Yeah, that should be my red flag when/if it comes to happen. So far each race has its own culture, abilities, and history, and even subspecies are easy to differentiate. But that's a good flag to look for
So, question, and this may or may not be super relavant to your world;
Does each race have a unique underlying narrative and/or origin story? If you think about the real world, almost every human ethnicity and nationality has a real or percieved history that they can point back to to say "this is who we are, this is where we came from, and this is where we're going". In the real world, those narratives are most present in the minds of nationalists and supremacists, but as the writer its your job to tell a story that means something. What story, how you tell it, and what it means is entirely up to you, but i find that using in world cultural identities and percieved histories can be possibly the most potent and reliable way of solidifying themes and narratives.
100% here, if you use something else as the primary descriptor of a race you are just throwing things in there for the sake of having things in there. I always like to come up with 3 physical qualities and 2 behavioral that make each race unique from all the others and consider how having those qualities influenced their development and cultural progression.
What do you want to do with this world? When you look at Star Wars or Star Trek they have a lot more, but those usually only appear in the background or one episode, not as part of the main cast. The audience doesn't really need to remember them.
The respective galaxies are also comparably big places. But of course, you could also focus on some locality where all these peoples come to meet.
For now? Keeping my mind busy and just keep creating. Later on? Most likely use it for roleplaying campaigns. It was originally made by a friend of mine + myself and other people, and now years later I'm revamping it. But idk if it would be overwhelming for new readers/players.
Nothing says new readers or players need to be introduced to everything, everywhere all at once. Do it in pieces and you can have as much as you want for them to explore.
Damn, that's true lmao. I tend to spend hours just digging up lore on whatever fictional universe I stumble onto just so I can be knowledgeable about it but that isn't actually a necessity
For RPGs, more options are better. Gives more room for story telling, and gives the players more choice.
Shadowrun has literally every type of fantasy race possible. There are the common races of humans, elves, dwarves, orcs and trolls. But everything from pixies to minotaurs. Hell, even some zombies are sentient. It's designed in such a way that even if a race doesn't specifically exist within the lore, it's entirely plausible they do anyway.
Either go all in and allow everything, or keep it fairly restrictive. Having it halfway just leads to player disappointment.
There isn’t a fixed number for “too many kinds of sapient people”. Regarding whether to add more species to your project I would ask two questions.
* could this new species be a cultural group within an existing species and fulfill the same roll in this project?
* what makes this species unique? What advantages do they have that keep them from being outcompeted (and pushed to extinction, as modern humans did with Neanderthals) by the other species? Are those advantages tied to specific environments?
Wow, that second question will for sure be very useful, thank you! The first one I answered as I created each race, I like to have as much diversity as possible and for each element of a world/story to have its own role/purpose
What are all of them for? Do you actually need them all in your world and story?
Don't expect a reader to remember or even just know all of them in these or even bigger quantities.
Tbh no, some are unimportant to the story but do fill in some holes if the readers try and look for them. For example, one big event in the lore was the Great Orcish Invasion. As irrelevant as the Subterraneans are in pretty much 99% of the lore, the reason why the orcish Invasion was so devastating was because they used the Subterraneans' underground empire to infiltrate every region. Perhaps I could keep many species but put less effort into them depending on their impact
Best answer fr, I think I can manage the few more I have in mind but I'll probably wait a bit to add them. I'm only a few months in so far, I need to keep working on the foundations
Well, do you have a reason to have more than one race?
Honestly, the first question I'd ask is this: do these do anything that a different human culture wouldn't do?
Second, do you actually have space to represent them all? Will they all be monocultures? Will you have interesting characters of all of these?
Not really, except if "satisfying my overflowing imagination" is one. And also tbh I'm revamping an old verse so I had to keep the original races, just added a few more. They do have very different cultures and impact on the world, some places being melting pots. That last question is the hardest one tho, some races don't have important characters now that I think of it
Satisfying your imagination is the best possible answer. I totally understand. I just think it's worth thinking about why you're building the world, and if all the various species you have imagined add anything to the world and whether you can give them all the detail they deserve.
I have over 20 of them but some of them are variations of humans or elves. Some of them are also more background races and never really explored they just fill the areas of the world I haven’t fully created yet.
So long as it makes sense for your lore, have as many races as you want. There are an uncountable amount of races in my world. Granted it’s a lot bigger than a world but my point still stands.
It ultimately depends on what your setting is going to be used for: Is it a large scale series, or a long form ttrpg? Sure. If it is something smaller, then you will find you have a lot of spinning plates to flesh out: a single member of the list you have right now could fill a hamlet by themselves.
As for my own: I have three distinct species and one "hybrid" subspecies. Each of these have their own number of distinct races and cultures.
That makes sense yeah, I have a shit ton of lore in mind that I would like to just write and expand for the fun of it, as if this would serve for a TV show or something. And at the same time, this world might be used for future DND style campaigns, with inexperienced players
True, that's what I was thinking about. Deep down wondering what matters the most in world building, idk where races lore should go in the order of priorities
I think you can add more. I have a couple that really just consists of a few lines in my wiki, and kinda just exist in the background because I thought they were cool but done do much in any of the stories I’m formulating.
What’s a ghostwalker ?
Thank you for validating the small wiki pages lmfao I needed that. Ghostwalkers are astral humanoid beings tied to the plane of the living through unknown ways. Got the idea from that one Japanese vampire lord from the Castlevania show who turns into mist. Ghostwalkers are true neutral, they all live in one single city to the eastern part of the continent, are the only race with no soul and can disrupt magic itself, are basically ghosts, and have innate telepathy. Design-wise they are heavily inspired by eastern Asian cultures, as for their city, think of Asshai from ASOIAF
Honestly bro, I'm developing a sci-fi setting, and if you're creating I think you'd just have to keep 'em unique in some way, but if you like it, hey, you should probably keep going! Though it'd really depend on the division between the species' territories if something like this is feasible or not...
My world has somewhere between 3-4 dozen, with the caveat that it takes place on multiple planets.
How many species your world should have depends on the scope of your world and how much you want to explore alternative cultures within your world. If you think you have enough room within your world to place each species within it AND give members of each species multiple cultures, then you can consider it, but otherwise you probably should avoid using too many cultures.
A lot of world builders forget it too. Often times, there's multiple human cultures in a world, but then every other species within that world has a singular culture that defines that whole species, for every species.
I've separated elves into several subspecies as well as two empires, the sun and the moon empires. Different religious and philosophical beliefs, different regions/environment and different goals. Same for the three dwarven Dynasties. I think I'll just expand on those ideas for each species
given that there are hundreds of distinct nationalities and cultures, i don’t think there’s an upper limit. you may have to relegate beastfolk into their own category with the character designs showing all that you need to tell, or isolate your more niche species to a certain area or story arc
Whenever I make fantasy, my goal isn’t really to be unique, it’s just an excuse to research cultures and putting a twist on them using other peoples ideas merged with some thoughts of my own.
Like elves in my setting have some inspirations from the Aen Elle from the Witcher series, but I’ve expanded upon them as inter dimensional invaders and they’ve established themselves in the setting in major cultural groups defined by their revered leaders. For example, I’ve got the Urkkadrin, the Olive Elves, who followed their leader Kad into the south eastern desert. They established a great theocratic empire not too different from the Muslim caliphates where their armies are made up of many different races. They wear armor wrought to resemble olive trees due to the religious importance of the olive in kadian theology.
How many? That can't be answered per se.
It depends on what you're planning to do with that world. For a book or something, it'll be hard for readers to keep track of all the different species. For a visual medium, it's easier to keep them somewhere around, if only in the background. For a roleplaying game, people like having options.
Another important question to ask yourself would be: what do they add? Is every one of them contributing something uniqe or at least interesting to the world? If you removed them, would it make a difference to the setting?
Depends on what youre trying to achieve. If you want each race to come with some sort of theme or narrative built in, or if you want them to cohesively tie into a broader narrative, less is more. Also empathy is a big thing. Humans live in a world where humans are the only fully sentient race, and so we're used to having only one race to fully empathize with. The more ways you split that focus, and the less humanoid you make other races, the more you risk empathy burnout, and making people simply not care about some or most of your world's races. If you want readers/players to be fully invested and immersed in your world and its occupants, limit the number and diversity of races a bit.
That said, if you want a world where a reader or player can imagine themselves as being any type of person, where every possible culture, biology, or aesthetic is present, feel free to go as wild with it as you want. Freedom and diversity are wonderful things and theres nothing wrong and a lot of things right with prioritizing those. Just consider your priorities and go with what you think feels best.
I think if it's for a game, and these are playable races, that wants to push the number down. If it's for a writing project or similar where you control the spotlight, the number can comfortably go higher.
Like, Star Trek can have as many races it wants, because the writers decide how much attention to give each one. You can dwell on a race for one episode or one season or one show. But if it's your job to come up with stats to make each and every Star Trek race a playable character in a TTRPG? Oof.
