spelljammer setting ideas:
each species has its own home system/crystal sphere. they also have control of most of the spheres in an area around them. the further out from their territory the more likely they are to share a sphere with a nearby species. so there's a homesphere for elves, for dwarves, orcs, and halflings but where the territory overlaps you'd start getting crossbreeds.
so like an elf and a dwarf would be something like a Mul from dark sun. an elf and orc would be like a combo of a typical half-elf and half-orc, something like a wild elf or a voldur. and elf and a halfling would be like a wood elf, making the "regular" elves something like a high elf. a halfling and a dwarf would be a gnome while a halfling and an orc would be a goblin. not sure what a dwarf and an orc would be but google comes back with something called a dareog. and then when you mix all of them together you get a "mutt" called a Human.
so in this case Common isn't the human language because of imperialism bullshit but because its the trade language all the other groups share and when you're lineage is super mixed its more likely your parents had different languages and thus spoke a common one while you were growing up. it would also finally explain why humans are in that whole "jack of all trades, master of none" thing when it comes to stats and abilities.
not sure what to do with the drow though. like i don't want any "pure evil" races. like sure they won't all get along but no need to be all scapegoaty either. prolly make the dark elves part of the "high elf" group. so it'd be dark elves, sun elves, and moon elves as the "original" elves. maybe in their home sytem they've got three habitable worlds. one in the warm end of the goldilocks zone, one in the middle, and one in the cool end of the zone. so you'd have the dark elves in the warm end, the sun elves in the middle, the moon elves off by elf pluto.
the dark elves wouldn't be as sun-adverse as they normally are but hey their whole schtick was fucked up from the start. besides i like the elder scrolls version of dark elves better. still assholes but not inherently bad.
also not sure what to do with the "beast" races either. like where do dragonborn come in? are the dragons a spacefaring race too? would that make dragonborn part of the human category? or are they something else?
similar problem with tieflings, aasimar, and genasi.
guess i'll have to think on it more















