S&P races

Looking at this list, let's see what is non-fantastic and more gee-whiz planetary romance-like, shall we?

From the first Core Races set, I think Human is the only one to qualify.  Everything else is either magical or mythological or a derivative thereof.  To the (limited) extent that the psionic stuff can be considered core, I'd say all of the EPH races are also applicable, although I think the Goliath is a better choice than the half-giant, and conceptually they are quite similar.  I also think it's conceivable that the elan and maenad are better represented as culturally exotic humans rather than as another "race" that just happens to look like humans with another set of game stats.  And if I'm disallowing dwarves, then using duergar seems odd; they're just a variety of dwarf, after all.  I guess that means that I modified the EPH races to dromite, xeph, and goliaths in place of half-giants.  The Githyanki and Githzerai aren't open content, and aren't in the SRD (but are listed as playable, albeit LA +2 races in the EPH) and could conceivably be used as well.  As a houserule of D&D elements, they're perfectly fine, but as non-open content, their use is somewhat problematic in any other setting; I'll probably want to come up with a new name for similar concepts.  The same is similar for the thri-kreen.

Of the 3.5 Monster Manual "Monsters as Characters" list, the ones that strike me as workable include only a few: the lizardmen, the kobold maybe as a reptilian counterpart to the halfling, gnolls, and maybe the three goblinoids—goblins, hobgoblins and bugbears.  I'm a little hesitant with them, because they do have a folkloric background, but maybe something like hobgoblins with a derived cultural description aren't really very different from the githyanki anyway.  Gnolls are open content, but they've also been utilized in stuff like New World Computing's Heroes of Might and Magic III, so even if WotC wanted to try and assert I/P rights as the heir to stuff TSR created, they've probably already let that one slide.  In fact, as basically little more than an anthropomorphic hyena, it's worth pointing out that a few other anthropomorphic animals could fit, although I'm not really a big fan of them.  Ratmen, catmen, etc.—they'd not really be out of place, just... I'd probably rather not personally.

The Races series from 3.5 then gives us catmen, maybe feral garguns, sea kin, and underkin and a bunch of other stuff that isn't usable (I briefly considered killoren, but changed my mind).  The Eberron setting gives us kalashtar (better represented as exotic humans) and warforged.  Shifters and changelings are probably too "magical" to work, although—changelings could maybe fit (Star Wars had them too, for what it's worth.)

The 3.5 environment books also give us two or three races each (mostly), but I don't know how useful they'd be.  From Frostburn we get the Neanderthal (which I could use) and the uldra, which is a fey and therefore probably not applicable.  The Sandstorm races are garbage, and I'd never consider them for anything.  Stormwrack gives us another aquatic sea human (different from sea kin, but conceptually the same) as well as gliding apes and orca-men, both of which are absurd.  I don't remember that Cityscape and Dungeonscape either one had any races; they were a bit smaller than the other three environments.

I also don't believe that any of the other editions gave us anything that's worth pillaging; dragonborn and tieflings are heavily based on fantasy elements, after all.  Some of the more esoteric settings like Dark Sun or Dragonlance had some esoteric races (minotaurs, pterosaur people) and of course Savage Species made almost any monster playable, as well as offering brief statlines for every kind of anthropmorphic animal you can think of from bats to baleen whales.  But let's round up what I've just reviewed and see what looks likely to make the cut.

• Human (naturally) and probably in more exotic ethnic diversity than normal, since we're talking about alien planets with red people, blue people, green people, etc. in the immediate source material.
• Goliath
• Xeph (can be seen as a replacement for the halfling, in a way, without the fantasy baggage)
• Dromite
• Ersatz gith and thri-kreen (does the presence of gith naturally infer the presence of mindflayers, or something similar?  Thrints?)
• Lizardmen (and kobolds as a small version)
• Gnolls
• Catmen (provisionally.  I'm still on the fence if I think this is a good idea or catnip (no pun intended) for creeps.  If we do have them, they have to be more like the Kzin than anything else.  Predatory wookies.)
• Neanderthals (maybe interpreted as sasquatches or gnoph-kehs?)
• Sea kin or some other kind of aquatic Atlantean people: Namor and Aquaman style, I mean.
• Underkin (aren't these really just morlocks anyway? Why not call them that?)
• Warforged (probably could also stand to be renamed.)

