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 Seeing the other post about too many classes brought this question to me. I personally think there is entirely too many playable races in TTRPGs now. I witnessed this when the owner of a group I DMed for about 3 years ago, allowed them to select from every 5e race. I realized this was a horrible idea as soon as he said this.

I never got why Gary Gygax had a special page in the AD&D 1e DMG (I never played AD&D, although I enjoy referencing Gygaxian wisdom) on page 21 talking about player characters as monsters (or I guess in my case, monster races) up until that point. What was supposed to be a eastern style setting the owner came up with, quickly became a mess of edgy monster race characters that didn't fit into the setting at all and all the players wanted the special treatment for being "unique". I get banning races is a semi-common practice, I do it myself quite a bit even with the core 5e races (fuck Dragonborn and Tieflings), but when is it time for there to just be enough races period in a game?

Quote from: Avus on September 07, 2022, 12:52:04 PM
Seeing the other post about too many classes brought this question to me. I personally think there is entirely too many playable races in TTRPGs now. I witnessed this when the owner of a group I DMed for about 3 years ago, allowed them to select from every 5e race. I realized this was a horrible idea as soon as he said this.

I never got why Gary Gygax had a special page in the AD&D 1e DMG (I never played AD&D, although I enjoy referencing Gygaxian wisdom) on page 21 talking about player characters as monsters (or I guess in my case, monster races) up until that point. What was supposed to be a eastern style setting the owner came up with, quickly became a mess of edgy monster race characters that didn't fit into the setting at all and all the players wanted the special treatment for being "unique". I get banning races is a semi-common practice, I do it myself quite a bit even with the core 5e races (fuck Dragonborn and Tieflings), but when is it time for there to just be enough races period in a game?

YES.

IMHO the original 4 are more than enough, and opening the door to monsters as PCs was an error that only attracts the very special snowflake type of player.

I remember one player in a game I was in playing an elf so weirdly that it freaked me out. Turns out he was playing the elf as written in the rules: an immortal fey creature of Chaos. It made me realize that most people, including myself, play non-humans as quirky humans in dress-up, like Star Trek aliens. Worf could be human but for the head ridges. To do a race justice, you really have to pull out all the stops and likely offend the other characters and perhaps the players, too. So, yeah, there are too many races and often humans are enough.

Quote from: rytrasmi on September 07, 2022, 01:02:20 PM
I remember one player in a game I was in playing an elf so weirdly that it freaked me out. Turns out he was playing the elf as written in the rules: an immortal fey creature of Chaos. It made me realize that most people, including myself, play non-humans as quirky humans in dress-up, like Star Trek aliens. Worf could be human but for the head ridges. To do a race justice, you really have to pull out all the stops and likely offend the other characters and perhaps the players, too. So, yeah, there are too many races and often humans are enough.

God I think I'd kiss a player for playing an Elf like that. Every Elf I've DMed for has just been either a edge lord or just acted like you said, a quirky human in dress-up.

Quote from: GeekyBugle on September 07, 2022, 12:57:34 PM

Quote from: Avus on September 07, 2022, 12:52:04 PM
Seeing the other post about too many classes brought this question to me. I personally think there is entirely too many playable races in TTRPGs now. I witnessed this when the owner of a group I DMed for about 3 years ago, allowed them to select from every 5e race. I realized this was a horrible idea as soon as he said this.

I never got why Gary Gygax had a special page in the AD&D 1e DMG (I never played AD&D, although I enjoy referencing Gygaxian wisdom) on page 21 talking about player characters as monsters (or I guess in my case, monster races) up until that point. What was supposed to be a eastern style setting the owner came up with, quickly became a mess of edgy monster race characters that didn't fit into the setting at all and all the players wanted the special treatment for being "unique". I get banning races is a semi-common practice, I do it myself quite a bit even with the core 5e races (fuck Dragonborn and Tieflings), but when is it time for there to just be enough races period in a game?

YES.

IMHO the original 4 are more than enough, and opening the door to monsters as PCs was an error that only attracts the very special snowflake type of player.

I don't entirely agree. I remember loving the 8 racial options in the original Earthdawn...though I did feel, 30 years ago, that Windlings were designed for what would eventually evolve into the  "that guy" type of player.

