Regalia: Of Men And Monarchs is doing well on Kickstarter - update #5:

ON THE TOPIC OF RACES

Once upon a time, a certain Mr Tolkien codified the classic trifecta of races: humans, elves and dwarves, and the shadows of his ideas linger still. From Dungeons & Dragons to Final Fantasy, from West to East, the intuitive split between the generic, the beautiful and the crafty finds eternal purchase. In that sense, Regalia is no different. The trifecta is there, too. If this raises your suspicions and/or protests, then rightly so. In my previous update, I made a sweeping statement about being tired of certain conventions - and true, nothing is more conventional than using those three stock races. But gleefully tossing in some horned helmets and Legolas clones would be both bland and unrewarding. As we sat down to do some basic worldbuilding, we took our dwarves, and elves, and gnomes (they're in too), and thought to ourselves: what, how, why? What defines those races? What inspired them in the first place? What are their conventional purposes, and what would be their logical conclusions? Can we twist and poke them for some fresh output?

When you look at dwarves, in Dungeons & Dragons terminology, they're a poster "lawful" race. They are honorable, orderly and orthodox to the point of boredom. They have a strong martial culture and are typically wary of outsiders. And I thought: hell, this sounds a lot like the stereotypical medieval Japan.

Boom, samurai dwarves.

Our elves came from a different thought process. As a dwarf fan, I may be slightly biased, but I never really enjoyed how elves tend to be portrayed as noble, angelically beautiful lords of a bygone age. Sure, that's how people like them, and I respect that. But they weren't always this way - and, as Terry Pratchett noted in his Discworld series, there used to be a time when "terrific" meant "to beget terror", a time of Us and Them, of the Fair Folk who would kidnap your children and gnaw on your bones. The Irish sidhe were capricious, inexplicable creatures, both wonderful and monstrous. That's how I wanted our elves to be. Also vikings, because vikings are cool. Please don't judge me.

Last but not least, gnomes. In a world of easternized dwarves and scary elves, we tried to keep our gnomes closer to how other universes tend to portray them - that is, lighter and crazier. At the same time, instead of making them grease monkeys or burrow dwellers, we chose to plant them at the head of Regalia's largest trading empire. They are, at core, Arabian Nights-esque flavored people, hailing from a weird land full of spectacular wonders, with much of that strangeness reflecting on gnomes themselves. Unsurprisingly, although many respect them, almost nobody understands them. (...)