This is not the first world.
A battle is ongoing, since the very beginning of time - or at least far back enough as makes no difference to any mortal race.
The gods of creation are at war with the god of destruction, Lanfel. As every age begins, they create the world anew.
They need to do this because at the end of every age, Lanfel destroys it again.
A new race has been born to dominate each world.
Fourty thousand years ago, the world of the dragons was ended. The age before that, or the previous... nobody knows for sure. Nothing survived to tell the tale.
This is the world of humans, elves, and gnomes. Samsarra.
At least, so the usual creation myth goes.
But what do you care? You're a normal, if fairly capable, person, and the dealings of gods aren't just not your concern, you haven't seen any evidence to prove they exist at all (unless you're already a believer, in which case you've seen plenty). The heads of pretty much every church and a lot of nations claim the gods talk to 'em directly, but as you might expect, a lot of those claims are contradictory - so either the gods are at odds, or someone is lying their ass off.
Though this's a medieval setting, so chances are good you believe anyway. Or fake it to not get burnt at the stake. Not being cooked is good.
Races
Elves: The elves are the oldest humanoid race on the world of Samsarra. Both in terms of history, and in terms of individual longevity.
Elven artifacts (mostly stone tools) have been discovered in areas believed to date back fourty thousand years. And individual elves stick around for something on the order of three to five hundred years, presuming nothing kills them in the meantime.
This is a bad thing.
You see, societal change, and increases in freedom, often happen simply because the more restrictive generations died off. The elves take far longer to do so. Not only does this mean that they've had less cycles of social development than most other races, but it also means that the older generation has more time to indoctrinate the younger into their own social restrictions, so they need more.
What this means is that traditional elven culture is built on an extremely socially conservative caste system - they don't like change, and they do not respect or particularly like people who want to alter their perfect society, or leave it. The traditional elven kingdoms live in their traditional homes in the forests, observe the same set of traditional social mores (devotions to the gods on the sixth day of every week; women to be protected but not respected; no marrying between castes; no divorce - marriage is a political tool, not for romance; no sexual intercourse outside marriage; veneration for the forest, they are pretty good about taking care of their environment; respect for and following of higher castes, which goes in the order nobility->clergy->military->craftsman->merchant->labourer; etc etc), follow the same royal lineage they've been following since they thought maybe they could build houses in the trees (at least, so they say, though elven politics can get pretty Byzantine, and assassination is probably their national sport - power takes a fairly long time to transfer due to long natural lifespans, so the people who really want power early tend to shorten said natural lifespans, and who knows where the current leaders descended from), and practice their traditional arts in pretty close to the same form they were in ten thousand years ago.
All that said, however, a restrictive culture tends to lead to a fairly vibrant counterculture, if they can survive the backlash from the mainstream. And the younger generations are always full of new ideas. In a situation where they cannot overtake the cultural mainstream, they do still have the option of leaving it. There are two main groups that have done so.
The first, chronologically, are the dvergar tribes (well, the traditional elves call them tribes, but the traditional elves call every non-traditional-elven nation tribes). The dvergar were originally part of a number of elven mining colonies... then they took over the mines and kicked their overseers out, built their own society, and proceeded to repeatedly rebuff elven recapture attempts through means of substantial violence. As such, about a third of the total metal supplies in this world are in the hands of the dvergar. (For reference, the traditional elves have 1/12, the gnomes have 1/6, the human groups have 1/4, and the dragons have the last sixth)
Now, the dvergar are extremely socially liberal. Given that they started at a great disadvantage against the elven empires, which were pretty intent on causing them great amounts of harm, they really couldn't afford to go alienating any of their already-small population base, or restricting any of them from any roles. So there aren't honestly many taboos in dvergar society. They operate off the rule: 'If it doesn't mess with society, just damn well do it and keep it out of my face'. Other cultural groups tend to find them a bit too liberal (you may, too - they honestly don't care about 'squicky' things, as long as the squick isn't put into their faces), but they get along fairly well with almost every cultural group except the traditional elves - they possess a large portion of Samsarra's wealth, so it's fairly easy for greed to overpower one's distaste for them using women in combat, or their complete lack of sexual taboos...
