Have you used archaic humans, or races inspired by them, in your games? I'm interested in knowing how people run them, and what players think of them, as I am considering adding them to my campaign in the place of conventional races. My concern is that they are too wacky and silly due to their portrayals in media and so won't be taken seriously in a serious campaign, ruining the tone. Would you be able to be invested in a noir story where the client is a neanderthal and the street gangs are denisovan?That said, for my own campaign I intend to draw from pseudoscientific, outdated, obscure, or misunderstood stuff as well. For example:>Neanderthals look human but behaved as described in the Neanderthal Predation Theory>Aquatic Ape Theory is real and some of our ancestors stayed in the oceans to build cities in lagoons and on coasts>That one theory that fairy myths came from homo sapiens displacing other, smaller, non-metal-using humans is true and there are displaced civilizations of arboreal gypsies wandering aroundI am very interested in other examples of hominid theories like aquatic ape theory or neanderthal predation theory. I don't care if they are true or false so long as they are gameable.Like I said, feel free to post about your own experiences and uses of them as well.
>>94409180Any plans for stoned ape theory then?
>>94409195That's a good one actually. The theme so far is taking these theories and then building a race off of them, so rather than the conventional thing to do which is go "oh yeah mushrooms gave homo sapiens self-awareness", it would be a trait of a unique lineage (or maybe it is still universal, but this one species went really hard on it). These guys could be something like Dune mentats, or maybe navigators, or warhammer Jokaero but for philosophy instead of tech. I don't see a race of stoned apes forming their own civilizations with stoned ape farmers and tax collectors, but they might be embedded in other civilizations as rulers or some other special caste. If we exaggerate the idea of "mushrooms gave us sapience" maybe they're some kind of super-sapient and we are like children to them, like Bakker's Dûnyain, and they manipulate other hominids into serving their convoluted plans, but require ever more powerful doses of psychedelics to sustain themselves.
>>94409180What system?
>>94409407I am probably going to run in it in CoC with some numbers fudged. The premise is a homebrew alternate timeline where the mythos is in the open and monsters are more openly out there, with the PC investigators living in one of the biggest cities and having to deal with day to day spooky bullshit. My basis for including other hominids is to make the world just alien enough that the players can't just go "oh this is an expy of historical situation X or Y", this is Ace Combat Strangereal-tier divergence. In-setting it is because mythos interference meant homo sapiens couldn't dominate the world as easily so other human lineages developed as well, with their own strengths and weaknesses. I might even just throw away it being set on earth entirely and gen a map using Azgar or something.
>>94409439Cool. Can you post the homebrews?
>>94409451That's the part I'm still working on. CoC has 8 stats and and 50 is considered an average score. My current plan is to solidify the different races and then apply bonuses during character creation, for example Neanderthals getting a +10 to strength and constitution after rolling, but a -10 to appearance and intelligence. My aquatic apes on the other hand will have a minimum of 50 in swimming, but I'm debating either slower movement on land or a requirement to soak in a bath every few days before suffering debuffs.CoC is not exactly built for multiple races but I like its other mechanics so I'm doing to it what most people to do DnD, that being trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. If any more experienced CoC DMs have any advice on this I'm all ears.
>>94409497Care to post it when you are done?
>>94409439I already can't take Shadow run seriously so if you're including non-humans the mythos influenced alt-hist is easier to swallow as "serious" imo. The Laundry Files implicitly do something similar through a multiverse lens, it's masquerade urban fantasy so sapiens did all the fratricide same as irl. Thing is that "elves" are a could-have-been where the hominids who came out on top were predisposed to linguistic logic (by extension magic) over tool use. Their cold war equivalent went hot and the remnants are forced to invade our "un-irradiated" timeline.The Strangereal alt-hist explanation works but then with the eldritch at play you could have a "shadow cosmology" offering alternate yet (at present) untrue explanations for things. On some level sapiens (and potentially every other hominid) are the genocidal / fuck-crazed "last men standing". As much as any mythos taint the fact that ridding the world of eldritch influence entails fratricide could be an interesting dynamic.>>94409262Might be a good place to toss in the bicameral mind. Incidentally I have orc analogues that may be of interest if you need guiltless murder-fodder who display flashes of humanity in the right circumstances.>>94409180I've heard of the arboreal gypsies as feral children too. If the displaced and the exposed form a syncretic "civilisation" together they may take to snatching babies, changelings are another fun Fae motif.
>>94409180>Have you used archaic humans, or races inspired by them, in your games?Not real ones, but I like to use 'ape men' over orcs unless I'm running something where orcs are baked in, like Warhammer ot LotR. Makes for a nastier surprise in a lost world context when they're expecting cannibal tribes and they get a human subspecies that split off long ago.
>>94410750very cool
>>94409180Putting aside the rather ridiculous anti-Semitism of this image, it's a pretty interesting concept to use for this sort of topic.>a parallel race survives a prehistoric genocide by the skin of its teeth, is forgotten about by everyone else but still holds onto that ancient grudge, and now manipulates and harms their enemy's modern societies by implanting themselves in positions of power, often using cosmetic surgery to hide that it is a wasp amongst bees
>>94409180Neanderthals in my campaign world all sing The Song - a low, nasal and throat tonal chant. They don't think about the present but remember their ancestor's lives through The Song. Separated from their people, they go insane or useless.>>94409262Sounds like a shamanic line of people.
>>94411766Robert E Howard had a few stories in this vein. Though, not with Jews.
>>94409180I run aquatic ape theory
in my setting there are the legendary Elders, a mix between extinct hominids and T'lan Imass from Erikson
Ironically I decided to draw anime versions of the most hominid species.Dunno if OP cares, but I had fun doing this.Pls rate.
