Define your race, Everyone has one race they adore Options

[joshpurple]

Posible name for Ghedi's new race. Adip'laci

Why are you never on IRC Josh?

I almost missed that, pardon .

Good question, I guess it's habit? Or lack of habit *blush.* I don't mean to avoid it, it's just not an item that comes to my mind.

I think of Chat like a telephone call, so if it 'rings' I'll pick it up and talk (ie; Pandra will send me a note, "Hey stinky! Get on IRC with us!" ).

My apologies you guys, I certainly am not meaning to avoid connecting, 'cause I DIG PW, and that includes EVERYONE !

[Pandra]

Yeah, graceful, graceful, graceful...  Everywhere I go, I see slender, elven featured creatures, or large, massively muscled, low-body fat freaks...

Why can't we have a creature that is fat?  Not grotesque, or obviously obese, but by human standards, well, 'big boned.'

The race should be well muscled, but not ripped in any sense of the word.  All of the muscles should be hidden in a liberal layer of fat.  The skin, however, is smooth and soft to the touch.  A person pressing against one of these creatures should feel large, rippling muscles close under the fat, but wouldn't be able to see the muscle definition at all.

Here's a sample descriptions of how a typical human adventurer would tell the tale over a few pints.  "'E 'ad arms th' size o' a tree limb and legs that, I swear, would've been of better use as roots if I 'adn't seen 'em walk.  The only neck 'e 'ad was a crease between the barrel o' 'is chest and 'is round chin.  I'd swear I walk't inna emporer's kitchen full o' fat 'n lazy eunichs, 'cept they ran as fast as I could when I'm sober, and I saw one lift a barrel o' wine twice th' size o' th' innkeep's barrel over there as though 'twer empty.  I 'ad to go look for meself, and it was filled to th' top, it was."

Despite their great weight, which they easilly manage, these creatures are not very physical, but preffer technical and spiritual endeavors.  They very rarely develop weapons for themselves, so the vast majority of what they do make are clumsy imitations of weapons created by other races, and they do not spend their time practicing their skills in melee combat.  An exception is their skill with spears, since it is almost impossible for them to sneak up on prey.  They are very adept at creating very ballanced throwing spears (even though the spear is twice the size of a human's typical throwing spear), and are able to throw these spears with great accuracy twice the distance as humans.

Their climate of choice is frozen tundra (which explains the layer of fat).  Because of this, they avoid metal armor, which could cause frost bite.  They typically dress in well tailored hides.  On the few occasions when they do wear armor, they preffer a very thick banded leather with softer hides on the inside and white fur on the outside (camoflage in the frozen tundra).  The women do NOT run around in skimpy shirts showing their cleavage, and a loin cloth is entirely unheard of.  Picture eskimos with twice to four times the girth and much larger limbs.

Technologically, they are at the same level as other humans at the time, and their favorite building material is ice.  Because their game tends to travel around a lot, there are very few permanent structures made by this race, the rest being ice carved from nearby rivers into one-story buildings. Large furs are draped along the walls and floors inside the buildings to provide privacy and added insulation against the cold.  (This would be a good transparency effect to test in Ogre...)  The few permanent buildings are the fire holding structures, such as a blacksmith and a central fire house that holds fire year-round with a slow-burning fuel, also the center of the clan's spiritual life.

A typical clan will have four settlements, populating each one for three months before following the game to their next settlement.  When empty, the only sign of life is the heavilly warded fire house holding the fire for when the settlement is filled again, and an empty blacksmith's building, as well as large amounts of shattered ice where the temporary buildings stood.  Only the clan knows how to disarm the wards around the fire house, which causes damage, as well as pushes intruders away (like swimming against the current of a river).

The flame inside the fire house is a sacred relic, technically the same flame that these creatures had at the dawn of their civilization.  The source of the flame is unknown, but if all four of a clan's sacred fires were to go out, they would be unable to use their shamanistic powers until they were relit from a fire originating from another clan's sacred flame.  When traveling, a clan will carry part of the sacred flame with them on a well protected torch in case the flame at their destination was extinguished, thus it is not possible to extinguish all flames by waiting until the clan is traveling...  at least one has to be extinguished using brute force.  (And I really don't want players to be able to extinguish the flames at all...)

