Races - a general discussion

[Chalgyr]

We have... a lot of races on KotL. Of course, part of that was feeding the evolution/trasform system we put in place during our earliest days. While I'm looking back at things and what we would probably 'do differently' - Thalia and I both agreed we would probably scrap the evolution system. It's fun from a 'game' standpoint - to try and improve upon a race, but from a logical in-character standpoint, it tends to be lacking I think.

Question is, what races would you want to work with - all skills aside. I am just thinking of them as base races. Are there any you would add that are not among our rather plentiful roster? Some basic rules I've been making in the back of my mind:

- Humanoid size/shape. No dragons, no pixies, no unicorns... and much to my wife's delight, no Grigs.
- This does not include racial 'modifiers' or stats (vampires, ghosts, etc)
- Again, I'm not worrying about skils or even equipslots

My general list of ones I would still want to have had:

- Siltha
- Shadow Elf
- Dwarf/Mountain Dwarf
- Siren/Saron (female/male)
- Gnome
- Kalchi

What about you?

[Tylon]

I'm glad that I'm not the only one that had that thought about evolution... I'm still considering how to make my character grow his third arm ICly. 

One thing I enjoy about this mud is it has the capacity to entertain a wide venue - there are outlets for rp, powergaming, what have you. It appeals to a wide audience. So while its useful to talk about what races fit best into roleplay... race balancing and optimization needs to be touched on as well. I feel as with any grouping of races on a mud the ones generally chosen revolve around what is 'best' for the class that is chosen. A good way of approaching this could be throwing some optimal races in for each tier-class, or maybe even to the first sub-tier. So mayhaps 10 races, and race 1 could be the best for the sorcerer cast etc.

Now, from my standpoint what these races are is in material. You start with what skills would be useful to that particular cast and throw them on the race. The caveat being, the skills need to be useful from level 1 to level 275 - racial attack skills by and large do not currently qualify in this category. Then and only then do you start spinning the rp characteristics around the races.

Having sizing standards and even wearslot standards is a good thing, but I would caution strongly against making the races too standard. MUDs with 3 flavors of human come to mind. Kotl, however, lives at the other end of that spectrum with 25 races. Combine that with 5 base classes, 7 kingdoms and stat rolling at creation and you've got a very complex setup for the layman to walk into and try to understand. Most new characters wind up creating multiple times to find their own optimal setup. Some MUDs correct this by having newbie school etc. being a primer for the MUD before they are allowed to make such decisions, which can be a good thing.

Keep in mind also that most players must like the actual game dynamics on a MUD before they will invest effort into a roleplay scheme.

So with all of that in mind, here's my essential kotl race list 1.0:

Storm Giant - Sorcerer
Snifvliblin - Conjurer
Centaur - Monk
Siren - Pastor
Kalchi - Shaman
Siltha - Ranger
Gargoyle - Brigand
Tallfellow - Thief
Athach - Warrior
Cloud Giant - Knight

Take note of a couple of details: First, I retained the evolve system and used end races because I feel that's something unique this mud should retain. Second, I used what we already had, but obviously the skills/spells/stats would need to be optimized around whatever cast it was intended for. Third... these would be presented as race suggestions (that could be ignored) at creation "You're a warrior, so you should probably be a athach or a cloud giant." Fourth, I tried to select neutral varieties of races because I feel the whole "evil race good race" blah blah should be player dependent rather than racial tendencies.

Anyways, back to studying, have a good day and I hope at least some of this sparks some creative juices.
-Tylon

[Elendil]

Hi Chal,

I must say that I agree with all that you have selected, only I would also retain the halflings and add High Elf(Eldar) to the list of selections.  And I will say that I have lots of fun with playing the siltha(Avariel)char I got 

[Thalia]

I'll put in a vote to retain humans.

And if we're going to really trim the list of races, I'm a little uncomfortable with including more than 1 variation of any "race" -- Tylon has 3 giants (Cloud Giant, Storm Giant, Athach) and Chalgyr has 3 Elves (Siltha, Shadow Elf, Kalchi).