Though, don't go confusing 'liberal' with the usual political conflation. They're not pacifists, by far, just extremely pragmatic.
The second group to split off is more of a trickle of other groups. They are usually called by the catchall term 'urban elves', though they exist in non-city-based cultures as well. Urban elves, in essence, rather than forming their own cultural group, just left and attached themselves to another. These elves can't really be governed by a catchall description, suffice to say that they generally match the social mores of their host society, usually with a leaning either towards traditional elven mores ('home wasn't all bad, just mostly'), or diving face-first into the host nation's culture.
The 'attached themselves to another' phrase does carry with it some connotations, not all of which are accurate. The urban elves are generally full members of their multiracial host culture, and in many cases are a statistically significant percentage of said society.
Now, elves in a physical sense. You know how, in traditional D&D, by the time an elf has learned to tie his shoelaces and go potty, a human has started creating his ultimate doom fortress, attained immortality, and moving onto his next blasphemy against all laws of god and man? That's not the case here.
Elves mentally and emotionally mature at approximately the same rate as humans, though physically is a great deal slower (which also has some effects on mental maturity, given the composition of their brain chemistry at that point in their lifestyle - basically, if an elf looks thirteen, they'll probably act like a thirteen-year-old when they're not focusing, even if they're a veteran, highly proficient soldier, who can speak eloquently on topics of philosophy and law). This slower physical maturation means, essentially, that an elf, by the time they're capable of heading out into the world, is probably highly educated on a variety of side topics just so they have something to do while waiting for their body to be able to do whatever they're aiming towards.
(In game terms, this means A: elves have a +2 to Int, and B: most elves, having had fifty-plus years of practice, for those on the young end, have a higher level average than the other races)
Elves also tend to have better hand-eye coordination than the other races. This is because, in an evolutionary sense, they're descended from primates that never really moved from the trees to the plains like the ancestors of humans did. Therefore, their spatial sense, and overall acrobatic ability, tends to be higher. This has also had the interesting side effect (along with their longevity and thus lots of time to practice - or work on a single piece), of making them quite spectacular at craftsmanship. This is not to say that craftsmen of other races cannot be just as good (or better, though the elven potential is higher, so a human or gnome has to be more practiced to achieve the same or better levels of proficiency), just that elves have the highest average natural talent, and thus have a higher average of craftsmanship.
While most creation myths tend to agree on broad strokes and disagree on details, the elven myths, as far as their own race's origin, focus on this: they are supposed to be the race chosen by the gods. The ones who will survive the end of Samsarra, and allow the gods to defeat Lanfel once and for all. Though the only ones who especially focus on this aspect of they myths are the traditionalists - the dvergar and urban elves are a little less narcissistic about mainstream elven culture, given that they've, you know, left it.
Gnomes: Gnomes can, technically, be called the middle race... if you really want to get punched in the face. But, as far as lifespans and numbers are concerned, it is accurate. Gnomes live about two hundred years, and are more numerous than elves, but less numerous than humans.
The race's known age is, again, between the two. Where exactly gnomes came from is somewhat unclear. The dvergar first encountered them in the underworld about five thousand years ago, and opened up trade relations.
The gnomes themselves, at that point, had been down there for a few generations (they're not exactly sure how long, having not been able to see the sun), and most of their history was myth. According to the myths, they were refugees, they dug deep into the ground to escape the Aos Si that ruled their world... and popped out in Samsarra. Well, Samsarra's underworld, though after contacting the dvergar, they did venture up to the surface. There have been exploration attempts, but thus far, nobody has found the path the gnomes used to come from Sidhe, if they really did at all.
