New races

[dragonjournal]

I love making up new races. I love it. I love doing it for no other reason than I have an idea and then I make a file and leave it on my hard drive.

Sometimes, these races spawn stories. Sometimes, they don't.

Okay, honest truth: Most of the time they don't.

But, they're still fun to figure out. What are their traditions? What color is their skin? Does that make them stand out or blend in? Do they have magic/technology other races don't have? Do they have rituals that make them anathema to other peoples or are the rituals outlawed because of fear?

These are the type of things I always ask myself when creating new races. Especially since I'm always fascinated by cross-breeds.

Now, this is something each writer has to decide for themselves.

I love doing it.

I might, eventually put up some examples under f-lock, if I can find them. (The depths of the hard drive are deep and unfathomable...)

Do you make up new races or take old ones and put a new spin on them?

Comments

[st_aurafina]

I definitely do - I ran a Star Trek RPG for a while, and the best part of writing for that was making up races and the worlds they came from. You do find a lot of stories as you're going, and I think it's a more organic form of world building.

(I'm here from the nano_writers friending meme, by the way.)

[dragonjournal]

I don't run RPs too much any more. My brain just isn't wired for them any longer for whatever reason. (I think it's because I have control issues, and cannot let out control of my worlds to ANYONE else.)

Also, I agree. I love building the worlds around the people, rather than the other way around.