I’ve been wanting to write this article for a long time now.

Let’s talk about Kin in my new world that I’m working on for Hex-A-Day 2025. Just going off of the various kin I have created, and the group has encountered, one would think I have a thing for anthropomorphic animals. Maybe I’m building a game full of fuzzy wuzzy, lovable, cozy, harmless creatures that all get along all the time. Outward appearances can be deceiving.

Every world, real or imagined, capable of sustaining life has more than one type of organism living on it. Earth has about 8.7 million species of living organisms that we know of. If you count what lives in the ocean and things smaller than the naked eye can see, there are probably far more. How much of our oceans remain unexplored? What we define as sentient life is somewhat of a moving target, too.

Bring that to fantasy worldbuilding. So far I’ve been pretty easygoing in the design of kin. All sorts of kin and creatures have come and gone from this world. I’m not ruling out the Cthulhu-type Elder gods yet, either. I wanted this place to have a deep history of many different cultures and civilizations.

Disclaimer: Statements expressed in this article are strictly my opinion. If you disagree or have a different opinion, that’s okay. I’m not an expert on everything. I’m not always right. I’m just writing from my experience as I know it. Your mileage may vary.

I had to ask myself, “Who wrecked the place?”

The short answer: humans. The long answer is stuff for other articles. Today, let’s look at humans for a few minutes.

Let’s look a Star Trek: The Next Generation specifically. Q referred to humans as “a dangerous child race.” He wasn’t kidding. Have you seen the state this planet is in today? Spiritual and ET related talk aside, we humans are a scary, messed-up lot who have nearly wiped ourselves along with half the planet out. We are kind of a backwards, dangerous bunch of kids playing with nuclear firecrackers, lots of guns, and germs we don’t understand and have no hope of stopping if they get loose. That’s not even counting things like pollution, weather manipulation, manmade geological disasters, and various doomsday weapons that may or may not have been built yet.

Sure, humans are capable of amazing stuff. Imagine how amazing it would be if we had renewable or zero point energy? What if we doubled the human lifespan? But we always find a way to screw it up and just kill more of our own kind, Gaia’s creatures, and anything else that gets in the path. Some of us are dangerous and stupid enough to just spend the day randomly swinging a board around hoping to hit someone. (Not me.) Did you see how the USA voted in their last election? Yeah.

We can’t even stop fighting amongst ourselves on this planet. Imagine if there were Elves or Dwarves to also squabble with. Let alone what happens when robots, ETs, and/or the zombie virus get into the mix. I agree with whoever said the first AI to truly become self-aware is going to rapidly discern that it wants nothing to do with humans and high tail it off the planet. I can’t argue with that.

Will there be good interactions with humans?

Sure. Will humans turn out to be more trustworthy than other kin? Possibly not. Humans will have a lot of competition on this world.

Will all types of kin mix and intermingle with one another on a regular basis? Heck no! Some Ophidslakt think Otterkin are fast moving snacks for example. The True Reptilians hate basically everyone except Lizard Folk who they still disregard as inferior. Humans are the least of everyone’s concerns, but everyone knows about them.

To put it in Dragonbane terms, Humans are getting the same treatment on this world that Orcs get in the Misty Vale. Which is to say humans don’t have a lot of trust for much of anyone because they have been betrayed a lot of times over by almost all of the other kin in the past. No one has any sympathy for them, either. Few know what previous human empires did to the planet, but there are an awful lot of what appear to be human ruins all over the place.

The exact fate of Elves and Dwarves is unknown on this new world. Very few encounters have led us to believe that they ever existed in this place at all. However, given the ridiculous numbers of creatures and kin that have or will pass through portals into this world it’s reasonable to assume that there are probably enclaves of them.

What about idyllic fantasy towns with a little bit of everyone?

That’s not going to happen a lot until we see some of the bigger cities and even then there will be different sections of different kin. There will be the Ratkin quarter, the Lizard Folk refuge, the human portion, and so on with some borders to protect certain kin (otters) from being eaten. There is also a real possibility that some kin will prefer to remain isolated to their own little settlements and never be seen in the world at large except in very small numbers.

I feel that Dungeons & Dragons 2024-25 edition has become a little too cuddly with the way Wizards of the Coast’s writers seem to want everyone to act in game. It’s not the game company’s or the setting designers’ jobs to dictate how the game is played out at the table. If the players and the Dungeon Master want a warm, cozy world where everyone gets along and nothing bad happens, great. Likewise if the players and the DM agree to play in a dystopian, Darwinist, grimdark fantasy game where the death rate exceeds the birthrate and no one gets along, great. Let the players and the DM hash that out.

Please do what works best for you as a Game Master and your group. What works for me at my table may not work for yours and vice versa. The main focus is to have fun. There is no right or wrong way to roleplay.

Personally, I like a bit of a mix. Some towns are going to be isolated, insular, monochromatic little settlements of all one type of kin. There will be cities and ruins where some of the various residents do manage to cohabitate. I’m highly anticipating that very few inns or taverns are going to resemble the Mos Eisley cantina from Star Wars.

The point of exploration.

I know we all like fat sacks of loot from dungeons. We all want to discover uncharted lands and explore ancient ruins. That’s why a lot of us like fantasy games so much is because we get to go in search of the unknown.

Much like Star Trek, we seek out new life and new civilizations when we game. Anthropologists and sociologists live for that sort of thing. The cool thing about fantasy is there are still plenty of places we haven’t ventured yet. Many of those places could be populated by beings (kin) that are completely different from us. Some of which we maybe couldn’t have imagined in our wildest dreams.

Thank you for being here with me today. I appreciate you. Keep it real, but please strive for positivity, too. Please embrace the things that bring you the most joy in your life.