Saga of the Ortegids: Races

The settings of the Dragon Quest games tend to be quite humanocentric. Almost all playable characters throughout the series have been human, and the ones that aren't tend to be cursed humans or tamed monsters rather than sapient humanoids. In the entire Erdrick Trilogy, there are only two nonhuman polities (three if you count Charlock), and nonhumans are not found in human realms. However, nonhuman races do appear in the Trilogy, and some play quite a prominent role in certain quests. Thus, there is room for discussion on what role the different playable races fill in The Saga of the Ortegids.

In general, nonhumans have their own kingdoms, and there is little overlap in demographics between them and human states. Mixed settlements are rare to unheard of. This is clearly a world closer to Middle-Earth than Faerun. This doesn't mean that nonhumans should never be found in human settlements - I think there's something to be said for leaning into the Blacksandliness of Ashalam and having some beastmen there, for instance - but this should be rare, and worthy of comment.

• Elves are your typical willowy magically-inclined forest dwellers. From what we see of Elvenham in Dragon Quest III, they don't have much in the way of permanent structures, which may imply a semi-nomadic lifestyle, or else they live in the trees and we can't reach their dwellings. I'd be inclined to rule them as wood elves, rather than high elves, but they do tend to be fiercely xenophobic and look down upon humans. They have one kingdom, Elvenham, located in the forests in the far north of the Romalian Empire. I would give them multiple such realms in wooded areas throughout the worlds. In particular, I think it makes sense for them to have a heavy presence in the Worldforest.

• Hobbits appear a few times in DQ3,mostly as one-off NPCs. Of note, the series consistently uses the term "hobbit" rather than "halfling," and I'm going to be keeping that - this project is already an act of copyright infringement anyway, so Tolkien lawyers can't stop me. Curiously, these hobbits tend to be quite solitary; the only two with significant dialogue both live alone in the wilderness, in contrast to the typical bucolic villages we expect of halflings. For The Saga of the Ortegids, I would run hobbits as typically being loners and hermits dwelling far from civilization, leaning into a more fey vibe. Ironically, more Tom Bombadil than Frodo.

• Dwarves do not actually appear in the Erdrick Trilogy, but it feels weird to have elves and hobbits without them, especially if translating the setting to D&D. I would add dwarven strongholds to the mountainous regions of the worlds, likely as self-sufficient and isolationist holdouts that trade little with the outside world to explain their absence from the games. The fact that the world is hollow does have some interesting implications with a subterranean race. There may be dwarves who maintain tunnels linking Erdland and Torland, allowing for travel between the two worlds - though this would, of course, require gaining the trust of the dwarves involved. There is a considerable overlap with hobbits here; one of the hobbits in DQ3 lives in a cave in the mountains, and some translations of the game use the term "dwarf" instead of "hobbit" for these characters. However, the term "hobbit" is used in the GBC release, which is what I'm most familiar with, and the Japanese script specifically uses the word "hobitto," so I'd like to keep them as halflings.

• Beastmen, also referred to as Orcs, would take the place of orcs, goblins, and other monstrous humanoids, and would be represented by their stats. This is a catch-all term to encompass the various humanoid monsters encountered in the Erdrick Trilogy (at least the ones that don't appear to be actual humans, and there's far more of those in earlier games than one familiar with later entries would expect). The series uses anthropomorphic animals more than it uses humanoids with odd skin tones and bestial features - orcs are consistently pig-faced, for instance. So if the Caves of Chaos exists in Torland, it's inhabited by wolf-men, swine-men, bird-men, ape-men, rat-men, and lizard-men instead of orcs, goblins, hobgoblins, and bugbears - which is quite satisfyingly pulpy anyway. There aren't as many of these sorts of monsters in 3 compared to the first two games, so I'd say that beastmen are native to Torland, but they've no doubt established populations in Erdland as well from past excursions. Beastmen tend to be brutish, barbaric, and degenerate, but in the interests of portraying a more realistic ecology than what's in the video games, they would have some degree of society, with villages and fortifications scattered throughout the worlds.

• Dragonborn, or Dragovians, actually fit pretty nicely into the setting. The Dragon Quest games have a number of NPCs who are dragons capable of taking human form, and having dragonborn be playable would represent similar characters. In the interests of game balance, these would have to be lesser descendants of dragons that cannot take the form of a true dragon, but still possess draconic powers. They look mostly human, but may have horns, patches of scales, unusually-colored eyes, or other such features. Their primary realms are Charlock in Torland, and a small kingdom north of the Worldforest in Erdland.

• Tieflings aren't specifically present in the games either, but I would allow them as a playable race anyway. A number of villains in the series have monstrous features that are never really explained, and the amount of demonic incursions into mortal domains would make it quite believable that some interbreeding would occur. Tieflings would be very rare, appearing only sporadically and often being shunned by society, and would not have much in the way of their own civilizations.

• The Drokkarim are something of my own creation. In DQ3, the villain Baramos looks like some kind of saurian humanoid. He's probably supposed to be some kind of demon, but due to technical limitations, they reuse his sprite a few times, including as a generic monster in Zenithia. And one boss, though portrayed in recent releases as Baramos's ghost due to a mistranslation, is actually supposed to be his brother seeking vengeance. Based on this, I've interpreted Baramos to be a member of an entire race I've called the Drokkarim. These creatures are twice as tall as humans, with dragon-like heads and wings and three-fingered claws. They were originally created through the experimentations of the mad wizards of Old Aliahan by breeding humans, demons, and dragons together, and the knowledge behind their creation is long since lost, but scattered populations of them still live on. Drokkarim would be very rare, solitary creatures and would not be available as PCs.