What about some races we don't already have?  Any interest in...
-- non-shapechanging feline?
-- some thing canine?
-- Minotaur?
-- Ursine (bear)?
-- Dragonkin or Drake or something dragonic/reptilian that's of medium-to-large builid?

[Elendil]

Kk.....so you want Minotaurs, Ewoks and Lycans.....check.....::runs and hides from Thalia's wrath::

[Elendil]

All the jokes aside,

I must confess to liking some of Thalia's suggestions and some of Chal's suggestions....so here are my suggestions included in this too:
- Siltha
- Shadow Elf
- Dwarf/Mountain Dwarf
- Siren/Saron (female/male)
- Gnome
- Halfling (my suggestion)
- High Elf (my suggestion)
- Lycan (Thalia's)
- Urso (Thalia's)
- Minotaur (Thalia's)
- Human (Thalia's)
I do think such a selection would also be another strong selling point for this game, Chal...again, just my tuppence thrown into the hat....

[Daklore]

You just want Gnomes around because Daklore >P

But in all honesty, I think races should be -flavour-, not a factor in the outright power of the character as it were. Race can offer some benefit toward a class combo, but.... I, personally, feel they should be flavour type and what you -want- to play, not what you feel you have to play to benefit from a certain class.

So.... I dun care much about races.

The limit on stats can be problematic, but understandable considering ye olden days... but... yeah. I made no sense, didn't I? I don't mind the point of "evolution", I always just considered it like pokemon evolving, except we used magic >P (maybe a mutation-type event after "absorbing" so much of the ambient magical energy of the land?)

[Thalia]

Kk.....so you want Minotaurs, Ewoks and Lycans.....check.....::runs and hides from Thalia's wrath::

"Want"?? -- meh. 

"Want people to consider??  -- :: nods::   That I could agree to.

However, we were going to pull a race from Star Wars for a Medieval RP, (1) we'd be insane and (2) it would be Wookie way before Ewok.

[Chalgyr]

I vote wookie.

And humans - I should have included those.

I don't have a problem with multiple elf types, but they should be different. Even if we're not looking at 'skills', resistances would be way different. It might be nice if there were other differentiators as well.

[Chalgyr]

I thought I would share some of the other feedback I have gotten via emails and notes. I'll keep the person unknown but this way we can still converse about the ideas.

While i love augment and it is really nice, i am not complaining just trying to bring a fact to light, classes like evokers archmages and even chronomancers seem to benefit earlier on more so than most other classes from this. Yes I know that is just how it is. I wouldn't want you to change that anyway. But when some classes like rogues have 5-6 at most attacks compared to warriors who will have upwards what? 8-10ish attacks?

While we rogues can augment to those attacks What i'd like to advocate for "rogues" more specifically for rogues with circle is that Circle receive a damage buff. Nightstrike is an amazing rune, but circle pales in comparison to most other mage spells. And without a Nightstrike runestone Circle is extremely underwhelming, not to mention Nightstrike is rare runestone if not one of the rarest sharing in that pool with the archmagi which i beleive runes like nightstrike and archmagi should be but thats not the topic. Circle needs a buff even if its only going from its base now to base.2.

Also Races? rakshasa weretigers and werepanthers need something cool, because honestly their racial to transform under a full moon kind of sucks at high levels, being able to maybe control that at X hours would be a pretty cool feature for them and maybe might encourage people to play that class more so than it has been over the years.

And if that isn't taken for a possible change maybe at specific set of hours a rakshasa (and its evos) could maybe start wearing some pieces of gear not all but some. because at high levels we either get excluded or gear a negative mark in our death column if they are not lucky enough to be a vampire which some if not all are but htere are some that aren't lucky enough to be able to change form.

[Chalgyr]

And another one:

beyond the standard fantasy races I'd like to see things like lizardmen
and werefolks (differnt animals transform into

[Chalgyr]

And one more secret contributor:

I think you have a lot of mobility here with this idea.

