House Races

So, as I said in the last post, this one is one meant predominately for my players, a guide to some of the extra races that are both core to our home setting and common/associated enough with the area that they are options for players beyond what is in the Core Rulebook. That being said, I still think this is valuable to those outside my tiny group of players. For you, think of this as a window into some of the expansive things one can do with this system, a taste of how far one can go with the options for creatures one can play and/or interact in their own world with using these mechanics.

Core Races:

Feralfolk: Feralfolk (aka the Skinwalker) are one of my top 3 favorite editions to the core racial options. Interesting mechanically, diverse in options, and unique in execution, there is nothing out there that plays like a feralfolk and is built to be played by players. You can play out your lycanthropic dreams without having to worry about murdering your teammates, you can become an unassuming animal and spy on your enemies, nearly everything in-between. And on top of all that, the mechanical diversity that each subspecies gets and the vanilla choice get are excellent! Someone deserves a medal for the idea to compensate for the lack of special ability choices when you shift with the ability to pick the ability score you bump.

But, I'm wandering off. The Feralfolk are good in just about any class. The base race has a Wis bump making it a solid choice for both Wisdom based casting classes and most classes as it increases Will saves, and the modular physical stat increase is good for both martial classes like Fighters and Barbarians all the way to Rogues and more. There is not really any class that can't benefit from a bump to Str, Dex, or Con and the fact that you can change it in an instant is really useful. Boost your strength when you need to carry a little more or hit a little harder, bump your Dex to shoot better or pick that lock, or juice up your Con to fight off that poison. Again, I could go on for days. Now, the penalty to Int hurts, but it is something that one can overcome with a little investment in a point buy game. The other choices have a similar versatility, with the other specific races trading out the ability to change their ability score bump for more exotic abilities when they transform. Losing the physical buff to get abilities like a climb speed, ferocity, amphibious, or see in darkness is often worth the trade off for either the right build or the right thinking during character creation.

• Feralfolk in Oki (Houserule): The feralfolk are one of the most prolific native peoples of the continent of Oki, equal to the native humans in number and when the Exiles arrived and embedded in nearly every culture across the land to be almost inseparable from the many histories of the world. Here, these humanoids who can take on the aspects of beasts are received as everything from great heroes and beings connected to the land and the Lords to horrible monsters and lost souls at war with the beast locked to their spirits. To the Exiles though, they are often unfortunately seen as nuisances or beastmen, relics of the old world they have built their new world upon, and bound to the predators they can become rather than their own will as true born members of the Empire. This unfortunate belief has lead many of these people to have been persecuted and marginalized by empire as a whole, relegated to slums and unfortunate roles that few want.
  
  But in the rest of the world, where the empire has yet to sink its grip deep enough to choke them, the feralfolk have created a much deeper and complicated history. In the Frontier, Feralfolk live among the many tribes, bands, and clans of the native people that inhabit the territory, sometimes as components of mixed tribes of humans, halflings, orcs, and others, sometimes as their own distinct units. Here, they live lives as varied as the rest, some hunting buffalo and other large game on long nomadic migrations throughout the year while others choose sedentary existences amidst the farming cultures that exist near the great rivers, the lowland swamps, and the fertile soils of the plains. Many Imperials are often fearful of these groups, believing that, "It is a land where the beasts of men walk among them, and are welcomed behind the town gates with open arms!" but to the frontiersmen who live there, many of these people are neighbors, family, or old friends. They are people, and they are just around as much as any other.
  
  Of special note is their ancestral history, a tale that many scholars say is shared by all feralfolk from some ancient past. It is said that they are the second to last children of Lycanus, the Lord of Predators, Community, and the Moon. Fathered by his strength and the tragic fracturing of his mind by the hands of his former lover, the Feralfolk birthed into this world bastards of men and beasts, imperfect in their mothers eyes, but perfect by Lycanus' will. They learned to live with the world and how to move within it as their brothers the wolves, coyotes, tigers, sharks, and dragons did before them and use their minds of men to build upon it. They could speak the words that wolves could only howl, and castigate their father's capture for her tortures to him. They rallied against her and managed to trick and fight her off before more damage could be done to their father, and though the damage had left maddness, he could at least be saved.
  
  Now, the Feralfolk wander the world as men and beasts do, making with the hands and minds of men the dreams of their brothers and sisters in scales & fur and fighting off the last of their greatest enemies, the The Beasts Unbidden, the rabid final children their father's tormentor managed to birth before he could be saved. Every tribe and band has a different version of this story, but these notes ring true throughout nearly all that scholars have managed to collect. 

