The Races

An important element during the creation of your Heroic-Fantasy or Space-Opera Roleplaying Game is the creation or adaptation of races to your world. This page will help you.

The Number of Races

The number of Races you will integrate in your Roleplaying Game must be balanced by the accessibility factor. Clearly, which one will be usable by Players and which one will not? Once you have decided, you'll have to adapt or create the one thar are accessible to Players.

Those who are not accessible musn't be written precisely at the beginning. So, just write the main Characteristics, Skills and Powers of each unaccessible races. Once you have tested your  RPG and only if your Players find it pleasant, then you can write unaccessible races in details. (Believe me, with 186 Races and 370 ethnic groups, this work is really laborious!).

Here are some factors you must remember :

1) If you plan to "dispose of" your RPG after your campaign, limit yourself to ten or less races or the work would be too important.

2) If your RPG is a long term RPG, then you can integrate various races but it's a gradual work. Trying to define the temper of each races is hard. Be inspired by the Roleplay of your Players.

The Different Species

Unless you are an experienced Game Master, just use existing races in the beginning and adapt them to your Roleplaying Game. (However, I've created Aventures Arcanes because I was saturated with common RPG races!).

According to your world, you can alter existing races to decline them into ethnic groups (like AD&D with Black Elves!). Then, let your imagination works!

1) The classic group of races is : Human, Elf, Dwarf, Orc, Goblin. It's really effective for a Heroic-Fantasy RPG but for Space-Opera, you'll have to imagine them or draw your inspiration from films.

2) If you create your own races, try to keep in mind the information we give you in the "Creating the World" page. Cold blooded creatures don't need many clothes to survive but can't  bear high variation of temperature. Aquatic races have a shaped body to swim fast and to resist high pressure and so forth...

Races Balance

Most of the RPG try to balance their Races between their Characteristics, Skills and Powers. However, the reality is really different. Look around you and you will see that nature is totally unbalanced. Now, you've got two options :

1) You create balanced races : the global sum of their Characteristics, Skills, Abilities and Powers is the same for everyone. In this case, the number of races must be limited or your races will be redundant  unless your RPG have a gigantic number of Characteristics, skills, abilities and powers. Then, the Character Sheet will be complicated.

2) You creat unbalanced races : no justice, a Player may have a powerful  race and the other a weak one. You may have a problem of jealousy between your Players but you'll be closer to the reality.

We will complete this page in a next version of the site!.

Other questions? Send us an e-mail!