Pictures and Words

The last five races of All-That-Is.

Humans, Elves, Orcs, Gnomes, Dwarves:

Humans, Elves, Orcs, Gnomes and Dwarves have remained largely unchanged. You could almost play these races straight from the D&D PHB (except for the difference in character creation numbers, which I’ll be detailing in a post of its own.)

Humans
My friend Damon, who was the person I worked closest on All-That-Is with in the first few months of its existence (before it had a name, and was simply (and a little egotistically) referred to as “The Peterverse”) hates the fact that Humans are the “base” of every other RPG system. The more I worked on All-That-Is, the more the other races intrigued me, and Humans were given a smaller and smaller role in the world.

In All-That-Is, instead of being the “dominant race”, they’re actually one of the least dominant – the only reason the other races ever notice them is because they fight all the damned time. Angels, as the large, self-proclaimed protectors of the world, are the most prominent, however Dwarves (for reasons I’ll go into later) are the most common.

Humans are notorious for their aggressive tendencies. The Human home-land (“Humania”) is in a state of constant civil war – it’s the only homeland that doesn’t have a capital city, simply because they couldn’t agree on one. In the in-universe year that the Traveller’s Guide is published, two of Humania’s states are at war, and the other two are just a number of tiny provinces (they refer to themselves as “kingdoms”) who are all constantly bickering over petty matters of land, kidnapping each other’s princesses, and setting dragons on one another.

Humans look pretty much like they do in our world – they’re slightly tougher and stronger, for the sake of adventuring, but otherwise there aren’t a lot of changes. Humanian Humans (Humans from the Human home-land) are of an Anglo-Saxon appearance, however Human skin has a unique feature – when someone spends more than a decade in another land, their skin slowly changes colour, and some of their facial features rearrange.

For example when a Human lives for more than ten years in the Angel home-land, their hair and face start to pale – within a generation, they have an entirely Albino appearance. (for the Fairy home-land, it’s a South-West Asian appearance, for the Gnome homeland it’s more of a Mediterranean look, etc etc.) Babies are born looking like their parents, however if they live for more than a decade in another land, the same thing happens. It’s not uncommon for a Human family reunion to be made up of two Albino adults, an Asian grandfather, a black grandchild, and a white cousin or two.

Elves
Elves, honestly, are the race that I’ve done the least work on. At this point, they’re essentially just stereotypical fantasy Elves, simply because I haven’t had much of a chance to mess around with the tropes yet – their civilisation live in cities in the Tree-tops, they’re a very formal society, warrior-based sort of thing – they’re by far the most racist of all the races, and the Elven homeland is the most “racially pure”, but I don’t really know enough about Fantasy to tell you whether that’s typically Elven or not.

As you can see from the picture at the top of the post, I had an idea early on about all Elves wearing glasses, but that was, fortunately, abandoned rather quickly.

I’ve written bits and pieces of fiction set in all the other countries, about all the other races, I just haven’t sat down and fiddled around with Elves yet, so they’re not at all fleshed-out. My cousin Gavin had an idea about their society being split into distinctly different social classes, but I haven’t decided whether or not to go with that. As I said, I simply haven’t worked on them at all.

Orcs
Orcs are a playable race – I never liked the Dungeons and Dragons race being “Half-Orcs”, especially since (at least in any of the campaigns I played) you never really came across many orcs, let alone felt compelled to start having sex with them. Essentially, Half-Orcs were their own race, and so when I brought them over to All-That-Is, I removed the “half” element, and just made the race Orcs. (Orcs are one “size” away from Humans – Medium to Large – and thus the two races are able to breed, but they’re not called Half-Orcs. A Half-Orc could be half-Human, half-Elf, half-Angel…)

Orcs have tough, scaly skin that comes in a variety of dark colours. (green, black, blue, red…) They stand at the same size as Angels, about a human-and-a-half, or two Dwarves stacked on top of each other. They’re dumb and strong, but not as dumb and strong as ogres. (one could describe them as Ogre-light, and the two races are often lumped together in-universe, simply referred to as “Trolls”. This can either be an insult, a term of endearment, or simply a description, depending on the tone of voice used.)

The race has an extremely strong sense of family, loyalty, and race-pride; Orcs don’t hate other races, but they’re unlikely to make close friends with anyone who’s not an Orc. They’re also strongly connected with nature and the world around them, with the vast majority of Orcs in the Orcish homeland living off the land. I haven’t decided whether or not to give them tusks yet, or just huge teeth.

Orcs are the second-most common types of slaves that can be found. Non-Troll slaves are extremely rare, except in the Land of Ogres, where pretty much anything goes.

