies and city-states in virtually every tropical area on the map. Oh, and despite the British Empire connection and despite the memes, my world's Drow do NOT have Australian accents (except for one recurring Ranger NPC called Ieve Sterwen who is given to yelling "Cripes!" Ain't she a bewdy?" any time he sees a dragon, dinosaur, behir or other large reptile...)
The Only Elf introduced in my story doesn't act like your typical Elf. She runs an orphanage for a multiracial empire. She speaks the language of the realm and her culture is adapted to said culture and her aspirations within it.
@@WorldAnvil yes she is the only surviving Elf in the story. The second question I have to give some thought. She accepts orphans of any race but some of the kids if not adopted choose to find their own kind.
I personally have elves and humans living on the same cities but they can't interbreed, it just doesn't work. Reason being otherwise after a few hundred years you'd only have half elves and maybe some really old elves. The elves speak the language of the place they're from but being a minority they also speak a common language that has regional differences (being immortal their language doesn't change as much as human languages do). Elves from different places look different and there's other elf-like peoples who the elves *can* breed with, like the genies/djinn. The attitudes of elves who live among humans are basically the same as a human's, except some biological differences make them not able to properly partake in some human activities and vice versa (elves can't drink alcohol for instance).
Why would interbreeding lead to a unified race? Different human races can interbreed, and strangely none of them have disappeared, even though they were in contact for thousands of years. And with Elfs it is much easier to see reasons of why mixed offspring would be rare. I mean who sleeps with someone he hasn't even dated for 50 years :P
@@elana1463 Because we have whole continents full of the original "race" as backup. "In contact for thousands of years" means a few travelers passed by selling things, or tax collectors in some empires. Even with as much movement as there is today with our planes and cars, only big, global cities are actually racially mixed to any significant degree (and it's still ~10% of the population of a different race to the locals at most in most of them, the US is special in this). The way I have it happen is there's a near 100% territorial overlap between humans and elves, and that overlap has always been there, or at least as back as human history has. There's a few elf-only places but otherwise they're in constant contact with each other. When that happens IRL, the original populations disappear. How many Visigoths or Berbers do you see in Spain today? How many central Asian Huns do you see in Hungary? Even the Jews, who retain their cultural and ethnical identity wherever they go, always look suspiciously similar to the local population of where they're from. I wanted the humans and elves to be very distinct from each other, not having everyone be 3/16th elf. Heterogeneity makes up for better storytelling, the inability to interbreed was added as a device to maintain that heterogeneity in that territory forever.
@@elana1463 In the US that happens because of racism, which keeps the two populations apart. I didn't want to replicate that in my universe. Eurasia is full of historical peoples who faded out of existence due to interbreeding. Your very first asseveration doesn't make sense. Humans breed with other humans and elves with other elves, this is what happens with racist populations, only here it's biologically enforced rather than because of cultural taboo. Humans are the majority and they have no problems finding partners, and elves live forever if they don't get killed so they're in no rush. And the elves wouldn't fade away unless they get genocided, they live forever. The problem is *all* humans would have elf blood in a couple hundred years. Just consider how many people are descended from Genghis khan, genes get passed around REALLY fast. In fact, this is exactly how it works in the Witcher books, all humans have elf ancestry.
@@Altrantis If your elves and humans are anything like the races usually associated with the words, the difference in lifespan automatically will insert racism and cultural differences. Just think how people would live here with a species that ages to maturity within 2 years and will start to look old at around age 4 and can live up to 8 years when they are lucky.. But okay, they can't interbreed, so it's not racism. It's just one species that clearly is much better than the other. The more you separate them on a biological basis, the more justified the elves will feel when they take care of their human pets
@@elana1463 except that's not how psychology works. Actual superiority doesn't breed racism. Racism is a justification for one's xenophobia. In the US, racism was born as a justification to oneself as to why owning slaves is OK, "they're like animals", they told themselves to sleep at night. Yet we know they weren't inferior at all all along. Dogs are presumably inferior to humans, living short lives and being unable to speak or to build things, yet humans love dogs, some more than other humans. You know you'll outlive your dog many times over, yet you still get a dog and treat it like your child. In my universe, elves do have the perspective of time, and skills they've picked up over the centuries, but like anyone, they still live day to day, they have to work (And never retire!) and get food and pay rent and everything, and in their day to day life they come into contact with humans, and form meaningful relatonships.
I love Tolkien's work, but I've always found the fact that all orcs are terrible in his works is a bit too much! No race is purely evil, just like no race is purely good.
The orcs weren't a natural born race though they are originally elves that were corrupted by melkor/morgoth and later sauron and sauroman for the exclusive purpose to be evil and bad that is what they were designed for to conquer the lands of Middle earth for mordor and to claim dominion over the races created by Eru Ilúvatar
Well races that come from demons are pure evil. On thing about fantasy you races of the underworld. Orcs where made to evil so would serve their master. It a fantasy thing
There is a difference between race and species. Which affects point 5. On Earth, different species almost never live together. Often, one uses the other as slaves (horses, dogs), food production (cows, sheep) or pets. Or more often, war until one side is eradicated. Or live as parasites (rats, sparrows, pigeons) When it comes to races, there has been a homogeneous culture in all areas in almost all times. Those who have been of another race / origin have either been merchants or craftsmen who have often only stayed for a limited time. And always in special commercial cities. Or adopted the local culture. Almost always, the other group has been suspected and has had less legal protection. It is a modern idea that several different groups live together. These areas often work worse than neighboring homogenous populations, unless they have the same culture.
Niklas Molén there are a lot of symbiotic or semi symbiotic relationships in nature! But also I think it’s a major difference between intelligent and self aware species compared to animals!
@@WorldAnvil On Earth, we have very few examples of how intelligent species interact. Humans, dolphins and chimpanzees live completely isolated from each other and have very little contact with each other, neither peaceful nor hostile. Homo sapiens and H neanderthalensis lived apart from each other without major conflicts. Sometimes they formed pairs, but probably quite rarely. H sapiens drove away H neanderthalensis peacefully. As I said, there is too little evidence on how this can be done. But it seems as if intelligent species live apart but peacefully, with less contact for trade or occasional collaborations. But when there are common interests, guaranteed cooperation takes place. It is already happening between humans and whales. And would happen more often if linguistic barriers could be broken. The question is more how close would they live to everyday life. This is where I think it would be sparse, as needs and values would probably be so different that it becomes too troublesome.
Niklas Molén yeah - you raise some great points! I guess from a worldbuilding perspective the question is always “what serves your story/game the best, and how do you make that seem as logical as possible!
I would definitely add one more point, as this is something I see far too often in fantasy (and SF for that matter): - Ask yourself is your new race just human in disguise? If yes, then go with humans. There's no point in creating a new race, if it's just it's appearance that distinguished it from humans.
I agree, there has to be intrinsic differences, specially if they make interactions with humans awkward at times. If it's weird looking humans you can just have them be humans who are weird looking. Actual fantasy *races* should have things they can do humans can't, and thing they can't do humans can. Like, vampires having to hide from the sun. It's often used in literature to *fight* vampires, but what if you have a vampire friend and you're stuck somewhere and dawn's coming? And then you have to do things to protect the vampire friend from the sun, and basically solve all the problems yourself because they have his weakness that has them incapacitated and vulnerable. To take a SF example, in Star Wars, togrutans are carnivore and have a passive echolocation. Ahsoka Tano from Clone Wars is a togrutan, but she's treated like a human in disguise, the fact she can't eat plants never comes up, or the fact she can basically see in the dark thanks to echolocation.
One of my bugbears for this is when people take an existing earth ethnicity or culture and turn it into an entire species. "Here are the Egyptian desert snake people. Here are the English Hobbits...." That's sort of the crux of this video, I guess...
