Elves and Dwarves... and Conan!

I love new campaign settings and the nostalgic sense of the unknown you get by reading them for the first time (that's my HC SVNT DRACONES Rule). Another thing that I really appreciate is a well-done reskinning - taking something now and twisting into new and exciting lore.

I once tried to do a Sword & Sorcery setting by giving a new face to D&D traditional races... actually, I failed miserable at that goal, because I completely created the races (here are my "elves", "halflings", "half-orcs" and "dwarves", all for Pathfinder 1E). As you can see, it was indeed a "reskin" most of the time - I kept the mechanics but changed the flavor.

However, let me show what I always considered impossible: keeping D&D races (and their mechanics so far) but adding a pure Sword & Sorcery flavor, of the kind you usually see with Ashton Clark Smith and Robert E. Howard). I'm talking about the new Sword & Sorceries series, a 5E collection of adventures that place in the Broken Empire setting and is published by Arc Dream. I talked about and created new material their first adventure - The Sea Demon's Gold.

I still remember avidly seeking and reading every scrap of lore of some (now famous) settings that I could get me hands on. Examples are the amazing Iron Kingdoms, when everything we had on them was the Witchfire Trilogy or Golarion, when Paizo was still publishing the first volumes of Rise of the Runelords. That was an amazing experience and I'm repeating it now with Broken Empire - not exactly through their adventures (which are great) but by their pre-generated characters.

Yup! Go over to Sword & Sorceries and read the character backgrounds of Saurga, Hannatamtu, Enu, Ajusuuji and Aimina. Particularly, read about the non-humans adventurers (that's Enu and Ajusuuji). The Broken Empire's take on dwarves and elves - i.e. within the context of classic Sword & Sorcery tropes - is awesome! Without changing a single thing, they managed to give a new face to those otherwise very traditional and Tolkienesque races. The way that Ajusuuji learns magic is also very interesting, because it keeps all of D&D rules working but within what appears to be a Low Fantasy scenario. Read it! It is that good!