The Genius Guide to Races of Wind and Wing

At its core, a roleplaying game is a chance to enjoy escapist fantasy. Rather than face the real-life threats of traffic jams, rent payments, movies poorly adapted from video games, the flu, and co-workers who never bothered to learn their job, we decide to spend time pretending to deal with the more exciting threats of inhuman marauders, magic doomsday jewelry, horrific toothy beasts, and undead spellcasting tyrants.

Fantasy should be fantastic (and by "fantastic" we mean the dictionary definition-conceived by unrestrained fancy; beyond the realm of the ordinary). That might seem like an obvious thing to say, but fantasy fiction has become so common in popular entertainment that in many ways it has lost its sense of fancy. Elves and dwarves and orcs... we've seen them all before. They're as familiar to the modern audience as private eyes, foreign spies, and femme fatales were fifty years ago. What was once fantastical now represents the status quo, and we have to look farther abroad if we truly want to find something beyond the realm of the ordinary.

As a small offer in that regard, The Genius Guide to Races of Wind and Wing presents a trio of new fantasy races-the aellar, kestrel, and silfide-suitable for use as player characters or NPCs. These races share a common trait of being able to fly to some degree: a small connection but one not found in any of the standard races. They also all come from remote-some might even say exotic-locales, making the possibility of encountering them a rarity in almost any world (and making it easier to incorporate them into existing campaigns).

Of course, it takes more than just a few cosmetic peculiarities to make a creature feel truly fantastic. Like the elves, dwarves, and the other classic character races, each of the new races comes from a culture with its own unique perspective on life and their place in the world-a set of cultural norms that GMs and players can use to understand how the group would fit into a campaign and build characters that fit within (or purposely stretch themselves beyond) those expectations.

Like any good rules expansion, The Genius Guide to Races of Wind and Wing is meant to introduce new possibilities to your Pathfinder campaign and give everyone at the table a chance to expand the horizons of the game and create adventures that are truly fantastic.