The story team can take things up with the sacred flame's origins...  Perhaps it is as old as the planet itself, and all flames originating from it have a measure of sentience?

Is that enough detail to work with?  Ask any questions, and I can fill in details...

Oh, their usual decorations are simple patterns and totems...  It's a *very* shamanistic society.

And I don't have a name for them...  Anyone have ideas?

Oh yeah, some physical attributes: Height: 5'2". Weight: 320lbs (mostly muscle...  looks like 250lbs fat humans, since muscle weighs more than fat.)  No neck, round jaw, arms average 30 inches in diameter, waist = 50+ inches, generally a short ogre, except that they are fair skinned.  Men are bearded, but they keep their beards no longer than two inches, so that ice doesn't get trapped in them.  They are a very social, "neutral-good" society, where they don't care if you break the rules, so long as you're breaking them to help society out.

Thank you Ghedipunk! <3 That's what I've been hoping to get. Right at the moment I'm thinking more Escamo - Buddah than Ogre, but I'll play with it. I'm not a fan of hypionated racial names just because that kind of makes the grammar realating to them awkward. Example, people from America are Americans, Elves are Elven, if you're from Texas you're Texan, ect. What would the pural and possessive of Adip'laci be? And would it sound out loud?

[Dwilf]

Adip'Laci would have same rules as Yuan-ti and being a racial name would be more like Human than nationality like American.

You you could:

a Human, an Adip'Laci, a Yuan-ti
some Humans, some Adip'laci, some Yaun-ti

Thats the great thing about -i, easer to remember.

[Honis]

Right On Honis! Ratturas sound good . Great idea, how big do think a Ratturas would be?

No larger than a Gnome I would think. Maybe smaller. If it gets to small though it would need to be made into an NPC rather than being playable (I would think).

Ghedipunk's post:
Until I reread "The Hobbit" recently I viewed Dwarves as "large" but muscled. I like this idea of race, sounds like a fine warrior (and an easy target for a pickpocket ).

[Minthos]

Some norwegian words that could be used to describe the horizontally challenged eskimos:

Nordboer - 'someone who lives in the north' (plural Nordboere)
Islending - Icelander (plural Islendinger)
Isboer - 'someone who lives in the ice' (plural isboere)
Fettkladd - 'lump of fat' (derogatory, plural Fettkladder)
Fettberg - 'mountain of fat' (derogatory, plural Fettberg)

[Pandra]

Some norwegian words that could be used to describe the horizontally challenged eskimos:

Nordboer - 'someone who lives in the north' (plural Nordboere)
Islending - Icelander (plural Islendinger)
Isboer - 'someone who lives in the ice' (plural isboere)
Fettkladd - 'lump of fat' (derogatory, plural Fettkladder)
Fettberg - 'mountain of fat' (derogatory, plural Fettberg)

I kinda like Isboer as a race name and Fettberg as city name. Though if we get a big Norwegian following that might take some of the um... realism out of the game for them

[Minthos]

I think they'd find it rather entertaining, an easter egg kinda. There are numerous examples of similar things in other games.

[Jerky]

Like Filipinos will like some of the names of things, since I suggest a lot of Tagalog words as names. A lot of the names in the current lore come from suggestions I made using Tagalog, Ilocano and Pangasinan, maybe even some Zambal (the latter 3 are dialects, while Tagalog is the national language).

[Pandra]

Very awesome

[PinkDino]

I myself have a thing for playing a bald female ogre. Something about playing a really tall, and intimidating looking female wielding a huge two handed axe is fun.

This post has been edited by PinkDino: Dec 14 2006, 11:59 AM

[Tegan]

Gnomes, all, the, way. Gnomes, Gnomes, Gnomes, Gnomes. Seriously, Gnomes.

The problem with Gnomes is that they are defined and described so many, many difference ways. For instance, you have the "Roaming Gnome" Gnome. This is not the kind of Gnome I speak of. Not all Gnomes are garden Gnomes.

Then you have the EQ style of Gnome, where all of them have wrinkly skin and look like they are 105. Again, not quite the kind of Gnome I am going for.

