Sure, why not? ;) Sorry that most of the sources are in German, but I don’t know about relieable English sources.
Orcs are big, bulky warriors with green skin and very little hair in almost all other franchises. DSA has a bad case of “our XYZ are different than yours!” for most of their species, so their orcs are covered from head to toe in thick, black fur (they’re condescendingly called “Schwarzpelze” / “blackfurs” by other races) and are noticably smaller than humans. Think of small, dark wookies with big teeth. Orcs generally don’t view women as people - not even their own! Female orcs are called by a name that allegedly translates to “animals that birth orcs” and they’re generally treated like livestock.
Goblins got the same weird “ours are different” overhaul. In almost all other franchises they’re the smaller, big-eared, smooth-skinned green people, but in DSA they’re basically orange monkeys (some official art) who ride swine and are literally incapable of understanding where babies come from because the “goblin queen” (Kunga Suula) held a ritual to permanently erase specific traits of that species, these being: understanding what fatherhood means, understanding what personal property is, understanding any type of death rites (they just toss deceased relatives to their swines), understanding loyalty of any kind. A bit more info here: https://pnpforum.de/viewtopic.php?t=56697 … and the “best” part is that this ritual was held to protect the tribes from the Nameless (basically the main antagonist) because that entity often corrupts people by false promises appealing to their desires, like promising to liberate a folk from harsh conditions or protecting their loved ones and the like. A Goblin who doesn’t care for his offspring or friends won’t be tempted by that, right? Extremely weird way to protect your people IMHO, but canon.
Elves, at least the “purebred” ones, never have unwanted pregnancies. They can f*ck all they want and won’t need protection or birth control, because elven babies have to be “called from the light” which is basically just a ritual to make a female elf pregnant. No idea what this ritual is supposed to look like, but sex isn’t necessarily involved. Elves having fun with other races, that’s a different topic tho, and might lead to an inconvenient surprise when the elf in question suddenly understands why other races don’t have / need such a ritual…
Elves start out incapable of digesting fermented or highly processed stuff. The entire race is basically lactose intolerant and “spice-tolerant” like a Brit until they VERY slowly get used to eating human meals. The Elven language (isdira) is also basically unlearnable by other races, because elves speak with two voices at once, so a single elf sounds like two different people saying the same thing at the same time, and THAT in turn is a prequisite for the correct pronounciation of a lot of elvish words. Like I said earlier; I really wonder what TH the creators smoked … I also faintly remember reading somewhere that the second voice comes out of their nose when they say two different things at the same time, but I can’t for the life of me find the source for that so take it with a grain of salt. It might have been a fan theory. Some more info here: https://dsaforum.de/viewtopic.php?t=51042
Every single person on the continent Aventurien has a “soul animal” that represents their character traits. They may not know about it, or may know that such a thing exists but don’t know WHICH soul animal they are associated with, but there are magic spells to “see” said soul animal in others to give the spellcaster an insight of the spell-targets soul. If for example a wizard casts that spell on a person claiming to be a war veteran and they see a battered, scarred, old lion then the wizard will know the other guy speaks true, whereas if their soul animal turns out to be a stressed-looking chicken or something like that, then that guy is probably a liar.
Simlar to that, witches usually have an animal companion that is basically a separate part of their own soul, so it should be identical to the soul-animal of the witch in question. The rulebook suggests some “classics” like crows, black cats and frogs, but any regular (non-magical) animal between the size of a bunny and a cow is okay to use when creating the character. You want your witch to have a monkey, goat or tortoise as a companion? Go ahead. Witches also have some …unusual spells. They can make their saliva have healing or damaging properties, so they can heal wounds by licking them but also melt the face of an attacker by spitting at them. And they can reanimate and move “dead” wood. The witch of one of my regular players once was in a situation where she was tied to a chair, and she decided to make the chair run away with her still on top while their captors weren’t looking. We had to pause the session for a while because everyone was laughing so hard at the mental image of a tied-up 80-something wrinkled old lady galloping through the streets on an effing chair, yelling “so long, suckers!”
There is a goddess named Rahja, who stands for lust and love and joy. One of her “Alveranians” (basically angels) carried her child to term in her stead, to spare the goddess the pain of having to birth the child herself. The thing is … that Alveranian was a man. I do NOT want to think about this any further.
So…yeah. There you go. One big serving of coversation starters ;)
Honestly, their orcs don’t seem odd so much as old. Green orcs mostly come from Warhammer and Warcraft and were backported into DnD after they became popular enough to be the default. Dark, hairy, and short isn’t actually far off from how Tolkien described his orcs.
I’ve seen The Dark Eye at book and game store in the past, but I’ve always passed it by. Thanks largely to this comment, I will now be spending a lot of money on it.
That animal companion thing sounds like the daemons in His Dark Materials, which is cool.
Lots of neat unusual concepts there too, I like. Though using familiar names like orc and goblin just makes things confusing. They should have come up with different names for their weird races.
It’s basically that, minus the ability to talk (the “daemons” in HDM can talk like people, whereas the soul animals in DSA can only talk telepathically with their respective witch). The only other difference is that a witches’ companion is usually born elsewhere and has to find their witch in the real world later, which usually happens when the witch is around seven years old and her magic awakens. IIRC the daemons in HDM are somehow born alongside their respective humans and keep shapeshifting until they settle for a matching animal form eventually.
I fully agree with the name change tho. I mean, it should not have been that hard to just stick to Blackfurs and Redfurs for orcs & goblins when they’re “nicknamed” that way in the actual game anyway. Both races also have noticably different names for themselves in the game (goblins call themselves Suulak, for example) so that would have been yet another option for a unique name. No need to call these fictional races by a name that most people already associate with very specific traits and then go out of your way to make them “different”.
Sure, why not? ;) Sorry that most of the sources are in German, but I don’t know about relieable English sources.
So…yeah. There you go. One big serving of coversation starters ;)
Honestly, their orcs don’t seem odd so much as old. Green orcs mostly come from Warhammer and Warcraft and were backported into DnD after they became popular enough to be the default. Dark, hairy, and short isn’t actually far off from how Tolkien described his orcs.
Agreed.
I’ve seen The Dark Eye at book and game store in the past, but I’ve always passed it by. Thanks largely to this comment, I will now be spending a lot of money on it.
That animal companion thing sounds like the daemons in His Dark Materials, which is cool.
Lots of neat unusual concepts there too, I like. Though using familiar names like orc and goblin just makes things confusing. They should have come up with different names for their weird races.
It’s basically that, minus the ability to talk (the “daemons” in HDM can talk like people, whereas the soul animals in DSA can only talk telepathically with their respective witch). The only other difference is that a witches’ companion is usually born elsewhere and has to find their witch in the real world later, which usually happens when the witch is around seven years old and her magic awakens. IIRC the daemons in HDM are somehow born alongside their respective humans and keep shapeshifting until they settle for a matching animal form eventually.
I fully agree with the name change tho. I mean, it should not have been that hard to just stick to Blackfurs and Redfurs for orcs & goblins when they’re “nicknamed” that way in the actual game anyway. Both races also have noticably different names for themselves in the game (goblins call themselves Suulak, for example) so that would have been yet another option for a unique name. No need to call these fictional races by a name that most people already associate with very specific traits and then go out of your way to make them “different”.