I had a #DnD idea;
Most PC races are similar to those intended as NPCs and players constantly want to play them anyway. The big martial dudes who trust hitting things more than magic. The expert foresters who have tame animals. The sneaky trap wise rogues. What if you;
* set those options in front of the players and said hey these are the non humans; you tell me if they’re woodsy hyena-people, bearded gruff axemen, sneaky bat-rats, whatevs
* then extrapolate so those are the big NPC species?
Like; the would be wizard player wants his character to be an outcast from a warlike straightforward group, and likes WoW orcs - so WoW orcs are those guys in your world. The would be ranger likes halflings, so you have halflings, but the would be bard likes kobolds, so your world has kobolds. And then you model your villainous raiding armies or long forgotten ruin builders off your PCs, throw out a few more non player sapient species, call it a day?
@Leucrotta yes except always kobolds,
@vahnj (*confidence* of actual dragons, bus + autocorrect)
@vahnj right! and then hey, there are kobolds as the small nimble trap species where most settings have halflings, gnomes, goblins etc. then I’d ask if your kobolds were little dragon guys with the conference of actual dragons *or* if they were small scaly dog ‘bolds *or* if they wanted to be dragon servitors or something even different. And what you’d say would be the campaign setting, though I might throw in say bullywugs as a rival small nimble trap group for story complexity.