If I can be allowed to venture just a bit into the m20 sphere for a moment, I probably have stats that are interpretable as these races already kicking around.  They also all exist for D&D 3.5, of course.  I don't know what kind of coverage you'd get for 4e or 5e, and a few of them do not predate 3.5.  Despite all that I'm sure that no matter what edition of the game you play, you could find some suitable stats that can be reskinned.  Planetary romance has a very exotic feel to it with regards to races, and they've got an almost (but not quite) science fiction feel to them, assuming that science fiction equals the more constrained modern definition, which is synonymous with "hard science fiction."  Planetary romance has a more soft science fiction feel, but not so soft that they feel like fantasy.  The races listed above, I think, can qualify, although they may require a little bit of work with regards to fluff.  For example, the goliaths are not half-giant former slaves (well, they might be former slaves, I suppose) because they're not related to giants; they are just a big race in their own right in a planetary romance setting.  The warforged are artificial people, but they're not magically animated—they could be more like a kind of clockwork feel to them, although without the steampunk gears and copper plating, etc.  They may in fact that Lovecraftian brain canisters as the source of their intelligence, for all I know—assuming that we use them as a "standard" as opposed to exotic race.

Do the dromite and the thri-kreen kind of impugn on each other's "insect people" vibe?  Probably not—I'm more inclined to reinterpret the thre-kreen to be more like the Green Men of Barsoom, honestly.  (Lin Carter's Callisto series had his Green Men analogs be more overtly insect-like.  I can't remember what he called them, though.  Yathoon?)  Realistically, this is more races than I need to get started.  It'd be better if I thrifted it down to no more than 8-10 playable races.  I've got 14, but many of those are better seen as monstrous humanoids rather than playable races.  Nobody (well, one guy I know, anyway—has to be the exception) ever thought it made sense to play in a Middle-earth roleplaying game and having ent as a playable option, or orc.  Some of these options maybe are more suited to be antagonists than protagonists by nature.  That gives us the slightly truncated list, then, as follows below.  The bigger list above can be used as an "expansion" list if needed.

• Human
• Gith
• Goliath
• Xeph
• Dromite
• Lizardmen
• Kobolds
• Morlocks
• Sea kin

D&D S&P

Glancing at my stats, I see that an old post of mine about using D&D to play sword & planet has had a strange spike in views.  Let's revisit this concept somewhat, and maybe even create a D&D S&P tag to explore it as an alternate setting.   Here's a few of my past posts to review, before we start (I just read them.  You can, although of course if you don't, that's fine too.)

• Using D&D for planetary romance
• Planetary Romance
• John Carter of Mars

Maybe that last one is a bit superfluous.  The real stuff is especially in the first one; what if you wanted to use D&D elements, but adapt them to sword and planet (or planetary romance) instead of sword & sorcery?  That post talks a bit about what to change, but I'm going to be just a bit more conservative, and attempt to create planetary romance out of existing D&D elements rather than rewriting them more radically.  This means trawling through D&D races, removing the ones that are fairytale and fantasy races, and seeing if I can specifically focus on ones that are planetary romance-like.  Classes is maybe a bit more difficult, because class variety between editions of D&D is more marked than race differences.  But I'll see what I can do.

"But Mr. Desdichado!" you may be saying.  "Aren't you just going to do what you always do anyway and whip up an m20 game for this, so that the specific classes don't really matter that much?"  Well... probably.  But I'll discuss some classes and their suitability to the game.  For ease of use, this will probably focus on either 3.5 or Pathfinder classes, because I'm more familiar with the former, and the latter are open content and readily available for anyone to read.  Plus, I like the notion of using archetypes to better align them the genre and/or setting.  The same can be said, to some degree, of D&D races; what are the D&D races?  There aren't a ton of choices in 1e or B/X that will really work, but in 3e (and 3.5), and 4e, and 5e and Pathfinder, we get a lot of choices.  And then, of course, there are monster races that are usable as PC races... sorta.  

So, what will I need to specifically post as I develop this series over the next... however long it ends up being?

