Worldbuilding with Ancestries and Monsters

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Everything you choose or make for your world, (or even for a campaign in someone else's world) from the simplest NPC, to the dungeons and crypts, to the accents characters use, to curating spells, ancestries, and the like, to include . . . that's all worldbuilding.

Today, we're going to examine ancestry and monster choice or creation, including the origins of ancestries and monsters, their abilities, their place in the world, and what all that says about both those monsters and they world they fit into. It's a major thrust of my Alternate Ecology series to examine exactly how monsters fit into the ecology and cosmology of the world, and its definitely important to remember that the effects go both ways. The nature of the world you're working in, whether you made it or not, affects the kind of creatures live there. Conversely, those creatures, once you've made them, will have effects on the world around them, and other things will act or change in response. So lets get into it.

I will be using the Successor States of Rega in my examples again, but I don't really need to get into the weeds about the setting any further than I have. I've been sort of wandering off the point and just talking about my world, less than teaching how to make one, and I'll try to do a better job going forward.

Choose the ancestries or 'races' you want to use in your game very carefully. These, especially, will set the tone for much of your game. A setting where you can be any fantasy creature D&D or other rpgs have thought up in the last 50 years is going to feel, at best, crowded and inconsistent, because not all those critters are really compatible on the same world. So definitely keep this in mind when choosing your monsters, the two will be more interesting if there are known interactions between certain types of monsters and the kinds of things PC's can be. Note that a limited choice is not bad in anyway, and can help to focus campaign or setting themes and mood. Don't try to fit everything in unless you want a disjointed, but also cosmopolitan and maybe planehopping kind of feel. Totally ok to let people be anything when playing Planescape, for instance. Anywho, back on topic.

Lets take a look at Rega when it comes to ancestries. Rega allows all the ancestries in the Player's Handbook except dragonborn, gnomes and half-orcs. Why?

Well, in Rega, gnomes were never created. The closest thing is a subtype of halflings called Underhills, and they aren't crafters and miners. One of the reasons for that is it maintains a distinction between them and the dwarves which can get muddled when you throw in gnomes. As for half-orcs, this ties right into the monster choices. Rega doesn't have Orcs at all, and the goblin folk are a variety of beings who are still technically biologically members of the main races, twisted by magic. With no orcs, and other creatures in their niche, there's no place for half-orcs.

Instead of half orcs or dragonborn, in the basic player ancestries, we have a different entry: The Spartoi. Metallic humanoids crafted from the teeth of the metallic dragons in the First Age, they kind of fit the big strong ancestry mold, and take the place of Orcs, Dragonborn, and Goliaths all at once. But they also have a unique flavor and purpose in the world. They were made to oppose the dragonspawn (like kobolds and dragonborn) that come from chromatic dragons, who were made by the dark Gods as living siege weapons. Now, I might put out a book later where one can be dragonborn (called drakonai or drakonae) or kobold (drakonaki), but at base, most of them are under the control of the evil dragons, and thus (mostly) 'bad guys', so it makes sense to put them out later in my Outcasts book, rather than have them available to the folks that are focusing on uncomplicated heroic adventure and maybe don't want to deal with 'fantasy racism'.

Now, I added in new elf and dwarf and halfling subtypes, and there are rarer ancestries like skyloi (dogfolk) and chaosborn (folks descended from some denizen of Limbo/Primordial Khaos), but the main five choices are humans, dwarves, elves, halflings, and spartoi. Gives a classic array, good variety, but not so much it feel muddled. And the last race makes the whole setting feel more mythic, less stereotypical generic fantasy. Tieflings and Aasimar exist, by the way, but mostly they are just considered members of their other ancestry, despite their powers. Cross breeding with gods, demigods, etc, is just kind of a fact of life in a Greco-Roman inspired setting.

So I chose the five main ancestries for a feel. To cross familiar fantasy with a little bit of a deep mythological feel, and to very clearly set up the dynamic of the settin. Each one of these types of folks have their own relations with the other beings of their world. Spartoi are born and bred to fight dragons and dragonspawn, and although they can certainly choose another path for themselves, a certain perspective on the draconic races is heavily culturally inculcated in them. All five of these peoples have their own specific counterpart among the kobaloi, aka the goblinfolk, because the kobaloi were literally created when the Dark Gods intentionally twisted members of each of those into mockeries of themselves. Even the kobaloi are not 'inherently' evil, by the way, but it's hard to be good when the dark gods infected you with some kind of weird curse thing. The kobaloi are genetically, biologically, still members of their original species. Goblins are still halflings. Hobgoblins are still dwarves. Bugbears are still Spartoi. Plagueborn are still human. Serpentfolk are still elves. So there becomes an interesting dynamic between the kobaloi and their counterparts, and this also greatly affects what the world will look like. (See my article on the Kobaloi.)

