It's very possible that you could just uses races as cultural proxies, much like they are often used in fantasy fiction. As such, you could set them up like the following:
Dwarves: Either a proxy for Germanic tribes with access to wonderful metal crafting technology, or maybe Persian merchants with vast wealth in intricately crafted goods.
Elves: Either Asian influences with strange, inscrutable customs, fine silks, and elegant weaponry and armor, or more traditional Gaelic influences to play up their fey nature.
Halflings: Either your standard English country bumpkin-style of culture, or maybe give them more Spanish or Italian influences of hospitality, machismo and decadence.
Dragonborn: Either Roman influences or a caste system delineating between the more Greek philosophy minded and more Spartan warriors or maybe more Viking culture inspired with boats and dragon imagery.
Tieflings: Any culture, with their demonic heritage maybe being more important due to the uptick in superstitious thinking.
Half-Orcs: Since Orcs can likely be a fill-in for either Moors or Mongols, this half-race could pop up with trappings from either culture.
Oh wow thank you both so much. Those links seem really helpful!
And while I wasn't going to go full cultural proxy, that's just wasting my existing knowledge, I was going to do things like put major dwarf colonies in the Scandanavian mountains and the Alps a la Tolkien's Dwarven kingdoms, and I was at a loss for how to mix in some of the groups like Dragonborn and Halflings and you gave me some good ideas on how to do that. (Though I am leaning towards making most halflings be like the Ghostwise Halflings and thus have them act more like brownies and other small fey-creatures of lore).
And I am really looking for any suggestions, tips, extra resources, etc that might be able to help me.
I'm an archaeologist so the cultural and historical and geographical knowledge are all fine and I've got that covered thankfully.
And I have an idea of how I plan to set up the geopolitical/religious aspects of the world.
But integrating some of the races is something I could use some tips on.
I'm also building a custom "demigod" race that's basically a slightly more customizable VHuman.
It's very possible that you could just uses races as cultural proxies, much like they are often used in fantasy fiction. As such, you could set them up like the following:
Oh wow thank you both so much. Those links seem really helpful!
And while I wasn't going to go full cultural proxy, that's just wasting my existing knowledge, I was going to do things like put major dwarf colonies in the Scandanavian mountains and the Alps a la Tolkien's Dwarven kingdoms, and I was at a loss for how to mix in some of the groups like Dragonborn and Halflings and you gave me some good ideas on how to do that. (Though I am leaning towards making most halflings be like the Ghostwise Halflings and thus have them act more like brownies and other small fey-creatures of lore).
My suggestion is to not use 5e and go with HârnWorld and HârnMaster instead. They do pretty much exactly what you're trying to do and they do it well.
http://columbiagames.com/cgi-bin/query/harn/cfg/single.cfg?product_id=5001
http://www.kelestia.com/catalog/51
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