@@WorldAnvil What I have happen is I may vaguely include earth-cultures (I have a sort of dutch/english mix culture, for instance, north sea culture maybe, or Frisian) but have people of different fantasy races be part of that culture, perhaps fulfilling different roles in the overall culture. Or have members of races non-native to the culture take out strange and unusual conclusions from the culture (like how the Japanese celebrate Christmas without any of the deep cultural meaning it has for westerners. Perhaps something like having humans wear elf-ear shaped ear jewelry as a sign of status) or creating weird hybridization or creolization of the culture. So for instance warcraft does that RL culture = fantasy race with worgen and tauren (others are a bit more subtle, like highborne elves being fench+persian or draenei being greek+russian+indian), the way I'd do it is have, perhaps night elves who are of the same plains culture as the tauren, that it isn't tauren culture, it's a culture of the plains.
Oh, also, sorry for maybe spamming this, but I have an addendum. If you do not think of a given fantasy race of an actual people and equally relevant and important as humans, maybe don't add them (unless they're literally soul-less flesh robots like zombies or something added to the story as disposable enemies who quite literally have no culture and personalities of their own). I'm tired of humans hogging all the story and lore in 99.999999% of fantasy universes (ironically, in LotR it's *hobbits* who have the lion's share of the protagonism, and in Silmarillion it's the elves. And I'd argue in the Hobbit it's the dwarves.)
@@Altrantis I'm on the fence on that. On the one hand, I totally understand your point. I'm tired of human fantasy as well. But on the other hand, most writers (probably including myself) couldn't handle writing from a perspective of a truly non-human race, assuming there are significant differences between it and humans. For example, there are so many elves in movies, but so few are done in a way that feels right and properly alien. The example of this I always give, is Thranduil. Especially, in the scene where he has a conversation with Thorin. For me, that scene is a masterpiece, as it shows the elf as something beautiful, stoic and powerful almost to a point of being terrifyingly perfect. But when he mentions his fights with dragons, his mask slips, and you realize how good is he at masking not only his scars, but also his anger and passion. And then snap! The mask is on once again. That is not human, That is so far from being human, it makes you uneasy. And that's, how you should do it.
One of my greatest problems is, I think I have be original all on my own. Like, if I want Fantasy names with an Irish bent, then I have to think of them myself, and I'm quick to forget I can find a name generator for that.
Yes, absolutely! It's tricky to figure out which elements need a lot of care and attention, and which can be dashed off quickly! For example, I name settlements slowly and carefully, but characters very quickly!
well in the world i've been working on very slowly for the past years called kalpanaki in world anvill I'm still learning and experimenting but if you put them everywhere and mix everything there would be no point on this aspect of fantasy anyways and describing that without a movie or something would be a pain, I rather play with a more flexible alignment, jobs etc.. than language and places.
As I mentioned in the description, we call them races because that is what the majority of TTRPG players know them as. But of course they are technically species (or in the case of fiction like Shannara Chronicles, possibly sub-species) which is how they are referred to on World Anvil.
I agree that multiplicity in languages and cultures is more realistic but in the modern era, we see languages, companies and cultural products spreading around the world. I think media, transport and education are now bringing people back together albeit slowly and fitfully. Projecting ahead, I would expect a futuristic/sci-fi setting to have less cultural diversity.
That is an interesting thought! It makes me wonder what languages and their dialects and names would look and sound like - and how this commonality would necessarily impact the western concept of individualism.
I definitely agree with the points made in the video, however, I can see some ways to justify some of this. First, if someone really wanted a single language and country for a race, I would justify that politically. Perhaps there was a unification project that brought all the different nations under one flag (either through force or cooperatively) and one language. I vaguely remember this being attempted throughout history. Technically, this nation would still have multiple languages, cultures, and ethnic groups within it. For language, one language might become the dominate one either through the suggested unification attempt or simply as a linga franca. If the perspective character is human, maybe it is common for them to just generalize any Elvish language as "Elvish". At the same time, instead of seeing distinct nations or countries, they just generalize all the Elvish Kingdoms as the Elf Lands. This could reflect a human bias towards Elves or be due to a lack of understanding/knowledge of the Elves by Humans. As for the inhabitants, perhaps both the Elves and Humans and any other races have strong border control and aren't tolerant of each other. Just some ideas if someone really wanted this style of world but also wanted to justify it.
I love Elvish, but yes i always despised the uniformity of them in mainstream fantasy. Gosh. And i hope you were kidding implying some dwarves took out the poos. Muhahahahaha! You know they simply mine a stone pipe to take it out right? xD Cool Vid! I hope your retinas were not too burnt after filming this : p
I’m making a werewolf type species that can control their shifting that have a spring festival to celebrate the flowers growing in they wear extravagant spring festival clothes dyed with flowers and their clothes are dyed with clay and wood for natural brown tones they live in forests and they herd livestock I’m going to make more races for more stuff they mainly communicate in simple sentences and howls,barks and growls
Remember kids, realistically there ate no such things as an all-good or an all-evil race! Such concepts of morality are not always shared with every member of their races.
There's gonna be a whole spate of these over-exposed videos (sorry!) as I messed up the lighting for a whole afternoon of recording! Still learning here....
That impression of elves is missing them being stuck up egoists. Edit: Not just elvish you say? How about around five different forms of Elvish that all have similar rules but are different. Sort of like how the English language has changed.
That's exactly the kind of thing I'm advocating for! Hinting at realistic levels of complexity, even if you don't develop everything down to the most granular degree! :D Is this something you've done yourself?
Whether these are mistakes depend on your point of view and what you count as interesting . Should 'alien' races be as diverse as they should be in reality or are they a construct to tell a story? This often happens in space opera and fantasy because the alien races aren't their to as well thought as humans but to reflect a certain type of story in the human condition. So it depends on your goal.
We chatted about this on Twitter too but, as I mention in the description of the video, 1) if you did any of these things on purpose, then it's not a mistake! 2) At the end of the day, the best worldbuilding is what tells your story or serves your purpose! The biggest problem is when beginner worldbuilders do these things without thinking about it, and then end up with worlds that feel simplistic and artificial, but can't work out why! As long as it's done intentionally, you can't call it a mistake! Agreed!
for the races of my fantasy world i tried to down this "scientificly" with some "common ancestors for some grouup of races that have formed diférent races because of geography, historical or magical event. The races of the same group can inbreed but only in some situation and they are some races that have setelled around the world (in exemple, i created a "grek-atlantis civilisation/race" who come from a specific place where there empire is but they found many colonies around the world and some of them became independant and goes they own way etc...)
Species for sci fi can't have the "it's magic" concept for any inconsistencies.... we all know how well having more than one intelligent hominid species worked out for the Neanderthal. Cat Butt sign! My cats will tell the others in the neighborhood that the kitty invasion is near!
you are missing some thing by not making all dwarves drunk barbarian miners that hate elfs and that is a distinct flavor i this world the difference between and elf and a dwarf is very small and that can definitely be a disadvantage of your worlds memorability
Common elves:”hi I speak the same language as that guy” ... My elves:”zuskfiruwhe jeisiaue uricuejw!” Another elf:”iwiwiduejejqo? Know what, I hate that language.” The original elf:”dowjdhxuhw?” In other words, that’s not an issue in my world.
In my fantasy world, there are several species of the base races. For example humans: Earthborne(regular humans) Blemmyae(headless humans with a face on their chest) Panotti (hairless humans with long draping ears) Geryons(tall humans with six arms) Cyclopes And Merfolk In addition to non-sapient species like the Ettin and Manticore
I've lived in France my whole life and never met a single elf. I've yet to go to England and see if there are any humans over there though. Heard they have dragons, can anyone confirm?
So, the way I fixed this for my worldbuilding is...There are elven languages, plurial. The Pyroxene Drows are only one of the socio-linguistic groups. Same with dwarves and with humans.