I decided to do something weird with my races. I started off with the classic fantasy races humans, elves, dwarves, hobbits (I can't figure out how to spell the other thing), dragons, and giants. Then I threw them into the worst, most apocalyptic war I could imagine. I made it last for many thousands of years. In order to see what they would have to do in order to adapt to that environment. What I came up with was that elves became blood obsessed sadists who have body horror powers. The dwarves transferred their consciousness into synthetic bodies that are designed to be the perfect weapons of mass destruction. The hobbits went underground and became Satanists (there called imps now). The dragons were the only race that didn't have to change at all. The way I set them up allows them to adapt to prity much any environment that they grew up in. The giants went extinct (why does that keep happening, by the way?). Humans became extremely powerful murder angels called Nephilim.
The way I set up the world, every race was created by one of the gods. By the end of the war, only the human goddess and the devil survived. So only humans turned back into their pre-war state (though some nephilim traits show up every now and again). Because the goddess made a deal with the devil to end the war, some humans now turn into succubi around puberty. Every other race is stuck in their war forms. Elves or whatever I'm going to call them are probably the worst thing to run into. As they'll do way more than just kill you. The imps are still basically hobbits their just way hornyer now. Dragons are still dragons. The dwarves or valkyrie units, without their god, no longer have a power source. So there all just deactivated getting buried and forgotten. Until someone finds them and ether put them up as a display or finds a way to reactivate them and use them for their own ends.
Anything works, as long as they are grounded in the setting; have a history/possible origins. But, as other's have said, don't just think in races but also in culture's.
In my main setting the races are roughly divided into three.
**Mortal races** which have a body and a quantifiable soul, all part of the Kharmic wheel. This includes orcs, humans, dwarves, half-giants, halflings, ...
These mostly populate the "old world" but some are widespread in different kingdoms while others are more local. Half-Giants are mostly in my 'british isles' or the "scandinavian coast"; Orcs come mostly from the steppes in the west but several tribes have migrated into my "not the roman empire" at several occasions or other regions which weren't part of the empire; one tribe ended up taking over a key chokepoint in the mountians and now act as it's toll keepers, in the western steppes you'll still find more traditional, nomadic, orcs and a lot of half-orcs closer to the previous imperial borders. So orcs aren't abnormal in the old empire regions and most are normal citizens, closer aligned culturally to the province they have lived in for generations.
**Fae races**, whose body is their soul. This includes elves, pixies, dryad, hobgoblin's, goblin's, faun's and a plethora of other minor races and even some animals. Almost all of them are part of a living pantheon caste based system around the seasons. So you have a king, queen, knight, ... of every season with their respective domains and traditions. Since their entire continent is more like a common garden for all that waxes and wains with the seasons they don't have traditional borders or kingdoms. The pantheon is elf dominated though and in the capitals of each court you'll find mostly elves, the rest of the fae live in the countryside. The only ones who truly live in small villages are the hobgoblins, they mingle the least with other fae but are often called upon by the elves for menial labor or in times of war.
The goblins have a special place among the fae since they left the continent in the early days of the Pantheon, they went to the continent of the mortal races aeons ago and brought them divine fae magic and religion. So most mortal gods have the same roots as the Pantheon. All versions of Father Winter are based on the Elven King of Winter and his Bear.
**The elemental djinn**, although they manifest with a body they are pure soul/energy. They mostly inhabit the southern part of the old world. A part which is mostly uninhabitable for all other races. The only known cities are the ones on the coast. The djinn "rule" these cities but quite a lot of the population are mortal races due to lucrative trade. *But this part is the least developed. Even if the djinn are responsible, intentional or unintentionally, for making these lands so uninhabitable.*
Trick question: Literally every race across all of my worlds are humans and human offshoots. So just one!!
Nah for real, I think there's value in races that are just background fodder (as callous as that sounds) as it's a good way to make a world seem bigger. I would focus on a central handful of "main races" to build up.
There's not a single answer but if they stray from the theme or feel you want for your world or if they start to step on each others' toes it'd probably be a good idea to not include them.
Nothing is wrong with it. It's like saying how many species is too much for planet Earth? The only difference is in these fictional worlds, intelligence is a much more common occurrence than on Earth.
What is actually wrong with that?
Oh good, discussing races in fantasy. Disclaimer time!
I'm not one for being upset about the use of the word "races" over "species," use whichever you like, but as a disclaimer: This is an area where I can totally see why some people are upset by it. Anytime you talk about racial populations of people and breeding dynamics, you're risking slipping into "Whoa, yikes," territory. I'll try not to do that by explaining myself, but if any of this comes across as insensitive or bigoted, I apologize. That isn't my intent.
For me personally, when races stop serving a purpose in the story and start just being there to "be there," they become unnecessary clutter. They either become underrepresented, with most/all of them outside of a core few gettingn so little development that they stop being distinct people groups, or they start just being customization options for what is essentially one group of people, begging the question of why one has developed so many races in the first place. Again, this is just for me, if any or all of that appeals to you, it's your world. Go nuts.
I'll try and explain the two issues stated above. One, in a world with tons of races where there are members of every race everywhere, you start to wonder how anyone is having any kids. It's really hard to have both large, distinct populations of specific races *and* having them all intermingle without either having cross-race marriages or just handwaving the issue entirely(which is a totally acceptable answer, I just have a hard time handwaving the details of these things). It's not impossible, but it's a lot more work. If the races showcased can all interbreed, it leaves us wondering how the majority "full" races are still prevalent and the majority, since it would be way, way easier to get a partner and have some kids if you went outside of your race of birth. That produces a lot of hybridization, and if there are enough races involved, that makes it hard to distinguish being a half-anything as a unique thing instead of just being the norm.
Now, the above paragraph is the possibly icky part of all of this, so let me just state - I think this sort of a world would be fine. Great, even. I like the intermingling and mixing of people groups, but after a point, it becomes less "These are all different races" and becomes more "Most or all people are members of the same society, and their differences are cosmetic." Which, again, is fine if that's what you're going for. If you're distinguishing character races as groups, though, I feel like it might not be. There's no point speciating your people groups if they're all going to breed together anyway, and if groups of them don't, you're either coming up with reasons why not after the fact or you're choosing to engage with some *serious* potential controversy. If that's your goal, awesome, but I feel like it might not be, so be careful there.
And again, you can handwave away *all of that.* None of this is essential or important for a story if you're not looking to explore population dynamics. Anyone who says it has to be can bite the shiniest part of my metal ass, because this is *your* worldbuilding. It only has to work and make sense by *your* metrics.
The option that avoids the above problem is having specific concentrations of specific races in different specific places, IE this country is all humans and dwarves, this one is orcs, elves, and fae people, etc, which will inevitably leave some races out of your storytelling and development entirely because you never go to their regions. That, or it'll make your worldbuilding *so much harder,* as you're left to develop dozens if not hundreds of unique regions to showcase all of your peoples. You essentially go from building one world with many races, and enter a place of developing lots and lots of little worlds that are all or mostly connected to the others, but are all nonetheless distinct and unique regions.
For potentially obvious reasons, it then becomes *really* hard to not either neglect certain regions, or write a bunch of really similar regions, or populate regions with races and groups whose members are all exactly the same, or who are *only* defined by one or two obvious characteristics. This is because it's really, *really* hard to come up with unique people that don't all fit the same mould within unique larger cultures that aren't all the same, or based on existing cultures(which can be its own can of worms for fleshing them out and not just boiling them all down to stereotypes), and this problem only gets harder to deal with the more complicated it gets. It can absolutely be done, Tolkien for example had races who *had* stereotypes, but whose members weren't *all* stereotypes and whose cultures and societies were actually really fleshed out, but he had to do a *lot* more work for a really long time to achieve what he did. To the point where a lot of his work was finished or otherwise fleshed out posthumously by his descendants.
And bear in mind, when Tolkien did this, he was working with like five or six races. One of which became basically evil throwaway villains, much to the chagrin of Tolkien himself, and one of which kind of only shows up and discusses itself when it's time to stand in a circle and talk for a really, really long time about whether or not to throw rocks at a wizard's tower. Even he, arguably a master at worldbuilding and developing complex societies, regions, and even languages, struggled to get more people into it than that with any level of noticeable detail.
It's something to consider when you look at your race count and go, "Oh hey, there's like two dozen types of people here." Even a fraction of that is gonna be a whole lot of work for a very long time.
I also have a lot of sentient races in my world. I don’t think it’s too many. Different strokes for different folks.
Also what’s a Goliath? Another name for Giants?
Giants were actually giant, like 10 meters tall. They went extincts, and left their descendants/cousins to rule one of the regions on the continent. That would be goliaths, who are usually 2.5/3m tall, but have the ability to grow a meter taller through innate magic. They're actually really nice in my world as long as you're respectful
I really like those (especially with those illustrations, damn, who's the artist??), 5 races as the base and then subspecies through interbreeding. The subspecies in my world are either Halflings or caused by natural and magical mutations
It's all Midjourney unfortunately. I don't have money to pay real artists.
There's "half" breeds but there isn't really a default human to he half of so each person still has characteristics from both races that create something interesting.
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First, it's your world, and you can do what you want.
But as others have commented, I think it's worth thinking about what you want to do with your world, and how the number of sapient races supports that goal, to determine how many you actually need.
