I like the column, since I'm one of those that always seek reasons for the way things are in Fantasy worlds (and quite often find that none are given).
You can easily mix several origin stories in one world. There are many examples of this, including Talislata, where all of the origins you suggest are used for different species/races.
One other origin that doesn't quite fit you categories is uplift: The races were created by augmenting animals with intelligence and modified body structure (allowing, say, upright walk and use of forelimbs as hands).
Regarding species, it is true that diferent speciaes can't interbreed (IFAIR, this is pretty much the modern definition of species), but there are exceptions: Related species might be able to interbreed, but the offspring will be sterile. For example, a mule is cross between a horse and a donkey and a liger is a cross between a lion and a tiger. Mules are definitely sterile, and I think ligers are too.
But even within one species, you can have a great deal of variance in looks and qualities. Just think of dogs: They are all able to interbreed, but the difference between a chihuahua and a saint Bernhard is (on the surface) greater than the difference between different species such as jaguars and leopards.
So, you could have "races" in fantasy be like different breeds of dogs: They can all interbreed, identifiable "races" are kept distinct only by selective breeding (selection may be due to preference, isolation or outside forces), and lots of mixed breeds exist. Races can be specialised to specific environments or specific functions (much like dogs are). If you postulate a past master race that kept the modern races as pets and worker stock, they may have bred specialised races for different purposes without keeping them geographically isolated. After the master race leaves, these races may find it natural too keep to the functions they were bred for (after all, that is what they are good at).
An advantage of having a single species with diverse breeds is that you can have an unlimited number of different "mongrels", allowing players to create their own by defining what properties thay have, but offsetting this my reduced status. For example, public offices may require you to be of a specific breed, and mixed breeds might be considered low class or even un-caste, with many prohibitions and genrerally outside the protection of law.
Combining a Hindu-like caste system with such breeds might go a long way towards explaining how breeds keep "pure" over time.
The rifts theory has always been my favorite, and I blatantly steal from American Indian myths in that regard. I also use the "uplift" theory for some of the more animal-like critters, especially gnolls.
As for crossbreeding goes, I've used a number of theories. In the past, I've said that humans, elves, orcs, and ogres were all descended from a common ancestor, which explains why they are able to bear children. More recently, and due to a darker edge in my gaming and the example of recent history in more troubled parts of the world, I've written up orcs and ogres as magically-created races built specifically for war. As such, they were given the magical ability to cross-breed with almost anything, allowing them to replenish their numbers at the expense of nearly any conquered population.
- Brian
__________________ Sadism is a valuable trait in authors. Just when things look bad, just when the situation is at its most dire, you drop a rabid badger in your main character’s lap and watch the fun ensue.
A MUD I play in has an interesting variation on #1 (The Gods Did It) that I think works well and addresses the flaws in that variation. Of the many Elder Gods that used to exist, some splintered, each one turning into a race of people that bear some of the traits of that Elder God. That's what makes people different from animals -- animals are merely creations of the Elder Gods, but people are actually shards of one of the Elder Gods. It also explains why it's possible for people to aspire to near-godhood themselves under certain circumstances. Each race has its own origin and can boast of the virtues of the god from which it was created, and which it, collectively, still is, in a sense.
A MUD ....Of the many Elder Gods that used to exist, some splintered, each one turning into a race of people that bear some of the traits of that Elder God. That's what makes people different from animals -- animals are merely creations of the Elder Gods, but people are actually shards of one of the Elder Gods.
Anyone looking for a more natural explanation for how different species could evolve may want to do some research into human evolution. There have been several different branches of hominids (i.e. upright-walking apes like us) in the past few million years, often occupying the same environments at the same time. What if some of these early linages continued to evolve along their own evolutionary paths? In fact, during the last Ice Age there may have been Homo sapiens, Neanderthals and Homo floresiensis all living at the same time. (The last ones are the small hominid fossils found in Indonesia, which have been nicknamed "Hobbits" -- ironic for our purposes). You could quibble whether Neanderthals and "Hobbits" are truly different species, but for gaming purposes assume they are. You also could assume they can interbreed because of their evolutionary relationship to one another, with perhaps the offspring being infertile like mules.
