Felar have had an in-game past and a distinct creation story.

Dwarves in almost any and every incarnation in every fantasy setting are based in something vaguely stereotypical highland scottish.

Giants always had only a single alignment to draw from and thus stereotypes to be drawn from, and in the case of storms and fires...areas (lake/kiadana) that explained via room descs and mob descs alot about the kind of "people" they were. And now you even have these new helpfiles.

Gnomes/svirfneblin also have a not-insignificant representation in popular fantasy literature...as well as a fairly well-defined "personality profile" in their in-game helpfiles.


Duergar are "evil dwarves"...that have both dwarf rp, and single alignment rp to draw from...as well as some fantasy literature.

drow/elves are probably the most extensively "explained" in fantasy literature.

Orcs are almost as explained as the elves...and they not only have a single alignment to draw from...but a single class...making it easy to fall into the stereotype...and easy to adjust the existing stereotype enough to make it interesting.

Minotaurs have a bit of a real-world mythological background...as well as a very well defined in game helpfile.

Arials are....birdlike. Arial city does not give them any flavor other than "humans with wings" (sorry to say it that bluntly, but that city just does not offer any uniqueness to arials that drow city/blidgen/mortorn/lake/kiadana/blackclaw lends to their respective races). They can be any alignment and almost any class...and given the EXTREME variation in how we as human beings look at different birds...from doves to woodpeckers to eagles to vultures...combined with almost a total lack of in-game history/distinct culture...

where all of the other races have stereotypes that are well known to draw off of...the player of an arial has to work *MUCH* harder to create a distinctive background and attitude...to the extent of almost every well-roleplayed arial has had to create out of whole cloth an entire arial culture from which to draw manerisms...speech patterns...and the like.


Some people like that open-ness and the freedom of roleplay and are able to make a rich character out of it. Most people take the shortcut and just put something vaguely "birdish" into their roleplay and call it a day.

"Death awaits ya all, wit nasteh big pointeh teeth!"