What 'racism' there is, in the setting, is directed at two specific groups: One, the kobaloi, are not a race or even a species, but rather twisted members of other species, that are in many ways victims. While prejudice toward them might well be both ableist and truly horrible, it is, to a certain extent, understandable. It's more like a prejudice against, say, vampires or werewolves, both people who have been infected or cursed with a condition that invariably drives them to evil acts, than it is 'racism' per se.

The other is more legitimately considered racism. There are a very few dragonspawn who have broken free of their dragon queens, and some of them are good of heart, but the vast majority of them are servitors, many of whom don't realize there are other options. In many ways, the dragonspawn of Rega are more like the drones, workers and soldiers of a hive in which the dragon is the queen (see my updated version of an Alternate Ecology of Dragons). Once again, many of them don't even really have free will, and some break free, but to the people of the Successor States, they are simply monsters.

There's a dichotomy there, because the people of Rega pride themselves on being tolerant, cosmopolitan. There is no sex or gender based discrimination. Among the five main ancestries (dwarves, elves, halflings, humans and spartoi), there is no 'racial' or ancestry based discrimination. It just doesn't occur to them, mostly because of their gods. People, however, have real trouble being tolerant and open minded when faced by someone that looks like a thing that hurt them, and continues to threaten them. And the kobaloi and dragonspawn are the primary foot-soldiers of the Dark Gods, who expressly wish to destroy the world of Tellus. All of these truths exist because of conscious design choices while building my ancestries and monsters, and make Rega a place that feels much more real.

It doesn't end with intelligent creatures, either. Having established that there are pools of Invidian blood just lying around on Tellus, from when the great primordial dragon was slain by the storm god, it gave me a clear origin for most of the monsters of the world. They represent normal creatures warped by the chaotic and evil influence of that blood, made into monsters by horrific mutation, and many of them are driven as much by the pain of their existence as they are anger, or hunger, or 'evil'.

So that told me that making a lot of monsters was going to be like the medieval mix and match monsters, and the combo critters that are so common in Greek and other myth . . . or was it the other way around? Maybe the blood came up as an explanation of why there are so many things out there that are weird combos or mutations of other critters. Either way, the cause and the critter both expand the world, and its rules and suppositions. (see On the Origin of Monsters).

On a more prosaic, Doylist level (outside the fiction), the kinds of monsters you make, or choose to use, affect the setting and the narrative profoundly. Imagine a few fantasy settings. All are generic Anglocentric fantasy worlds. One has as its primary monsters, a species of intelligent humanoids like Orcs. Maybe there are a variety of kinds of Orc, and a few other monsters around the edges, like a few undead, a couple dragon things, a nameless horror . . .but mostly it's Orcs. The other uses mainly non-humanoid monsters, especially, say dragon types. A third only has human fighters, human magic wielders and undead, with like, three dragons ever. All these are very different worlds, different games, different settings, even if every other single thing about them is the same. Different threats mean different worlds, different ways societies have formed to face those threats, different architecture . . . in the dragon world, if almost all of your enemies can fly you don't have castles with open courtyards, your fortresses are pyramids or domes. Of course if they aren't that common, maybe your culture doesn't adapt completely, but you will have specialists in dealing with dragons. If you face orcish hordes all the time, you have a use for normal castles, but you have to have folks regularly patrolling to catch all the raiding parties. In the world with mostly human foes and then a dragon or two and the undead, everything looks a lot more like medieval Europe up until the time the undead get into big groups, and folks have to deal with that.

I've just described The Lord of the Rings, Dragonbane by Barbara Hambly, and Game of Thrones. Same Anglocentric backdrop . . . totally different worlds. Because of monster choice.

So. When worldbuilding, don't just throw in everything and the kitchen sink. Curate, and choose your ancestries and monsters carefully. They can change everything, and your players or readers will appreciate the depth and consistency of tone and theme.