Goblins: Goblins are one of those fun racial options that, in the right hands, can be something amazing to see at your table. Tiny, energetic, and blessed with a lot of really great flat mechanics, the goblin is also blessed with great art and a ton of killer themed writing that'll help just about any player get into the goblin spirit. Now, for mechanics they are solid. They have a 30ft move, darkvision, a great Dex, a racial Stealth buff, and their small Stealth buff which gives them a lot to work with. As it stands, a goblin PC has a +10 to Stealth before you ever set a stat, and though that's only a single ability, a modifier that high in a skill as useful as Stealth opens the doors for playing Goblins as any class and in ways you've never seen. You can have Goblin fighters in full plate who literally have better Stealth than the human fighter or Goblin wizards who are able to spell snipe like no one's buisiness, and lets no even talk about what happens with a Goblin rogue. In short, they are a perfect example of a hyper focused buff done right, one that gives you new things to do, but doesn't make them just better than everything else around them. That said, the biggest issues with Goblins often has more to do with their narratives & themes than their mechanics. Though one of the best parts of the species itself, Goblin lore makes goblins an option that some players will be more disruptive with than entertaining. Violent, distractible, and easily excited pyromaniacs tend to be something that when played wrong can be played VERY wrong at the right table. That said, if you think you or your player can handle the dichotomy of incredibly skilled sneak combined with pyromaniacle ADHD 7 year old then you'll likely have a blast.

• Goblins in Oki (Houserule): Goblins... are complicated, and best represented in a parable of their creation. It is said, that in the beginning of time, when all the old races were being brought into this world that their creators lined them up to assign their traits. Elves were given beauty and grace of muscle and mind, dwarfs strength of will and stomach, and halflings the ease of nature with all men and beasts. This continued until they reached the smallfolk, the gnomes, the kobolds, and the goblins. Each was asked what he would like bestowed upon them and they all answered in turn. The gnomes wanted brilliance of mind like that of the sun, shining and illuminating in its ways, and a warmth to guide their endeavors. The Kobolds sought engenuity to rival their enemies the gnomes, and a mind like the night receding, always chasing ahead of the dawn that followed.
  
  Then came the Goblins, and all they asked for is Fire.
  
  They snickered to themselves and asked for knowledge that lit and burned. To be amazed by a world full of things and to let that take them along. "Sneeze on warmth, lets burn!" they shouted, "And may none ever forget our touch! For what is life unseen unless our observers choose to notice? Let us make smoke and set fire! and through this clean the world!"
  
  And so it was given, Goblins are creativity unbound by law or chaos or any proclivity save what flickers in front of them. They excite at new and shiny and can soar to the highest heights of any task they apply themselves to. They can also get bored, nap for 2 days, then go light a field on fire to change things up. They are like cockroaches, numerous, annoying, and stubbornly resistant to removal. They are like man in their envious ability to explore and learn past fear of all life's greatest deterrents. In this way Goblins can be found anywhere, in every city, outside every town, lurking in every forest or hillock just outside of every farmland, Goblins are likely to make their homes. They live in sea side caves, dugout hillsides, abandoned homes, and sometimes even crammed in the walls of town walls. Here they live in squalid disarray, scrounging for what they need to survive as they collect, study, and discard whatever interesting things their minds come across and dispose of just as easily. This is a goblin's life, one filled with projects half finished and ideas formed and then ignored for newer shinier things.
  
  To many, goblins are a nuisance at best and a terror at worst, mad innovators driven by their own curiosity and the price one pays when their mind cannot finish what it starts and starts burning down villages for chickens rather than catch them themselves. But to others, they are a window into what creativity can bring when one has nothing else to guide them than the question, "What will happen next?". It is in this way that many manage to deal with the tiny green terrors with round heads like footballs and a penchant for fire. They use them as traders, mercenaries, scholars, and guides, little folk who have explored every part of their world and moved on and in so doing discovered all manner of potentially useful things no one has ever seen.
   

Wow, that took way longer to write than I thought, and this is only two of them. I might have been a bit too ambitious having this as a single post, and knocking them all out at once apparently will be more of a dissertation than an easy afternoon read. So, I'll be breaking this post into a few, and continuing to post on other topics as the weeks pull on. For those of you still here, stay tuned! Next up, a piece focused on GMs, and writing multiple narratives, for multiple people, that have to all potentially be playing all at once. The GMs conundrum is next!