One of my pet peeves within fantasy literature is when the author "mirrors" real-world races, and their experiences. Same with sexes etc. For example, they have a dark-skinned race, and somehow they were enslaved (note, they were the ONLY ones enslaved). Or women have no right to the throne (the GOT universe is a perfect example of this). Like... why in the world would you wanna apply those things in your fantasy world? It's fantasy xD You can do WHATEVER you want. Have dragons, sirens, monsters, fish people, lizard people, you name it! So why apply the same archaic standards and customs as our real history? I don't necessarily take issue with slavery in fantasy. But why just the dark-skinned races? Before Arabs began the slave trade hundreds of years ago by selling blacks to Europe and America, slavery had already existed for centuries. For most of history, slavery had nothing to do with skin tone. Rome, Greece, China, Sumeria, Persia, Babylon, and many, many more had slavery. They enslaved THEIR OWN PEOPLE. If you wanna be different, or edgy, in your fantasy, show me more of that. Or show me how Fish people enslaved humans. Or how blacks enslaved whites. Show me something old, but new, instead of something new, but old.
Mirrors can really stifle creativity - so true. When world building, the whole world is your oyster to draw inspiration from intentionally and respectfully so I agree - don't limit yourself 😊💯!
The other thing I can't stand is a guy fantasy person can go do crazy impossible things but no not a female. Why not? Its fantasy so in our world we have a mix of some guys that are fantastic legends but so are the females and both can be rulers. We are also putting in more cultures but I do need to see how to refer to skin color because I want to put in cultures based on Native America or Polyneisan or Hispanic (having worked with them) and I would love some books where wolves are good. I am so tired of bad animals that sound like wolves.
Most notable people on my world speak "Elvish" as a matter of convenience. These people have had internet for a long time, they're working alongside one another via telepresence, they live under one government, etc... as a result, the Isaani language has become ubiquitous enough on Aethis to simply be called "Aethi". Which isn't, of course, to say that people don't speak their own languages any more, but it does mean that I have a perfectly good excuse for not inventing them all. :P
This is a great example of why people WOULD speak the same language! Others would be things like trade languages which are mutually comprehensible (even though peoples might have their own languages too)! As I say, as long as it makes sense, it’s all good! And no one has time to make 300 Conlangs! 😱😂
@@WorldAnvil Normally even if you want Conlangs, you can just lay the groundwork. How it's pronounced, what do words in that language typically look like, perhaps some relevant grammar rules, and then just make vocabulary as you need it.
@@Altrantis Definitely - Conlangs is an awesome and complex field, but you don't necessarily have to go full conlang! Depending on your story, a nod to this is enough!
Makes notes: "Yes all humans should learn dutch, its a fun quirky native language of mine" :P Oh wait that was an example of what not to do... Dutch =/= common... Wait Gary why do all the civilized people know common? mmmmhhh?
I think generally the reason this ends up happening is pretty simple, it is assumed that we're replacing countries with races. Germans speak German, we replace Germans with Dwarves, now Dwarves speak Dwarf, and are from Dwarflandia.
Woah. I thought dwarves were Scottish but okay. At least the Snow White and Seven Dwarves fairytale is German. In fantasy, it is tricky to pin down the exact coding of fantasy races. I think of all the light skinned races as being European. This is people like humans, dwarves and elves. Beyond that I didnt know about what exact languages go with what countries. It is iffy.
actualy groups do tend to conform i studied behavioral psycjology in groups and well they do confirm to group the modern indevodualistic world is not common and is a abnormality they springs out of modern philosaphy in the west
Well, one "issue" with realistic cultural interactions in your world is people really do be fucking, to the point that hybrids would make up the majority of all inhabitants of your world, if the different species of Orcs, Elves, Dwarves, Humans etc. have existed long enough to create civilizations, they will war and fuck and elope, and rape etc. so much that it would be next to impossible to have any pure species, sure some cultures might favor certain traits, but for the most part you would lose any distinction over who is more elvish vs who is more orcish in most places of your world.
basically like humans XD. Jokes aside I feel one way to do this is to make them genetically incompatible. Thats if you want purebloods etc etc. If not well yeah but thats one route i thought of. Or Make it like Elder Scrolls where the child takes on all the triats of the mother and not the father. I guess that'd be more parasitic but i think that works too? Maybe
Yeah, elves don't like in France... but French do. Race and country is not the same, but countries usually form from a single dominate culture. And yes, Ancient nations had mixed race populations around the Mediterranean, you can't say the same about Scandinavia. Geography was the primary influencer in that respect. And a World Builder who fails to take that into account, end up making their world less believable, not more believable.
Monolithic species.... Star Trek is as famous as fantasy for that :( The other bad thing [tm] are the mirror races. We're underground Elfs. Or the poser species. We're just like every other Dwarf but we shave our beards. If someone if just going for X but with Y, you should go that extra step and make something unique instead of putting a ribbed nose and fake pointy ears on an established trope race.
Mutual intelligibility often depends on multiple factors, not just native language! For example, I know Spanish speakers who can understand French and others who don't. Personal context and experiences play a big role here. In any case, thanks for pointing out it's not a universal truth!
Yarg - this was when I'd just started making videos, and was still leanrning a lot of stuff about camera, light etc! Fortunately the latest ones are better recorded!
Well, you just bogged down your fantasy world for the sake of "realism". Players won't really care if you got 8 different elf cultures, with 3-4 sub-cultures each, each speaking 2-4 different dialects of a similar language. All players care about is: Can they speak with this NPC? These aren't "mistakes". Generalizing is a tool a DM uses to control the pace of the game. Preparing 6 flushed out personalities for important NPCs is much better use of your time. And I highly recommend generalizing, until you need a 2nd or 3rd sub-culture of a particular region. Additionally, if you are using this as "writing advice", don't listen to her. -How many sub-cultures of hobbits can you recall from LotR? -How many magical dialects did you hear in Harry Potter? -How many human real-life cultures did you read about in Ender's Game? Like I said, you are going to waste a lot of time adding too much fluff.
Mark Sturzbecher As I said in the description - if you do these things intentionally then they aren’t mistakes. The problem comes when you do them by accident. Different worlds have different focuses and scopes - and artistic decisions of scope and theme are awesome and necessary for TTRGP games, novels and any other worldbuilding peoject. But following tropes because you didn’t think further or thoughtless assumptions that all species will automatically speak the same language mark out an amateurish project. So by all means make a choice for simplicity. But don’t be rude because you don’t personally - for your own projects - see the value of realistic renderings of species and ethnicities within a world building project. Plenty of people have found value in the concepts this video has presented. Don’t be a troll just because you’re basic.
What are the most common mistakes YOU'VE seen in fantasy races?!
"I guess that by being born a dwarf I know how to talk about rocks, even though I've lived all my life alone in a desert."
* shrugs *
Also, alignment. Just, alignment...
Oh yeah - I didn't even want to go into the whole "born evil" thing - really gets my goat...
Let my guess.. race is overly focused on one gimmick and as result has no real means of survival or even demographics future? At the same time it is both too human and lack any human sensibility, what in case of being too human is a issue?
Definitely races which aren't well rounded and have no obvious means of survival drive me nuts! :D
@@WorldAnvil Speaking of being "born evil", it is why I absolutely love so called "evil light", "good darkness" and "eldritch entity" tropes. If executed well they could work narrative miracles! But that is something for own dispute.
As a French citizen, I can confirm that there are not only elves in France, we have dwarves too!
I heard that Napoleon granted greater rights to dragons in order to better utilize them for Warfare.
Ooh!
Oooof! I
France is middle earth confirmed
Shows how much she knows about France and elves
I miss something to distinguish "races" and spezies.
like in D&D you have moonelves, sunelves, woodelves, wildelves... And they differ not only in their culture but also physically. But they belong to the same species. That's what I would call a race.