1. RACES: I'm going to try and focus on the more familiar rather than the more esoteric.  I won't be able to be completely successful at this, I don't think, because I'll have to dig a little bit to get ones that really work.  Either that or I can use the races as is, but rename them.  This would certainly be applicable to m20 races, but given the more detailed mechanical description of D&D races in most editions of D&D, probably not.  The Psionic Handbook races might feature heavily.
2. CLASSES: We'll need a wide variety of swashbuckling action classes, plus some kind of psychic powers or psionic mind-wizard type characters.  Honestly, this may more closely resemble the classes from a d20 Star Wars game than D&D as its normally constituted.
3. MONSTERS: Just a brief discussion on adapting existing monsters and what to look for.  
4. WEAPONS & EQUIPMENT: For the most part, S&P is all about both swords and rayguns, and they both have to coexist comfortably.
5. AN m20 RULESET: Yeah, I'll probably do one.  It'll end up being a hybrid of FANTASY HACK and AD ASTRA, I imagine, so it won't really need a permanent tab.
6. SETTING: If I do all of this and I'm still interested, I may whip up a setting lite.  

All in all, the end result shouldn't be, I don't think, more extensive in nature than the IRON LORDS OF JUPITER campaign from Dungeon 101 Polyhedron 160.  In fact, a collection of posts with about that same level and degree of content is about exactly what I expect as a side-effect in the end.

Given what I've done with ODD D&D and DEMONS IN THE MIST and some other games I've done in the past which also replaced most of the races with less overtly high fantasy D&D races and also replaced magic with psionics (mostly) you may be forgiven for wondering how this will differ from those except in details of setting.  That's... actually a legitimate question, and probably correctly noted; they won't actually differ too much.  Except, of course, that this will be revised into m20 before I'm done, which I did not do with either of those settings.  Those other games were all specifically 3.5 houserules.

Finally: if you're not already familiar with this genre, what should you research?  First off, if you've never read the first three Barsoom books, you absolutely should.  They're free, because they're old enough to be public domain.  A Princess of Mars, The Gods of Mars and Warlord of Mars all by Edgar Rice Burroughs.  Then, if you've got access to it through like your public library or something, watch the first season of the old Filmation Flash Gordon show.  Or maybe the old Buster Crabbe Republic serial.  Get a hold of that issue of Dungeon and read IRON LORDS OF JUPITER or find any DARK SUN material that you can, which is more D&Dish than I'd otherwise recommend; but still with a strong sword & planet "vibe" to it.  Listen to Les Préludes by Franz Liszt.  In a pinch, watch the 80s Flash Gordon with the Queen soundtrack, I guess, or the John Carter movie from a few years ago, although know that neither is really all that good.

Using D&D for planetary romance

Since Jeffro has pointed out that it might well have been expected in the mi-70s that you use D&D to run games that aren't necessarily a vanilla thud and blunder hybrid of sword & sorcery like game-play in a setting that looked like a vanilla extruded fantasy product high fantasy...  I wonder what using D&D to play sword & planet, or planetary romance would be like.

Clearly, D&D has borrowed a lot from sword & planet stories over the years.  The Dark Sun setting was specifically designed to be similar (in some ways) to Barsoom.  Creatures like the gorillon are quite explicitly the same as Barsoomian white apes.  The Pathfinder setting book Distant Worlds is clearly designed to be the Leigh Brackett solar system, complete with Barsoom-like Mars and Amtor-like Venus, turned into fantasy (it's actually a bit more science fiction and less planetary romance than I expected.)  Other, non-D&D games have explored the territory even more thoroughly; Space: 1889 has a strong planetary romance angle, Hollow Earth Expedition has a Mars add-on that's just like Barsoom (given that normally the setting is just like Pellucidar, it's fair to say that Jeff Combos is a Burroughs fan...)  Lizard wrote what may be the most popular (if my own completely unscientific observations about it and people asking about it online are any guide) of the d20 mini-games in Iron Lords of Jupiter.

White ape of Barsoom?  Or gorillon of D&D?

But what about seriously using D&D to run an unapologetic sword & planet setting; not a sword & sorcery setting with some sword & planet influences?  How would that be done?

I said a few days ago that sword & sorcery and sword & planet are already almost indistinguishable save for the rather arbitrary distinction that the former uses magic, and the latter uses pseudo super science to essentially do the same thing.  This was a rather facile over-simplification, so let's have a look at what is really different, shall we?