We passed that point a long time ago. There are now thousands of playable races.  https://www.rpgcrossing.com/showthread.php?p=4810322

First, the creation of different races is not inherently a bad thing. It's the inclusion of all of them into a game that is the problem. Sometimes it can make sense (there's a Star Wars homebrew for Savage Worlds that has over 50 playable races), but those are a rare exception. The tone of the setting should inform which races are available. For something like Star Wars, where multiple species can be seen mingling anywhere in the galaxy, it's fine, because the tone of the setting supports that. Most other settings suffer horribly when more than five or six races are offered.

Especially with Nu-DnD, it becomes a disjointed hodge-podge of nonsense that conflicts with whatever story the GM is trying to tell. The fact that the GM is the one to allow it is only more baffling. I've seen game adverts where the runner lays out a detailed plot, with tone and style, then says "all Official material allowed." So you get some edgy-boi that wants to play a mopey drow damphir warlock next to a bubbly tabaxi "neko-grrl" cleric slut.

I guess that's more of a problem with "modern gamers" than allowing too many races, but without setting boundries, the GM is just opening themselves to this crap.

Quote from: rytrasmi on September 07, 2022, 01:02:20 PM
I remember one player in a game I was in playing an elf so weirdly that it freaked me out. Turns out he was playing the elf as written in the rules: an immortal fey creature of Chaos. It made me realize that most people, including myself, play non-humans as quirky humans in dress-up, like Star Trek aliens. Worf could be human but for the head ridges. To do a race justice, you really have to pull out all the stops and likely offend the other characters and perhaps the players, too. So, yeah, there are too many races and often humans are enough.

I'm intrigued!

Can you provide an example?

Not too many races defined in the book.  Using all that many races in the same campaign, nearly always a bad idea.  Including that many races in the book to have a big list when some of them aren't done very well or race doesn't mean much, also a bad idea. 

When a player sits down to making a character for a particular game, they shouldn't be confronted with more than around 6-7 choices at any given moment of character creation, and when it gets up over that, the choices should be organized in categories that will pare it down pretty quick if the player has any idea at all what they want to do.  (Or alternately, they let dice decide such wide open choices, but few want to do that anymore.)

Quote from: Effete on September 07, 2022, 01:27:42 PM

Quote from: rytrasmi on September 07, 2022, 01:02:20 PM
I remember one player in a game I was in playing an elf so weirdly that it freaked me out. Turns out he was playing the elf as written in the rules: an immortal fey creature of Chaos. It made me realize that most people, including myself, play non-humans as quirky humans in dress-up, like Star Trek aliens. Worf could be human but for the head ridges. To do a race justice, you really have to pull out all the stops and likely offend the other characters and perhaps the players, too. So, yeah, there are too many races and often humans are enough.

I'm intrigued!

Can you provide an example?

Ditto. That actually sounds interesting and useful for good roleplaying.

Greetings!

Well, in many ways I think that the idea of a campaign having "Too many player character races!" is the cry of a lazy or simple-minded DM. Yes, I understand the importance of theme, and also the advantage of maintaining a Human-centric campaign. However, my main point is that providing playable options is almost always a great benefit. The DM is the one that chooses which menu selections are available for the current campaign.

For example, in my Thandor world, I have many playable character races. However, many of them are, at least initially, restricted to specific "Starting Regions". Many geographical regions thus have their own "Race Menu" of typically-encountered races. Depending on the players involved, and my own whims, determines what region the campaign will be set in. This foundation then informs what "Race Menu" that represents the typical races encountered in that campaign region.

Not all races are somehow equally likely to be encountered wherever, regardless of how cosmopolitan a particular place or city may be.

Perhaps lazy and simple-minded is a bit harsh, but embracing a framework that includes greater variety than just a standard four classical races is reasonably workable, it simply requires a bit of creative effort, and a DM to have backbone in holding to particular standards for a campaign.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: Avus on September 07, 2022, 12:52:04 PM
Seeing the other post about too many classes brought this question to me. I personally think there is entirely too many playable races in TTRPGs now. I witnessed this when the owner of a group I DMed for about 3 years ago, allowed them to select from every 5e race. I realized this was a horrible idea as soon as he said this.

