Quote from: flyingcircus;822627I draw the line with Non-humanoid like races, such as Dragons, Balrogs, Demons, etc.  And most GM oriented monster races (those without enough details to make them into PC's).

That's a perfectly acceptable preference, but I'll just recount about the sorts of non-humanoid characters that I've had for comparison.

I had a fantasy campaign that was set in the world of the Temeraire novels where there was a mix of human and dragon PCs. That worked pretty well, I thought, using FATE. The genre in that case was built around a lot of outdoor travel and social interaction that mostly included dragons. In fantasy, the only other non-humanoid race characters I recall were rhy-animals in Blue Rose - I'd had two wolf characters. In other genres, I've been fine with things like Dralasites in Star Frontiers, Hivers in Traveller, and mutated animals in Gamma World.

There are some legitimate concerns about dragons or horses simply not being able to fit in places where humans go. Probably for this reason, the only rhy-animal that I had in Blue Rose were two rhy-wolves.

Quote from: tenbones;822438I don't draw any lines. If it's appropriate for the campaign - I'll allow it. If the rules don't exist, I'll make them.

If someone wants to play something inappropriate - they have to get past my snowflake test and sell it to me with a good background. It can't just be "because".

I've allowed:

Quicklings, Minotaurs, Half-Giants, Cambions, Lizardmen, Lycanthropes of all sorts, Duergar, Troglodytes (yeah - even published some rules for them /shiver), Thri-kreen, Xixchil, Scro, Dragons, I could go on...

If the setting permits it, and you can stat the creature - then it should be playable as long as it's not horribly disruptive to the party. As long as you understand that the abilities given to a creature is based on the assumption of a certain powerlevel - and what that powerlevel standard is up to the GM and his game.

I did a series of articles for Dragon at the editors request to show how to make Lycanthropes and Dragons playable PCs... wasn't easy to do, but it is doable.

This.

The line should be drawn with the individual Player, when it comes right down to it. Some Players can handle exotic or overpowered races without breaking the setting, some Players can't even handle normal humans. It all depends on the person.

I have no problem with players playing whatever.

Where I have a problem is when a player is using it to be some kind of uber-special and totally unique snowflake which I've found to be detrimental to games.

Which is my experience is the vast majority of the time. So when I hear "I want to play X!" when X isn't a standard option it sends up a red flag. I won't dismiss it out of hand but I will be giving it a more critical eye.

So it's all about the attitude of the player I guess.

Quote from: Piestrio;822748So when I hear "I want to play X!" when X isn't a standard option it sends up a red flag. I won't dismiss it out of hand but I will be giving it a more critical eye.

So it's all about the attitude of the player I guess.

I find it good to ask how that person playing X is going to make the game better for anyone else besides the person playing X.

Will that person playing X make playing the game more fun, exciting, engaging, or cool for the other players?

Will that person playing X make running the game  more fun, exciting, engaging, cool, or easier for me as the GM?

If that person playing X isn't going to make the game better for any of the rest of us, then I am going to look very critically at any potential downsides to the rest of us since there is no potential upside for the rest of us.

i suppose 1 major exception is i would not allow kender

i dont use dragonlance anyway but if i ever do there right out as player characters

For me, it definitely goes on a campaign-by-campaign basis, but I'm usually fairly strict about allowable player races.  However, in theory, I don't think there necessarily needs to be any kind of hard barrier as to what could be used.

(shrugs)  GURPS is flexible like that: there are far fewer unplayable races than there are races with prohibitive point costs.  

My setting has a number of sentient races (with scholars positing that many of them were brought there).  Looking over my records, players have had avian characters, Horseclans-esque prairiecats, deodanths, insectoid races (the spaceship might have broken up in the atmosphere, but the lifepod made it down).  My wife played a sentient housecat for a while a few years back -- no powers at all beyond a normal cat other than human speech.