A good point, but to say that all wood elves share the same culture, religion and live in the same state is also monolithic.
The controversy is old.
Do dogs and wolves belong to the same specie?
Race =/= Specie.
Living beings from different species can't reproduce between them.
Living beings from the same race can reproduce between them.
However, there are exceptions.
For example, dogs and wolves.
They belong to different specie, however, they can reproduce between them.
Sometimes, there are more differences between light elves and dark elves....than between light elves and humans.
Also, in some works certains supernatural beings (onis, demons, angels, vampires etc) are living beings who can reproduce, create a family...like many animals do.
Working on a story where the wolf-people have a reputation for being noble warriors and masters of tracking and survival. The first one to actually appear is an electrical engineer who only ever left the city on weekend camping trips, and whose idea of outdoor cooking is steak on a charcoal grill.
Steven Setzer Sounds like a dad
But I speak Dutch! Everybody else doesn't!? What am I speaking right now then?!
I think you speak Human.
@@elana1463 Humans speak English, this is a widely known fact.
Ik spreek nederlands ook (een beetje)! Ben ik een human?
@@WorldAnvilI don't actually speak dutch, but I speak Norwegian, have Dutch family and have had German at school for 4 years, but even so I'm surprised I understood what you said.
@@garrondumont boom
can you figure that one out :P
PS
its not bad
I'd say my elves are similar to the german/dutch/etc or french/Spanish/etc split than actually the same language. They all clearly come from a parent language, but are diverse enough to be seen as separate languages. A wood elf and a drow could talk to each other in their own native language, but it would have to be done slowly, and with clear dictation and enunciation.
Sounds like you've already been thinking about these aspects of worldbuilding in your own world - great stuff!
Race =/= ethnicity!
Well said! Some day I guess I should do a video about species, subspecies, races, ethnicities and cultures.... and all that jazz!
@@WorldAnvil *nods* :3
Race in humand is weird anyways.
Its more comparable to sub-spieces in the plant kingdom then race used in animalia
My version of Elves live in deserts, and they have dark skin due to the heat in the desert. They also use mainly swords.
@@u.ahighschool8972 dark skinn is ussualy a sunlight thing.
My dark elves live on the north pole since there the snow doubles sunlight.
I have a counterpoint that works to answer your dislike of shared languages and less language barriers.
I have a highly detailed world with lots of characterizations and lots of stuff going on. That said, I made the choice many years ago to note that languages would be racial despite the fact that it makes no sense given how the world itself is 4x bigger than earth and many civilizations will have never heard of each other. The reason is similar to simplistic, but has a very notable difference and that is being "intentionally overly simplistic". At a certain point it dawned on me that if I was going to be running rpg campaigns that skill slots would as a mandatory requirement need to have every character speak 8 languages just for a party to have the ability to communicate in their travels just to not have to hire an interpretor constantly, or give them a magic stone of translation or whatever (which is also bad because then I can never use a language barrier problem again). So I defaulted instead to "video game logic" it works that way because it's easier for the enjoyment of the game, so unless there is a specific reason there is a language barrier, it stands to reason you can reasonably communicate with others as a form of simplistic adaptation of the rules. If you want you could extend that to mean that taking a language means the character is proficient in several dialects etc, but at that point you're just justifying something and making it more complicated when the whole point is to KISS. I guess what I'm saying is I think there is a place for actively choosing not to develop something if you don't think it's important to the story at hand. It's the same reason we don't RP scenes with characters brushing their teeth and taking a poo. It's just assumed that stuff is taken care of through "video game logic". That isn't to say language (or brushing your teeth) can't be super influential to a story the same way the movie "american beauty" makes a plastic grocery bag blowing in the street a potent theme for the story, but not every story can or should focus on the same aspects and elements.
I notice that in some series, worlds, and such that fantasy races have the same general ideology. For example, some worlds and series state that all elves believe in the same general cultural concepts and religions etc. Yet, I find this too "unified" in a world of conflicting ideas. Great video!
Definitely! I guess that ties a bit into Race as a monolith, which drives me nuts... and feeds into an earlier comment about races being "born evil".... I just find that really sad....!
Well it can make sense, if the elves are long lived, and litterally cannot escape their ancestors. Sure some would try, but they wouldn't succeed if you really think on it. Not once, never for long, and not ever.
I think it depends on the ethnicity.
An ethnic group is a group that share the same territories (climate, fauna, flora, etc), languages, races, religions, gastronomy, clothes, technology, etc.
If all ethnicities only have horses and carriots...people shouldn't expect big diversity.
In the real world, we are living the era of globalism, mass production, mass inmigrantion....Why? Because technology (cars, airplanes, ferries, cruisers, etc) made travels (of people, objects and information) easier, faster, bigger and more frequent.
Everything in nature has a reason behind it.
Race is not different, each race is adapted to a certain climate, a certain fauna, a certsin flora....It's the consequence of the natural evolution.
You know, "Elvish" qnd "Dwarvish" may be interpreted as a language grouping
Like Latin based languages irl
Qnd from a human perspective they sound similar enough that they were given one name before people realized that it wasn't one language
But like "common" those who know "elvish" know enough to get their point across because at least they know the root words
About point 5. My "elves" aren't exactly elves, but more like forest spirits that possess different hosts. The humans don't like being possessed and the elves don't like having their trees/homes cut down, so there started a war between the two. Is that a good explanation?
pretty cool "why" to a conflict, but creates an even cooler "how" (as in the warfare itself) and all the potential aftermaths. Hope you fleshed it out further, sounds good
What do you think about having a world where a group of races has their individual languages as well as a common language that is spoken between them, worldwide?
Ok, I'm definitely gonna give the World Anvil site a try. I've been putting it off, but I guess I'll jump in. LOVE THE VIDEOS!!!!!
That's awesome to hear! Remember to join the Discord so you can use the Help channel as you're getting started (and stay for the awesome worldbuilding community, of course!).
One fantasy setting that handles this really well, is the randomly generated world's of Dwarf Fortress. Characters move around for all reasons. Maybe there's a traveler, maybe there's a master to learn from in a different civilization. There's even big migratory events, like when the rulers of one civilization persecutes a religion within their borders, and the believers flee to safer lands.
As someone who got into worldbuilding by making races, I approve.
They are FASCINATING, right? One of my favourite parts of worldbuilding! What races are you working on?
But what if races in my fantasy world are the equivalent of human ethnicities on Earth?
What if each of them embodies a different aspect of our culture and nature?
I use the terms "ancestry" and "ethnicity" in my campaign. The elves have multiple vernacular dialects, but much like Latin, Classical Elven is still commonly used in academia, diplomatic correspondence, scientific research (including magic), and scholarship. In most human-dominated countries, they're second-class citizens, thought of and treated something like European Jews. Use history, file off the serial numbers, and have fun with it.
It is a wonderful idea take inspiration from the world around you and to put your own twist on the idea 😊!
An example of a biological reason two races might not ever cohabit: a race of mermaids that can only live in saltwater, and a race of dwarfs that have difficulty breathing in humid climates. Those two races would find it very, very difficult to reside in the same settlement.
Also in FTL Lanius sucks the oxygen from whatever room they're in, basically making them incompatible with all other races.
Aelfi ("elves" of my world) are a sentient speicies that evolved along humans and formed symbiotic relatinship with them. They are carnivorous and have supperior physical attributes then humans (better eyesight, smell, hearing, more strenght,...). They have weaker emotional reactions (accepting empathy), and do not understand some human concepts (such as certain words being considered offenzive). They evolved alongside humans and formed a symbiotic with them where humans made them tool and they protected humans from predators. After creation of civilization this relationship continued, however instead of deffence against predators it us against other humans. They live in small groups in forests and tend to speak languges based on local human languages.
