You left out Dragonborn.

Pretty much all of that stuff except druid makes me cringe because it reeks of special snowflakeness, but it's never really been an issue in any of my groups. I don't really run a game that attracts that kind of player, I guess.

Drow: Most of the people who want to play these that I have run across personally would do better with Vampire, any other World of Darkness or Fiasco. I think. (some were fantastic roleplayers) Quite frankly, they would have done better with any Storytelling game. I don't mean to disparage Storytelling games at all, it's just that people need to use the best game for what entertainment they want. All I'm saying is don't start fucking crying about how daddy was ashamed of you in the middle of the fucking Tomb of Horrors or White Plume Mountain.

@OP: You also left out elven bladesingers. Fuck them. (I may have a mid-level bladesinger in my binder )

Quote from: David Johansen;874193You left out Dragonborn.

Quote from: JasperAK;874201@OP: You also left out elven bladesingers. Fuck them. (I may have a mid-level bladesinger in my binder )

Thanks for making me realize what was unusual about this list. With the exception of Tieflings, this could be a list of cliches we were sick of in 1999. At least in my groups, these things have been overdone for so long they're just not seen. If someone were to actually suggest playing one now, I'd probably say, "okay, let's see where this is going..."

Except for drow, because drow just plain don't make a lick of sense.

Quote from: Simlasa;874185Half-vampire is just a stupid concept, IMO. I wouldn't have them as PC, NPCs or furniture in any game I run.

I could see using half-vampires as furniture.  As in "cut a vampire in half, then make furniture out of the halves."

Other than that, it all depends on the setting in question.  I don't generally run D&D or worlds where most of the things on the list exist, so they tend not to come up.  Although I did roll my eyes so hard I almost hurt myself when I was setting up a WFRP campaign and a player said she wanted to play a dark elf, only for it to become apparent that she was assuming that Warhammer's druchii were just renamed drow.

I'm surprised druids didn't score higher. Between their redundancy with clerics, trouble meshing with many settings, rarity in standard fantasy fiction, tendency to be run as unyielding eco-terrorists, and overpowered abilities (3e D&D and up) you'd think more people would have come to resent their presence in tabletop.

Quote from: rawma... and sooner or later climbing something a centaur can't

Most mentions of centaur here focused on the practical issues, which is fair. In many circle I moved through however there was something unsavory about requesting one as a PC. They had a reputation for provoking uncomfortable joking at the table and being a vehicle for deviant players to work out some of their... issues.

Too bad really, they are very human-like and genuinely grounded in ancient human mythology, which are usually assets in a fantasy PC race.

Quote from: David JohansenYou left out Dragonborn.

Damn it. Well, if they had been on the list, what would you have said?

Quote from: TrippyHippyThe most boring people in the world always play elves.

How so?

Quote from: Willie the Duck;874211At least in my groups, these things have been overdone for so long they're just not seen. If someone were to actually suggest playing one now, I'd probably say, "okay, let's see where this is going..."

Are you sort of saying that they've become comfortable cliches like elves and dwarves?

Quote from: Willie the Duck;874211Except for drow, because drow just plain don't make a lick of sense.

Could you explain? I've heard many good criticisms of drow, but incoherence is not usually one of them.

Centaurs, drow, tieflings and half-vampires don't exist so they're not an option, period. I'm unfamiliar with the D&D-ish version of pixies.

Brooding loners and clinically insane PCs are annoying and disruptive pretty much most of the time. I'm fine with players portraying a member of the opposite gender, though I generally don't find the result very convincing.

Quote from: TrippyHippy;874192The most boring people in the world always play elves.

:rolleyes: Yeah, elves were definitely missing from the list.

Half-Vampire would be nixed at my table. Clinically Insane at character generation? Nah, rather not deal with that. Though I have no problem with a character being driven to that point in the course of a game. That's half the fun of CoC, after all.