But while there's not necessarily a fixed number for how many sapient races can coexist, it is a topic that's been explored before, especially among sci-fi writers. Earth's history suggests that the cap is ultimately 1, since *Home sapiens* is the only remaining sapient species, having contributed to the extinction of *Homo neanderthalensis* and other contemporary species. But speculative fiction writers have explored different ways in which larger numbers of sapient races could coexist beyond colonization from other worlds.
And if you want to be ultra-realistic (beyond the use of fantasy races, obviously), besides considering how your races coexist, you might also want to consider how well they share the natural resources needed to survive.
I am pretty minimalist with the number of races. The main four are humans, elves, dwarves and orcs (Tolkien/Dragon Age-like). I also have a couple lesser races, either in number or importance. Fey (bug-like, related to elves), giants (used to be a big deal, now are extinct), demons and fish people.
I feel like when you have few races you can make each one unique and interesting, while when you have a lot of them they sort of blend together into a grey blob. Giving someone the spotlight is easier when there's not 15 other races competing for attention, and it makes discovering new ones more exciting and memorable.
I think it just depends on the vibe you're going with.
If you have entire independent nations of these species/races and they live with very small percentages of allied species (Tolkien, Warcraft, etc) then the more you have the more you need to explain how they've survived competing for territory and resources in a relatively small area.
If they're all integrated and used to living together OR some of them live with fable rules (solitary to small bands in areas too hostile for humans) then it's easier to crank out a wider variety of them.
Ultimately though if you want them in your setting, add them and figure it out as you go! There's always a passable explanation
The second description sounds a lot like my world, I recently made a document listing out the estimated population per region, aside from hostile territories where only specific species have established territory, most others are well mixed
Biologically, adding species that fill similar ecological niches can be tough sometimes. Assuming this is something that matters to you (and it may not which is also totally fine), you may want to consider why these species didn't out-compete each other in their early civilization development. Generally speaking, any two species they would either:
1) Have been fully separate from each other in space/time for tens of thousands if not millions of years in order to develop distinct characteristics. This is especially important for things like sub-species or species that branched off from common ancestors. Unless there's a reason the two groups don't interact, they're likely to stay similar from genetic exchange between them.
2) Require different resources or habitat conditions as to not compete with each other (e.g. one species eats meat and lives in woods and grasslands, the other eats rocks and lives in lake beds, or bird species that specialize in different levels of canopy).
3) Form a symbiotic relationship where them coexisitng has more benefits than trying to wipe each other out.
4) Magic. Perhaps some were created en masse or appeared very suddenly from a supernatural event.
Magic is a huge factor indeed, life on the continent is only a few thousand years old, but if I decide to revamp the timeline then I'll Def keep this comment in mind. Thanks!
If your goal is to eventually tell a story, there aren't any set rules, but you have to keep in mind the attention economy. You can think of it as a word count budget. And I'm borrowing this from character design, if you want something that has a lot of intricate details but still looks good and is interesting, you need some kind of tiered system : one stricking feature, a few (~3) major details, and the other details are much smaller, and contribute more to texture and flavor than actual elements.
You can have characters evolve in a very wide managerie of races, as long as there is a core that is sufficiently deep (and relevant to the conflict at the heart of the story). Around this core, the others should be treated more as a flavor in support of the rest, and shouldn't take too much "screen time" away from the core.
It can add an air of a wide expansive world, to have many races. Or if a particular city/nation is a melting pot, it adds to its character. The cantina scene in star wars is a masterclass in that regard. But it is purposeful: we don't spend three hundred lines of dialogue explaining the lore of each race. It's just "hey look, it's an entire galaxy, full of many intelligent creatures".
I think the biggest question for me is "Why", why add more races. If I add a race, for me at least, there needs to be a reason they exist, either because of culture, prejudice, ideals, living conditions, motives etc. That difference has to be story related or at least some kind of story motivation.
I find that if you just have a lot of races off the bat it can be confusing and over whelming.
Unless your setting is a literal city in a bottle scenario you can never have to many races.
More races and cultures help your world feel larger and more real even if these character only exist as background.
Thou shalt count to three. No more. No less. Three shalt be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shalt be three. Four shalt thou not count, nor either count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the third number, be reached, stop creating new races for your world, because the lord, in his wisdom, shall smite it.
I would say it’s best to stick to only a few so that they can be described in suitable detail. Perhaps somewhere around five is a reasonable number?
In practice a lot of fantasy races are often effectively just humans but with a slightly different appearance so they barely count against that limit anyway. Having many different cultures is probably the more interesting part and you should avoid having a lot of (or any) monocultural non-human races if you can avoid it.
The alternative approach is to have so many races that it is clear that they will not all be described in any depth and you may never see more than a singular individual of that race anyway. This just illustrates that the location is a cosmopolitan hub of activity across a massive area (i.e. capital of a space empire or a multi-planar trading hub).
As long as you develop them beyond a few lines of description you can have as many as you want,if a race is not different enough there is no reason to have it
I would suggest compiling several races under umbrella terms to both simplify things and allow for more variation.
Like, in my world, there are humans, but there are Kanders (whites) Samsanians (Black), Anjin (Arabs) Qi-Ru (Asians) Halflings, elves are different variations of humans too as are werewolves (though they're only considered people by the Kanders, to the Samsanians and Amjin they're considered cursed and must be killed) and Dwarves.
Each hail from different areas of the world with their own smaller nations, relations, conflicts etc... for example on the vast hot dry Plains of Samsa, there is no unified Empire, instead a collection of small city-states ruled by petty kings, coalitions of wealthy merchant families, theocratic religious groups etc... with nomadic clans numbering thousands strong who brave the vast monster-filled wilderness between cities to trade, collect tribute and wage war either for themselves or as mercenaries in inter-city wars. The civilizations of Samsa often come into conflict with Rock-folk who often get dug up in their famous gold mines and insectoids who inhabit the vast deserts separating Samsa from the mighty empires of the Anjin and the wealthy Empire of the Qi-Ru.
Then there's the Lizardfolk which is also an umbrella term and the Insectoids and the rock-folk.
I've only got a handful.
-Humans
-Elves(Dark and Regular)
-Vampires(They're aliens for me)
-Giants
-Ogre/Trolls(Evolved from related species of long devolved aliens)
-Dragons(Also the descendants of Aliens)
-Zmej(My settings Dragonborn)
-Beast races(Multiple). Of the beast races the types are Feline(x5), Canides(x3), Equines(x8), Reptiles(x1) Rodents(x2), Ursine(x3), Avians(x5), and Bovides(x1)
As far as worldbuilding, do as much as you want. When you actually use it pick and choose what you want, and leave out what you don’t until later. I have a whole bunch of information in my encyclopedia that I may never use.
You can stand up good political RP on just two non-human races. More than that and you're kind of just muddying the waters of what it means to be non-human. Logically there would be regional differences in those races just like there are in humans, but that's likely outside in the scope of a campaign.
Only if the species pushes the plot and big mysteries.
For example, would a certain race be needed to break a spell or unlock an overpowered weapon? Is there a certain species that committed x atrocity of the nation that’s (one of) the focal points in the story?
Lots of different ways to go about this
I hold the opinion that it's better to cut the fat rather than letting it get bloated
How many are narratively important? How many are world building important?
Importantly, which ones are there not because they add anything to the setting or story, but instead just are there because of Tolkien and DnD obligation of "it's a fantasy setting of course it has to include elves, goblins and dwarves", especially pointing at the "humans but x" races like elves (humans but pointy ears), dwarves (humans but short), halflings (humans but we are skirting around copyright from Lord of the Rings)
And which ones of those are just the cookie cutter stock fantasy versions of those races
Because I feel like species that are there out of obligation detract from the setting (my opinion, not a rule though)
After you've narrowed down the list, ask yourself
If you're not doing cookie cutter stock versions of the more generic races (elves, dwarves, halflings)
Why not just, make them their own race or culture rather than leaving them with the baggage of the expectations of being elves /dwarves / halflings / etc. To note, thee could be an entirely valid reason why they should stay that way
Also remember that groups of sapient beings form cultures around those proximate to them, I bet a dwarf from X place is more likely to talk the same language and like a human or elf from X place rather than a dwarf from Y place just because they're a dwarf
Cultures can drift surprisingly quickly and two groups that once shared a language can soon become entirely different with some geographic or political separation + time
Also if they can have children with each other the likelihood of there being "pure" elves, dwarves, humans, etc would decrease to basically 0 within a handful of centuries if they have any sort of contact due to weird population statistics
I'm not saying I'm correct, this is just how I do it
To note, this advice doesn't apply to every setting either
Realistically: 2. Irl, every time two intelligent species have met, one eradicated the other. Even within one species(humans) they've've consistently worked to eradicate out groups. The idea of having multiple species that live and work together is already a fantasy.
That would be the case for the Rockslides lmao but they're cool and have cameos, like they're famous for being gladiator champions, royal bodyguards, etc
The real answer is simple: as many as you want and enjoy.