IF you wanted to think really outside the box.. could be some work but man it might be refreshing and give people something to do.

What if each kingdom lets you start out as one or two races.   And then you can get two subraces for each of those races at that kingdom.  (or something like this)

Lets say.. Klevnone

You can start as..

A Giant

(can't think of another one for this example, but lets say starting at klevnone lets you start as a giant)
Then you can evolve via quest.. or story line quest, or something.
To Athach, Storm Giant, Water Giant, Earth Giant, Fire Giant, Cloud Giant, Colussus

(Now you could change them around if you wanted to change your rp.. maybe even be both! like.. half Cloud Giant, half Storm Giant.)

Each subrace could add some type of racial modifiers via resistance, stats, 'special attack' whatever, third arm etc. 

Murkwood would have..

Elves.

you could then be a wood elf, water elf/siren, high elf, dark elf, etc..

Armengar would have..

Human

You could then go...  nowhere.. but have humans have their slightly better than average attirubtes or what not.

Mesilena could have..

Undead

And from there you could go... Vampire, Skeleton, Ghost, Zombie, etc.

(infact I would go back to ARmengar and maybe make it a holier city and do.. something like 'Angel' 'Arch Angel' etc.

Tolin could have some rare quests.. that could modify races if you wanted.. or just get a specific race.
(Dragons would be amoung that, you could pick which one you wanted.. color.. and do a quest for it.  Make it only for elves? or maybe even any race?)
 
There is a lot you could do with a system like this.. The biggest factor I would look into is how many people get sick of their race class combo?  And if they could take all their customs and time and do some quests to change it up.  Maybe they would stay or when they come back

They would be into a certain theme and could change it up.  ETC.

The beauty of something like this is, it allows people to change their race with some kind of magical potion (why wouldn't something like that exist, in Dungeons and Dragons it does!)

You could then add... racial modifier quests as needed or event like.. Bloodplanes could offer otherworld races..

(I would also have Cherna start a fortress in BP and change BP to Blood tokens, and have it be questable and require you be bloodsworn) or something..

[Daklore]

I don't really agree on aligned races, as that kind muddies up the water... I will agree that weres are in a bad place right now. They have great flavour, but the loss of most of their gear, if not all of it--I forget--really makes them an undesired race to play.

As for the bit about skills and spells... definately needs looking at, but this isn't the thread for that. So I won't go into it here.

[Thalia]

What if we treated all race-evolving more like profession tiering -- you start as a base, then have a choice of several options to evolve into?  Basically, what we do with Dragons/Dracolich and Unicorn/Thestryl/Pegasus.

So a basic Elf might have option to evolve into a Winged Elf or Wild Elf.  A Winged Elf might have the option of evolving into a Grey Elf (long flight, extra wisdom) or Kalchi (short flight, mental powers, extra charisma).

A Catkin might have the option of evolving into a Neko (lithe/acrobatic, extra agility, nature loving) or a Leonin (fierce fighter, extra con & str).

Evolving could involve quests or specific activities/actions to switch to new race -- like we do with Dracolich and Shadow Elf, instead of just issuing the TRANSFORM COMPLETE command.

[elios]

What if we treated all race-evolving more like profession tiering -- you start as a base, then have a choice of several options to evolve into?  Basically, what we do with Dragons/Dracolich and Unicorn/Thestryl/Pegasus.

So a basic Elf might have option to evolve into a Winged Elf or Wild Elf.  A Winged Elf might have the option of evolving into a Grey Elf (long flight, extra wisdom) or Kalchi (short flight, mental powers, extra charisma).

A Catkin might have the option of evolving into a Neko (lithe/acrobatic, extra agility, nature loving) or a Leonin (fierce fighter, extra con & str).

Evolving could involve quests or specific activities/actions to switch to new race -- like we do with Dracolich and Shadow Elf, instead of just issuing the TRANSFORM COMPLETE command.

I like that idea Thalia