Centaurs and pixies are things that the PCs might meet, maybe, and would be very weird. Drow don't exist. I wouldn't want someone playing one even in Forgotten Realms. Half-vampire is a silly idea. Aquatic race? Rather daft.
To be honest, all my recent campaigns have been human-centric with either a Swords and Sorcery vibe, or something akin to a fairy tale atmosphere, where encountering the inhuman is either a source of horror or instills wonder, depending on which one it is. And I much prefer things that way. Tieflings scream angsty special snowflake. Now I might allow someone to have rumoured demon or Fae blood, but not for that to be a race, just a human with something weird about them. No Dragonborn either. I just don't get how you can get one of the ultimate thrills of the game finally encountering a dragon if you sort of are one.
So these days I add elves, dwarves, gnomes and halflings to the list of very rarely encountered NPCs, and if encountered probably more like unknowable, mysterious, possibly terrifying individual Fae creatures, rather than different looking people.

As for the others, I have druids and paladins in my campaign, but it's not D&D, so these are tied in deeply to the setting and not just classes with their attendant clichés.

Amnesiac, dispossessed noble, loner, and crazy person are all completely fine, as long as they're well thought out and the player pitches them in a way that makes sense, and that could function as an adventurer. And playing the opposite gender is completely fine. If that's fun for someone, I'm glad to allow it. I don't care how convincing it is. Most people aren't amazingly convincing actors as ANYTHING, so I don't see why this should be different. It's not an acting class, it's a fun game.

Oh I forgot cat humanoids, which is a "just no" from me.

And monks, samurai, and ninja in non Asian setting. Well, in my RuneQuest campaign there are orders that use the Mysticism rules to augment abilities, but are non Asian type characters. There are warrior monk inquisitors from the Order of the Crossed Keys, formed to seek out and persecute sorcery, or heroic warriors from the Company of the Stag who perform battle-feats based on the Fianna from Irish legends ...

But if you want to play an "Asian" character in my based-on-medieval-Ireland setting, you'd better have a great backstory!

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;874259I'm surprised druids didn't score higher. Between their redundancy with clerics, trouble meshing with many settings, rarity in standard fantasy fiction, tendency to be run as unyielding eco-terrorists, and overpowered abilities (3e D&D and up) you'd think more people would have come to resent their presence in tabletop.

In my O/AD&D games, we run druids as sorcerous pagan priests drawing on ancestral, animistic and elemental powers. They perform human sacrifices and other macabre rituals. If someone came to my table wanting to play a druid "eco-warrior" informed by modern environmentalist opinions and motivations, I'd tell them to pick something else or find another game. My druids aren't treehuggers who blow up oil pipelines.

I only put Centaur, Drow and Tiefling, because:

Centaur: Centaurs have never been part of the communities PCs have started in in my games, so I was imagining a PC wanting to be a Centaur and expecting everyone else to not have the reactions they'd have in the worlds we were playing in.

Drow: I almost never run D&D and don't often let D&D characters enter, though I have from time to time, and the Drow-wanting players I've met have seemed to be on a trip about their evil elves and how cool they think they are, but it seems to have just been a fetish without substance in play. And I've read and heard many stories of annoying Drow in D&D campaigns. Often involving "how do I hide that I'm Drow long enough to betray the party..." ::rolleyes::

Tiefling: Not only do I almost never run D&D, I never run Planescape or Shadowrun, which I take it is where these come from. Like many D&D races, my brain tends to forget what they are shortly after reading their description, and this is one of those. I get the idea and think it would be possible to play well and be interesting. I can also see how they would be yet another case of 1) reason/excuse for overall betterness and/or superhuman powers (i.e. superhero play, which genre is not usually my favorite) and 2) reason/excuse to be evil, betrayers, generic misunderstood evil (/teen angst?), hard to roleplay or excuse not to try, or just be reasonless generic evil. Moreover, another thing I generally don't include in my game universes is Biblical literalist Christianity, nor universal good/evil alignment/morality-axis and these seem at least in that direction. (i.e. if I have demons, they're not pseudo-Christian demons, more just magic beings.) So they probably don't make sense in my games, or if there was something like them, they'd be something else and not called Tieflings.

