What Do I Know?<p><span>For a long time, the only fantasy species I thought about in a heroic fantasy campaign were mythologically adjacent. If D&D was going to adopt species based on Tolkien, with a bit of Anderson, Moorcock, and Leiber thrown in, then my imagination of what was “normal” seemed to align with things that didn’t step too far off the beaten path. Are elves, dwarves, halflings, and gnomes standard? Then maybe I’m okay with centaurs and satyrs as outliers.</span></p><p><span>But with every generation of creators, the idea of what heroic fantasy could look like widened. When I read the </span><i><span>Planescape </span></i><span>boxed set, I wondered, ” What would the fantasy equivalent of the Mos Eisley cantina look like?” </span></p><p><span>Not every heroic fantasy setting needs to build out its roster of sapient species. In many cases, having a constrained perspective can focus a narrative. But when you look at fantasy games meant to emulate heroic fantasy, having a broader toolbox to pull lets players and GMs make informed choices about what they want their games to look like. </span></p><p><span>The default perspective of Shadow of the Weird Wizard is that of humans moving into the Borderlands from the chaos of the Old Country, encountering what they assumed were myths, legends, and exaggerations. But if you want to mix things up or expand the options as the players explore the world, that’s what </span><i><span>Weird Ancestries</span></i><span> is about.</span></p><p><strong><span><b>Disclaimer</b></span></strong></p><p><span>I am not working from a review copy. I received my copy of </span><i><span>Weird Ancestries</span></i><span> from backing the crowdfunding campaign for </span><i><span>Shadow of the Weird Wizard</span></i><span>. I have not had the opportunity to run or play </span><i><span>Shadow of the Weird Wizard.</span></i><span> I have run </span><i><span>Shadow of the Demon Lord </span></i><span>several times and been a player. </span><i><span>Shadow of the Weird Wizard </span></i><span>has some significant differences from </span><i><span>Shadow of the Demon Lord,</span></i><span> and while they aren’t directly compatible, there is some baseline similarity between the systems. </span></p><blockquote><p><b><i>Weird Ancestries: A Rulebook for Shadow of the Weird Wizard</i></b></p><p><b>Writing, Design, and Art Direction: </b><span>Robert J. Schwalb<br></span><b>Editing and Development: </b><span>Sue Weinlein<br></span><b>Proofreading: </b><span>Jay Spight<br></span><b>Cover Design, Graphic Design, and Layout:</b><span> Kara Hamilton<br></span><b>Cover Illustrator:</b><span> Mirco Paganessi<br></span><b>Interior Illustrations: </b><span>Auri Cavendish, Andrew Clark, Lyrica Costello, Biagio d’alessandro, Jack Kaiser, Vladimir Lubin, Yugin Maffiolo, Britt Martin, Mitch Mueller, Matthew Myslinski, Mirco Paganessi, Svetoslav Petrov, Claudio Pozas, Phill Simpson, and Jonathan Vera</span></p></blockquote><p><strong><span><b>Patents of the Borderlands</b></span></strong></p><p><span>The PDF for </span><i><span>Weird Ancestries </span></i><span>is 66 pages long. Those pages are used efficiently. There is a front and back cover, a table of contents, and a single-page Introduction. There is also an ad for the upcoming </span><i><span>Shadow of the Weird Wizard</span></i><span> sourcebook, </span><i><span>Glory of the High One</span></i><span>. The rest of the book is focused on presenting ancestries. </span></p><p><span>If you have seen any Schwalb Entertainment products before, you won’t be surprised to see a very attractive layout. There are art-adorned page borders and clear and easy-to-read two-page columns. Each ancestry has a piece of full-color art showing an example of an adventurer of that ancestry.</span></p><p><strong><span><b>The Longview</b></span></strong></p><p><span>Each ancestry receives two pages of details. Those pages contain the following information:</span></p><ul><li><span>A description of the ancestry</span></li><li><span>A history of the ancestry</span></li><li><span>How others view the ancestry</span></li><li><span>What professions are typical for the ancestry, and what those professions mean for the ancestry</span></li><li><span>What starting paths are typical for the ancestry, and why they might adopt that path</span></li><li><span>Alternate 2nd and 5th-level path advancements based on archetypes that the ancestry might follow</span></li></ul><p><span>The introduction broaches a topic we’re still wrestling with in heroic fantasy roleplaying. Harmful themes have been attached to heritability in fantasy roleplaying, as have some damaging assumptions about biological determinism. Some fantasy RPGs have adopted a minimalist approach to ascribing anything beyond sheer physicality to species. In some ways, this isn’t so much addressing the problems of the past as it is wallpapering over them.