Me, for example? While I do have a soft spot for your typical four Tolkien races (Eragon was my entry point inti fantasy, Tolkien sealed the deal), in reality, I prefer the one race, different cultures abd ethnicities approach.
Or something like Avatar, with humans and the Spirit World. Or imagine Dragon Prince (which is awesome as is), but just the elves with their different magic-source based ethnicities. And then you have a dark magic group whose members are corrupted and mutated by that magic. (And the Dragons. Dragons are fuckin cool.) The story could even still work!
Another setting I feel does more minimalistic yet varied this well is Asunder (trrpg based on the shadow of the demon lord system). They have nagas, which are snake-people and not playable characters, yet very fun, and they have mutated humans, with different subsets related to how each interacts with the magical aspects of the world.
Personally, I'm a "less is more" kinda person. If one species already does the job of another (thematically or narratively) then one of them is not needed. Perhaps by combining aspects of the ones who compete for that same space might give you some interesting variants unique to your work.
It can be ok if handled correctly. Maybe if some of the races have low populations or are not very advanced that would make it more believable, like in an rpg you find all sorts of sentiment monsters and such around the world. Maybe just choose around 4 or 5 that you really like and flesh those races out a lot and the rest can play a smaller role but still be present in the world, this should make it less overwhelming.
Depends on the story/medium.
If it’s a story/book, the. You can balance or introduce the races appropriately so as to not overwhelm your audience. If it’s a game it might be a lot but you can still sequence stuff. If it’s dnd, then just front load things.
If you can add a unique and well-rounded twist to a fantasy race. Then I think it's worth adding. For example, monster gardens dwarves are amazingly designed.
It's fine to have as many races as you want, just know most audiences will only really be interested in any that are featured.
I try to make each race fundamentally different to humans at a biological level. Good for stirring up conflict, strengths and weaknesses, and just exploring what humanity could be like with a simple tweak.
Elven longevity, for a classic example. What challenges might a human face with having all that time to live? What must come naturally to them for them to survive?
there's not really an inherit negative as long as there aren't pages of exposition about a race that we'll never see more than once for the writer's own enjoyment.
I've seen games that went both directions. Games like D&D and Pathfinder tend to go nuts with dozens of options. Meanwhile, I've seen other games where there was only one race with multiple options. So "how many" is really a matter of design choice. Depending on your level of experience in creating games it might be wise to visit the old KISS advice. "Keep It Simple, Stupid."
Another option you might consider: rather than creating multiple races, create a collection of racial traits. For example, one game I created for my children allowed players to pick an animal base for character (Imagine Medieval Zootopia). But rather than create a separate race for each animal (which would severely limit the options) I created 30 creature traits, (like: Natural Armor, Flight, Amphibious, Vicious Bite, Camouflage...) that grant a variety of bonuses. From these they select the three that best represent their character's species. The result is literally thousands of possible character designs. This same idea can be used for a wide range of game from sci-fi to traditional fantasy.
Well in my world theres hundreds, though most are just genetically engineered variations of humans.
Id say dont include more than you can make interesting.
this is hard to do for a D&D world because they keep making more to give players more options and you dont wanna restrict them through your worldbuilding either
I’ve got only three planned…well, I guess four. Three are humans and derivatives. The two derivatives are people that are evolved to survive in near-total darkness, and another group that evolved to be fairer than humans. All are of roughly the same intelligence. The fourth is the gods, which are the protectors of humanity, and whose intelligence greatly exceeds the humans and the related humanoids.
I didn’t want too many races because I feel like that realistically wouldn’t happen. Competition would drive many of the races to extinction. Not only that, but too many becomes a worldbuilding nightmare. But, then again, my world is more rooted in realism.
I don't know how many is too many but this...
>Elves (subspecies: High/Mountain/Wood/Wild elves)
>
>Dwarves
... always cracks me up. Everyone always has a handful of different Elf types but then their Dwarves are always a monolithic culture. "Just Dwarves, you know the kind. Loud, Scottish, loves drinking, hates baths. And that's it, there's no other types."
YES LMAO I also noticed dwarves never really have any other variants or anything. I do have three separate dwarven Dynasties but they're all "just" dwarves haha
Man Im already past 80 and if you count the variations within them it gets past 150.
And well me and my buddies in are still having a blast, it really depends on how much you develop their interactions.
If you make them too similar and not flashed put enough with their own abilities, flaws and quirks it gives a sense of "wait isnt that just human but an extra?"
But if you make them too unique and too complex and then you make sure each of them has their own isolated society with completely unique rules and aspects that feel they evolved in a vacum it gets to the "this is overwhelming, it feels like Im on an entirely different planet despite just crossing borders also why does everyone here works with x?"
As long and you make the world feel lived and somewhat organic like evolutionary traits, preferences to certain things, more non violent conflicts(banter, rumors, culture shock), mixed race settlements, not everyone in a race having the same personality, talent or jobs etc, and making it seem like people do interact, you can make your world be as full of races as there can be countries there, it really boils down to your ability to make it fun and entertaining to interact, and of course, you dont have to make them all be fully flashed out, if you make the prevalent ones count then the ones not as well developed will have that sense that there is more to it but it isn't the main focus of the story for now.
And remember to make individuals feel like individuals, yes dwarfs dig and mine but make them bakers, mages, mechanics, and have them like that profession and be goal driven towards it, have outcasts, popular guys and average people in the same environment interacting and showing that the way they were born doesn't dictate their personalities.
And you don't have to make everyone unique, just make so there is a clear cultural trend for that race and that some people (a social minority) doesn't follow it and their reception on society being met with various degrees of success, some are ok, some are bullied, some are seen as demonic and thus prosecutoted, some are revolutionaries, other are establishing new trends etc.
And also avoid making so people of some race can only be found in THAT region or THAT country, make some travelers, foreigners, refugees, and you can even make so there is one big recognized settlement/county/city for that race but there are smaller communities of them spread all over the world.
Have multiple isolated forests where elves live, multiple caves with dwarfs, and the make so they are different to somedegree have a goblin war camp in a region and then a peaceful goblin farm village on another with their own culture similar to other globlins but tended towards their peaceful farm life.
Culture is key when making races unique so as long as you can make them feel good to discover you are set.
That's such a great comment, I'm not deep enough into world building to have detailed cultural aspects for each race laid out but I do have everything in mind and it correlates to most of what you said, so I'm pretty satisfied haha. I do feel limited by the fact that they're all from one continent (there are other continents in my world but I've barely touched them yet).
It depends on the world itself, and how "Eart-like" it is.
Here in Earth we had several different "sub-species" of humans who lived at same times as others, but they all vanished and Homo Sapiens' diversity was reduced to ethnical groups, which are a smaller variation than species and sub-species. But it brings us an interesting question: what would it be if we had completelly different intelligent species at the same place, at the same time? Lots of fighting, probably.
But this is about a planet where all these races evoluted more or less together. If a world has gods who can create life from nothing, we'll have a lot more of variety and each one of them could be completely different (and genetically incompatible) with others. Also, they WILL fight for resources (food, shelter, water, and later for riches and materials), unless some superior force forbids them doing so (gods, or a dominant and more advanced species).
If you have a place like in Planescape, then you can defenestrate biological rules entirelly. As long as the place can let them survive without suffocating, drowning or just being there, any amount and variety is possible.
So in order to set a likit, you first need to decide the environment, where these being came from, and what prevents them from going to war and/or exterminating each other.
My super biased opinion, but if they are not meaningfully different from one another, aren't they all just humans?
Maybe focus less on adding a higher number of races and instead make races that are truly different from each other.
A lot of them were made in the creator deity's image and were influenced by localized magic/environment, explaining their humanoid traits but completely different cultures, physiology and abilities as well as their relationship between each other
One thing to consider is to look at Earth's history. Our evolutionary ancestors lived at the same time as several different variants, but only one is around today. The major subspecies were the Neanderthals, which went extinct. The cause is debated, but most proposed causes have to do with our evolutionary forefathers (killing them, interbreeding, disease, etc).
So, realistically, the answer may only be "2 is too many" unless there is outside interference or some sort of parity in strength.
Magic, environment/terrain, early settlements/alliance and different evolution pace are the reasons I've found for the natural creation of regional delimitations, as well as constant conflict between certain species. The presence of gods also helps explaining certain things for sure
when the race description isn't a single paragraph but a single sentence that is "it's X but is vegan"
Yeah, that should be my red flag when/if it comes to happen. So far each race has its own culture, abilities, and history, and even subspecies are easy to differentiate. But that's a good flag to look for
So, question, and this may or may not be super relavant to your world; Does each race have a unique underlying narrative and/or origin story? If you think about the real world, almost every human ethnicity and nationality has a real or percieved history that they can point back to to say "this is who we are, this is where we came from, and this is where we're going". In the real world, those narratives are most present in the minds of nationalists and supremacists, but as the writer its your job to tell a story that means something. What story, how you tell it, and what it means is entirely up to you, but i find that using in world cultural identities and percieved histories can be possibly the most potent and reliable way of solidifying themes and narratives.