I never got why Gary Gygax had a special page in the AD&D 1e DMG (I never played AD&D, although I enjoy referencing Gygaxian wisdom) on page 21 talking about player characters as monsters (or I guess in my case, monster races) up until that point. What was supposed to be a eastern style setting the owner came up with, quickly became a mess of edgy monster race characters that didn't fit into the setting at all and all the players wanted the special treatment for being "unique". I get banning races is a semi-common practice, I do it myself quite a bit even with the core 5e races (fuck Dragonborn and Tieflings), but when is it time for there to just be enough races period in a game?

Yes there are too many playable races. There always has been.

Cue: "But, but, Gygax let a Player pay a Balrog once!!!!" True, but he never said it was a good idea...

Go read what Gygax wrote on p.21 of the AD&D1e DMG, learn wisdom, and shut the fuck up.

There has always been a subset of players that have wanted more PC monster races. And even TSR had catered to that desire to varying degree's as evidenced by various supplements released over the years.

The Truth is that the majority of gaming tables would benefit from less Playable races, and more GM's growing the balls to enforce it.

The majority of players can't even play an Elf or Dwarf in an archetypical fashion. Adding more races will not magically fix "oh so special look at me" Cosplay player characters tendencies.

I'm fine with a smaller number of races; as long as the non-humans aren't "pointy-eared immortal human", "stout gruff bearded human" and "half-sized humans; hairy feet optional."

Those are pretty much the most boringly overused and generic races in all of fantasy and 90% are just direct Tolkein rip-offs and the remaining 10% deliberately subverting Tolkein to appear clever.

You know what I loved? While 4E's default lore includes the kitchen sink, the core of the Neroth default setting focused on humans, dragonborn and tieflings. That made the setting feel like it wasn't another warmed over Tolkein ripoff like so much of D&D.

So, yeah, I'm fine with Human + 3... as long two of the other three don't come from the list of dwarf, elf and halfling.

Like, in my own setting, the most important races are humans, eldritch, malfeans and beastmen as all four factor heavily into the foundational history of the setting. Does it have more? Yes, but only because I felt the need to supply the usually Tolkeinian suspects because some potential customers wouldn't even touch it of those were absent... in terms of relevance to the setting lore they're largely afterthoughts whose setting roles I could have just as easily assigned to my "core four."

Even more importantly for me than number of races though is... how well are they incorporated into the setting? My setting is quite explicit that humans are the ONLY native and naturally occurring sapient species on the planet. Everything else was either derived from mankind or came from elsewhere in the cosmos and the situation is NOT static, indeed the present state of the setting is barely 200 years old and if you jumped forward another thousand you'd find virtually all the non-human species to be either extinct (or nearly so) or so interbred back into humanity that they're basically Neanderthal DNA in our ancestry.

Even Tolkein touches on this; the Elves are leaving Middle Earth, the dwarves and hobbits that survive will hide away from the larger folk and the world will eventually become the one we know.

I'm absolutely fine with the number of available races.  The expectation from players that they can just pick any one of them without regard for the setting is what drives me nuts.  I like PF2E's approach with assigning a rarity to them, so players are guided by the rules to check with the GM first.  The little side panel in the 5E before diving into the non-Tolkien races about being rare isn't even in the awareness of most of the current player base.

Quote from: Effete on September 07, 2022, 01:26:59 PM
First, the creation of different races is not inherently a bad thing. It's the inclusion of all of them into a game that is the problem.

^This.

I love me some weird monster races, but goddamn! You gotta set some boundaries. Throwing the entire kitchen sink cheapens the idea of unusual races and turns them utterly mundane. And also turns the setting into unrecognizable mush.

Variety is the spice of life until you throw in every spice in the cabinet, then can't recognize WTF you're tasting, or bear to swallow it.

To my mind, the available range of races should reflect the setting.  Not every setting should be reduced or expanded to contain everything in D&D.  I've got an Arcane Confabulation setting where the playable races are talking bears, fading late generation vampires, humans, werewolves, and demonspawned.  An early version appeared on the game design forum here.  I was aiming for a setting that could not be discussed on rpgnet without getting banned.  Anyhow, the point is, such a setting would not benefit from having elves and dwarves wandering around, letalone the annoying and ubiquitous Dragonborn.

The Referee just has to know when to say "No".  If it doesn't fit the setting, then just say no.