</span></p><p><span>In the introduction, Schwalb explains that some aspects of the cultures of these ancestries in the setting will be detailed, and common and uncommon professions, courses of action, and societal assumptions exist in the entries. Two things are true of this means of presenting the information:</span><span><br></span></p><ul><li><span>It provides an archetypical explanation of the ancestry, which can serve as something to iterate from and is not meant to be a constraint on what the player does with that character</span></li><li><span>None of the attitudes, customs, or practices are dictated by blood but by the history and interactions that ancestry has had with the world and with others</span></li><li><span>The entries largely frame the information about that ancestry from the point of view of that ancestry’s primary culture rather than defining them by what humans know or feel about them</span></li></ul><p><span>Creators are still going to have their biases. Whenever a culture starts to take on more aspects of existing, real-world cultures, even superficially, people who understand that culture need to be consulted. However, an approach like the one outlined in the introduction will do more to advance and address the storytelling done by introducing various ancestries and their cultures into a campaign world than making ancestries or species too much of a blank slate.</span></p><p><span>Some of these ancestries are going to be easier to introduce to a campaign with similar assumptions as those outlined in the </span><i><span>Shadow of the Weird Wizard</span></i><span>’s Borderlands setting, while others are going to entail a more customized approach to the story of the game.</span></p><p><strong><span><b>Roll Call</b></span></strong></p><p><span>What follows is a list of the ancestries in the book and as succinct a description as I can provide for them:</span><span><br></span></p><ul><li><span>Archon–angel adjacent constructs cast to the mortal realms for some imperfection</span></li><li><span>Cambion–someone with an infernal ancestor or carrying a long-term infernal mark from their family</span></li><li><span>Centaur–half human/half horse wanderers</span></li><li><span>Changeling–a shape-shifting fey that has adapted to fit into a wide range of situations</span></li><li><span>Clockwork–constructs initially working for the Weird Wizard, finding new purpose in his absence</span></li><li><span>Daeva–a mortal being bonded to the spirit of a lost empire</span></li><li><span>Demigod–the offspring of powerful spiritual beings, or invested with their power at birth</span></li><li><span>Dhampir–living mortals partially infected with vampirism but not fully transformed</span></li><li><span>Dragonet–a three or four-foot-long draconic creature that looks like a small dragon</span></li><li><span>Dwarf–hirsute, short, stout, hearty humanoids looking for new homes to ply their craftsmanship, who worship their ancestors</span></li><li><span>Elf–immortal fey beings that live in adjacent pockets to the world, appearing as thin and graceful humanoids with something different about them, like tails, gossamer wings, or hooves</span></li><li><span>Faun–short, forest-dwelling humanoids with goat-like traits, mainly evident in their lower bodies</span></li><li><span>Ferren–cats that can turn into people, or maybe the other way around</span></li><li><span>Goblin–fey creatures that feared the damage humankind could do and set out to harry them from their entry into the world</span></li><li><span>Halfling–three-foot-tall humanoids who travel in wagons drawn by mammoths and are generally well-regarded</span></li><li><span>Haren–rabbit-like humanoid creatures that have been fighting to drive out those that get too close to their dwellings</span></li><li><span>Harpy–winged humanoids that often live in cliffside caves</span></li><li><span>Hobgoblin–a fey creature similar to a goblin that instead adopts humans, lives in their homes, and provides services as long as they are respected</span></li><li><span>Jann–humanoids infused with elemental powers, who are traveling sailors and merchants from across the sea</span></li><li><span>Naga–serpent folk who once ruled the continent but whose society collapsed</span></li><li><span>Pollywog–isolationist amphibious frog folk, mostly