I remember that Terry Brooks' Shanara books had a similar premise, with dwarves, gnomes, trolls and ect. having evolved from humans (in this case, after a nuclear war). Only the elves were special because they were fairy creatures.
As for non-human sentient creatures, go the Lovecraft/Howard route and have different humanoid species represent different stages of evolution. The amphibian creatures would come first, representing the animal kingdom's transition to land. Intelligent reptiles come second, representing the Age of Dinosaurs. Sentient bird-like beings could evolve from the earlier reptile race, representing modern theories about bird origins. Next comes mammals and man. Human-animal hybrids could be accounted for through human shapechanging, or perhaps as the youngest of races. Gnolls, for example, could be the equivalent of our cavemen, having just emerged from the savanna. That may account why they are so savage and not very bright.
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Re: #1: Origin of the Species
Um...
Literally billions of unique species evolved here on Earth. Just because there's only been one successful species that's developed civilization that we know of, there's no reason why there couldn't easily have been more. Why did you completely ignore the simplest, most obvious, and easiest answer: Plain old evolution.
Another explanation for the different species in a world with magic is simply the impact of magic. If there's elemental magic, then humanoids change according to the influence of the element dominant on the place they live in or they evolve from species existing in the environment. Dwarves live in mountains, so they get the rough and hard features of stone; ents are wood creatures; and so on.
To make things a little more complex one can have an "objective" explanation for the different human species (evolution, for instance, or import from another world) and a different "cultural" explanation (people X explains the different species as the workings of different gods; people Y explains it as the result of a magical misuse; and so on).
The fantasy/steampunk game Arcanum has a fairly detailed explanation of how the major species occurred (both natural and magical selection) as well as explaining why interbreeding is possible. IIRC, 'protohumans' and 'protodwarves' (gracile and robust forms of the same basic species) diverged as species a long time before the present, the 'protodwarves' diverging into gnomes (hill-dwellers) and dwarves (mountain-dwellers) later on (a futher gracile/robust divergence), while halflings were a magically-selected offshoot of gnomes. The fact that dwarves and gnomes were 'naturally' occurring species was used to explain their affinity with technology rather than magic, although humans had no such issue.
On the other side, the protohumans were magically altered to become elves and giants (the magic on giants degenerating over the course of millennia, causing them to shrink throughout successive generations and eventually produce ogres) and much later on orcs were magically created from humans (deliberately, it was implied). Thus humans could interbreed with ogres, orcs and elves because they were the 'root stock' from which these three species came, and elves (and to a limited extent, orcs) were capable magic users because it was incorporated into their biology to an extent. Ogres theoretically could be, but were too stupid in practice.
I personally quite like this 'few basic species, many others created by magical intervention from basic forms' for fantasy races and have used it in a couple of other settings, although not using the same specifics.
Looking back, that's way too many parentheses. Oh well.
As far as the humanoid races in my own fantasy campaign go, for most of them I use the same approach as torbenm - they're just different breeds of Homo sapiens.
As for how they came about, my favourite theory is that magic allows Lamarckian Evolution to work. For those unfamiliar with it, Lamarckism is the theory that an animal's offspring can inherit traits in acquired during its lifetime - so an antelope that spent a lot of its time stretching to reach higher leaves has kids with a longer neck.
If you have a universe with magic, where the will of sentient organisms can influence its surroundings, it seems very plausible that if a creature thinks "I wish I could do X" long enough it may develop talent X and pass it to its offspring.
Furthermore, it neatly explains why there are so many sapient species in a typical D&D-type fantasy world. Those creatures with higher intelligence are more likely to change themselves through Lamarckian magical evolution, and hence will speciate faster.
Re: #1: Origin of the Species
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