There are some settings where a menagerie of races works. Spelljammer, Star Wars, Palladium, Planescape, and many others.  Not so much in Greyhawk, Hyborian Age, Call of Cthulhu, or Boot Hill.

There sure are a lot of playable races, that I don't care to play.

It's just self-indulgence of players who want characters with special powers. They don't want to play an aarakocra, they just want their character to be able to fly, for example.

Most of these different races are just played by Americans as different types of Americans including blue collar workers (dwarves), sly kids (halflings), brutes (half-orcs), dilettantes (elves), bearded wiseacres (gnomes), and stern grown-ups (humans). These people don't even know how different humans live and yet they imagine they are playing different species.

I think we are seeing the wokesterians attempting to use different playable races as a crude stand-in for how they imagine their multicultural cosmopolitan worldview to still need emulation by the real world.

Human only. Fighter, magic-user, cleric and thief.

Nothing more is needed.

There are too many, because it encourages the wrong kind of behavior. The I want to play race x and should be allowed to because it's in the book instead of I wan to play in a specific game, what is allowed or appropriate for it. Too many options too little non stat block detail on each. Race as a class actually made sense from a other race are too alien to roll play unless you get the one oddball that wants to hangout with humans and is thus of a certain mentality and hence class. I want better developed races, not more on gimmick human cosplay options.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron on September 08, 2022, 12:34:27 AM
Human only. Fighter, magic-user, cleric and thief.

Nothing more is needed.

Hey, I like that.  I'd roll with that.  I have a lot of experience playing as a human.

Sometimes I think about playing a Dwarf.  I'm a big guy with a beard.  I know what Ale tastes like.  It's not too hard for me to imagine playing as a Dwarf. 

Otherwise, I don't see the appeal of the other races.  They're just not for me.

 Just because it is available doesn't mean it MUST be in your game. Manage your own table to your own comfort level. I am satisfied with Basic 5e core four, but see the utility of Mordekainen, especially if I want to play 'Unda Da Sea' races.

In other games, like Talislanta, I have trouble enough describing the Mos Eisley Times Ten bucket o' races let alone running each one distinctly. It is fun to sprinkle them as background flavor, but eventually most things have to recede into the background. Otherwise both my players and I get confused processing all the alienness. Like Star Trek foreheads, eventually you have to tamp down the noise in order to receive the signal.

Quote from: VisionStorm on September 07, 2022, 07:38:04 PMI love me some weird monster races, but goddamn! You gotta set some boundaries. Throwing the entire kitchen sink cheapens the idea of unusual races and turns them utterly mundane. And also turns the setting into unrecognizable mush.

I use an idea from Necropraxis. I have the main races that you can roll up when creating a character (the usual four plus goblins, pixies, and ogres). But after that any new races can only be played after the party meets and befriends a group of that particular monster. So just like unlocking them during play.

If the players go to the desert and meet some Gnolls, they can play a Gnoll from that point forward. Similarly if they are in a swamp and befriend Bullywugs, they can play a Bullywug.

This way not only will the races match the setting but they will also be a reflection of the party's previous adventures. More options as a reward for participating in the game (if you are a new player, you are rolling on the beginner chart like all the other players did at first).

Quote from: overstory on September 07, 2022, 11:57:07 PM
It's just self-indulgence of players who want characters with special powers. They don't want to play an aarakocra, they just want their character to be able to fly, for example.

Most of these different races are just played by Americans as different types of Americans including blue collar workers (dwarves), sly kids (halflings), brutes (half-orcs), dilettantes (elves), bearded wiseacres (gnomes), and stern grown-ups (humans). These people don't even know how different humans live and yet they imagine they are playing different species.

I think we are seeing the wokesterians attempting to use different playable races as a crude stand-in for how they imagine their multicultural cosmopolitan worldview to still need emulation by the real world.

This, 100%.

They boil the races down to their special abilities and play them as quirky humans (or awful stereotypes... which is wonderfully ironic to behold). This is not an exaggeration; I've personally witnessed it. And I'm sure I'm not the only one, even including WotC themself. Why else would the erase racial stat bonuses/penalties but leave other special abilities intact? It's so they'd just become "Human+".

Quote from: Kyle Aaron on September 08, 2022, 12:34:27 AM
Human only. Fighter, magic-user, cleric and thief.