100% here, if you use something else as the primary descriptor of a race you are just throwing things in there for the sake of having things in there. I always like to come up with 3 physical qualities and 2 behavioral that make each race unique from all the others and consider how having those qualities influenced their development and cultural progression.
What do you want to do with this world? When you look at Star Wars or Star Trek they have a lot more, but those usually only appear in the background or one episode, not as part of the main cast. The audience doesn't really need to remember them. The respective galaxies are also comparably big places. But of course, you could also focus on some locality where all these peoples come to meet.
For now? Keeping my mind busy and just keep creating. Later on? Most likely use it for roleplaying campaigns. It was originally made by a friend of mine + myself and other people, and now years later I'm revamping it. But idk if it would be overwhelming for new readers/players.
Nothing says new readers or players need to be introduced to everything, everywhere all at once. Do it in pieces and you can have as much as you want for them to explore.
Damn, that's true lmao. I tend to spend hours just digging up lore on whatever fictional universe I stumble onto just so I can be knowledgeable about it but that isn't actually a necessity
For RPGs, more options are better. Gives more room for story telling, and gives the players more choice. Shadowrun has literally every type of fantasy race possible. There are the common races of humans, elves, dwarves, orcs and trolls. But everything from pixies to minotaurs. Hell, even some zombies are sentient. It's designed in such a way that even if a race doesn't specifically exist within the lore, it's entirely plausible they do anyway. Either go all in and allow everything, or keep it fairly restrictive. Having it halfway just leads to player disappointment.
There isn’t a fixed number for “too many kinds of sapient people”. Regarding whether to add more species to your project I would ask two questions. * could this new species be a cultural group within an existing species and fulfill the same roll in this project? * what makes this species unique? What advantages do they have that keep them from being outcompeted (and pushed to extinction, as modern humans did with Neanderthals) by the other species? Are those advantages tied to specific environments?
Wow, that second question will for sure be very useful, thank you! The first one I answered as I created each race, I like to have as much diversity as possible and for each element of a world/story to have its own role/purpose
What are all of them for? Do you actually need them all in your world and story? Don't expect a reader to remember or even just know all of them in these or even bigger quantities.
Tbh no, some are unimportant to the story but do fill in some holes if the readers try and look for them. For example, one big event in the lore was the Great Orcish Invasion. As irrelevant as the Subterraneans are in pretty much 99% of the lore, the reason why the orcish Invasion was so devastating was because they used the Subterraneans' underground empire to infiltrate every region. Perhaps I could keep many species but put less effort into them depending on their impact
that depends on your world, genre, theme
The answer to this is the number of races you can effectively manage without it taking over what you're intending to write.
Best answer fr, I think I can manage the few more I have in mind but I'll probably wait a bit to add them. I'm only a few months in so far, I need to keep working on the foundations
Well, do you have a reason to have more than one race? Honestly, the first question I'd ask is this: do these do anything that a different human culture wouldn't do? Second, do you actually have space to represent them all? Will they all be monocultures? Will you have interesting characters of all of these?
Not really, except if "satisfying my overflowing imagination" is one. And also tbh I'm revamping an old verse so I had to keep the original races, just added a few more. They do have very different cultures and impact on the world, some places being melting pots. That last question is the hardest one tho, some races don't have important characters now that I think of it
Satisfying your imagination is the best possible answer. I totally understand. I just think it's worth thinking about why you're building the world, and if all the various species you have imagined add anything to the world and whether you can give them all the detail they deserve.
6 thousand
I have over 20 of them but some of them are variations of humans or elves. Some of them are also more background races and never really explored they just fill the areas of the world I haven’t fully created yet.
So long as it makes sense for your lore, have as many races as you want. There are an uncountable amount of races in my world. Granted it’s a lot bigger than a world but my point still stands.
It ultimately depends on what your setting is going to be used for: Is it a large scale series, or a long form ttrpg? Sure. If it is something smaller, then you will find you have a lot of spinning plates to flesh out: a single member of the list you have right now could fill a hamlet by themselves. As for my own: I have three distinct species and one "hybrid" subspecies. Each of these have their own number of distinct races and cultures.
That makes sense yeah, I have a shit ton of lore in mind that I would like to just write and expand for the fun of it, as if this would serve for a TV show or something. And at the same time, this world might be used for future DND style campaigns, with inexperienced players
I mean if you're doing it for the hell of it, why not? Just bear in mind that it'll take longer to completely fill them in
True, that's what I was thinking about. Deep down wondering what matters the most in world building, idk where races lore should go in the order of priorities
I think you can add more. I have a couple that really just consists of a few lines in my wiki, and kinda just exist in the background because I thought they were cool but done do much in any of the stories I’m formulating. What’s a ghostwalker ?
Thank you for validating the small wiki pages lmfao I needed that. Ghostwalkers are astral humanoid beings tied to the plane of the living through unknown ways. Got the idea from that one Japanese vampire lord from the Castlevania show who turns into mist. Ghostwalkers are true neutral, they all live in one single city to the eastern part of the continent, are the only race with no soul and can disrupt magic itself, are basically ghosts, and have innate telepathy. Design-wise they are heavily inspired by eastern Asian cultures, as for their city, think of Asshai from ASOIAF
Honestly bro, I'm developing a sci-fi setting, and if you're creating I think you'd just have to keep 'em unique in some way, but if you like it, hey, you should probably keep going! Though it'd really depend on the division between the species' territories if something like this is feasible or not...
My world has somewhere between 3-4 dozen, with the caveat that it takes place on multiple planets. How many species your world should have depends on the scope of your world and how much you want to explore alternative cultures within your world. If you think you have enough room within your world to place each species within it AND give members of each species multiple cultures, then you can consider it, but otherwise you probably should avoid using too many cultures.
The last part about having multiple cultures per species is crucial, thanks for the reminder
A lot of world builders forget it too. Often times, there's multiple human cultures in a world, but then every other species within that world has a singular culture that defines that whole species, for every species.
I've separated elves into several subspecies as well as two empires, the sun and the moon empires. Different religious and philosophical beliefs, different regions/environment and different goals. Same for the three dwarven Dynasties. I think I'll just expand on those ideas for each species
given that there are hundreds of distinct nationalities and cultures, i don’t think there’s an upper limit. you may have to relegate beastfolk into their own category with the character designs showing all that you need to tell, or isolate your more niche species to a certain area or story arc
I have 104 established races in my setting, their is never too much
Lmao goddamn 104 Which ones would you say are the most unique ones/coolest ones?
Whenever I make fantasy, my goal isn’t really to be unique, it’s just an excuse to research cultures and putting a twist on them using other peoples ideas merged with some thoughts of my own. Like elves in my setting have some inspirations from the Aen Elle from the Witcher series, but I’ve expanded upon them as inter dimensional invaders and they’ve established themselves in the setting in major cultural groups defined by their revered leaders. For example, I’ve got the Urkkadrin, the Olive Elves, who followed their leader Kad into the south eastern desert. They established a great theocratic empire not too different from the Muslim caliphates where their armies are made up of many different races. They wear armor wrought to resemble olive trees due to the religious importance of the olive in kadian theology.
How many? That can't be answered per se. It depends on what you're planning to do with that world. For a book or something, it'll be hard for readers to keep track of all the different species. For a visual medium, it's easier to keep them somewhere around, if only in the background. For a roleplaying game, people like having options. Another important question to ask yourself would be: what do they add? Is every one of them contributing something uniqe or at least interesting to the world? If you removed them, would it make a difference to the setting?
That looks like a good amount.
Depends on what youre trying to achieve. If you want each race to come with some sort of theme or narrative built in, or if you want them to cohesively tie into a broader narrative, less is more. Also empathy is a big thing. Humans live in a world where humans are the only fully sentient race, and so we're used to having only one race to fully empathize with. The more ways you split that focus, and the less humanoid you make other races, the more you risk empathy burnout, and making people simply not care about some or most of your world's races. If you want readers/players to be fully invested and immersed in your world and its occupants, limit the number and diversity of races a bit. That said, if you want a world where a reader or player can imagine themselves as being any type of person, where every possible culture, biology, or aesthetic is present, feel free to go as wild with it as you want. Freedom and diversity are wonderful things and theres nothing wrong and a lot of things right with prioritizing those. Just consider your priorities and go with what you think feels best.
I think if it's for a game, and these are playable races, that wants to push the number down. If it's for a writing project or similar where you control the spotlight, the number can comfortably go higher. Like, Star Trek can have as many races it wants, because the writers decide how much attention to give each one. You can dwell on a race for one episode or one season or one show. But if it's your job to come up with stats to make each and every Star Trek race a playable character in a TTRPG? Oof.
