robertsconley
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What I find, sadly, is that most GM's just play non-humans as humans with rubber prosthetics.
As a side note, I play into this with the Majestic Wilderlands. The only nominally alien race are the elves. All the other mortal type races (dwarves, halflings, lizardmen, centaurs, etc) are created from human stock by the demons during the brief age they ruled the earth at the dawn of time. This includes animal-human chimeras.
I develop this idea and put some thought into what the mutations were and how they effected the pysche of the individuals who are of these races.
For example the Orcs are also magically mutated human who not only had their physical makeup altered but also had their baseline psychology shift to make them a better servitor race for the demons. The mildest orcs would be considered to be pushy, rude, and bad tempered by the average person. The average orc are downright abusive and their extreme on the other end would be considered sadistic by human standard. The main reason they can hold together as a culture is that their submission to dominant leaders has been also rest to an extreme by the demons. So orcs can rise to be chief or king and still keep society going even though it would be consider brutal by human standard.
The "races like halflings, dwarves, gnomes, etc that are part of the traditional alliance with human and elves are that way because they were the first transformed by the demon and only their physical characteristics were altered. That didn't work out as well as the demons hoped so they started on animal-human chimeras, psychological manipulation, and some very extreme manipulations like the dopplegangers.
Elves
Basically a cousin race to humans so not totally alien. But their immortality dominates their psychology and cultures making it very different than baseline humans. I took a page from Tolkien's conception of his elves in that, elves don't ever die. Sure you can "kill" an elf, their body collapses, and their spirit leaves. But after a period of time (decades, centuries, or millenia) the spirit will be reborn into a new body. Basically the world of the Majestic Wilderlands acts as a soul jar for the elven race.