Interesting! These remind me a little of the elves from Terry Pratchett's Discworld (WHICH ARE TERRIFYING!) but turned good! Do they have different ethnicities and cultures?
@@WorldAnvil Yes, but I didn't put much thought into that yet. However they might not share our cultural universals.
They sound very Vulcan haha nice
I’m already considering having “triton” be a city state not a species so...step in the right direction
I dunno, racial languages for extremely long-lived races as opposed to regional languages makes a certain amount of sense. Assuming that 10 generations of elves might be alive at any given time, that's going to discourage linguistic drift as the youngest elves learn to speak like their ancient revered elders. They have something like 10 times a human lifespan (assuming we're talking about D&D/standard fantasy elves), so that culture isn't going to change at anything like the speed of human culture. Where humans or other similarly short lived species develop whole new languages incomprehensible to their linguistic forerunners in a matter of a few hundred years, it might take a similarly sized elven population 2000 years to see minor regional differences in language.
the second mistake is made a lot in The Elder Scrolls games, with a country for each culture and race, but it's well done, explained and written so I'd rather think that's the way you put one country for one race that will make ur world bad or good on that point.
Yes, so glad to have this mentioned. The world I'm working on is for a D&D campaign, which does the simplistic language model, but given the specifics of my setting, I've got some complications to add in.
The continent the PCs live on is united in a Concordancy where everyone all gets along (or else!) so having common languages makes sense. However, the campaign takes place on a recently discovered continent. They might have been in contact long enough to develop a trade language that works, but there's going to be some language barrier issues.
Yeah, for dnd I would get around the simplistic language by introducing dialects - like, you can totally understand each other but it takes a bit of effort.
I have a species of races fictionally that have their own languages. Although dont know how to make the language so would need someone thats experience to make that happen in order to organised the ideal exudating the whole language thing itself
Creating a new language is no small feat - I wish you best of luck!
For me, I suffered from this, but I attempted to tamper with my race but I couldn’t do much, since one reason....
It is a race of humanoid bee creatures, who share a hive mind.... so oop
I am so happy this exists in the world! MOAR BEES PLEASE!
World Anvil Worldbuilding
Thank you so much btw, I didn’t mention this but this video did allow me to form a sub culture of those who have broke free of the hive mind, and live in small camps scattered across the world, so thank you!
@@vigilabo3007 YAY! Always happy to inspire someone! :)
What if dwarves poop minerals? Then the people who take away the poop are still miners.
I tend to create races who are superior(or think that are superior) to others, but with possibility that roles can change in time 180 degrees, with a lot of social gradiation, like aristocracy, rulers, slaves, priesthood, supernatural groups inside those races. Superior in various meanings - military, intelectually, culturally, biologically or sometimes all this things at once. :)
Monocultures especially bug me when its one side of humanity played up X20. I get there's some exceptions, like if their hormones or brains made them simple, they might... just be primitives. But then there's "we just all love nature" and the "we're arrogant." races. Just why? There's got to be some larger exceptions, different ideas playing around in their history, accidents, etc. I'm double as bugged when those same races further lose creativity by not even being much of a race in the species sense, but more of an extra modified human race that just has... pointy ears. We can move beyond elves and budget-constrained aliens.
That said, I also wonder how far the exceptions to the norm go based on weird roots. For example, if the species doesn't 'speak' like us at all, would they maybe all speak the same language in a sense of agreed sign communications? Like if *arm wiggle* was easy to read to an instinct, would that be universal, or would there be a split in those that try to speak the same message in toe wiggles instead?
I am rather thankful in my current campaign I made a 100% commitment to no "Orcs are evil" and "Racial Homelands" so far I have just been handwavy with the noodly details for my players, but the there was a great magical cataclysm at the end end of the last war that basically turned power levels waaaay down. People still have abilities, and its no more rare, but a lot of the old powerful magecraft has been lost. Everyone was like "yeah, lets not do that again" and we've basically had a good long chunk of peace.
I currently waiting for my gang to need to cross the water, so I can work in my fishing boat with its long suffering Dwarfish captain and a fastidious Orc first mate.
I've been screaming this at people for fifteen years. I'm so sick of monolithic monocultures in fantasy.
I'll subscribe for that orange mane.
And for the awesome tips, thank you.
Interesting, as long as you're thinking iron age and after. If you have more of a bronze age world, before cities and large scale commerce, having races living in distinct settlements with their own language makes more sense. And more primitive cultures can still coexist with an iron age world, eg the classic lizardfolk village isolated in a swamp, who's people are still hunter-gatherers and don't really mix with other cultures.
In my opinion, all of these common worldbuilding "mistakes" could be deconstructed and/or justified in at least 2 ways:
1. The setting's knowledge of the world is limited to local geographic settings (like, say, all of Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa during the Dark Ages). For all we know, some distant cultures of the same races as Elves, Dwarves, Orcs, etc. that speak different languages, have different customs, and are far more tolerant of minority groups than their counterparts within the setting's world could've existed outside of the setting (like comparing Germans to Mongolians for example, despite their different cultures, they're both the same species of human).
2. The mono-cultural, mono-linguistic, xenophobic race of Elves, Dwarves, Orcs, etc. is the result of decades or centuries of Fascist practices of promoting cultural and linguistic homogeny, even if it must've come at the cost of repression of non-conformists (like in Nazi Germany, or present-day China). Probably the best example of such a race that I could've thought of is the Daleks from Dr. Who.
The moment you realize, Tolkien did this, (the suggestions not the problems)
I love how bananas the intro is 😂
In elf valley accent “Like ouu my gaaahd” BRUH 💀
🤣🤣🤣
Interesting you should mention the "living in different countries and colonies" bit. In my homebrew world, Elves are a parody/allegory for the British Empire, so while they originated from a (rather rainy) temperate region, there are Elven colonies and city-states in virtually every tropical area on the map. Oh, and despite the British Empire connection and despite the memes, my world's Drow do NOT have Australian accents (except for one recurring Ranger NPC called Ieve Sterwen who is given to yelling "Cripes!" Ain't she a bewdy?" any time he sees a dragon, dinosaur, behir or other large reptile...)
This was absolutely on point! Thank you for preaching the gospel!
You are so welcome! I am so glad this has helped you :D!
The Only Elf introduced in my story doesn't act like your typical Elf. She runs an orphanage for a multiracial empire. She speaks the language of the realm and her culture is adapted to said culture and her aspirations within it.
My interest is piqued by the phrase "Only Elf"! Is she the only elf? That and, how does the empire you mention influence it's people's aspirations?
@@WorldAnvil yes she is the only surviving Elf in the story. The second question I have to give some thought. She accepts orphans of any race but some of the kids if not adopted choose to find their own kind.
This is really touching~!
I personally have elves and humans living on the same cities but they can't interbreed, it just doesn't work. Reason being otherwise after a few hundred years you'd only have half elves and maybe some really old elves. The elves speak the language of the place they're from but being a minority they also speak a common language that has regional differences (being immortal their language doesn't change as much as human languages do). Elves from different places look different and there's other elf-like peoples who the elves *can* breed with, like the genies/djinn. The attitudes of elves who live among humans are basically the same as a human's, except some biological differences make them not able to properly partake in some human activities and vice versa (elves can't drink alcohol for instance).
Why would interbreeding lead to a unified race?
Different human races can interbreed, and strangely none of them have disappeared, even though they were in contact for thousands of years.
And with Elfs it is much easier to see reasons of why mixed offspring would be rare.
I mean who sleeps with someone he hasn't even dated for 50 years :P
@@elana1463 Because we have whole continents full of the original "race" as backup. "In contact for thousands of years" means a few travelers passed by selling things, or tax collectors in some empires. Even with as much movement as there is today with our planes and cars, only big, global cities are actually racially mixed to any significant degree (and it's still ~10% of the population of a different race to the locals at most in most of them, the US is special in this).