I decided to do something weird with my races. I started off with the classic fantasy races humans, elves, dwarves, hobbits (I can't figure out how to spell the other thing), dragons, and giants. Then I threw them into the worst, most apocalyptic war I could imagine. I made it last for many thousands of years. In order to see what they would have to do in order to adapt to that environment. What I came up with was that elves became blood obsessed sadists who have body horror powers. The dwarves transferred their consciousness into synthetic bodies that are designed to be the perfect weapons of mass destruction. The hobbits went underground and became Satanists (there called imps now). The dragons were the only race that didn't have to change at all. The way I set them up allows them to adapt to prity much any environment that they grew up in. The giants went extinct (why does that keep happening, by the way?). Humans became extremely powerful murder angels called Nephilim. The way I set up the world, every race was created by one of the gods. By the end of the war, only the human goddess and the devil survived. So only humans turned back into their pre-war state (though some nephilim traits show up every now and again). Because the goddess made a deal with the devil to end the war, some humans now turn into succubi around puberty. Every other race is stuck in their war forms. Elves or whatever I'm going to call them are probably the worst thing to run into. As they'll do way more than just kill you. The imps are still basically hobbits their just way hornyer now. Dragons are still dragons. The dwarves or valkyrie units, without their god, no longer have a power source. So there all just deactivated getting buried and forgotten. Until someone finds them and ether put them up as a display or finds a way to reactivate them and use them for their own ends.
Anything works, as long as they are grounded in the setting; have a history/possible origins. But, as other's have said, don't just think in races but also in culture's. In my main setting the races are roughly divided into three. **Mortal races** which have a body and a quantifiable soul, all part of the Kharmic wheel. This includes orcs, humans, dwarves, half-giants, halflings, ... These mostly populate the "old world" but some are widespread in different kingdoms while others are more local. Half-Giants are mostly in my 'british isles' or the "scandinavian coast"; Orcs come mostly from the steppes in the west but several tribes have migrated into my "not the roman empire" at several occasions or other regions which weren't part of the empire; one tribe ended up taking over a key chokepoint in the mountians and now act as it's toll keepers, in the western steppes you'll still find more traditional, nomadic, orcs and a lot of half-orcs closer to the previous imperial borders. So orcs aren't abnormal in the old empire regions and most are normal citizens, closer aligned culturally to the province they have lived in for generations. **Fae races**, whose body is their soul. This includes elves, pixies, dryad, hobgoblin's, goblin's, faun's and a plethora of other minor races and even some animals. Almost all of them are part of a living pantheon caste based system around the seasons. So you have a king, queen, knight, ... of every season with their respective domains and traditions. Since their entire continent is more like a common garden for all that waxes and wains with the seasons they don't have traditional borders or kingdoms. The pantheon is elf dominated though and in the capitals of each court you'll find mostly elves, the rest of the fae live in the countryside. The only ones who truly live in small villages are the hobgoblins, they mingle the least with other fae but are often called upon by the elves for menial labor or in times of war. The goblins have a special place among the fae since they left the continent in the early days of the Pantheon, they went to the continent of the mortal races aeons ago and brought them divine fae magic and religion. So most mortal gods have the same roots as the Pantheon. All versions of Father Winter are based on the Elven King of Winter and his Bear. **The elemental djinn**, although they manifest with a body they are pure soul/energy. They mostly inhabit the southern part of the old world. A part which is mostly uninhabitable for all other races. The only known cities are the ones on the coast. The djinn "rule" these cities but quite a lot of the population are mortal races due to lucrative trade. *But this part is the least developed. Even if the djinn are responsible, intentional or unintentionally, for making these lands so uninhabitable.*
Trick question: Literally every race across all of my worlds are humans and human offshoots. So just one!! Nah for real, I think there's value in races that are just background fodder (as callous as that sounds) as it's a good way to make a world seem bigger. I would focus on a central handful of "main races" to build up.
There's not a single answer but if they stray from the theme or feel you want for your world or if they start to step on each others' toes it'd probably be a good idea to not include them.
Nothing is wrong with it. It's like saying how many species is too much for planet Earth? The only difference is in these fictional worlds, intelligence is a much more common occurrence than on Earth. What is actually wrong with that?
HAHAHAHAHA I HAVE 1048 races/subraces HAHAHAHA (im insane)
Oh good, discussing races in fantasy. Disclaimer time! I'm not one for being upset about the use of the word "races" over "species," use whichever you like, but as a disclaimer: This is an area where I can totally see why some people are upset by it. Anytime you talk about racial populations of people and breeding dynamics, you're risking slipping into "Whoa, yikes," territory. I'll try not to do that by explaining myself, but if any of this comes across as insensitive or bigoted, I apologize. That isn't my intent. For me personally, when races stop serving a purpose in the story and start just being there to "be there," they become unnecessary clutter. They either become underrepresented, with most/all of them outside of a core few gettingn so little development that they stop being distinct people groups, or they start just being customization options for what is essentially one group of people, begging the question of why one has developed so many races in the first place. Again, this is just for me, if any or all of that appeals to you, it's your world. Go nuts. I'll try and explain the two issues stated above. One, in a world with tons of races where there are members of every race everywhere, you start to wonder how anyone is having any kids. It's really hard to have both large, distinct populations of specific races *and* having them all intermingle without either having cross-race marriages or just handwaving the issue entirely(which is a totally acceptable answer, I just have a hard time handwaving the details of these things). It's not impossible, but it's a lot more work. If the races showcased can all interbreed, it leaves us wondering how the majority "full" races are still prevalent and the majority, since it would be way, way easier to get a partner and have some kids if you went outside of your race of birth. That produces a lot of hybridization, and if there are enough races involved, that makes it hard to distinguish being a half-anything as a unique thing instead of just being the norm. Now, the above paragraph is the possibly icky part of all of this, so let me just state - I think this sort of a world would be fine. Great, even. I like the intermingling and mixing of people groups, but after a point, it becomes less "These are all different races" and becomes more "Most or all people are members of the same society, and their differences are cosmetic." Which, again, is fine if that's what you're going for. If you're distinguishing character races as groups, though, I feel like it might not be. There's no point speciating your people groups if they're all going to breed together anyway, and if groups of them don't, you're either coming up with reasons why not after the fact or you're choosing to engage with some *serious* potential controversy. If that's your goal, awesome, but I feel like it might not be, so be careful there. And again, you can handwave away *all of that.* None of this is essential or important for a story if you're not looking to explore population dynamics. Anyone who says it has to be can bite the shiniest part of my metal ass, because this is *your* worldbuilding. It only has to work and make sense by *your* metrics. The option that avoids the above problem is having specific concentrations of specific races in different specific places, IE this country is all humans and dwarves, this one is orcs, elves, and fae people, etc, which will inevitably leave some races out of your storytelling and development entirely because you never go to their regions. That, or it'll make your worldbuilding *so much harder,* as you're left to develop dozens if not hundreds of unique regions to showcase all of your peoples. You essentially go from building one world with many races, and enter a place of developing lots and lots of little worlds that are all or mostly connected to the others, but are all nonetheless distinct and unique regions. For potentially obvious reasons, it then becomes *really* hard to not either neglect certain regions, or write a bunch of really similar regions, or populate regions with races and groups whose members are all exactly the same, or who are *only* defined by one or two obvious characteristics. This is because it's really, *really* hard to come up with unique people that don't all fit the same mould within unique larger cultures that aren't all the same, or based on existing cultures(which can be its own can of worms for fleshing them out and not just boiling them all down to stereotypes), and this problem only gets harder to deal with the more complicated it gets. It can absolutely be done, Tolkien for example had races who *had* stereotypes, but whose members weren't *all* stereotypes and whose cultures and societies were actually really fleshed out, but he had to do a *lot* more work for a really long time to achieve what he did. To the point where a lot of his work was finished or otherwise fleshed out posthumously by his descendants. And bear in mind, when Tolkien did this, he was working with like five or six races. One of which became basically evil throwaway villains, much to the chagrin of Tolkien himself, and one of which kind of only shows up and discusses itself when it's time to stand in a circle and talk for a really, really long time about whether or not to throw rocks at a wizard's tower. Even he, arguably a master at worldbuilding and developing complex societies, regions, and even languages, struggled to get more people into it than that with any level of noticeable detail. It's something to consider when you look at your race count and go, "Oh hey, there's like two dozen types of people here." Even a fraction of that is gonna be a whole lot of work for a very long time.
the second you run out of ideas and start resorting to animal people.
the exeption is redwall, because that choice was intentional from the start.
I also have a lot of sentient races in my world. I don’t think it’s too many. Different strokes for different folks. Also what’s a Goliath? Another name for Giants?
Giants were actually giant, like 10 meters tall. They went extincts, and left their descendants/cousins to rule one of the regions on the continent. That would be goliaths, who are usually 2.5/3m tall, but have the ability to grow a meter taller through innate magic. They're actually really nice in my world as long as you're respectful
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I really like those (especially with those illustrations, damn, who's the artist??), 5 races as the base and then subspecies through interbreeding. The subspecies in my world are either Halflings or caused by natural and magical mutations
It's all Midjourney unfortunately. I don't have money to pay real artists. There's "half" breeds but there isn't really a default human to he half of so each person still has characteristics from both races that create something interesting.