Culturally, the gnomes are open to new ideas, highly inquisitive, and a bit erratic, on the whole - they get along fairly reasonably with the dvergar (one extremely impulsive, the other extremely tolerant - the gnomish stereotype for the dvergar is pretty much the straightman for their own antics, and the gnomes rather have fun with it; not to mention their shared openness for new ideas, mixed with gnomish creative bent and elven craftsmanship, creates some rather interesting toys), and there are actually some merged kingdoms down there, though the gnomes have spread pretty much wherever they can. While elves are moving away from their oppressive central culture, the gnomes are pretty much just going there to see it, and settling in if they think the place is cool.
So, gnomes are members of pretty much any cultural group that will accept them, and most will - they're a little eccentric, but they're charming, and economically solvent. There are still some primarily-gnomish kingdoms in the underworld, as well, and unlike the elven mainstream, the gnomes actually have a speaking (as opposed to stabbing) relationship with their home kingdoms.
Physically speaking, gnomes are the smallest humanoid race (and approximately on par in size with the kobolds). Despite their impulsive, carefree natures, there is some hint that they really have been running from something for a very long time - their senses are sharp, and a gnome, while usually acting impulsive, very rarely misses a trick, and can go calm, quiet, and fast-reacting the instant something 'smells' off.
Humans: Admit it, you were waiting for this section. So, here's the juice.
Humans are the newest race in the world. The shortest-lived. And by any measure you choose, the dominant. There are more humans on Samsarra than any other race - in fact, there are more humans than gnomes and elves put together. This numerical superiourity, and dominance over most of the land, means most of the other races are, if absolutely nothing else, forced to consider humans as factors in their lives.
This dominance is largely a product of a mix of factors. The easy factor is birth rate. But the second factor? Survival rate. Humans are, without competition, the toughest bastards on the planet. Humans can survive more or less any environment on the planet (short of, y'know, lava, or underwater - though they haven't let that stop them from building over water), and while they can't eat anything, they can definitely make enough of a shot at it to make it look like that to the other races.
What elves can eat, humans can eat. What gnomes can eat, humans can eat. What dragons and kobolds can eat, humans can eat. What none of them can eat... humans dip into that too. And human food... well, their spices are, to them, mild poisons. To other races, remove the mild. Most of the other races' choice in diet are pretty bland, to human sensibilities. Don't disguise yourself as a human and order at a restaurant.
Humans are also physically stronger than the other races (well, the other humanoid races). An elf's rail-thin girly-boy physique carries just as much muscle as it looks like it does, and the same goes for a gnome's midget-build. Though this is mostly an assisting factor, and not the main cause for their dominance, like their durability is.
Humans first came on the scene approximately three thousand years ago - if you listen to mainstream elven poems, the gods themselves wept fire for years before their coming. And even the dvergar records admit there was some seriously weird shit going on back then. The humans themselves... same as the gnomes. Historical fact is lost, and is now replaced by myth.
According to the myths, humanity was a group of angels (or gods, depending on the ego level of which human's telling you the myth) that was exiled from their holy realm, Apua Ana. (The reason for said exile isn't ever clear, though theologians and historians have been trying to figure it out from the scraps of older records for a while, and have a few thousand theories floating about) After their exile from Apua Ana, the human tribes wandered the Falias Desert (whether it was a desert at that point is usually unclear, some say no, some say yes, some say the manuscripts were using a word mistranslated as desert or it meant 'desert' in a 'spiritually parched' sense), and straggled out in groups at various times, whose descendants became the current human kingdoms. (Or tribes, as the traditionalist elves will insist)
What all the historians of all the races can at least agree on is that the humans all came out of the Falias region. And that they did form into the current human kingdoms, which spread out across more or less all available space.
Now, human kingdoms are pretty widespread in bent, so they'll need to be discussed individually in the next section.
This bit should be covered here, though: I did note that the humans are in control of 1/4 of the mineral wealth of Samsarra. And they do. So, as a bloc, they're richer than any other races than the dvergar. However, you can't forget that there are also a lot more of them. Which means that wealth is split among a lot more people.
Dragons: Elves are the oldest humanoid race. But dragons... dragons are the oldest race. Period. The dragons are the sole survivors of the last world. ... Well, the draconic race is. Even though they have lifespans in the range of a thousand years, not one dragon has lived through the end and beginning of the world. Even for them, it's pretty much myth.
