Redditor Aatriuz has shared an impressive and daunting project – an attempt to plot the evolutionary tree of all the playable D&D races.
How does that work? Well, it’s already hot territory with concepts like races, and there are different worlds within the D&D umbrella, but the basics make sense. You can find “ancient humans” in the cart (left in yellow), and nearby there are “feytouched humanoids” in green. Human is a type of ancient human, and elf a variety of feytouched; the two connect and cross at half-elf.
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The project certainly shows the scope of D&D’s options!
Updates to Monsters of the Multiverse mean that Goblinoids have Fey ancestry, and the chart needs Goliaths added back in.
Fans with deep D&D lore have a lot to discuss, such as Forgotten Realms Duergar being a branch of shield dwarves, whether orcs might actually be a subtype of elf (ala Tolkien) or Firbolg a plane touched type of giant.
Darkslide3000, commented on how evolution (doesn’t) work as expected in a world with magic. Saying;
Don’t think of it as natural evolution, think of it as raw fey magic affecting and “corrupting” creatures that live in the feywild for generations. The core concept of the feywild is all about mirroring stuff in a twisted manner, so why shouldn’t it twist humans to look more like rabbits, horses, etc.?
I honestly find that a much more believable take on the origin of those races than “this creature just completely independently evolved to have its top half look exactly like this one totally unrelated creature and its bottom half exactly like that other totally unrelated creature”.
Happily, there’s no wrong answer. There are maybe canon answers out there, which might persist in One D&D and in some official settings, or might not, but your preference is good for your game.
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Cant believe someone did this, it must have taken a lot of work.
This is a piece of art