Ten Fantasy Races Made More Interesting

Tolkien is boring and so are most D&D races.  You could re-write them from the ground up, but there's an easier option: re-interpret their existing descriptions.  That is, come up with new explanations for why they behave the way they do and what that means for the world.

1. Dwarves

Dwarves eat gold.  They need it to be healthy and fertile; those who don't eat enough to at least be fertile are viewed as un-marriagable.  Also, they're not that much shorter than humans.

The moral associations of up and down are reversed.  A dwarf who gains money or status is moving down in the world.  Military leaders are called the deep command, not the high command.

2. Elves

Elves were cast out of faerie eons ago.  Or fled a disaster.  Or perhaps are descended from faeries who interbred with humans.  Nobody's quite sure.  Faeries are polite to them, if condescending.

Their exceptional lifespans make for intense inter-generational conflict; imagine if your parents grew up back when only white male landowners could vote.  Elven teens would probably love Twisted Sister.

3. Orcs

Orcs breed at a prodigious rate; they get pregnant more easily, and usually give birth to twins.  Orc populations can quickly grow out of control unless an iron-fisted government enacts strict population control measures.

As they become more overpopulated, orc societies are usually compelled to turn first to raiding for supplies, then invasion of neighboring territory in a desperate grasp for arable land.  Some orcs justify this, but many view it as a tragic necessary evil.

Orcs grow up faster than humans, reaching full maturity around 15-18 years old.  Contrary to popular belief, they're not less intelligent, but usually less educated and have less life experience due to being younger.  They tend to be more aggressive, but whether that's due to genetics or the pressure of living in an overpopulated environment is anyone's guess.

4.  Goblins

While not a hive mind, goblins are extremely group-oriented, and view the group rather than the individual as the basic unit of society.  They place little value on individual lives, even their own.  That's why they're willing to engage in all sorts of borderline suicidal experiments and military tactics, but also why they tend to flee when they start losing a battle: they don't mind some people dying, but can't stand the chance of the whole group dying.

This gives them a sense of ethics that seems alien to many races.  Goblins would view inflicting a modest amount of suffering on a whole village as worse than murdering one person, for example.

5.  Dark Elves

Descended from Unseelie who rebelled against the growing decadence and sadism of the Unseelie court and were cast out.  Cruelly, rather than lauding their integrity, the surface races hated them for their Unseelie associations (light elves most of all!) and drove them into the underdark.  After generations of the moral compromise necessary to survive in that environment, drow became what they are today.

Also, their skin is mottled in different shades of grey, and their hair is usually grey as well.  This provides some camouflage against most cave walls, at least at a distance.

6.  Halflings

Just like in Tolkien's books, halflings tend to be peaceful, friendly, and adventurous.  They mostly avoid conflict if at all possible.

Since they tend to be neutral in most conflicts, halflings are often entreated to serve as mediators in disputes or to host peace talks, much like Switzerland in real life.

7.  Lizardfolk

Lizardfolk are almost completely devoid of emotion.  They're extremely rational, but have trouble understanding other, more emotional races.  They're not sentimental and really can't understand why eating people who were dead anyway is such a big deal.

Their lack of emotion skews their decision-making in an odd way; lizardfolk are great at evaluating the likely outcomes of a course of action, but terrible at weighing how good or bad an outcome would be.  It might not be obvious to a lizardperson that losing an arm is worse than losing a horse, for instance.  They're smart about pursuing their goals but often pick odd goals to pursue.

I read one that this is how emotional intelligence works.  I think it was the book Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman, but I don't remember at this point and how no idea if it's true.

8.  Dragons

Every dragon is unique.  Dragons hoard treasure for two separate reasons.

First, they hoard valuable treasure as an evolutionary fitness signal.  The more treasure they have, the more and stronger adventurers will try to take it from them, the tougher they must be to still be alive.  Their ability to survive with a target on their back proves their mettle to potential mates.

Their long life spans mean that dragons eventually have a hard time remembering everything.  They collect unique items as mementos to anchor their memories.  Dragons value these items mainly for the memories so anchored, not the item's inherent value.  Thus, a wooden toy may be more valuable than a silver statuette, which in turn may be worth more to the dragon than several thousand identical gold coins.

9. Beholders

Artist: Luciano Komorizono

Like dragons, all beholders are unique, with their own mix of magic eyestalk powers.  The beholder race is becoming more corrupted by mutation with every generation.  This is why they seek to kill beholders who don't look like themselves; they wish to save their race by purging it of mutation.

Of course, this isn't how heredity works.  By culling their gene pool of diversity, beholders ensure that they will become more inbred with every generation, hastening the very extinction they seek to prevent.

10.  Illithids

Like it says in the book, illithids are created by implanting a larva into a humanoid, turning it into an illithid.  An illithid larva implanted into a human will create a more human-like illithid, one implanted into an elf will make an illithid more elf-like in its personality, and so-on.  Combined with their psychic powers, this gives each illithid a great understanding of whatever race it was made from.

Illithids were originally created by a vast hive mind organism to serve as traders and diplomats.  The organism did not understand humanoids, but wished to get along with them, and it believed that its creations would make ideal emissaries.  Unfortunately it completely failed to anticipate how horrifying this whole process would seem to a race of individuals, or indeed why kidnapping and murdering individuals would be seen as more than a minor annoyance.  It was destroyed by an alliance of humanoids, and the surviving illithids became the mind flayers we know today.