On the other hand, they probably could answer some of the burning historical questions the shorter-lived races have, if they bothered. But, nope.
Dragons are fairly reclusive. And not very social to begin with - unlike most of the other races, they don't really have much drive to hang out with other beings, even those of their own race, and tend to be fairly possessive about their property - both their hunting territory (most have got the idea not to try hunting the humanoid races, largely because said humanoid races do gang up on their enemies, and even the elves can muster a platoon for every dragon on the face of Samsarra, so those who didn't get the point had the point forcibly rammed into their brain, atop a foot-long pole), and about their property. An individual dragon is pretty much comparable to a city-state. If not necessarily in military power (though, some...), then certainly in terms of independence and relations with other beings. They don't socialize much, and even matings are more or less temporary things, with the kids taught the basics, handed a kobold platoon, and dropped out of the nest when they hit their first growth spurt. Social interaction just isn't their thing, and when they do it, it's less analogous to buddies hanging out, and more analogous to diplomatic negotiations. (Though some of these tendencies don't apply to children. Extremely young dragons do have an active 'play' instinct that helps in their physical development.)
The rumour that dragons have a hoarding impulse is pretty much true, but not quite correct. It's not wealth that dragons like. Wealth is a product of society, and dragons do not have society in any real sense of the term. It's not the prettiness, either (what do you think they are, crows?), though they aren't immune to aesthetics. They sure as hell don't like sleeping on the shit - it's hard, and pointy, and if you really want to get stabbed in your sleep, rock formations are a lot easier to get a hold of.
What dragons like is power. With the great amount of societies that do value precious metals, possession of them gives dragons leverage, something to trade for future favours.
Before the elves started looking at and working with shinies (or, for that matter, being useful), draconic hoards were much smaller affairs, usually consisting of what magical items they had acquired or made (well, enchanted - they never really took to smithing or craftsmanship themselves, you know, the whole 'no hands' thing, so draconic original artifacts pretty much consist of usefully-shaped, or melted-into-a-useful-shape, rocks and tree limbs enchanted in some manner). Nowadays, they're pretty nearly spiraling out of control. The thing is, dragons like power... but power used is power used up, as they see it. Which means they tend to hoard as much of it as they can, and it keeps growing. They do spend somewhat to pimp their lairs (or hire humanoid craftsmen to do said pimpim), but honestly? Even dragons have a limit to their hedonism. (Not a low limit, but a limit, and one much lower than their financial worth) Some budding economists make ventures to gain more, and are actually doing pretty well for themselves (they literally would be rolling in the money if it weren't, you know, uncomfortable to lie on), but the majority of dragons prefer A: hoarding what they've got, and B: getting more via the mines they tend to be sleeping on top of.
It's worth noting that the information dragons hold on the details of history is quite a powerful bargaining chip. And, indeed, they know it... which is kind of why nobody has successfully purchased much from them. They know how valuable it is, and that they can only sell it once, ever. So holding the power until someone can come up with something that, at least for that one dragon, equals the value of holding onto that chip... well, it'd probably take an entire nation to convince a dragon to sell something big.
Even the venture capitalist dragons - though for them, it's less the hoarding it, and more the fact that they want to get their information's worth, and a bit extra. Though some do serve as information brokers, they usually hold onto anything big - though they're certainly not afraid to tell prospective customers that they've got something big and worth quite a bit.
As far as the humanoid races are concerned, dragons are something of a pest. After all, some big winged dinosaur just drops in, takes as much of the local wealth as it can get its hands on, and just sits on it, taking that out of the economy. To say nothing of what dragons do to the local hunting - they don't fully depopulate the area of game (unless their parent was really bad about the teaching part, they have enough sense to range fairly far afield to support themselves), but it's certainly rather light hunting for everyone else when a dragon lives there. It's usually not a big enough deal to actually go after a dragon, but there is certainly spitting in the general direction. And there aren't many dragons granted the title 'The Red Glory' by those around them, while there are at least three 'Old Medvedev's Overgrown Booger' on record.