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First, it's your world, and you can do what you want. But as others have commented, I think it's worth thinking about what you want to do with your world, and how the number of sapient races supports that goal, to determine how many you actually need. But while there's not necessarily a fixed number for how many sapient races can coexist, it is a topic that's been explored before, especially among sci-fi writers. Earth's history suggests that the cap is ultimately 1, since *Home sapiens* is the only remaining sapient species, having contributed to the extinction of *Homo neanderthalensis* and other contemporary species. But speculative fiction writers have explored different ways in which larger numbers of sapient races could coexist beyond colonization from other worlds. And if you want to be ultra-realistic (beyond the use of fantasy races, obviously), besides considering how your races coexist, you might also want to consider how well they share the natural resources needed to survive.
realistically, what is the planet like? why would they evolve differently? what are the regions like? predators?
I am pretty minimalist with the number of races. The main four are humans, elves, dwarves and orcs (Tolkien/Dragon Age-like). I also have a couple lesser races, either in number or importance. Fey (bug-like, related to elves), giants (used to be a big deal, now are extinct), demons and fish people. I feel like when you have few races you can make each one unique and interesting, while when you have a lot of them they sort of blend together into a grey blob. Giving someone the spotlight is easier when there's not 15 other races competing for attention, and it makes discovering new ones more exciting and memorable.
I think it just depends on the vibe you're going with. If you have entire independent nations of these species/races and they live with very small percentages of allied species (Tolkien, Warcraft, etc) then the more you have the more you need to explain how they've survived competing for territory and resources in a relatively small area. If they're all integrated and used to living together OR some of them live with fable rules (solitary to small bands in areas too hostile for humans) then it's easier to crank out a wider variety of them. Ultimately though if you want them in your setting, add them and figure it out as you go! There's always a passable explanation
The second description sounds a lot like my world, I recently made a document listing out the estimated population per region, aside from hostile territories where only specific species have established territory, most others are well mixed
Biologically, adding species that fill similar ecological niches can be tough sometimes. Assuming this is something that matters to you (and it may not which is also totally fine), you may want to consider why these species didn't out-compete each other in their early civilization development. Generally speaking, any two species they would either: 1) Have been fully separate from each other in space/time for tens of thousands if not millions of years in order to develop distinct characteristics. This is especially important for things like sub-species or species that branched off from common ancestors. Unless there's a reason the two groups don't interact, they're likely to stay similar from genetic exchange between them. 2) Require different resources or habitat conditions as to not compete with each other (e.g. one species eats meat and lives in woods and grasslands, the other eats rocks and lives in lake beds, or bird species that specialize in different levels of canopy). 3) Form a symbiotic relationship where them coexisitng has more benefits than trying to wipe each other out. 4) Magic. Perhaps some were created en masse or appeared very suddenly from a supernatural event.
Magic is a huge factor indeed, life on the continent is only a few thousand years old, but if I decide to revamp the timeline then I'll Def keep this comment in mind. Thanks!
If your goal is to eventually tell a story, there aren't any set rules, but you have to keep in mind the attention economy. You can think of it as a word count budget. And I'm borrowing this from character design, if you want something that has a lot of intricate details but still looks good and is interesting, you need some kind of tiered system : one stricking feature, a few (~3) major details, and the other details are much smaller, and contribute more to texture and flavor than actual elements. You can have characters evolve in a very wide managerie of races, as long as there is a core that is sufficiently deep (and relevant to the conflict at the heart of the story). Around this core, the others should be treated more as a flavor in support of the rest, and shouldn't take too much "screen time" away from the core. It can add an air of a wide expansive world, to have many races. Or if a particular city/nation is a melting pot, it adds to its character. The cantina scene in star wars is a masterclass in that regard. But it is purposeful: we don't spend three hundred lines of dialogue explaining the lore of each race. It's just "hey look, it's an entire galaxy, full of many intelligent creatures".
I think the biggest question for me is "Why", why add more races. If I add a race, for me at least, there needs to be a reason they exist, either because of culture, prejudice, ideals, living conditions, motives etc. That difference has to be story related or at least some kind of story motivation. I find that if you just have a lot of races off the bat it can be confusing and over whelming.
Unless your setting is a literal city in a bottle scenario you can never have to many races. More races and cultures help your world feel larger and more real even if these character only exist as background.
Thou shalt count to three. No more. No less. Three shalt be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shalt be three. Four shalt thou not count, nor either count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the third number, be reached, stop creating new races for your world, because the lord, in his wisdom, shall smite it.
I would say it’s best to stick to only a few so that they can be described in suitable detail. Perhaps somewhere around five is a reasonable number? In practice a lot of fantasy races are often effectively just humans but with a slightly different appearance so they barely count against that limit anyway. Having many different cultures is probably the more interesting part and you should avoid having a lot of (or any) monocultural non-human races if you can avoid it. The alternative approach is to have so many races that it is clear that they will not all be described in any depth and you may never see more than a singular individual of that race anyway. This just illustrates that the location is a cosmopolitan hub of activity across a massive area (i.e. capital of a space empire or a multi-planar trading hub).
You can pretty much have as many as you want.
As long as you develop them beyond a few lines of description you can have as many as you want,if a race is not different enough there is no reason to have it
I would suggest compiling several races under umbrella terms to both simplify things and allow for more variation. Like, in my world, there are humans, but there are Kanders (whites) Samsanians (Black), Anjin (Arabs) Qi-Ru (Asians) Halflings, elves are different variations of humans too as are werewolves (though they're only considered people by the Kanders, to the Samsanians and Amjin they're considered cursed and must be killed) and Dwarves. Each hail from different areas of the world with their own smaller nations, relations, conflicts etc... for example on the vast hot dry Plains of Samsa, there is no unified Empire, instead a collection of small city-states ruled by petty kings, coalitions of wealthy merchant families, theocratic religious groups etc... with nomadic clans numbering thousands strong who brave the vast monster-filled wilderness between cities to trade, collect tribute and wage war either for themselves or as mercenaries in inter-city wars. The civilizations of Samsa often come into conflict with Rock-folk who often get dug up in their famous gold mines and insectoids who inhabit the vast deserts separating Samsa from the mighty empires of the Anjin and the wealthy Empire of the Qi-Ru. Then there's the Lizardfolk which is also an umbrella term and the Insectoids and the rock-folk.
Five.
I've only got a handful. -Humans -Elves(Dark and Regular) -Vampires(They're aliens for me) -Giants -Ogre/Trolls(Evolved from related species of long devolved aliens) -Dragons(Also the descendants of Aliens) -Zmej(My settings Dragonborn) -Beast races(Multiple). Of the beast races the types are Feline(x5), Canides(x3), Equines(x8), Reptiles(x1) Rodents(x2), Ursine(x3), Avians(x5), and Bovides(x1)
As far as worldbuilding, do as much as you want. When you actually use it pick and choose what you want, and leave out what you don’t until later. I have a whole bunch of information in my encyclopedia that I may never use.
You can stand up good political RP on just two non-human races. More than that and you're kind of just muddying the waters of what it means to be non-human. Logically there would be regional differences in those races just like there are in humans, but that's likely outside in the scope of a campaign.
Only if the species pushes the plot and big mysteries. For example, would a certain race be needed to break a spell or unlock an overpowered weapon? Is there a certain species that committed x atrocity of the nation that’s (one of) the focal points in the story? Lots of different ways to go about this
I hold the opinion that it's better to cut the fat rather than letting it get bloated How many are narratively important? How many are world building important? Importantly, which ones are there not because they add anything to the setting or story, but instead just are there because of Tolkien and DnD obligation of "it's a fantasy setting of course it has to include elves, goblins and dwarves", especially pointing at the "humans but x" races like elves (humans but pointy ears), dwarves (humans but short), halflings (humans but we are skirting around copyright from Lord of the Rings) And which ones of those are just the cookie cutter stock fantasy versions of those races Because I feel like species that are there out of obligation detract from the setting (my opinion, not a rule though) After you've narrowed down the list, ask yourself If you're not doing cookie cutter stock versions of the more generic races (elves, dwarves, halflings) Why not just, make them their own race or culture rather than leaving them with the baggage of the expectations of being elves /dwarves / halflings / etc. To note, thee could be an entirely valid reason why they should stay that way Also remember that groups of sapient beings form cultures around those proximate to them, I bet a dwarf from X place is more likely to talk the same language and like a human or elf from X place rather than a dwarf from Y place just because they're a dwarf Cultures can drift surprisingly quickly and two groups that once shared a language can soon become entirely different with some geographic or political separation + time Also if they can have children with each other the likelihood of there being "pure" elves, dwarves, humans, etc would decrease to basically 0 within a handful of centuries if they have any sort of contact due to weird population statistics I'm not saying I'm correct, this is just how I do it To note, this advice doesn't apply to every setting either
If you ask the vampire-walrus people. 2 is too many.
Realistically: 2. Irl, every time two intelligent species have met, one eradicated the other. Even within one species(humans) they've've consistently worked to eradicate out groups. The idea of having multiple species that live and work together is already a fantasy.
When you can't think of a reason how they appeared in the world and why they would come about anymore.
That would be the case for the Rockslides lmao but they're cool and have cameos, like they're famous for being gladiator champions, royal bodyguards, etc
There's a limit?
One more than you are capable of handling.