Thirdly, you have the Dragonlance/D&D/WarCraft style Gnome. Ahhh, here's the sweet spot. Short, cute, stout of heart, scary intelligent, unafraid to try anything for their next "gadget". Your average Gnome should be three to four feet in height, be a tad overwieght (generally with a bit of a beer belly, you would be surprised how much Gnomes love their ale) and have large, bright eyes, full of intelligence. They should almost seem like a know it all, but not in a condescending or conceited manner (mostly because, in respect to their times, they really DO know it all). Their clothing would be a mix between Dwarven and Human, mostly in the latest styles. Obviously females would be slighter in stature than males.

I will try and think of more details later, but yes, Gnomes please

[iti]

Hmm,

I love the whisps. Full of confidence, yet you can still only see them from the corner of your eye. When you turn full, they are gone.

Sometimes, under summer's full moon, you will catch site of them, dancing around a circle of white stones, with low growing fragrant moss in the center of the stones.

You can watch them elegantly lift from this earth and float, spin, and swoop through the tree branches as they celebrate life then disappear into the night sky on their journey towards the .....

[echorev]

specters, ghosts, phantoms, ethereal type of stuff that float and look cool

i've always wanted to see a type of ghost phantom thing floating around with an axe and in battle armor

[Maxwell]

Ghosts are at the Bottom

Here is a good Idea of what Honis thinks of ghosts. I think it is a very good Idea. Take a gander out it if you get the time.

[Windragon]

I read this thread and the one regarding playable races and I've only one point to expose, too much.

Too much races mean:

• Make really difficult for a player a choose when he start
• Too many possibility regarding builds so confusion for developers and players, is not so difficult in that case make a race too strong between other.
• A long really long development time
• To guarantee so many races the map must be really large and that mean:
  [**]Too much dispersive for players (no if you plan more than 6000 concurrent player in the same map... but with witch server?)
• A lot of different geographical areas that mean lots of different mobs, objects, plants, bosses, quests etc

Finally what I want to say might be better start with less things and plan to increase the game with some updates after...

I hope to don't have wrote in an offensive way (I'm not English speaking) but my worries is that too much meat in the flame will not become good...

Did you have made a little plan with the thing to do or are you still evaluating what to do?

Windragon

This post has been edited by Windragon: Sep 4 2008, 09:33 AM

[Pandra]

You're not offending, and you can quit worrying. These are not the development threads. The general public doesn't get to see those and yes the team is well aware of the difficulties of creating one race let alone several. The purpose of this thread is to get people talking in detail about what 1 race they really like.

It gives the developers an idea of what their community is interested in, it gives folks a chance to exercise their creative muscles, and it might just generate something worth while for development. Though the original purpose was just to give me something to draw.

Unfortunately I lost a lot of work when my computer literally blew up on me last year. I had backed up, or so I thought, but when I tried to use my back-up disks it told me the data was corrupted and couldn't be recovered. I'm still hoping to eventually get some free time and get drawing again, 'specially on Ghedi's idea since I still find it very intriguing.

This post has been edited by Pandra: Sep 6 2008, 06:08 PM

[Windragon]

Ok now I understand the target of this thread.
I'm sorry for your data lost, if near I was glad to do a try to help you recover that that (I worked as technician for years too) but I'm sure that by the time you will make new and more improved draws.
Some years ago I lost some backups due a fallout of a hd and when I finished to remade all the works lost most of them was improved a lot than original ones.

Windragon

[Pandra]

I might eventually get to redo some of the work that was lost. I'm not gonna hold my breath though. Right now I have to finish school before I can even thing about being able to afford the materials and equipment I'll need to pursue my art hobbies. But even with that major disappointment, this thread did provide some useful information for me and hopefully the developers who are still able to work on the project.

t_t I miss having free time and hobbies.

[RicoSuave]

What is everyone's opinion to using "classical" race types as defined by current and past literature? My feeling is that where we probably want to create a new slough of monsters and foes to serve our purposes, I would really like to keep MANY of the classical elf, human, dwarf, orc, etc. creature types... as long as they have normal-sized ears.

Part of this question is to determine if the community wants artistically "stylized" graphics. By that I mean the 3-foot ears of the elves of WoW, versus the (what I consider) normal-shaped trees/monsters of UO.

-Rico

[Jerky]

We've already decided on a "realistic" style. That part is set in stone . Oh, and don't worry about those ears. They won't ever get big as long as I am around.