The venture capitalist type of dragon is a lot more popular, after they've been around for a while. They actually have stuff, services and resources, floating back into the local community, so while they certainly are a drain on the local wildlife, they do, in essence, pay their rent.
This should be noted, as well: dragons do not have temperaments (or elemental associations) determined by the colour of their scales. Anyone who tells you that is trying to sell you a crusade (or get some dumbass who can swing sword good to help them get rid of their dragon infestation).
Kobolds: Dragons, as always, lead into kobolds. Kobolds are what we could call an artificially constructed race, and technically are the newest one to have popped up, though that still leaves them with around a thousand years of culture going for them.
You see, the dragons noticed the effectiveness, and utterly massive proliferation of humans. (Putting it in simple terms... humans could actually consider 'feed ourselves to the dragons until they develop overeating disorders' a viable military tactic for extinguishing dragons, if they wanted to. Let alone actually using weapons to do the job.) And some of them thought pretty much whatever anyone thinks when they see someone else being successful: "Why can't I get a piece of that?"
So... they did. A conclave of dragons - possibly the only large-scale endeavour they've ever done, and certainly the only one other races know about - used their skills with magic, mixed in some elements of themselves, and created a race to serve them. They basically took what they believed to be the traits that caused humans to be successful (breeding rate, pretty much), tossed in some other elements, and cranked them up to eleven in an attempt to zerg the planet.
It was both successful, and... not.
It's certainly true that kobolds are at this point the second highest-population race on Samsarra. In fact, given their population density, if they lived anywhere other than in those tightly-cramped mines and dragon-lairs, chances are pretty good they'd be swarming over the planet.
It's also true that an individual kobold isn't very effective in... anything. And given that their life span is approximately twenty years, they're not likely to become so, either. So kobolds generally must swarm to achieve comparable or superiour results... and can only really outswarm gnomes and elves.
Further, it is very true that while kobolds certainly have breeding rate down pat, they do not have survivability quite as 'down'. Kobolds really aren't very durable creatures, and can't take a lot of punishment. Their diets, while certainly less picky than dragons (they were, after all, built to basically be fed 'all that stuff I toss off my food because I certainly don't want to eat it'), are still nothing on a human's. And given that dragons were used as their base, they are cold-blooded - which means they are unable to regulate their body temperature, and tend to fare poorly in cold environments. And for a kobold or dragon, 'cold' means 'outside the tropics'. They can survive, but they're less active, require more food, and generally just don't perform very well.
So, now that we've laid out what kobolds don't do well, let's fill in what they do.
Kobolds are the workers from a communist's (or fascist's) dirtiest wet dreams. They are consistently... satisfied with life, no matter what it's like at the moment. They take the long view. The needs of the group (with the dragons at the top) outweigh even their own survival. Success of the group is their personal success. They like work, they like the daily grind, it gives them a solid sense of purpose, fills out their days, gives them a sense of belonging... Kobolds are extremely social creatures, though their 'programming' generally causes them to restrain their strong desire for social identity and social interaction to members of their draconic family.
From our individualist-minded perspective, this sounds kind of scary, and it is. But this psychology means kobolds are the most industrious, hardworking little pluggers on all Samsarra. And this means they are the most productive little critters around.
It certainly doesn't hurt that they are nimble little buggers. Spectacularly fast for their size, and very good with their hands. Which makes them very useful as workers and guardians to improve and protect a dragon's lair.
'Half' Races: There are no half races. Or rather, there are no hybridizations specially set out. All sentient races are cross-fertile with one another, if they can cover the mechanical issues involved with getting everyone's 'equipment' into place (it's probably be due to the magical nature of the world - prospective parents can, to some extent, cross the biological gap and, in essence, get all the wires hooked up).
What that means for you, game-wise, is that if you want to play a 'half' race, talk to me and we'll work up a hybrid of the stats for you.
Next Episode: Geography!