Nothing more is needed.

True. As I said earlier, the tone of the game is what should dictate race availability. In a setting about exploring the human condition in a fantasy setting, every other race (elf, dwarf, lizardman, etc) is off the table. Efforts should be made to show just how alien other races are to humans. That's a fascinating concept that can have a lot of depth and produce some absolutely amazing roleplay opportunities... but I'm sure some wokey somewhere will try telling me how it's my internalized white supremecy attempting to "otherize" minorities, or some shit like that.

Yeah. This is partly why my fantasy settings have increasingly tended towards depicting just humans. They might have ancestries like planetouched, dragonblooded, dhampir, or whatever, but they're all human.

I don't care about all the races they keep adding because without a specific setting - none of it matters.

What I don't like is that players assume because these races exist then *all* of it in on the table for play in any and all settings.

And yet... that's how DnD has become. This is why I say - people play the rules *as* the game. Which for me is only half-of the equation. Setting matters. Otherwise Black Lesbian Viking half-dragon tieflings are legit in my Roman-era England game.

Context. Context. Context.

Quote from: tenbones on September 08, 2022, 12:45:23 PM
I don't care about all the races they keep adding because without a specific setting - none of it matters.

What I don't like is that players assume because these races exist then *all* of it in on the table for play in any and all settings.

And yet... that's how DnD has become. This is why I say - people play the rules *as* the game. Which for me is only half-of the equation. Setting matters. Otherwise Black Lesbian Viking half-dragon tieflings are legit in my Roman-era England game.

Context. Context. Context.

Yes.
The Forgotten Realms has become... forgettable.

Quote from: Avus on September 07, 2022, 12:52:04 PM
Seeing the other post about too many classes brought this question to me. I personally think there is entirely too many playable races in TTRPGs now. I witnessed this when the owner of a group I DMed for about 3 years ago, allowed them to select from every 5e race. I realized this was a horrible idea as soon as he said this.

I never got why Gary Gygax had a special page in the AD&D 1e DMG (I never played AD&D, although I enjoy referencing Gygaxian wisdom) on page 21 talking about player characters as monsters (or I guess in my case, monster races) up until that point. What was supposed to be a eastern style setting the owner came up with, quickly became a mess of edgy monster race characters that didn't fit into the setting at all and all the players wanted the special treatment for being "unique". I get banning races is a semi-common practice, I do it myself quite a bit even with the core 5e races (fuck Dragonborn and Tieflings), but when is it time for there to just be enough races period in a game?

Fuck, yes!

Most of these weeabo races are taken just for the benefits without bothering to try and be interesting to role-play.

Quote from: Svenhelgrim on September 07, 2022, 09:35:51 PM
The Referee just has to know when to say "No".  If it doesn't fit the setting, then just say no.

There are some settings where a menagerie of races works. Spelljammer, Star Wars, Palladium, Planescape, and many others.  Not so much in Greyhawk, Hyborian Age, Call of Cthulhu, or Boot Hill.

A menagerie of races doesn't really work in Star Wars. Depending in the size of the group, no more than 1-2 PC's should be non-human.

The menagerie of races in Star Wars was window dressing to express how the protagonists were in a large galaxy where interstellar travel was common. The actual Lore is just too thin to make all but a handful of their Iconic alien races playable as PC's .

There's just too many:

Quote from: Opaopajr on September 08, 2022, 07:28:36 AM
...
In other games, like Talislanta, I have trouble enough describing the Mos Eisley Times Ten bucket o' races let alone running each one distinctly. It is fun to sprinkle them as background flavor, but eventually most things have to recede into the background. Otherwise both my players and I get confused processing all the alienness. Like Star Trek foreheads, eventually you have to tamp down the noise in order to receive the signal.

Especially true in Star Wars if you follow the setting conceits.

Imperials don't like Aliens, and Humans are the most prolific spacefaring race. A menagerie PC party just isn't Star Wars anymore...

If the settings supports many races, there should be many playable races. 

Some settings are human only; some involve the infinite planes - I would expect more races in a game that involves crossing multiple dimensions/planets. 

Quote from: Avus on September 07, 2022, 12:52:04 PM
I get banning races is a semi-common practice, I do it myself quite a bit even with the core 5e races (fuck Dragonborn and Tieflings), but when is it time for there to just be enough races period in a game?