I didn't put Cat People, because even though I haven't had them in one of my fantasy worlds since Star Fleet Battles, Dominions, or make-believe games we made up about our cats which we stopped playing when I was 10, I can see them being done OK, just as I've played settings with various types of Reptile men. I can relate to them more than I do Dragonlings, or even Wolfen, which I've not used. But I have also heard/read people trying to do Cat People and doing them in ways that do have me rolling eyes :rolleyes:

My main examples of rolleyes race requests which has come up though are:

* Half-breeds (especially all the half-elves and half-orcs) from players who just want some fantasy spice but then don't seem to put any effort into background or roleplaying - in fact it mainly seems to genericize their roleplaying as they seem to be half-playing a stereotype they don't really relate to - they just seem to have some notion that it's an exotic idea and then get inhibited by it.

* Were creatures / infecteds. I've had players wanting this, and told them no. Especially the were-jaguarundi. Another "I want to have a super ability" that doesn't exist in my world, would get them treated as a monster and killed, and usually without really wanting to think it through or play it out. If I were running a weird superheroes or monsters game, maybe, but I'm generally not.

All my reactions boil down to one or more of:

* That doesn't exist or make sense in my world.
* In my world, those things almost certainly get treated as monsters. You're probably going to get hunted down, sooner or later or repeatedly, and possibly your PC friends too.
* I am dreading the player's attempt to roleplay that, or am pretty sure the player isn't really going to enjoy that the way they think they will.
* I don't want the players to feel artificial pressure to accept your unsympathetic PC freak into their party.
* I don't want to have to GM your unsympathetic PC freak, or to feel artificial pressure to not check for anyone who knows what you are, whether there will be an attempt to hunt you down.

I admit my POV's colored by many years in a combat fantasy LARP, where we had no defined "races," but you could pretty much play anything you could convince other people of -- and for which you had reasonably convincing props/makeup -- as long as you didn't claim any supernatural abilities you couldn't legally get through advancement in the game system.  A regular feature was the newbie who declared himself (to anyone in earshot, as often as possible) a half-elf, half-dragon, half-vampire ‡ who was the rightful Duke of Fnordia, and was in our lands to gain support to reclaim his throne.

‡ - Yes, I'm aware that's too many halves.  I'm not making up the example.

After enough indifference from the veterans, they either dropped the weirdness, changed characters, or left the game in a huff.

Beyond that, let's see:

* I have centaurish and felinoids as playable races on my world.  The centaurs (Amiths) are a bit of a pain in the ass for adventuring -- e.g., stairs and walls -- and no one's played one in the last 25 years.  I suppose someone playing a "pixie" would have the same problem as the PC who played a sentient housecat: one hit with a sword and you're a goner.

* Drow don't exist in my setting.  The point cost for playing a vampire would be all but impossibly prohibitive.  Cetaceans are sentient in my world, but even those adventures I have at sea take place on ships.

* Actually, a current PC is a recovering amnesiac (she bought it off, after a couple of years).  She did quite an excellent job of it.

* Monk, samurai or ninja in a non-Asian setting?  I'm not, per se, opposed; I have a quasi-Asian region in my world -- more Malaysian than Japanese -- and people travel.  Of course, that person would have to follow *my* cultural template and practices, and a pastiche of Warring States era is right out.

* Cross-gender.  Eh, people have done it.  I'm unsure what's considered so out of line with playing something you're not.  Isn't that what we play this game to do in the first place?

* Insanity: I'm generally opposed.  Like the brooding loner, only more so, the whackdoodle makes life very hard for the rest of the players, without any compensating factor.

Quote from: Ravenswing;874307* Cross-gender.  Eh, people have done it.  I'm unsure what's considered so out of line with playing something you're not.  Isn't that what we play this game to do in the first place?

Yeah, I don't know why this one is comparatively forbidden. As long as it's not some Pythonesqe falsetto and ridiculous stereotypes I'd have no issues with it.

Quote from: Simlasa;874172I don't know what a Tiefling is and don't care enough to look 'em up... some sort of quasi-magical mouse people, yeah?

First they were people with demonic blood who had a shadowy/demonic look about them. Then they were hot chicks with horns. Then after they were chicks with horns so grossly oversized it was disturbing and disgusting but still presented as if they were hot.