The Imperial Age Fantastical Races, Podreczniki RPG, The Imperial Age
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F
rom its inception, the
Imperial Age
line has been intended as a toolkit, or rather a
smorgasbord of options so that you could take what you liked and leave out what
you didn’t. After releasing rules for magick and steam, we realized that some of
you might want to bring in races from your favourite fantasy roleplaying game (and if
you’re playing
The Imperial Age,
then we have a pretty good idea what that is!). Toward
that end,
The Imperial Age: Fantastical Races
adapts classic and not-so-classic fantasy
races into the Victorian era.
Perhaps no
Imperial Age
supplement embodies the toolkit approach more than
Fantastical Races.
As the Game Master, you have a number of decisions to make when
incorporating this product into your campaign. You will have to determine which races
exist, how they came to exist, and how they it into your Victorian world. Hopefully,
we’ll be able to give you enough guidance along the way to make these decisions
fast and enjoyable.
THE DEFAULT SETTING
The default assumption for
Fantastical Races
is that Fantasy Races have
always existed throughout recorded history, as most classic
fantasy RPG settings follow this model. The human race is a
relatively recent development, but humanity quickly spreads
and dominates the globe. As it did so, the other races were
pushed to the fringes of civilization or forced to assimilate
into human cultures.
Prior to the ascendance of humanity, elves, dragons,
dwarves and other elder races had large empires before
“the Great Cataclysm.” This apocalypse caused
widespread
destruction,
destroying
these
ancient cultures and reshaping the
world. The remnants of these
elder races, now weakened,
struggled
for
survival
alongside
newer
races
that
arose
after
the
Great
Cataclysm.
Fantastical
Races
by
Walt
Ciechanowski
For the sake of convenience, overall human history remains intact
and progressed much as it did in the real world so that the Imperial
Age geographically looks much the same as the historical Imperial
Age. The beginning of each racial entry includes an extract from
the ictional English naturalist Sir Tristan Mayweather’s book,
The
Races of Earth: a Survey
(1880)
.
WHY A DEFAULT SETTING?
We began this project with the goal of making
Fantastical Races
a generic toolkit. As Game
Master, it is up to you to use as much or little of
the material contained herein as you see it. As
a book of options, it may seem contradictory to
present a default setting.
A PLETHORA OF RACES
It can be a bit intimidating at irst when lipping through this
product. Many races are available and most have their own
paragon classes. Before panic sets in, however, let us reassure
you that
Fantastical Races
follows the “options, not limitations”
school of thought. We’ve assumed that you won’t be using every
single race (although you could if you wanted to), but merely
select those that you want to use.
However, as the project developed we realized
that a lightly detailed default setting helped tie the
book together as well as establish a baseline for
using the book as we felt most GMs would, adding
a classic mix to their Imperial Age campaigns.
The classic approach is also useful to long-time
players that want to play traditional versions of
their favourite Fantastical Races. In short, we took
the path of least resistance to keep the setting
familiar, rather than make jarring changes.
The irst section of races,
“A Survey of the Fantastical Races,”
includes the standard spread of races for the default setting. Most,
if not all, of the races in this section should be familiar to anyone
with passing experience of fantasy roleplaying games. That said
you need not use all of these races if you don’t want to. If you
don’t want goblins or hallings in your game, simply ignore them.
That said, Sir Tristan’s excerpts are written in
italics and easily ignored if you are using a different
approach. The rest of the entries are written as
generically as possible. Occasionally elements
from the default setting slip in, but like Sir Tristan’s
excerpts they are also easily ignored.
The second section,
“The Exotic and the Powerful,”
is even
more optional. Many of these races have level adjustments or are
rare in fantasy campaigns. Some are more easily incorporated
than others; a half-dwarf would it seamlessly in a campaign
that already includes half-elves and half-orcs, while ogres would
require you to consider level adjustments.
CUSTOMIZING FANTASTICAL RACES
While
Fantastical Races
uses the classic approach, there are still many things you’ll need to consider when using Fantastical
Races in your campaign. Do you wish for your races to maintain their “classic” appearance or do you want in-eared dwarves
and copper-skinned elves? Do all of the races share the same lifespan, or do different races mature and age at different
rates? Is it possible for the races to interbreed or are they separate species?
The sections below are designed to guide you through such questions. Remember that familiarity and consistency are
assets. If your players are used to a particular presentation of a gnome, then it will be easiest for you to simply use that
presentation.