1) First off, the races.  While you could conceivably come up with some way to make fantasy races fit into planetary romance (Pathfinder's elven kingdom on Venus actually works pretty well, for instance) you're better off changing them.  The classic sword & planet setting has humans—although of some exotic ethnicity unlike any on earth, usually, and then a bunch of really kind of gonzo non-human races.  The Green Men of Baroom, for instance, are ten feet tall, have chameleon-like eyes, huge porcelain tusks, and four arms.  Lin Carter's Yathoon on Callisto are giant insect people.  Barsoom also has kangaroo-like hopping people, and gigantic head-like spiders that ride headless humanoid bodies as steeds.  Amtor has bird people, fish people. people that grow as buds from plants, and people that reproduce via mitosis, etc.  Look for some really gonzo, unusual races, mix that up with regularish human people with green skin and blue hair or something like that, and your racial selection is good to go.

2) Secondly, classes: A lot of D&D classes (at least in most editions) are related to some kind of magic; either divine or arcane.  While I can imagine a planetary romance that uses magic, normally it does not.  Curiously, psychic (or psionic) powers is not at all out of place; in the first John Carter novel, Burroughs goes on and on about the telepathy that is common on Mars (although it's rather conveniently forgotten and rarely mentioned again later; kind of like midichlorians that way...) and on Callisto, the Mind Wizards are another example of weird psychic mind-readers and mental manipulators.  Some of the more colorful tricks of a psion in D&D are essentially indistinguishable from magic, other than the mechanics and the pseudo-science names attached to the powers.  I think something a bit more toned down than actual wizards is desirable.  Something more like the Jedi would work.

3) Many fantasy stories, even sword & sorcery, don't really emphasize the "pulp aesthetic"—things needs to be gee, gosh, exotic, exciting, over the top: gratuitously exciting in a boy's adventure tale kind of way.  One fascinating feature of planetary romance (actually, Burroughs, who created the genre, did this in most of his other books too) is that just over the next rise or hill, just on the other side of the next sea, or whatever, is always some really bizarre, unguessed, exotic location.  Although the action is fast and furious, there's also a sense of the travelogue about these books; it's also about showcasing the imagination.  Quiet little villages and farmlands are never as exciting as abandoned cities protected by illusion-projecting primitives who everyone assumed were extinct, or valleys filled with weird cyclopean carnivorous plant people, or a sea made of red mist instead of water, or... y'know.  Whatever.

4) To be really true to the genre, you might think about being the PCs be Earth people stranded in a strange land.  While it's not required (there were Barsoom, and other settings, books that featured native characters from time to time) it's customary.  Burroughs did it, Carter did it, Resnick did it, Kline did it, Akers did it, Moorcock did it, Howard did it, Norman did it, etc.  With a pedigree like that, you've got to give it some serious thought.

5) While there certainly are super-science elements to a sword & planet campaign, your scientific stuff can't be so effective that it eliminates a) big, angry, primitive monsters that are basically equivalent to alien dinosaurs, or b) the effectiveness of hand-to-hand combat with swords and stuff.  Make sure that your rayguns (or whatever kinds of guns you have) aren't so good that naturally everyone will switch to using them exclusively as their weapons of choice, for example.

Along those same lines, while it was really only (mostly) Barsoom that had naked people running around, this is supposed to be a swashbuckling kind of genre.  Plonking around in heavy armor doesn't seem to really be the way things are done.  D&D has some optional rules for scaling armor class (as to hit scales) without needing armor; I'd either adopt these, or find some others that do more or less the same thing.

6) In a swashbuckling combat game, lots of dungeon-crawling doesn't really seem appropriate.  While certainly John Carter or some of the other guys occasionally got into a fight with someone or other in a cave, the entire paradigm of dungeon-crawling seems highly inappropriate for this genre.  Zipping across the planet in a flying ship, sneaking into an enemy city at night to rescue a supremely hot space princess or eliminate a political rival—that I can see.  There's lots of politics, gladiatorial games, mass combat of mounted and/or flying troops, and the discovery of strange and exotic cultures, races or terrain while lost out in terra incognita.  If there's an old school model that you need in order to run the game, the hex-crawl makes a lot more sense than the dungeon-crawl.