A Critique on Khorasian Elves

[avisarr]

Good question. I have gone through several phases. When I first started creating Khoras, it was specifically as a campaign setting for Dungeons and Dragons. I created Khoras with very typical dwarves, elves, etc. But I did make some minor changes. For instance, I created the grum which is basically a combination of gnomes, halflings, kender and all the other little races.

As Khoras started to come into focus, I thought about creating more variation in the races. For instance, I toyed with wings on elves and making dwarves more like humanoids made of living rock. For awhile, I changed the names. I changed the elves to "jevani" and the dwarves became "tellurians". Also, the saurians were called "argrox". So, now I had this world with many strange races - jevani, tellurians, argrox and others. I also had very strange versions of goblins and trolls and such. After about a year of that, I decided I didn't like it. People don't know what a jevani is or an argrox. But people can instantly formulate a picture in their head if you say "elf" or "dwarf". Even "saurian" is easily recognized as a lizard man. Trolls, goblins and such also are pretty well entrenched into the general social mind. I debated this for awhile and then finally decided to use archetypal names and traits, but put my own unique spin on it. So, all the races came back to traditional names, but I made each my own. I have elves and dwarves now, but there are MY version of elves and dwarves. Not to say they are better or worse... just a slightly different version. Generally, the changes are made to make them fit into Khoras a little better. And sometime the changes are just to give the race a little more flavor.

There were still a lot of neat ideas that I wanted to keep. So, several of the more unique ideas were kept but were made into entirely new races. Also, I kept the avarians, the phellysians and so on cause I like them. The grum are still grum only because I didn't want to have to mess around with gnomes and halflings and kender and all other variations. I just wanted to keep things simple and have ONE race of little folk. Of course, with the grum, it's easy enough to swap in gnomes and such if you really want them.

But again, feel free to alter things for your own games and campaigns if it helps. Grum can be replaced by halflings and gnomes. Elves can be stripped of their wings. And so on... do whatever you need to make it work.

[Drul Morbok]

Just reviving this old thread because it somehow reminds me of the "Harry Potter effect".
Could it be that ther person who wrote the original email also took this site for a real kind of wikipedia on elves (or on fantasy/magic/supernatural/... )?

[David Roomes]

Yeah, I love it when an old thread gets resurrected.

Yes, it's entirely possible that the person was suffering from the Harry Potter effect or something similar. And now that I've reread this thread, I agree with the others. His initial description did sound a lot like Tolkien's elves.

The whole "wings on elves" thing hasn't really come up either because I can not REMEMBER the last time someone played an elf in one of my campaigns. It's been a LONG time. So, yeah, the whole wing thing never really comes up.

[tanis]

Honestly, I love the Elven nations, but out of two 'elves' in my personal stuff, only one's an elf, the other is my own personal modification of a faerie. But then, I really prefer the Ankari, Borrellians, and the northern humans over most of the other races. I like the depth that they add, especially the Magrakians and the Phellysians, I just don't find them as intriguing to play as the others. Of course, that's really just my bias, but whatever. Then again, if I could play as a dragon, then I'd be all over THAT. XDDD

[Laurent MEKKA]

I think what some people dislike is the fact that Khorasian elves have wings.
I like it a lot, so, my solution : if a player want an elf without wings, it's simple, it's a half-elf