APPEARANCE
When adapting fantasy races for the Imperial Age, I deliberately stayed away from describing physical features unless the
race was only found in a particular geographic area or had physical features that would be more or less uniform no matter
where they settled. Stating that all elves have pale skin and golden hair might sound ine if you’re running a campaign in a
fantasy version of medieval north-western Europe, but sounds very out of place for elves that have lived along the Congo
or Mississippi Rivers for thousands of years.
However, it’s your game. If you decide that all hallings look like East Asians, go for it. This is especially true if you decide that
a race is only found in a particular geographic area. If all orcs come from the Great Thar Desert, then they’ll likely look like
South Asians. On the other hand, especially for long-lived races like elves and gnomes, you may decide that there weren’t
enough generations to justify an evolutionary change of characteristics and that all elves resemble Persians, no matter how
long their ancestors have lived in France, Japan, and Argentina.
On a related note,
Fantastical Races
has kept the races as classic as possible. Dwarves, elves, and half-orcs look as most
players and GMs would recognize. That said, instead of selecting from the cosmetic differences portrayed in various media
(do elves have short or long pointed ears? Do orcs have tusks?), you may wish to move your races even further away
from their classic appearances. Perhaps your dwarves are clean-shaven and your elves have a golden skin. Perhaps your
goblins come from the desert and have large dorsal ins. Perhaps your aquatic elves have green hair and silver-blue scales.
It’s your world; customise your races as you will.
LIFESPAN
A race’s lifespan is a huge consideration in an Imperial Age campaign. If Queen Elizabeth was an elf, she might still be on
the throne today (and perhaps Scotland might still be an independent nation or incorporated into Great Britain at a much
later time). The same gnomish inventor that assisted Thomas Edison with the light bulb might have helped Benjamin
Franklin discover that lightning was electricity (or, if Benjamin Franklin was a gnome, he might have lived long enough to
invent the light bulb himself).
As these two examples show, the Imperial Age could be a very different place if you incorporate long-lived Fantastical
Races, especially if you choose to change the race of famous historical characters. This could be a lot of work for you and
may also confuse some players, making it dificult to get
into a historical mindset. Unless you are willing to put in
the work and deal with the consequences, you may wish
to consider the following options.
THE SHOCK OF LONGEVITY
In many fantasy roleplaying game settings, the player does
not have a good grasp of the history of the world. You may
have crafted a long and colourful history of the world of
Fictionia, but to the player they are just unfamiliar nations
and wars. Technology may not have changed much over
long periods of time, with elves and orcs using the same
arms and armour in a thousand-year-old war that the PCs
carry today. Conceptually, the player would portray a two
hundred year old irst level elven wizard no differently than
he would an eighteen year old human one. It feels the same
to him.
First, you may rule that all famous historical characters
were human. While this may seem unrealistic, it neatly
sidesteps the problem and will seem much more
palatable if other races are rare. Also, if your world
includes magick, engines, or other anachronistic
technologies, you may wish to make racial historical
igures in those categories. Having Elwindalia the elven
hermetic disciple develop the necromancy school in
1451 and add a new type of
lame strike
to the evocation
school in 1680 will not harm your timeline.
Second, and perhaps more obviously, you can lower (or
raise) age limits to roughly correspond with humanity.
To pick on old Ben Franklin again, he lived to the ripe
old age of 84 and had a lirtatious reputation. It would be
quite easy to develop him into an elf that was a bit more
youthful looking throughout his middle ages.
In the Imperial Age, however, the weight of history falls
squarely on their shoulders. Assuming your players stayed
awake during history classes, playing a character that spent
her youth supporting the American and French Revolutions
will certainly feel different than playing one born in 1862.
This provides excellent roleplaying fodder and seeds for
future adventures. The PC may have encountered and/or
befriended a few notable and now deceased personalities
along the way. Some characters, both player and game
master, may have trouble letting go of past troubles and
inlict them on their enemy’s descendants.
Third, you could use an elastic approach. Most players
aren’t history majors and, although Imperial Age players
are likely to have a greater interest in history, will not
notice subtle changes. Perhaps the elven Ben Franklin
did live a few more decades. He might have even been
President (and later Governor) of Pennsylvania for a
few more terms, replacing historical igures unfamiliar to
your players. Perhaps Alexander Graham Bell is a gnome,
but he only succeeded with the same inventions that the historical Bell did. Your players may not even care if Ben Franklin
invented the light bulb with his partner Tom Edison, and the old revolutionary is now in London hawking their wares.
