What are some animals that haven't been made into fantasy races yet?

Cats, Wolves, Foxes, as well as generic reptiles and birds seem to be pretty well represented. You've also got hyenas in the form of gnolls, as well as frogs. I don't see a lot of insects borrowed wholesale, but plenty of pixie-esque creatures borrow some anatomy here and there like wings and antennae.

One thing I see very little of are domestic dogs. The above mentioned wolves and foxes seem to fill that niche. Shame IMO, as the staggering variety in appearance and behavior of dogs (I believe they're the most phenotypically diverse species known) is excellent fodder for different cultures. Ironically, I myself ended up homogenizing my own diverse canine kobolds into the more vulpine (and less anthropomorphic) yinrih.

Admittedly I didn't have much developed on them, but there were two subraces of kobolds based on corgis that filled the dwarf role (short, hardy, stubborn, and practical) but they were pastoralists as you'd expect of a herding breed.

Primates, even other hominins, would make a great foundation for fantasy races. My previous conworld, whence came the above kobolds, did this, with human subraces based on neanderthals.

15 points · 14 comments · view on lemmy.world

14 Comments

badlotus@lemmy.zip · 8 pts · 74d (1 reply)

Axolotl, groundhog, sea urchin.

early_riser@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 74d

While you are correct in pointing out that they're underrepresented, by shear coincidence two of the games I've been playing recently feature an urchin and axolotl. There's a sea urchin background character in Mina the Hollower, and one of the playable characters in Windblown is an axolotl.

e0qdk@reddthat.com · 7 pts · 74d (2 replies)

I haven't run into the following, as far as I can recall:

  • tardigrades
  • coconut crab
  • sea cucumber

I have a feeling that trying to write a fantasy story based on any of these would come out decently weird, if you're up for a challenge.

Lumidaub@feddit.org · 4 pts · 73d

sea cucumbers

Did you mean: Elder Things?

An artist's rendition of an Elder Thing from the stories by HP Lovecraft.

IndigoGollum@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 74d

A Pathfinder podcast i listen to (BCBParty) does have a sea cucumber character, but he's a familiar so i'm not sure that counts.

cerebralhawks@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 6 pts · 74d (1 reply)

The red panda. Aside from Turning Red and, oh yeah, Mozilla Firefox, they don’t get much love in popular culture. They don’t even have them in Animal Crossing!

early_riser@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 73d

There’s the Ponya from Torchlight 2

edit: also re: firefox, AFAIK they've been using a red fox as a mascot at least since 2006 when I first discovered it, at least they already had the classic fox and globe logo.

dumples@piefed.social · 1 pts · 73d (4 replies)

Pathfinder does have a monkey based race vanara and dark suns has an insect race with the Thri Kree

That being said there are so many different types of insects you could be a world continent or part of the underdark when multiple insects races.

early_riser@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 71d (3 replies)

Pathfinder does have a monkey based race vanara

Interesting. They have a South Asian flavor but they also have prehensile tails, which only new world monkeys have.

dumples@piefed.social · 2 pts · 71d (2 replies)

RPG creators are not known to be the most scientifically accurate. I used them in one of my campaigns. They were the native population on an island of Yuan-ti slavers whose slaves were mostly humans / half elves with drow characteristics. Neither spoke common so they used a hybrid draconic / under common / vanara language. It was fun

early_riser@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 71d (1 reply)

It's a pretty tiny nitpick honestly, though mesoamerican-flavored monkey folk would be interesting.

dumples@piefed.social · 1 pts · 71d

I would love that. Especially as a small race

Zachariah@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 74d (1 reply)

giant squid

early_riser@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 73d

Cthulhu: "What am I, chopped liver?"