Personally, a lot of my RPGs are human-only like Call of Cthulhu or modern-day / historical adventures. So when I play sci-fi and fantasy, I often prefer to emphasize the fantastical elements, and I'll often have a bunch of weird stuff. That includes playing Amber Diceless and having all reality-warping PCs, or similar.

Also, I have a bias in fantasy in that I'm sick of Tolkien look-alikes. I've greatly enjoyed running games in actual Middle Earth with elves, dwarves, hobbits, and orcs. However, I dislike how so many fantasy worlds all have elves and dwarves and halflings just to be similar to Tolkien. I like having more races, to do non-Tolkienesque settings or at least less Tolkien-like adventures.

My current setting is an original D&D, and does use the standard races to be familiar. It's patterned after Incan history and mythology, so a lot of the lore is new. But I've tended to emphasize the less Tolkienesque side of things. My recent adventures have been set in the north of the Solar Empire, where the dominant race is dragonborn. I've found it pretty interesting, and there's been a bunch of lore and intrigue.

In recent years, I've found myself increasingly gravitating to games with only one playable race, usually human. I think the reason for that is this:

The fantasy genre is largely about confronting the unknown, and any element of a fantasy setting loses much of its mystique as soon as it becomes a practical resource for the protagonists. I suspect this is the reason that all the main characters in Star Wars are humans, and why the protagonists of fantasy stories are rarely wizards. It allows things like aliens and magic to still be portrayed as elements of the unknown. As soon as something becomes de rigueur for the POV characters in a story, it stops feeling magical to the audience.

The problem exists in fantasy fiction, but it's compounded in an RPG. Not only is the player directly identifying with their character and controlling them, but the character is then subjected to the utilitarian concerns of playing the game. Fantasy races can't be all that special, because they can't be allowed to have game-breaking powers, and they can't be all that alien, because they need to fit in with the rest of the party. Once an elf becomes a PC, it stops being an ineffable, timeless creature, and becomes just another adventurer that commits petty crimes and fumbles their attacks.

Of course, that's all fine if you don't mind all your fantasy races being stripped of any sense of the fantastical, but it's how you get to the feeling of current D&D settings, where the fantasy elements are treated as utterly mundane by everyone in the setting (and therefore by the players).

Quote from: ForgottenF on September 08, 2022, 08:04:56 PM
In recent years, I've found myself increasingly gravitating to games with only one playable race, usually human. I think the reason for that is this:

The fantasy genre is largely about confronting the unknown, and any element of a fantasy setting loses much of its mystique as soon as it becomes a practical resource for the protagonists. I suspect this is the reason that all the main characters in Star Wars are humans, and why the protagonists of fantasy stories are rarely wizards. It allows things like aliens and magic to still be portrayed as elements of the unknown. As soon as something becomes de rigueur for the POV characters in a story, it stops feeling magical to the audience.

The problem exists in fantasy fiction, but it's compounded in an RPG. Not only is the player directly identifying with their character and controlling them, but the character is then subjected to the utilitarian concerns of playing the game. Fantasy races can't be all that special, because they can't be allowed to have game-breaking powers, and they can't be all that alien, because they need to fit in with the rest of the party. Once an elf becomes a PC, it stops being an ineffable, timeless creature, and becomes just another adventurer that commits petty crimes and fumbles their attacks.

Of course, that's all fine if you don't mind all your fantasy races being stripped of any sense of the fantastical, but it's how you get to the feeling of current D&D settings, where the fantasy elements are treated as utterly mundane by everyone in the setting (and therefore by the players).

This isn't necessarily the case. If everyone is committed to the storytelling then you don't have to describe characters the same way. Although I'd agree that most players either aren't committed enough (for various reasons, often reasonable) or capable of maintaining the mystique you might get from a well-crafted story.

I'm in favor of running mostly-human, mostly-low-magic type games for precisely the reasons you say.