INTIMATE RELATIONS
One of the questions you must consider when adding new races to
your campaign is whether these other sentient beings are actually
subspecies or species. The primary distinction is whether members
of each race can produce fertile offspring together. Thus, if an elf and
human mate and produce a fertile half-elf, then elves and humans
are two subspecies within the same species. If they cannot (or if
the half-elf is infertile), then elves and humans would be considered
separate species. Other examples in the animal world include cats
and dogs. Each has many different-looking subspecies, but they can
interbreed and produce fertile mixed offspring.
ONE HAPPY FAMILY
One interesting option is that there’s been so
much intermingling in a particular nation or
campaign world that a child could have traits
of any race (for example, an elf and human
could have a halling child). In this case, racial
prejudice is much less likely to exist and it allows
for interesting familial ties. If you do choose this
option, however, it’s best not to muck it up with
hybrid races (although, as always, it’s your
call).
Whether or not the offspring is fertile, if shared offspring exist then
you must determine what traits they possess. Generally, there are
two possibilities: either the child completely favours one parent (e.g.
the child of a human and a dwarf is either a human or dwarf) or the child blends traits from both (e.g. the child of a human
and a dwarf is a half-dwarf). If the child completely favours one parent, then you will need to determine whether one race
dominates (the child of a human and an elf is always human) or whether the child could favour either parent. It could also
be possible that the child of a human and an elf could be a human, elf, or half-elf. Even if a child favours one parent racially,
she may blend cosmetic traits. The elven daughter of a human mother, for example, may still look a lot like her mother.
If the offspring of two races is a hybrid (e.g. half-elf, half-orc), then you must also decide if the offspring is infertile, fertile
only with one or both of the parent species, or fertile with others of its type. In the latter case, hybrids may form their own
societies. You should also determine how many generations of true breeding with a parent race will purge (or at least bury)
the other heritage.
LANGUAGE
Although it is a common fantasy trope, the Fantastical Races are presented without racial languages. This is because there
are many possible ways to include Fantastical Races within an
Imperial Age
campaign, and any list of languages would be
arbitrary. In a truly integrated racial setting, the average elf would speak the language from where he was born (most likely
English in a standard
Imperial Age
campaign). In campaigns where elves keep a separate culture or subculture it is far more
likely that they would have their own language.
Unless you are considering full integration (either the races have long been intermingled or the races evolved from man),
then a good rule of thumb is to allow all races to be proicient in their cultural language as well as the main campaign
language. Thus, a dwarven Londoner would be luent in dwarvish and English.
In the default setting, racial languages are further divided by geography. Scandinavian dwarves (of all variations) speak
Scandinavian Dwarvish, while Himalayan dwarves speak Himalayan Dwarvish. Each is about as similar as Tibetan would
be to Swedish (in other words, none). These regional languages share common pronunciation, as well as some rules of
grammar and shared words, with local human languages. A Norwegian dwarf, for example, might have a Danish or Swedish
accent when speaking dwarvish, while a Romanian dwarf sounds Slavic.
CREATING A FANTASTICAL RACE CHARACTER
A character of a race other than human utilizes the same core rules that human characters do with the following
modiications:
1. Characters of a race other than human receive one less feat at irst level.
2. Characters of a race other than human receive four less skill points at irst level and one less skill point each
level thereafter. This does not include racial paragon classes given in this product, as they have been adjusted for
Fantastical Races.
ADDING F/X TO FANTASTICAL RACES
Unless you are running an atypical
Imperial Age
campaign, it can be
safely assumed that you will wish to add F/X elements to your Fantastical
Races. While the core book provides rules on magic (arcane and
divine) and psionics, certain
Imperial Age
products provide their own
spin (information on incorporating these products is given in the Racial
Paragon chapter).
A NOTE ABOUT SKILLS
Various
Imperial Age
products have
introduced a few new skills: Craft (engines),
Craft (rune), Fantastic Science, and
Knowledge (Fantastic Engines). These
skills have been integrated into this product
for convenience. Most of these skills can
be ignored if you aren’t using them, as
the new rules in this product are balanced
without them. Craft (engines) is a special
case. If you do not have
Engines
, replace
Craft (engines) with Craft (electrical) and
Craft (mechanical).
If you wish for your
Imperial Age
campaign to have more of a fantasy
feel, then the F/X in the core rules is suficient (you may even allow
characters to learn spells at 1
st
level, rather than the default 4
th
level). If,
however, you wish for your campaign to feel more “Victorian,” then the
appropriate
Imperial Age
products should be applied. You can, of course,
mix and match, as every
Imperial Age
product is modular by design.
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