Unlike Ogres, intelligent Orcs aren’t outcast, they’re revered, and given important positions in the tribe.

Gnomes

If Ogres are known for being big and dumb, Gnomes are known for being smart and smart. By far the most intelligent race in All-That-Is, Gnomes treasure above all else knowledge, intelligence, organisation, and smarts. Gnome, to many people, is synonymous with “Genius”.

Gnomes exist much as described in Dungeons and Dragons, except without the playfulness and creativity. Gnome society is a hairs breadth away from eliminating names altogether, and simply giving each Gnome born a number.

Any Gnomes born with even a hint of playfulness or creativity are likely to shun Gnomish society and become adventurers, though they might be regarded as stuck-up and stiff by their fellow adventurers. (especially Peedlings. Peedlings and Gnomes go together about as well as Orcs and Demons, or Angels and Dwarves. Ogres and Fairies, despite their differences, get along quite well.)

Dwarves

Of all the “kept” races, Dwarves are the ones that I’ve changed the most, though I didn’t even realise I’d changed them until someone pointed it out to me.

To begin with, all Dwarves have beards, even the female ones. Yes, I’m aware that Terry Pratchett did it first.* **

*so did Tolkien and early versions of D&D.
**I hadn’t actually read any Pratchett when I came up with this – it wasn’t until I was telling my cousin about it that he revealed the unoriginality of my idea. I’ve already written it into a couple of pieces, so I’m unlikely to get rid of it, even if it does cause unfavourable comparisons to Discworld. I’m not using it to make points about feminism, or metaphors for fitting in or coming out, I just think it’s an interesting idea that I want to play with.

Secondly, and this is the one that I had assumed automatically came with Dwarves, most Dwarves are Pirates.

I thought this was self-evident. They have beards, they speak in gruff voices, they drink alcohol by the barrelful – of course Dwarves were Pirates. It wasn’t until I was showing a friend the map, showing which Dwarven Clans controlled which parts of the sea that I was informed that no, Dwarves aren’t typically sea-faring creatures.

There are five Dwarven Clans. Three are primarily Pirate Clans, two are primarily Miner Clans, but they both have extensive navies and mining operations. The three Pirate Clans control roughly one-third of the ocean each, and range from “Good-natured” to “Evil”. Depending on which part of the ocean you’re planning on crossing, you’ll need to either hitch a ride with a heavily-armed ship, ready to fight for your life, or set sail prepared to stand to the side while the pirates rummage through your good cutlery. (in exchange for compliance, good-natured pirates won’t kill you, do any lasting damage to your ship, or take your food and water – if you don’t make it to your destination, they won’t be able to rob you again on the way back, and killing people tends to inspire missions of revenge. Who needs the hassle?)

Dwarves are fiercely loyal to their clan or to their friends, heavy drinkers, and great sailors. Dwarves are the only race with a majority not living in their homeland – most Dwarves are either sailing the eleven seas*, happily mining in another land, or simply adventuring.

*technically four seas and seven oceans.

All-That-Is is a world of islands (writers create their ideal world – I have always loved islands) and so Dwarves, controlling the oceans as they do, are ubiquitous. Angels might be the most powerful race, but Dwarves are the most wide-spread, making up about one-quarter of the world’s population. If an adventure takes places entirely within an Elven forest, or a Gnomish city, then you might not run into any, but if the story takes you anywhere near the ocean, you’re going to come into contact with Dwarves, and probably a lot of them.

I don’t even particularly like Dwarves, it just makes sense to me.

So those are the ten playable races of All-That-Is.

Character creation numbers and other stuff that needs to be known to actually play them will come in another post, this was just to introduce them, give an idea of the kind of world that All-That-Is is.

In the next few posts I’ll be covering some of the miscellaneous bits of information you need when you’re creating a world (e.g. what sort of Calendar is used, life-spans, religious beliefs), what Earth has that’s “missing” in All-That-Is, a bit about the countries and lands of All-That-Is…once all that pesky “world-building” stuff is out of the way, we’ll start getting into the meat of this project – The Numbers.

If there’s anything in this post that you think doesn’t work for whatever reason, feel free to leave a comment – at this point, I’ve done so much work with these races the way they are that I’m unlikely to change much, but this project is all about getting input, so let me know. If you think that Dwarves shouldn’t be pirates, or that Fairies are too small to be a playable race, or that Gnomes are just stupid and ugly and you hate them, please, leave a comment, and I’ll address it in a later post.

Up next: Miscellaneous World-Building Stuff!

Post a Comment