Fantasy Interest Check: Death of the Old World

The Game

For millenia, the old races have, if not lived in harmony, then at least coexisted neutrally in their ancient homeland.
Now, the arrival of a new people is threatening this peace. Humans have arrived in the homeland and after forcing the dwarves to retreat back into the mountains in a short, bloody war, have spread their influence. They have come to conquer and are here to stay.

A generation after their first arrival, the ancient races finally cannot ignore this threat any longer and have gathered the first shared council in all of history. Their goal: Sending a group of emissaries to meet the humans, to discover their motivations, their attitudes and goals and to establish how to deal with this threat.

You are these emissaries. Tasked with making contact with these dangerous newcomers, your choices will shape the world. Whether the homelands erupt in a war that will drive the invaders out or end the reign of the native races or whether a compromise, a way for old and new to coexist, can be found is in your hand.

The game will be played in the same homebrew system as my Cyberpunk in Space game, although modified to match this setting and include some fantasy staples. All relevant rules to this game are explained in threads in the game forum and I will help with things when they come up so the rules shouldn’t be a problem.
The PCs will be members of non-human races. There is some lore and background for the "main" races (elves, dwarves…) but other races (including monstrous ones) can be played as well as long as we can fit it into the lore (which shouldn’t be too hard – The setting is fairly loose and I’m flexible).
Some of the races have been somewhat modified from the 'standard' but (except maybe for the elves), they're all still pretty much the recognizable archetypes.

The character creation for this game is very freeform so for simplicity’s sake, I will take over the bulk of the mechanical work for it. The only thing I’ll need from you is a concept that I can work with and translate into mechanics. We’ll discuss this in the game forum but basically, you tell me what you want to play and I make it happen ;)

I’m expecting approximately three posts per week (so around a post every other day). Occasional gaps are not a problem of course, but please only apply if you think you can keep up with a steady posting frequency.

I’m looking for approximately 4 players (±1). I will leave this thread up for a couple of days so more people get a chance to see it.
If you’re interested, please apply either in this thread or with a PM and I will pick out a group in the end. Feel free to already come up with a brief character idea and let me know what it is but don’t worry about fleshing it out yet. We can do that together in the game forum

I really like the lore, consider me interested! I also took a look at the rules from the other forum and they seemed interesting.

So, when you say monstrous race, I think emissary of the jungle drakes, trained in the strange manners and esoteric magics of the South, sent to guard the interests of the scaly-kind.

Looking forward to more interest!

Think I will pass on this. But it is interesting.

I am very interested, especially since the system discussed is quite similar in structure and concept to others I enjoy. :)

Oooh, the themes.

I'd like to have a peek.

Looks like there is already some interest here and in my PMs, that's great!
I'll keep the interest check running for a while longer so more people get a chance to see it while I finish setting up the forums.

One thing I forgot to mention up there is that the setting is very snow-and-ice. I think I mentioned it in the game description but not everyone reads those if there's already a full interest check so I thought it makes sense to write it here as well.

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When you say "emissary of the jungle drakes", are you thinking of being a drake yourself or something like a dragonborn? Both would theoretically be possible but a drake in the party might lead to more difficulties than a humanoid character would.
Lots of fantasy settings mention that at some point in the past, the humans arrived in the land of the elves and dwarves and took over while the old races slowly started to decline and thought that's an interesting idea for a game.
Then I meshed that together with an old setting my friends and I worked on a little bit years ago and it evolved a bit from there.

Sorry I didn't see the link in plain sight. I'm sending a PM to you.

This looks fun! I’d like to join in if you have room for another player :)

I have a vague idea for a bookish elven prince who has been given this task to prove himself worthy of the throne. Do the standard subraces of elves (high elves, wood elves, dark elves, etc.) exist in this world?

bowl is away...but I got the feeling the elves would be some sort of unified race, but more like a feral/predatorial race. Though they can have princes and books and prove himself worthy looks right up the elven alley :D

Oh cool! I’ll refrain from making any more definite character decisions until I know a little more lore to make sure that I don’t come up with something that doesn’t fit the setting, but feral elves sounds really interesting :D

Hmm, is there any room in the lore for formians (ant-people)? I was thinking of a character who is like a formian prince, a member of the race imbued with greater independence and intelligence, for a task like being an emissary.

Something like that can certainly work. You can have a look through the existing lore in the game forum once I sent out invites and then we can come up with something.
The old races are more tribal so there wouldn't be a prince of all elves but it could certainly be the "prince" of a particularly large or maybe a famous tribe. I'm inviting you to the game so you can look through the lore. I'm sure we can find a way to get that idea to fit into the setting.

Okay, awesome! Looking forward to it :)

Alright, the forums are ready and there are already more people who want in than I have room for unfortunately. For my selection, I went with perceived enthusiasm (and I'm sorry if I misinterpreted someone's excitement for the game)

I have sent out invitations to:
Turtledragon, ZivenOfNine, somebox, oopsylon, naelick
Just follow this link to accept them and join the game.

GreyGriffin and CESN, I'm making the game public so you can observe if you're curious to follow it. If you want to get notified for updates, you can apply to the game and I'll add you as observers to it.
If someone drops out and you're still interested then, you'll be the first ones in line to fill up the free spot.