[crossfire] races

[Mark Wedel]

  Lost in some of the other discussion is races.

  For the most part, they don't need a lot of work - they give some stat bonuses 
and some skills, but generally not weapon skills.

  But one thing I was thinking about is what are appropriate races, from a game 
view standpoint, to make available.

  For example, dwarves, elves, humans, half orcs, dragons, trolls, gnomes, 
northmen, and wraiths are all fairly common creatures in the world that the 
player will meet/fighter (not half orcs directly, but orcs).

  However, some, like fenx, fireborn, halfling, quetzalcoatl and serpentmen are 
uncommon or non existent in the world/maps.  The only fireborn in the world are 
those that are characters.

  Now in some cases, this may just be the fact that maps have not been created - 
there is no reason there couldn't be a lot of halflings about in various places 
- I think that is more a case of the race being added later (same for most of 
the other ones).

  But from a world perspective, it is also a bit odd.  If the only fireborns in 
the world are floating about town, I think as a towns person I'd be a bit 
concerned/freaked out about that.

  But there are also some fairly common monsters that are not represented:

beholders - way back when these were a custom addition for one server.  But 
these are also different in various ways.

devils/demon: Fairly common, but townspeople probably wouldn't like them much 
either.  But maybe angels (something like god touched) creatures instead?

pixies: fairly common, and probably a race that could exist more commonly in 
towns without as much concern.

one could add more humanoid races (goblins, ogre, kobold), but I think as it 
stands now, half orc and troll pretty much cover everything (but as a 
townperson, I'd be concerned with trolls wandering about)

Maybe add some plant/tree type creature?  There are deathrees and ents in the 
world, so one could imagine having a tree creature.

  My general thought here is that it is hard to have a believable world if some 
of the starting races themselves don't really fit in/are not all that 
believable.  Now I suppose in many cases it would take new players a while to 
realize this, but I sometimes think that many new player races/classes are added 
more on the idea 'this is a neat idea' vs it actually fitting into the world 
that much.