The way I have it happen is there's a near 100% territorial overlap between humans and elves, and that overlap has always been there, or at least as back as human history has.
There's a few elf-only places but otherwise they're in constant contact with each other. When that happens IRL, the original populations disappear. How many Visigoths or Berbers do you see in Spain today? How many central Asian Huns do you see in Hungary? Even the Jews, who retain their cultural and ethnical identity wherever they go, always look suspiciously similar to the local population of where they're from. I wanted the humans and elves to be very distinct from each other, not having everyone be 3/16th elf.
Heterogeneity makes up for better storytelling, the inability to interbreed was added as a device to maintain that heterogeneity in that territory forever.
@@elana1463 In the US that happens because of racism, which keeps the two populations apart. I didn't want to replicate that in my universe. Eurasia is full of historical peoples who faded out of existence due to interbreeding.
Your very first asseveration doesn't make sense. Humans breed with other humans and elves with other elves, this is what happens with racist populations, only here it's biologically enforced rather than because of cultural taboo. Humans are the majority and they have no problems finding partners, and elves live forever if they don't get killed so they're in no rush.
And the elves wouldn't fade away unless they get genocided, they live forever. The problem is *all* humans would have elf blood in a couple hundred years. Just consider how many people are descended from Genghis khan, genes get passed around REALLY fast. In fact, this is exactly how it works in the Witcher books, all humans have elf ancestry.
@@Altrantis If your elves and humans are anything like the races usually associated with the words, the difference in lifespan automatically will insert racism and cultural differences.
Just think how people would live here with a species that ages to maturity within 2 years and will start to look old at around age 4 and can live up to 8 years when they are lucky..
But okay, they can't interbreed, so it's not racism. It's just one species that clearly is much better than the other.
The more you separate them on a biological basis, the more justified the elves will feel when they take care of their human pets
@@elana1463 except that's not how psychology works. Actual superiority doesn't breed racism. Racism is a justification for one's xenophobia. In the US, racism was born as a justification to oneself as to why owning slaves is OK, "they're like animals", they told themselves to sleep at night. Yet we know they weren't inferior at all all along. Dogs are presumably inferior to humans, living short lives and being unable to speak or to build things, yet humans love dogs, some more than other humans. You know you'll outlive your dog many times over, yet you still get a dog and treat it like your child.
In my universe, elves do have the perspective of time, and skills they've picked up over the centuries, but like anyone, they still live day to day, they have to work (And never retire!) and get food and pay rent and everything, and in their day to day life they come into contact with humans, and form meaningful relatonships.
I love Tolkien's work, but I've always found the fact that all orcs are terrible in his works is a bit too much! No race is purely evil, just like no race is purely good.
The orcs weren't a natural born race though they are originally elves that were corrupted by melkor/morgoth and later sauron and sauroman for the exclusive purpose to be evil and bad that is what they were designed for to conquer the lands of Middle earth for mordor and to claim dominion over the races created by Eru Ilúvatar
Well races that come from demons are pure evil. On thing about fantasy you races of the underworld. Orcs where made to evil so would serve their master. It a fantasy thing
Elvish Preshly
There is a difference between race and species. Which affects point 5. On Earth, different species almost never live together. Often, one uses the other as slaves (horses, dogs), food production (cows, sheep) or pets. Or more often, war until one side is eradicated.
Or live as parasites (rats, sparrows, pigeons)
When it comes to races, there has been a homogeneous culture in all areas in almost all times. Those who have been of another race / origin have either been merchants or craftsmen who have often only stayed for a limited time. And always in special commercial cities. Or adopted the local culture. Almost always, the other group has been suspected and has had less legal protection. It is a modern idea that several different groups live together. These areas often work worse than neighboring homogenous populations, unless they have the same culture.
Niklas Molén there are a lot of symbiotic or semi symbiotic relationships in nature! But also I think it’s a major difference between intelligent and self aware species compared to animals!
@@WorldAnvil On Earth, we have very few examples of how intelligent species interact. Humans, dolphins and chimpanzees live completely isolated from each other and have very little contact with each other, neither peaceful nor hostile. Homo sapiens and H neanderthalensis lived apart from each other without major conflicts. Sometimes they formed pairs, but probably quite rarely. H sapiens drove away H neanderthalensis peacefully.
As I said, there is too little evidence on how this can be done. But it seems as if intelligent species live apart but peacefully, with less contact for trade or occasional collaborations. But when there are common interests, guaranteed cooperation takes place. It is already happening between humans and whales. And would happen more often if linguistic barriers could be broken. The question is more how close would they live to everyday life. This is where I think it would be sparse, as needs and values would probably be so different that it becomes too troublesome.
Niklas Molén yeah - you raise some great points! I guess from a worldbuilding perspective the question is always “what serves your story/game the best, and how do you make that seem as logical as possible!
I would definitely add one more point, as this is something I see far too often in fantasy (and SF for that matter):
- Ask yourself is your new race just human in disguise? If yes, then go with humans. There's no point in creating a new race, if it's just it's appearance that distinguished it from humans.
I agree, there has to be intrinsic differences, specially if they make interactions with humans awkward at times. If it's weird looking humans you can just have them be humans who are weird looking. Actual fantasy *races* should have things they can do humans can't, and thing they can't do humans can.
Like, vampires having to hide from the sun. It's often used in literature to *fight* vampires, but what if you have a vampire friend and you're stuck somewhere and dawn's coming? And then you have to do things to protect the vampire friend from the sun, and basically solve all the problems yourself because they have his weakness that has them incapacitated and vulnerable.
To take a SF example, in Star Wars, togrutans are carnivore and have a passive echolocation. Ahsoka Tano from Clone Wars is a togrutan, but she's treated like a human in disguise, the fact she can't eat plants never comes up, or the fact she can basically see in the dark thanks to echolocation.
One of my bugbears for this is when people take an existing earth ethnicity or culture and turn it into an entire species. "Here are the Egyptian desert snake people. Here are the English Hobbits...." That's sort of the crux of this video, I guess...
@@WorldAnvil What I have happen is I may vaguely include earth-cultures (I have a sort of dutch/english mix culture, for instance, north sea culture maybe, or Frisian) but have people of different fantasy races be part of that culture, perhaps fulfilling different roles in the overall culture. Or have members of races non-native to the culture take out strange and unusual conclusions from the culture (like how the Japanese celebrate Christmas without any of the deep cultural meaning it has for westerners. Perhaps something like having humans wear elf-ear shaped ear jewelry as a sign of status) or creating weird hybridization or creolization of the culture.
So for instance warcraft does that RL culture = fantasy race with worgen and tauren (others are a bit more subtle, like highborne elves being fench+persian or draenei being greek+russian+indian), the way I'd do it is have, perhaps night elves who are of the same plains culture as the tauren, that it isn't tauren culture, it's a culture of the plains.
Oh, also, sorry for maybe spamming this, but I have an addendum. If you do not think of a given fantasy race of an actual people and equally relevant and important as humans, maybe don't add them (unless they're literally soul-less flesh robots like zombies or something added to the story as disposable enemies who quite literally have no culture and personalities of their own). I'm tired of humans hogging all the story and lore in 99.999999% of fantasy universes (ironically, in LotR it's *hobbits* who have the lion's share of the protagonism, and in Silmarillion it's the elves. And I'd argue in the Hobbit it's the dwarves.)
@@Altrantis I'm on the fence on that. On the one hand, I totally understand your point. I'm tired of human fantasy as well. But on the other hand, most writers (probably including myself) couldn't handle writing from a perspective of a truly non-human race, assuming there are significant differences between it and humans.