smaller than humans, but some of whom grow to a much larger size than average</span></li><li><span>Revenant–a mortal that has died and returned to life to complete some task</span></li><li><span>Shadowkith–humanoids that live in a mirrored, shadowy reflection of the world</span></li><li><span>Sphinx–generally human-sized cat folk with wings who have relocated to the Borderlands</span></li><li><span>Spriggan–human-sized plant people who were once trees but are now much more humanlike</span></li><li><span>Sprite–two-foot-tall fey creatures with wings who don’t want to take orders from elves</span></li><li><span>Tatterdemalion–a vaguely humanoid pile of clothes inhabited by a spirit that animates them</span></li><li><span>Triton–aggressive fish/humanoid hybrids who traditionally don’t get along with seafarers</span></li><li><span>Warg–humans descended from lycanthropes who were chased out of the Old Country by zealous inquisitors</span></li><li><span>Woodwose–beast-like humanoids who were once shock troops of the trolls but who now want to forge a new life</span></li></ul><p><span>If you’re asking, “What about orcs,” Shadow of the Weird Wizard has a different take on orcs. Orcs aren’t an ancestry or a species. There is a disease that infects other humanoids, turning them into orcs, who violently attack other humanoids that haven’t been infected.</span></p><p><strong><span><b>Mechanical Makeup</b></span></strong></p><p><span>I’m not particularly fond of what defaults to human ancestry benefits compared to the ancestries in this book. Humans have an ability called “a cut above,” which lets them add +1 to two attributes. “A Cut Above” already sounds a little like humans are the “chosen ones” in the setting rather than the default point of view, and I would have liked to avoid any attribute boosts as ancestry benefits. This is somewhat mitigated by the fact that they aren’t applied to any specific attributes, and the description mentions something more akin to special training, fate, or destiny being the source of this rather than humans being “born better” genetically.</span></p><p><span>The other problem with two ability bonuses is that it makes it hard to gauge what the other ancestries get as benefits are in line with humans. They’re always playing with different mechanics than what humans get, and it’s hard to weigh a +1 greater chance to roll success in those situations where your attributes are relevant to abilities outside of what humans could accomplish overall. I almost wish humans got to pick from a handful of benefits more in line with the abilities these ancestries get.</span><span><br></span><span><br></span><span>But what kind of ancestry benefits are we looking at in this book? Here are some example benefits:</span><span><br></span></p><ul><li><span>Bonus to defense score</span></li><li><span>Bonus to health</span></li><li><span>Immunity to some condition</span></li><li><span>Speed Increase (compared to humans)</span></li><li><span>Fire Resistance</span></li><li><span>Natural Weapons</span></li><li><span>Impersonation</span></li><li><span>Push your luck for extra actions</span></li><li><span>Disembodiment</span></li><li><span>Health Drain</span></li><li><span>Flight</span></li><li><span>Extra probability to avoid magical effects</span></li><li><span>Harder to hit</span></li><li><span>Friends with animals</span></li><li><span>Changing the results of luck rolls</span></li><li><span>A limited number of floating boons</span></li><li><span>Additional opportunity attacks</span></li><li><span>Keen Senses</span></li><li><span>Limited and conditional invisibility</span></li><li><span>Venom</span></li><li><span>Repositioning enemies</span></li><li><span>Limited conditional healing</span></li><li><span>Short-range limited teleportation</span></li><li><span>Quick escape</span></li><li><span>Speaking with animals</span></li><li><span>Immunity to some transformative effects</span></li><li><span>Bonuses to some traits when in another form</span></li><li><span>Easier checks when you use strength to move things </span></li></ul><p><span>Some of these ancestries have similar traits that work in slightly different ways. Many of the flashier abilities can only be used for a specific amount of time until the character rests or makes a successful luck roll. </span></p><p><span>Quite a few of these ancestries, especially those with some of the more substantive special abilities, also have weaknesses or difficulties. For example, some larger ancestries are more accessible to hit. Some are slower than the standard rules assume. Some are easier to target with specific attacks or take more damage from them, such as cold or fire. </span></p><p><span>First, I’m not looking for some magical means of measuring any of these abilities for balance. That’s not possible. Mostly, I think the ancestries that get some of the wilder abilities have some thematically appropriate setbacks to deal with. I don’t care if those setbacks trigger more often or less frequently than the character can use their benefits. I’m more concerned that setbacks don’t keep you from playing your character and that you can use your abilities often enough to enjoy having them without causing too much of a headache for the Sage to present appropriate challenges.