Custom race culture

Well, having variations on culture also depends on how huge your world is. Sure, elf culture in the country your story takes place in might be like this but elven culture from another county could be totally different, but unless your characters go to that country or meet someone from it it doesn’t make a huge difference. It would be really cool to see lots of variations, sure, but there has to be reason behind it or it might just get confusing and muddled

1 Like

For whatever reason elves are the only non-human race that usually gets much differentiation (i.e. High elves, wood elves, dark elves, that’s usually it). I imagine orcs get lumped together as a holdover from historically being the Always Chaotic Evil race. Amusingly, Tolkien was probably a bit better about that, with his orcs actually having internal subgroups that didn’t always get along with each other.

I don’t know what my input is worth but just my two cents on the issue. Summarizing something as just Beastmen seems weird since it would imply all animal like species would get along solely because of that.

What about non-apex predator animal people? You’d assume something more like deer, wouldn’t be seen as scary or a big deal compared to something like alligator or bat people. Odds are they would probably be more likely to be accepted into major civilizations that are more oriented towards human standards.

A war-like people, which is typically orcs, are probably going to be closer with the more savage type of beast people.

Beast people themselves would realistically be pretty complicated socially in comparison to pure human society. Most mammal type beasts rely on scent, likely meaning that they would hold a negative stigma to things like soap and perfume.

Biologically, since not all groups are the same size or have the same diets, food is going to be a constant competition among them, with weaker species resorting to things like cannibalism, stealing, or even having to work in service to pure blood humans for food.

Most beast people are born naturally with some level of athleticism above what even a conditioned regular person can do. It’s not realistic that they would fully comprehend the difference of why other species are unable to do the things they can’t. The most likely case is that they would come to the conclusion that it’s just because “pureblood” humans are less than they are. They’d find them either pathetic or adorable.

It would be seen as a humiliating thing to ever work underneath one, let alone have any kind of relationship with them that implies they might be on equal footing with each other.

It’s possible that they might have good social actions with Centaurs who are probably going to be able to understand their logic a little bit. A conventionally brutal ogre or troll clan, is most likely going to try and view them as a quick source of food but it’s also feasible that a vicious enough beast race could potentially befriend them. It’s highly unlikely they understand, know or even care about how elves are supposed to be different from humans, which is going to create serious tension with them expressing zero interest in eleven superiority. If it looks like a human, fumbles around like one, and smells like it, who cares how pointy it’s ears are?

In all likelihood, beast people aren’t going to get along very well with other races or each other on the best of days. They’re likely valued as mercenaries and nature loving groups such as druids. Not many of the naturally powerful beasts need to know or care about things like tailoring, currency, or the proper forks to use at a dinner party.

I know this is a long post, but that’s just my speculation is all to if they actually existed in a fantasy setting, then there is a realistic possibility that those fantasy stereotype cliches about them would actually turn out to be true.