For example, there are so many elves in movies, but so few are done in a way that feels right and properly alien. The example of this I always give, is Thranduil. Especially, in the scene where he has a conversation with Thorin. For me, that scene is a masterpiece, as it shows the elf as something beautiful, stoic and powerful almost to a point of being terrifyingly perfect. But when he mentions his fights with dragons, his mask slips, and you realize how good is he at masking not only his scars, but also his anger and passion. And then snap! The mask is on once again.
That is not human, That is so far from being human, it makes you uneasy. And that's, how you should do it.
One of my greatest problems is, I think I have be original all on my own. Like, if I want Fantasy names with an Irish bent, then I have to think of them myself, and I'm quick to forget I can find a name generator for that.
Yes, absolutely! It's tricky to figure out which elements need a lot of care and attention, and which can be dashed off quickly! For example, I name settlements slowly and carefully, but characters very quickly!
well in the world i've been working on very slowly for the past years called kalpanaki in world anvill I'm still learning and experimenting but if you put them everywhere and mix everything there would be no point on this aspect of fantasy anyways and describing that without a movie or something would be a pain, I rather play with a more flexible alignment, jobs etc.. than language and places.
Mistake #1: Calling them races. By and large, they are separate species.
As I mentioned in the description, we call them races because that is what the majority of TTRPG players know them as. But of course they are technically species (or in the case of fiction like Shannara Chronicles, possibly sub-species) which is how they are referred to on World Anvil.
There's no such thing as MISTAKES when you come up with your own Fantasy Races !!
Eddy Alvaross yup - exactly what i said in the description! If you do it on purpose, it’s not a mistake!
I agree that multiplicity in languages and cultures is more realistic but in the modern era, we see languages, companies and cultural products spreading around the world. I think media, transport and education are now bringing people back together albeit slowly and fitfully. Projecting ahead, I would expect a futuristic/sci-fi setting to have less cultural diversity.
That is an interesting thought! It makes me wonder what languages and their dialects and names would look and sound like - and how this commonality would necessarily impact the western concept of individualism.
I definitely agree with the points made in the video, however, I can see some ways to justify some of this. First, if someone really wanted a single language and country for a race, I would justify that politically. Perhaps there was a unification project that brought all the different nations under one flag (either through force or cooperatively) and one language. I vaguely remember this being attempted throughout history.
Technically, this nation would still have multiple languages, cultures, and ethnic groups within it. For language, one language might become the dominate one either through the suggested unification attempt or simply as a linga franca. If the perspective character is human, maybe it is common for them to just generalize any Elvish language as "Elvish". At the same time, instead of seeing distinct nations or countries, they just generalize all the Elvish Kingdoms as the Elf Lands. This could reflect a human bias towards Elves or be due to a lack of understanding/knowledge of the Elves by Humans.
As for the inhabitants, perhaps both the Elves and Humans and any other races have strong border control and aren't tolerant of each other. Just some ideas if someone really wanted this style of world but also wanted to justify it.
I love Elvish, but yes i always despised the uniformity of them in mainstream fantasy. Gosh.
And i hope you were kidding implying some dwarves took out the poos. Muhahahahaha!
You know they simply mine a stone pipe to take it out right?
xD
Cool Vid!
I hope your retinas were not too burnt after filming this : p
Who else thought their AirPods were dying? 😂
The Queen is back!
For me, werewolves speak wolf-tongue because no other races besides animals are decipher it
Well, I’m glad I don’t have any of these problems
I’m making a werewolf type species that can control their shifting that have a spring festival to celebrate the flowers growing in they wear extravagant spring festival clothes dyed with flowers and their clothes are dyed with clay and wood for natural brown tones they live in forests and they herd livestock I’m going to make more races for more stuff they mainly communicate in simple sentences and howls,barks and growls
Remember kids, realistically there ate no such things as an all-good or an all-evil race! Such concepts of morality are not always shared with every member of their races.
Spoken audio too quiet, sound effects too loud
Thanks for watching! This is quite an old video and we've come a long way since then in terms of editing. I hope you found the content useful!
Adore you, your videos and your cat!
Thank you! Also MIOAW from the cat (her name is Shadow)!
Kinda exaggerated that illumination
There's gonna be a whole spate of these over-exposed videos (sorry!) as I messed up the lighting for a whole afternoon of recording! Still learning here....
Very much agreed!
That's one of the central things I tackled in my world, Lantartia.
That impression of elves is missing them being stuck up egoists.
Edit:
Not just elvish you say? How about around five different forms of Elvish that all have similar rules but are different. Sort of like how the English language has changed.
That's exactly the kind of thing I'm advocating for! Hinting at realistic levels of complexity, even if you don't develop everything down to the most granular degree! :D Is this something you've done yourself?
Whether these are mistakes depend on your point of view and what you count as interesting .
Should 'alien' races be as diverse as they should be in reality or are they a construct to tell a story?
This often happens in space opera and fantasy because the alien races aren't their to as well thought as humans but to reflect a certain type of story in the human condition.
So it depends on your goal.
We chatted about this on Twitter too but, as I mention in the description of the video, 1) if you did any of these things on purpose, then it's not a mistake! 2) At the end of the day, the best worldbuilding is what tells your story or serves your purpose!
The biggest problem is when beginner worldbuilders do these things without thinking about it, and then end up with worlds that feel simplistic and artificial, but can't work out why! As long as it's done intentionally, you can't call it a mistake! Agreed!
It's cool, I'll make high Elvish and low Elvish. That solves the problem.
🤣 Perfect!
for the races of my fantasy world i tried to down this "scientificly" with some "common ancestors for some grouup of races that have formed diférent races because of geography, historical or magical event. The races of the same group can inbreed but only in some situation and they are some races that have setelled around the world (in exemple, i created a "grek-atlantis civilisation/race" who come from a specific place where there empire is but they found many colonies around the world and some of them became independant and goes they own way etc...)
Very cool stuff! That's a cool way to do it (reminds me a little of the Shannara chronicles!
Species for sci fi can't have the "it's magic" concept for any inconsistencies.... we all know how well having more than one intelligent hominid species worked out for the Neanderthal.
Cat Butt sign! My cats will tell the others in the neighborhood that the kitty invasion is near!
you are missing some thing by not making all dwarves drunk barbarian miners that hate elfs
and that is a distinct flavor i this world the difference between and elf and a dwarf is very small
and that can definitely be a disadvantage of your worlds memorability
Common elves:”hi I speak the same language as that guy”
...
My elves:”zuskfiruwhe jeisiaue uricuejw!”
Another elf:”iwiwiduejejqo? Know what, I hate that language.”
The original elf:”dowjdhxuhw?”
In other words, that’s not an issue in my world.
Your videos are ace! :D
In my fantasy world, there are several species of the base races.
For example humans:
Earthborne(regular humans)
Blemmyae(headless humans with a face on their chest)
Panotti (hairless humans with long draping ears)
Geryons(tall humans with six arms)
Cyclopes
And Merfolk
In addition to non-sapient species like the Ettin and Manticore
I love all of these variants of the human form in mythology 😊! Is there a reason in your world why these species have common features between them?
I've lived in France my whole life and never met a single elf. I've yet to go to England and see if there are any humans over there though. Heard they have dragons, can anyone confirm?
They are pretty rare around here these days, but if you come to Britain via boat, you might see the sea dragons that have settled off the coast ❤ !
@@WorldAnvil Absolutely worth the sea sickness, I'm sold!
So, the way I fixed this for my worldbuilding is...There are elven languages, plurial. The Pyroxene Drows are only one of the socio-linguistic groups. Same with dwarves and with humans.
This is really cool! and, pyroxene, like the mineral group right :D? - Are your drow made of crystal / earth?
@@WorldAnvil No, it's more of a symbolic association.
One of my pet peeves within fantasy literature is when the author "mirrors" real-world races, and their experiences. Same with sexes etc. For example, they have a dark-skinned race, and somehow they were enslaved (note, they were the ONLY ones enslaved). Or women have no right to the throne (the GOT universe is a perfect example of this).