</span></p><p><span>Going back to my comment about humans, getting a statistically consistent bonus on two attributes and not having any particular setbacks or weaknesses may “balance” against more situational abilities, but having abilities you can actively trigger or abilities that can be used to mitigate situations that come up in play, feels more actively engaging than what humans get.</span></p><p><span>What I’m getting at is that I like most of these ancestries and what they can do mechanically. I just hope there’ll be some advanced option where humans might play with active or situationally crucial abilities. </span></p><p><span>I’m less concerned about some abilities that appear if you take your ancestry as an advancement instead of a path because those will be measured against the various paths. Some of them have similar benefits. For example, more traditionally magical ancestries may provide access to new magic traditions. Some of the ancestry advancements take an ability that can only be used infrequently and increase its use intervals. In some cases, powerful signature abilities are tucked away at higher levels, but the story of the ancestry often reframes those defrayed abilities. For example, your screeching ability as a harpy isn’t going to manifest until you take your 7th-level path advancement.</span></p><p><strong><span><b>Challenges</b></span></strong></p><p><span>There are some very imaginative options in this book, some of which may be too interesting not to entertain and still a little strange to implement. Humans from the Old Country are distrustful of the strange supernatural things they didn’t have to deal with in their previous homes, but changelings, daeva, demigods, careful dhampir, ferren, maybe revenants (for a while), shadowkith, and warg all may be able to sit next to wary humans without too much trouble. Dwarfs and halflings seem to be regarded by humans as just strange folk but not overtly supernatural or inherently dangerous.</span></p><p><span>Some human settlements may have acclimated enough to the strangeness of the Borderlands that they have an easier time associating with centaurs, harpies, Haren, fauns, or even clockworks. That seems like the kind of drift of assumptions that works for special frontier towns that have a history with other cultures.</span><span><br></span><span><br></span><span>On the other hand, holy constructs, demonically infused humanoids, small and friendly dragons, snake folk, frog folk, winged cat people, plant people, scary-looking fish folk, and Ludo from Labyrinth all seem like a harder sell if you are using the default setting. That said, there is no reason it couldn’t be an interesting story arc, building relationships between humans and their stranger-seeming neighbors. I don’t know how comfortable I would get around an animated mound of clothes.</span><span><br></span><span><br></span><span>When I say this is challenging, I don’t mean that as a negative. It’s just that the campaign will either be a unique setting created by the group, or the story will at least partially be about how these characters came together. </span></p><p><span>As far as abilities go, some might cause the game’s Sage to do some extra planning, but those trickier abilities aren’t any more challenging to navigate than the inclusion of similar abilities in a game like D&D. For example, some of these ancestries can fly from level one, meaning that any challenge you hope to derive from a scenario where PCs have to climb or find some way up a vertical surface, or where a chasm or pitfall would be a significant problem, may not be a problem for that party.</span></p><p><strong><span><b>Storytelling</b></span></strong></p><p><span>It’s interesting to see some ancestries similar to those presented in </span><i><span>Shadow of the Demon Lord</span></i><span> and how their stories change in this setting. For example, changelings, as far as their own history says, are fey creatures just as old as the elves and goblins, but their replacement construct origin from </span><i><span>Shadow of the Demon Lord </span></i><span>exists as folklore humans share about them.