TVTropes builds a campaign setting!

He doesn't do much, except protect the environment and life, especially aquaeous life. Predominantly, he uses his power to keep fresh water fresh and clean and pure cause that's what he's supposed to do, right?

That doesn't sound over-the-top to me. At all.

He dos manifest as a giant frog head made of water eternally spilling watter from his mouth.

That's a bit over-the-top.

Well, the physical form, maybe.

Elves & Gnomes

The Sylvan, most magical of all humanoid races. Being so close to the Aether, the Sylvan race is marked by intense emotional & neurotic disorders and increasingly strange physiological quirks. The length and pointiness of their ears is the least of their oddity; eye, hair, skin color ranges wildly, marking different 'sub-races' that have blended to match their environment, creating both muted and bright neon array of pigments, sometimes doing all sorts of strange things (Wild hair-dos, changing eye colors, natural 'tatoos'). This startling array of colors and designs has leaked into the general humanoid genepool, especially Humans, but only pure -or mostly pure- Sylvan portray the next set of traits.

Between the age of 5 and 55, a Sylvan will stop aging. One, throughout their lives until they suddenly stop aging, a Sylvan continue to grow; this peaks at the age of 30 where they are even taller then the average humanoid and then they begin to shrink back to the size of a 5-year-old at 55 and it's at 30 where they begin growing facial hair. Two, the term of Elf and Gnome is applied by other races, Elf to Sylvan who are closer to age 30 or stopped aging there; generally between 15-45, and Gnomes to Sylvan who tend more to the extremes of 5-15 and 45-55. Three, each Sylvan knows the exact moment they stop aging and every moment is as likely as any other, their is no tendency around any age. Four, as soon as they stop aging, a Sylvan will now have exactly 100 years lefts so by simple dating they know the immutable deadline of their lives.

The one thing that never stops growing and does in an ear uniform fashion is a Sylvan's ears. The long the ear, the older the Sylvan.

edited 8th Dec '11 4:58:31 PM by God_of_Awesome

So Elves and Gnomes are stages of the same race, just like Goblins and Orcs? I like it, if only because I'd never heard that before. And it fits the setting.

Speaking of races:

Axolotl- The axolotl are distant relatives of the Mabinari. They're native to the New Lands, one of the few sentient races that were there before even the Orcs and Dragons arrived. Though virtually identical to the Mabinari in most ways, there are a few differences. First, the Axolotl have external gills growing on the sides of their heads, that look kind of like reindeer horns. They also have tails. Socially, they have a civilization very similar to that of the Precolombian Central and South Native Americans.

How's that?

edited 7th Dec '11 5:35:16 PM by Sijo

Well, Goblins and Orcs seems to have a Caterpillar-Butterfly dynamic while Gnomes and Elves it's more likes Calves and Cows.

Horny salamanders. I like it. Of course, definitive statements like "they were there before anything else" will eventually lead to either a paradox or a timeline conflict. Might I suggest just sticking with "been around a really long time"?

For what reason is their culture homogenous? Or do you mean that subcultures each reflect different central/south American civilisations?

edited 7th Dec '11 6:32:34 PM by Exelixi

I was almost hoping their was no intelligent race on the World Spine before the Age of Exploration: As people from opposites of the spine meet, they assume that the other is the native.

Like everyone else, I'm just presenting the idea for use/rejection/adaptation. I just want a nonhumanoid race that's actually native to the New Lands. The details can be adjusted as needed. (Plus I always thought the Mexican Salamanders were cool and wanted to do something with them.)

As for their civilization, I'm just being vague precisely to leave room for development instead of being a carbon copy. I wouldn't like them to have human sacrifice, for example.

edited 7th Dec '11 6:48:32 PM by Sijo

Like I said, fuck yeah Mexican salamanders. That is an awesome idea.

God: That can still very well happen. Just because there are natives doesn't mean people won't assume non-natives are natives.

edited 7th Dec '11 6:52:02 PM by Exelixi

I noticed we talked about some dwarven cultures, but not physiology. Lemme make Dwarves different but the same.

Dwarves

Dwarves are like the Sylvan in several ways with differences in those similarities. While Sylvan are beings of intense Aetherial power, Dwarves are beings of intense Elemental power. Their is a breed of Dwarf for every possible element to varying degrees of rarity. Their hair, all of it all over their body, tends to show the most obvious signs of their element and many, but not all, dwarven cultures value beards as the largest most obvious sign of their element. Earth Dwarves happen to be the most numerous of the breeds and their hair looks the most like normal hair.

Like Sylvan, they continue to grow throughout their live but they have no set time to die and never revert backwards. As they grow, they become closer to their elemental power and most succumb to death as their element overcomes their life around a hundred years of age when they're about chest height to most humanoids. Some don't though and keep growing. As they do, they actually suffer something not unlike what the old of some races do as their minds slip from them and they are known as Ogres. If they do not succumb, they will find they become even bigger and their minds start to return, and they are called Giants. Legendary are those who, their minds become even greater then before, creature more element then flesh in and gargantuan in size, Titans.

I love this!

Also did anyone read my abomination submission?

edited 7th Dec '11 8:40:30 PM by Vyctorian

Vyc: I did. I like them, though I can't help but imagine Frankenstein Beholders.

edited 7th Dec '11 8:46:53 PM by Exelixi

I figured Abominations should cover all failed genetic experiments.

I stated in my description that they were just one of many failed experiments, and tired to also make them a kinda ancient enemy of the dragon.

Sorry didn't we do Dwarves before? And rejected the idea of tying them to an element?

edited 8th Dec '11 5:31:51 AM by Eyclonus

I favor the "abominations are natural creatures, they are just too alien for us humans" idea (as in the Cthlhu mythos, except they're more likely to have Orange And Blue Morality than being actual evil.) Of course there's no reason we can't have both types, especially since we have established the Dragons as being also the product of human(oid)'s experiments.

edited 8th Dec '11 5:46:10 AM by Sijo

Well, as I pointed out, we did culture but not physiology.

You know what we also need? An index of links to the posts stating each concept, so they can be revisited more easily (now that this thread is about 10 pages long.)

Possibly doing it in the first post, so that it'll be easy to find itself.

Something like this: Axolotl (race)

edited 8th Dec '11 9:54:03 AM by Sijo

A Trope page might fix that, I've seen other forum projects use them.

Tropin' it up.

Domhain Sceal

Feel free to start editing.

In addition, could someone with more technical skill than myself create a linked "characters" page under which we can place the cultures?

edited 8th Dec '11 1:01:20 PM by Exelixi

Good, I'll start working on the page right away.

Uh, shouldn't we wait until we have actual characters for a character page? So far we only have Lord Hrod. I think.

edited 8th Dec '11 3:06:27 PM by Sijo

A great many works use the "Characters" page as a "races, classes and/or factions" page, which is what I was suggesting.

First Edition (of the campaign page I mean) done! Please check, correct, and add anything I might've missed.

(Note there is some stuff I left out because I wasn't sure if it was agreed upon yet.)

Also: should it have a list of contributors?

edited 8th Dec '11 4:06:21 PM by Sijo

I would hope so, also I'm working on a race which is a bit of a different spin on undead.