Like... why in the world would you wanna apply those things in your fantasy world? It's fantasy xD You can do WHATEVER you want. Have dragons, sirens, monsters, fish people, lizard people, you name it! So why apply the same archaic standards and customs as our real history?
I don't necessarily take issue with slavery in fantasy. But why just the dark-skinned races? Before Arabs began the slave trade hundreds of years ago by selling blacks to Europe and America, slavery had already existed for centuries. For most of history, slavery had nothing to do with skin tone. Rome, Greece, China, Sumeria, Persia, Babylon, and many, many more had slavery. They enslaved THEIR OWN PEOPLE.
If you wanna be different, or edgy, in your fantasy, show me more of that. Or show me how Fish people enslaved humans. Or how blacks enslaved whites. Show me something old, but new, instead of something new, but old.
Mirrors can really stifle creativity - so true. When world building, the whole world is your oyster to draw inspiration from intentionally and respectfully so I agree - don't limit yourself 😊💯!
The other thing I can't stand is a guy fantasy person can go do crazy impossible things but no not a female. Why not? Its fantasy so in our world we have a mix of some guys that are fantastic legends but so are the females and both can be rulers. We are also putting in more cultures but I do need to see how to refer to skin color because I want to put in cultures based on Native America or Polyneisan or Hispanic (having worked with them) and I would love some books where wolves are good. I am so tired of bad animals that sound like wolves.
Most notable people on my world speak "Elvish" as a matter of convenience. These people have had internet for a long time, they're working alongside one another via telepresence, they live under one government, etc... as a result, the Isaani language has become ubiquitous enough on Aethis to simply be called "Aethi". Which isn't, of course, to say that people don't speak their own languages any more, but it does mean that I have a perfectly good excuse for not inventing them all. :P
This is a great example of why people WOULD speak the same language! Others would be things like trade languages which are mutually comprehensible (even though peoples might have their own languages too)! As I say, as long as it makes sense, it’s all good! And no one has time to make 300 Conlangs! 😱😂
@@WorldAnvil Normally even if you want Conlangs, you can just lay the groundwork. How it's pronounced, what do words in that language typically look like, perhaps some relevant grammar rules, and then just make vocabulary as you need it.
@@Altrantis Definitely - Conlangs is an awesome and complex field, but you don't necessarily have to go full conlang! Depending on your story, a nod to this is enough!
Makes notes:
"Yes all humans should learn dutch, its a fun quirky native language of mine" :P
Oh wait that was an example of what not to do...
Dutch =/= common...
Wait Gary why do all the civilized people know common? mmmmhhh?
I think generally the reason this ends up happening is pretty simple, it is assumed that we're replacing countries with races. Germans speak German, we replace Germans with Dwarves, now Dwarves speak Dwarf, and are from Dwarflandia.
Great point!
Woah. I thought dwarves were Scottish but okay. At least the Snow White and Seven Dwarves fairytale is German. In fantasy, it is tricky to pin down the exact coding of fantasy races. I think of all the light skinned races as being European. This is people like humans, dwarves and elves. Beyond that I didnt know about what exact languages go with what countries. It is iffy.
actualy groups do tend to conform i studied behavioral psycjology in groups and well they do confirm to group the modern indevodualistic world is not common and is a abnormality they springs out of modern philosaphy in the west
How cool that you studied behavioral psychology - thank you for sharing this 😊! - How have you incorporated this into your own world building?
Well, one "issue" with realistic cultural interactions in your world is people really do be fucking, to the point that hybrids would make up the majority of all inhabitants of your world, if the different species of Orcs, Elves, Dwarves, Humans etc. have existed long enough to create civilizations, they will war and fuck and elope, and rape etc. so much that it would be next to impossible to have any pure species, sure some cultures might favor certain traits, but for the most part you would lose any distinction over who is more elvish vs who is more orcish in most places of your world.
basically like humans XD. Jokes aside I feel one way to do this is to make them genetically incompatible. Thats if you want purebloods etc etc. If not well yeah but thats one route i thought of. Or Make it like Elder Scrolls where the child takes on all the triats of the mother and not the father. I guess that'd be more parasitic but i think that works too? Maybe
Yeah, elves don't like in France... but French do. Race and country is not the same, but countries usually form from a single dominate culture. And yes, Ancient nations had mixed race populations around the Mediterranean, you can't say the same about Scandinavia. Geography was the primary influencer in that respect. And a World Builder who fails to take that into account, end up making their world less believable, not more believable.
Good point! Keeping the context of the world (such as geography) in mind is always important when worldbuilding anything!
Monolithic species.... Star Trek is as famous as fantasy for that :(
The other bad thing [tm] are the mirror races. We're underground Elfs. Or the poser species. We're just like every other Dwarf but we shave our beards.
If someone if just going for X but with Y, you should go that extra step and make something unique instead of putting a ribbed nose and fake pointy ears on an established trope race.
So you like finnish language translate = sinä siis tykkäät suomen kielestä
100% disagree. Look at history and LOTR. Much more unified than modern times
Interesting! So, how has this perspective influence how you world build?
Why is your (magical) potato so overexposed
Kavi Sugiharto Weber because I’m super new to making videos! I’ve got a new set up now so hopefully I’ll glow less! :D
@@WorldAnvil yep, will do
I think you confuse race with species, with that taken into account I agree with you
Suomi mainittu, torilla tavataan.
The marketplace. Rodger that!
Like if you are here because of the egg hunt
For people looking for coins, gold, gems, diamons, etc., try Gamecrook.
The germanic languages are definitely not mutually intelegable... im dutch but i suck at german in school.
Mutual intelligibility often depends on multiple factors, not just native language! For example, I know Spanish speakers who can understand French and others who don't. Personal context and experiences play a big role here.
In any case, thanks for pointing out it's not a universal truth!
Sorry, but this falls into the category of "the bleedin' obvious".
Holy camera exposure!
Yarg - this was when I'd just started making videos, and was still leanrning a lot of stuff about camera, light etc! Fortunately the latest ones are better recorded!
lol just say "planet of hats is bad"
ehh all humans should speak dutch!
*Looks at Username, looks back at comment*
😄 Honestly though, you aren't wrong - At least a little to pepper into conversation!
Nice info, thanks. FYI - ay want to work on the white balance as your cute face is washed right out. Cheers.
Well, you just bogged down your fantasy world for the sake of "realism".
Players won't really care if you got 8 different elf cultures, with 3-4 sub-cultures each, each speaking 2-4 different dialects of a similar language.
All players care about is: Can they speak with this NPC?
These aren't "mistakes". Generalizing is a tool a DM uses to control the pace of the game. Preparing 6 flushed out personalities for important NPCs is much better use of your time. And I highly recommend generalizing, until you need a 2nd or 3rd sub-culture of a particular region.
Additionally, if you are using this as "writing advice", don't listen to her.
-How many sub-cultures of hobbits can you recall from LotR?
-How many magical dialects did you hear in Harry Potter?
-How many human real-life cultures did you read about in Ender's Game?
Like I said, you are going to waste a lot of time adding too much fluff.
Mark Sturzbecher As I said in the description - if you do these things intentionally then they aren’t mistakes. The problem comes when you do them by accident. Different worlds have different focuses and scopes - and artistic decisions of scope and theme are awesome and necessary for TTRGP games, novels and any other worldbuilding peoject. But following tropes because you didn’t think further or thoughtless assumptions that all species will automatically speak the same language mark out an amateurish project. So by all means make a choice for simplicity. But don’t be rude because you don’t personally - for your own projects - see the value of realistic renderings of species and ethnicities within a world building project. Plenty of people have found value in the concepts this video has presented. Don’t be a troll just because you’re basic.
why is she so white