</span></p><p><span>Elves retain their “one step stranger than Tolkien” traits, which lean slightly toward Poul Anderson’s elves and folklore about the fey. The woodwose touch on the idea that the trolls are some of the setting’s more dangerous supernatural antagonists, which is consistent with their role in </span><i><span>Shadow of the Demon Lord. </span></i></p><p><span>Goblins are portrayed as largely unpleasant and adversarial, which might be more of a problem, except the fey are somewhat influenced by their outlook and what traits they want to have, at least in a broad sense. It’s also interesting that hobgoblins seem almost like goblins would be if they hadn’t quarreled with other fey and decided that humans are too dangerous to be left alone.</span></p><p><span>While some ancestries often have cultures that are antagonistic to humans or other ancestries, it’s also interesting to see those ancestries that aren’t demonized by human folk tales. Harpies rarely sing songs to enthrall humans and lead them to their doom. They are mainly a matriarchal society of bird folk. Since fauns share traits that humans often ascribe to devils, they sometimes portray them as devils living in the woods, seeking to tempt humans into damnation.</span></p><p><span>Some of these ancestries also throw some curve balls. Archons have a backstory that calls back to the D&D 4e angels, constructs built to serve the gods with no natural morality of their own. The daeva in Shadow of the Demon Lord are elemental creator spirits from prehistory rather than the survivors of a sunken realm who exist in spiritual form. Sphinx aren’t any more overtly magical than a humanoid cat person with wings would be. The triton are less the noble aquatic humanoids of D&D and instead have traits more commonly associated with kua-toa, sahuagin, or deep ones (which get name-checked as an alternate name for the creatures). The haren are unexpectedly aggressive compared to assumptions you might have about rabbit folk.</span></p><p><span>While the Shadow of the Demon Lord products mixed some comedy with a fantasy horror vibe, the setting of Shadow of the Weird Wizard allows for a little more breathing room for light-hearted content. The description of the ferren is the kind of loving yet exasperated assessment you would expect from someone who loves cats. The dragonets have an amusing balance of self-importance and benevolent disposition that is a fun trait to draw from when playing one.</span></p><p><strong><span><b>Trickier Content</b></span></strong></p><p><span>There are a few places where it may be worth it to tread carefully with the ancestry story that’s been told. This product handles ancestries with issues in other games well. For example, an interesting point/counterpoint in the cambion entry says the gods may have cursed them, or they may be the recipients of a consciously chosen bargain.</span></p><p><span>On the other hand, there are still some potential pain points. Goblins avoid many negative stereotypes and real-world allegories that other games have stumbled into. However, they still amount to creatures that almost always come from an unpleasant and malevolent society, where few will challenge the status quo to become more benevolent adventurers. Despite this, framing goblins as having their own city and explaining their initial point of view on humans doesn’t assume they are lesser or subservient and makes them feel less two-dimensional than they might have.</span></p><p><span>While it avoids some of the more detrimental language surrounding these tropes, the Naga play with the “we were a great ancestry once, but now we’re lesser and trying to find our glory,” which implies that they are less intelligent and competent than in the past. It also frames some of them as superior because they are more like their “unfallen” form. I’m not sure what would work better for this story, but I’d rather there was less of an assumption of superiority versus a cultural divide based on motivation.</span></p><p><span>My last concern may not be of concern to other people. I’m mainly worried about what it might appear to be rather than what it is. Pollywog isn’t an offensive term, but it does contain a word that is used as a slur in some parts of the world, and using a word that contains that a potential slur to refer to a sapient species feels like it might be getting close to touching the third rail. I realize that this is a regional slur, that the complete word isn’t a slur at all, and that there are so many languages that contain slurs and insults that it’s not going to be possible always to avoid them, but because I’ve seen this brought up before when people were discussing the world pollywog, I wanted to address it.