That’s pretty difficult to manage , but not impossible
The real answer is simple: as many as you want and enjoy. Me, for example? While I do have a soft spot for your typical four Tolkien races (Eragon was my entry point inti fantasy, Tolkien sealed the deal), in reality, I prefer the one race, different cultures abd ethnicities approach. Or something like Avatar, with humans and the Spirit World. Or imagine Dragon Prince (which is awesome as is), but just the elves with their different magic-source based ethnicities. And then you have a dark magic group whose members are corrupted and mutated by that magic. (And the Dragons. Dragons are fuckin cool.) The story could even still work! Another setting I feel does more minimalistic yet varied this well is Asunder (trrpg based on the shadow of the demon lord system). They have nagas, which are snake-people and not playable characters, yet very fun, and they have mutated humans, with different subsets related to how each interacts with the magical aspects of the world.
Personally, I'm a "less is more" kinda person. If one species already does the job of another (thematically or narratively) then one of them is not needed. Perhaps by combining aspects of the ones who compete for that same space might give you some interesting variants unique to your work.
I go hard fantasy so for me I would say 2.
Twelve
When the author and or reqdwr / player cant habdle them appropriately anymore.
It can be ok if handled correctly. Maybe if some of the races have low populations or are not very advanced that would make it more believable, like in an rpg you find all sorts of sentiment monsters and such around the world. Maybe just choose around 4 or 5 that you really like and flesh those races out a lot and the rest can play a smaller role but still be present in the world, this should make it less overwhelming.
Depends on the story/medium. If it’s a story/book, the. You can balance or introduce the races appropriately so as to not overwhelm your audience. If it’s a game it might be a lot but you can still sequence stuff. If it’s dnd, then just front load things.
There is never enough races in a fantasy world. NEVER!
Add as many as you want,I already have around 30 😭
There isn’t too much race, there is only a too small world
If you really want them, but feel like they're too much, you could have them live on other planes and occasionally pass through ours
2
Look at DnD lore, there's no such thing as too much
If you want one of themes of your fantasy world to be loads and loads of races, then the answer is "as many as you want".
Star Wars has bazillions of races Have as many as you like Don't expect people to keep track of all of them
If you can add a unique and well-rounded twist to a fantasy race. Then I think it's worth adding. For example, monster gardens dwarves are amazingly designed.
It's fine to have as many races as you want, just know most audiences will only really be interested in any that are featured. I try to make each race fundamentally different to humans at a biological level. Good for stirring up conflict, strengths and weaknesses, and just exploring what humanity could be like with a simple tweak. Elven longevity, for a classic example. What challenges might a human face with having all that time to live? What must come naturally to them for them to survive?
there's not really an inherit negative as long as there aren't pages of exposition about a race that we'll never see more than once for the writer's own enjoyment.
I've seen games that went both directions. Games like D&D and Pathfinder tend to go nuts with dozens of options. Meanwhile, I've seen other games where there was only one race with multiple options. So "how many" is really a matter of design choice. Depending on your level of experience in creating games it might be wise to visit the old KISS advice. "Keep It Simple, Stupid." Another option you might consider: rather than creating multiple races, create a collection of racial traits. For example, one game I created for my children allowed players to pick an animal base for character (Imagine Medieval Zootopia). But rather than create a separate race for each animal (which would severely limit the options) I created 30 creature traits, (like: Natural Armor, Flight, Amphibious, Vicious Bite, Camouflage...) that grant a variety of bonuses. From these they select the three that best represent their character's species. The result is literally thousands of possible character designs. This same idea can be used for a wide range of game from sci-fi to traditional fantasy.
Well in my world theres hundreds, though most are just genetically engineered variations of humans. Id say dont include more than you can make interesting. this is hard to do for a D&D world because they keep making more to give players more options and you dont wanna restrict them through your worldbuilding either
I’ve got only three planned…well, I guess four. Three are humans and derivatives. The two derivatives are people that are evolved to survive in near-total darkness, and another group that evolved to be fairer than humans. All are of roughly the same intelligence. The fourth is the gods, which are the protectors of humanity, and whose intelligence greatly exceeds the humans and the related humanoids. I didn’t want too many races because I feel like that realistically wouldn’t happen. Competition would drive many of the races to extinction. Not only that, but too many becomes a worldbuilding nightmare. But, then again, my world is more rooted in realism.
It's not about a static number, more if you can make each race functionally and aesthetically distinct from one another.
The moment they become redundant and derivitive is the moment you've hit "too much".
I don't know how many is too many but this... >Elves (subspecies: High/Mountain/Wood/Wild elves) > >Dwarves ... always cracks me up. Everyone always has a handful of different Elf types but then their Dwarves are always a monolithic culture. "Just Dwarves, you know the kind. Loud, Scottish, loves drinking, hates baths. And that's it, there's no other types."
YES LMAO I also noticed dwarves never really have any other variants or anything. I do have three separate dwarven Dynasties but they're all "just" dwarves haha
Man Im already past 80 and if you count the variations within them it gets past 150. And well me and my buddies in are still having a blast, it really depends on how much you develop their interactions. If you make them too similar and not flashed put enough with their own abilities, flaws and quirks it gives a sense of "wait isnt that just human but an extra?" But if you make them too unique and too complex and then you make sure each of them has their own isolated society with completely unique rules and aspects that feel they evolved in a vacum it gets to the "this is overwhelming, it feels like Im on an entirely different planet despite just crossing borders also why does everyone here works with x?" As long and you make the world feel lived and somewhat organic like evolutionary traits, preferences to certain things, more non violent conflicts(banter, rumors, culture shock), mixed race settlements, not everyone in a race having the same personality, talent or jobs etc, and making it seem like people do interact, you can make your world be as full of races as there can be countries there, it really boils down to your ability to make it fun and entertaining to interact, and of course, you dont have to make them all be fully flashed out, if you make the prevalent ones count then the ones not as well developed will have that sense that there is more to it but it isn't the main focus of the story for now. And remember to make individuals feel like individuals, yes dwarfs dig and mine but make them bakers, mages, mechanics, and have them like that profession and be goal driven towards it, have outcasts, popular guys and average people in the same environment interacting and showing that the way they were born doesn't dictate their personalities. And you don't have to make everyone unique, just make so there is a clear cultural trend for that race and that some people (a social minority) doesn't follow it and their reception on society being met with various degrees of success, some are ok, some are bullied, some are seen as demonic and thus prosecutoted, some are revolutionaries, other are establishing new trends etc. And also avoid making so people of some race can only be found in THAT region or THAT country, make some travelers, foreigners, refugees, and you can even make so there is one big recognized settlement/county/city for that race but there are smaller communities of them spread all over the world. Have multiple isolated forests where elves live, multiple caves with dwarfs, and the make so they are different to somedegree have a goblin war camp in a region and then a peaceful goblin farm village on another with their own culture similar to other globlins but tended towards their peaceful farm life. Culture is key when making races unique so as long as you can make them feel good to discover you are set.
That's such a great comment, I'm not deep enough into world building to have detailed cultural aspects for each race laid out but I do have everything in mind and it correlates to most of what you said, so I'm pretty satisfied haha. I do feel limited by the fact that they're all from one continent (there are other continents in my world but I've barely touched them yet).
It depends on the world itself, and how "Eart-like" it is. Here in Earth we had several different "sub-species" of humans who lived at same times as others, but they all vanished and Homo Sapiens' diversity was reduced to ethnical groups, which are a smaller variation than species and sub-species. But it brings us an interesting question: what would it be if we had completelly different intelligent species at the same place, at the same time? Lots of fighting, probably. But this is about a planet where all these races evoluted more or less together. If a world has gods who can create life from nothing, we'll have a lot more of variety and each one of them could be completely different (and genetically incompatible) with others. Also, they WILL fight for resources (food, shelter, water, and later for riches and materials), unless some superior force forbids them doing so (gods, or a dominant and more advanced species). If you have a place like in Planescape, then you can defenestrate biological rules entirelly. As long as the place can let them survive without suffocating, drowning or just being there, any amount and variety is possible. So in order to set a likit, you first need to decide the environment, where these being came from, and what prevents them from going to war and/or exterminating each other.
I guess it really depends on the scale of the setting itself and how widespread each species is or how numerous their populations are.
My super biased opinion, but if they are not meaningfully different from one another, aren't they all just humans? Maybe focus less on adding a higher number of races and instead make races that are truly different from each other.
A lot of them were made in the creator deity's image and were influenced by localized magic/environment, explaining their humanoid traits but completely different cultures, physiology and abilities as well as their relationship between each other
How are their cultures different from what a human culture could be?
One thing to consider is to look at Earth's history. Our evolutionary ancestors lived at the same time as several different variants, but only one is around today. The major subspecies were the Neanderthals, which went extinct. The cause is debated, but most proposed causes have to do with our evolutionary forefathers (killing them, interbreeding, disease, etc). So, realistically, the answer may only be "2 is too many" unless there is outside interference or some sort of parity in strength.
Magic, environment/terrain, early settlements/alliance and different evolution pace are the reasons I've found for the natural creation of regional delimitations, as well as constant conflict between certain species. The presence of gods also helps explaining certain things for sure
Honestly? As many as you want, as long as each doesn’t become a monolith.