In my setting all races are actually hominids except for orcs (functionally extinct but are porcs) and elves (marsupials that had conveergent evolution with that of hominids)Picrel is my reference since its also the most the species that ever coexisted
crog manon added.
>>94409439>>94409497>My aquatic apes on the other hand will have a minimum of 50 in swimming, but I'm debating either slower movement on land or a requirement to soak in a bath every few days before suffering debuffs.Slower movement on land seems like the better angle, since I'd assume that their benefits to swimming are a factor of different body proportions which hinder their ability to walk around. Other aquatic mammals tend to die out of water due to a lack of mobility or being crushed by their own weight, rather than drying out or anything. Appearance itself feels like an odd trait to give a penalty to, mostly because various hominids would probably seem equally weird to each-other. More likely you'd just want to give a situational Appearance penalty when interacting with outsiders.In terms of other pseudoarcheology to offer, I vaguely remember hearing a theory about how there was a frailer but smarter relative of early humans, contrasted to neanderthal stereotypes. But rather than going extinct for being dumb like neanderthals, the theory was basically that they were too smart, spent too much time stargazing instead of hunting, or otherwise died to to depression. I'm pretty sure that's 100% bullshit, since I'm not even sure if there's a hominid species that fits that description, and an entire species going extinct because they were too smart to live as cavemen is a little backwards. In the context of CoC though, it could work as them being some of the first to tap into any of the Mythos stuff, and then by extension some of the other ancient aliens pseudoarcheology of making big stone structures way before anyone else.
>>94409180Here's a better one than the predatory theory:>Neanderthal were all autistichttps://www.loyno.edu/news/jun-07-2024_groundbreaking-study-unveils-role-neanderthal-genes-autismIt would make sense, too. Hunter gatherers would benefit more from being able to communicate in clear, unemotional manners, while a greater sense of belonging and consensus is more useful in neolithic societies.
>>94409180Funnily, I'm working on a sword and sorcery setting where palaeolithic hominids also replaces fantasy race.I want to have ape-men and I'm wondering if Erectus or Heilderbergensis could fit the bill.Assuming you are a dark lord ruling them, how early could early hominids be taught and coerced into using swords, shields, armours... that kind of things? Or even learn artisanship?
>>94409439>The premise is a homebrew alternate timeline where the mythos is in the open and monsters are more openly out thereDid you see this post by Throne of Salt? https://throneofsalt.blogspot.com/2023/06/a-weird-history-of-stranger-earth.html?m=1It's basically a retelling of earth's prehistory but with the mythos (and a few other stuff) thrown in.You could steal it outright.There also was a setting for CoC taking place "after the stars aligns" and the Great Old Ones take over earth. I don't remember the name, but it was amazing
>>94409180I like my non-humans to be feral and weird than just humans with x ears or animal people (apart of a few than have either entered a covenant with the equivalent of Gaia, wich make them a lot less agresive and cute so I can have non sexualized animal people than aren't furries, and stuff like Kokiri), so I use a lot of inspiration from aliens and speculative biology for my games. The neanderthal predatory theory is something I Loved from years, even if it isn't true, its exellent for stuff like ogres or orcs. Inspiration from other rpgs and books have made my ogres, wich I call Gogs when they aren't magical, and magogs when they are (that's is isnpired in some Alexander chivalric tales), so an orc would be a grouping or social Gog, an ogre a Robust big gog, a Troll, depends, is the kind of more bestial and dumb, like a seal mixed with an ogre, is a robust sea gog, or Sea troll in the norhten parts, but if its a magical one, perhaps in not-Japan, there is a big magog, or Oni in the local parlance, as a gog is any Humanoid mamal than has 8 digits in the hands (necrophages, guls and lots of other monster humanoids fall there), and they tend to be inimical to humans, hating they smell and visage, tough not all the gogs/magogs hate humans (there are good ogres in tales after all) but its a general thing.
>>94417289I think its better to use "fantasy" version than real stuff, or better, just fantasy archaic beings, if only because any new discovery could destroy what we know of this or that ancien human (like denisovans or neanderthals, or erectus and floriensis).
>>94416277Red deer cave cute.
>>94417960>>94416277Can't believe I'm writing that, but would Habilis no homo I agree that Red Dear Cave is waifu material
I just wish someone would turn Indecent Descent into an erogame.
>>94424172Right off page 11, huh.
>>94416360I remember a thing which fluffed Neanderthals along those lines: in essence they were super-smart enough to know that which Man Was Not Meant To and accordingly kept their material culture too modest to spiritually implode. Sapiens were the idiot cousins they hung out with as almost pets, unfortunately we eventually became aware of the secrets they were keeping and procured the means of subjugating them. From there the Neanderthals marched into extinction as one unwilling to sink to our level yet also not up for handing over "radioactive" knowledge to children who'd surely misuse it to their own ruin.iirc it ended with the PoV narrator as a childhood friend of one of the genetically resurrected few getting ready to torture her for info that would not (perhaps could not) be willingly shared. The horror / tragedy was the fact that nobody really wanted to be evil: it's human nature to know at all costs while neanderthal to spare the innocent certain self-inflicted doom.Speaking of resurrected species Blindsight's vampires are relevant, the Black Man series also features what's basically a new hominid diaspora of tailored replicant clades.>>94417263Something could be done with trepanation and head binding I bet. Why wait for naturally occurring neurodiversity when you can lobotomise your offspring?
>>94411766Isn't that Fire Emblem Three Houses?