</span></p><p><strong><span><b>Hands Across the Borderlands</b></span></strong></p><p><span>There is a ton of imaginative, evocative material in this book. It expands character options, fills in setting details, and provides a toolkit for people homebrewing their own settings. Many of these ancestries have fun and thematic abilities that are active and available for players to use, and other abilities are clutch abilities that would feel good when the right circumstance comes up. The ancestries that have weaknesses have weaknesses that make sense for their stories. Each entry is just long enough to provide practical, actionable information but short enough to remain engaging and to compel you to read on.</span></p><p><strong><span><b>Good Fences Make Good Neighbors</b></span></strong></p><p><span>It’s less of a flaw in this book, but the fun design of these ancestries makes humans feel a little lackluster and perfunctory. The book does a great job of approaching ancestries with intentionality and from their own point of view, but some story elements still need to be navigated with care.</span></p><p><strong><span><b>Recommended—If the product fits your broad gaming interests, you are likely to be happy with this purchase.</b></span></strong></p><p><span>It’s not hard to recommend this product if you’re already interested in </span><i><span>Shadow of the Weird Wizard.</span></i><span> There is enough imaginative thought in the descriptions of the various ancestries that it might not even be a bad purchase if you aren’t using the system just to mine for ideas. In addition to providing player options, it also provides the Sage with additional information on the setting, making it a good guide for portraying NPCs, their personalities, and their motivations. It’s also useful if you use </span><i><span>Shadow of the Weird Wizard</span></i><span> as your framework for a homebrewed heroic fantasy setting.</span></p><p><em><span>If you would like to pick up some of the Shadow of the Weird Wizard releases, and you don’t mind supporting my habit of buying too many RPGs, you can buy them at the affiliate links below:</span></em></p><ul><li><a href="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/457226/shadow-of-the-weird-wizard?affiliate_id=63392" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">Shadow of the Weird Wizard</a></li><li><a href="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/472099/secrets-of-the-weird-wizard?affiliate_id=63392" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">Secrets of the Weird Wizard</a></li><li><a href="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/492780/weird-ancestries?affiliate_id=63392" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">Weird Ancestries</a></li></ul><p><a href="https://whatdoiknowjr.com/2024/10/29/what-do-i-know-about-reviews-weird-ancestries-shadow-of-the-weird-wizard/" class="" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://whatdoiknowjr.com/2024/10/29/what-do-i-know-about-reviews-weird-ancestries-shadow-of-the-weird-wizard/</a></p><p><a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://whatdoiknowjr.com/tag/000080/" target="_blank">#000080</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://whatdoiknowjr.com/tag/339966/" target="_blank">#339966</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://whatdoiknowjr.com/tag/800080/" target="_blank">#800080</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://whatdoiknowjr.com/tag/d20/" target="_blank">#d20</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://whatdoiknowjr.com/tag/d6/" target="_blank">#D6</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://whatdoiknowjr.com/tag/rpgs/" target="_blank">#rpgs</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://whatdoiknowjr.com/tag/schwalb-entertainment/" target="_blank">#SchwalbEntertainment</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://whatdoiknowjr.com/tag/shadow-of-the-weird-wizard/" target="_blank">#ShadowOfTheWeirdWizard</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://whatdoiknowjr.com/tag/ttrpgs/" target="_blank">#ttrpgs</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://whatdoiknowjr.com/tag/weird-ancestries/" target="_blank">#WeirdAncestries</a></p>