It seems to me that a core player's handbook should include humans and, there should be player's guides for published campaign settings that contain the PC races for that setting. The DMG should contain a rules system for creating balanced, new races. The races and their backgrounds are going to be intimately tied to the setting and, unless PCs are 'fish out of water types,' players should have a book that includes what their characters would be expected to know and expectations for alignment, histories, etc.

being pressured to run dragonlance using D6 and by age of mortals playable dragonlance races are a big list, every amaglamation of draconian, original and new, plus dragonspawn and dragonborn, minotaurs ogres oblins hobgoblins centaurs....i'm tempted to use marvel ultimate powers book for character creation.

now you watch i will go through all this trouble and everyone will still play dwarves elves and humans.

Quote from: ForgottenF on September 08, 2022, 08:04:56 PM
In recent years, I've found myself increasingly gravitating to games with only one playable race, usually human. I think the reason for that is this:

The fantasy genre is largely about confronting the unknown, and any element of a fantasy setting loses much of its mystique as soon as it becomes a practical resource for the protagonists. I suspect this is the reason that all the main characters in Star Wars are humans, and why the protagonists of fantasy stories are rarely wizards. It allows things like aliens and magic to still be portrayed as elements of the unknown. As soon as something becomes de rigueur for the POV characters in a story, it stops feeling magical to the audience.

The problem exists in fantasy fiction, but it's compounded in an RPG. Not only is the player directly identifying with their character and controlling them, but the character is then subjected to the utilitarian concerns of playing the game. Fantasy races can't be all that special, because they can't be allowed to have game-breaking powers, and they can't be all that alien, because they need to fit in with the rest of the party. Once an elf becomes a PC, it stops being an ineffable, timeless creature, and becomes just another adventurer that commits petty crimes and fumbles their attacks.

Of course, that's all fine if you don't mind all your fantasy races being stripped of any sense of the fantastical, but it's how you get to the feeling of current D&D settings, where the fantasy elements are treated as utterly mundane by everyone in the setting (and therefore by the players).

Up to a point, yes.  Then you've got the competing point that for the game to be fantasy, there has to be a certain amount of recurring fantastical elements in it.  Not everyone wants the same level, either.  At a low enough level, very few races, or even human only, makes good sense.  Only so much fantasy, most of it needs to be outside the party.  You reach a certain level of fantastical saturation, though, you want some of it inside the party--in the guise of spells or magic items or companions or ... maybe a fantastical player character.  It's just easier that way.

Granted, the fantasy inside the party is going to be less mysterious than the fantasy outside it, but that can be worked to advantage as well.  That is why, when I include elves as player characters in a setting, the elves aren't practically immortal, super fighter/mages.  Instead, they are "long-lived" in a few centuries, aging gracefully, a tad better at magic, etc.  Likewise, if I want the setting to have the more powerful, alien elves--then they aren't player characters.  (At least in a typical D&D-style game.  Another system with a different focus on what happens, all bets are off.)  In my view, PC elves are just a little bit "humans with pointy ears", no matter what, and I'll make that work for me instead of being a problem.  Doesn't stop me from including something more alien and fey, akin to elves but not elves.  Perhaps PC "elves" really are the "half elves" in spirit, the elf-like descendants of long ago fey/human dalliances. 

Which is the long way around to what several people have said already in different ways, the setting should drive the PC race choices, period.

Quote from: ForgottenF on September 08, 2022, 08:04:56 PM
The fantasy genre is largely about confronting the unknown, and any element of a fantasy setting loses much of its mystique as soon as it becomes a practical resource for the protagonists. I suspect this is the reason that all the main characters in Star Wars are humans, and why the protagonists of fantasy stories are rarely wizards. It allows things like aliens and magic to still be portrayed as elements of the unknown. As soon as something becomes de rigueur for the POV characters in a story, it stops feeling magical to the audience.

This is fine as a personal preference, but many don't share this preference. I note that Tolkien had zero human main characters in The Hobbit, and only 2 of 9 human in Fellowship of the Ring (and 87-year-old Aragorn isn't normal human given his Númenórean blood). I don't think this is a flaw. Tolkien deliberately made his fantasy races like hobbits into something homey and familiar rather than surrounding them with mystique, and I think that was popular with many readers.

Likewise, there are lots of books with wizard protagonists, like A Wizard of Earthsea and many others. For author Le Guin, having a wizard protagonist is deliberate for exploring magic rather than keeping it a mystery.

I get that it's something one wants to do. When I play Call of Cthulhu or Monster of the Week (which I regularly do), I enjoy having humans-only as PCs and magic be more mysterious than in D&D. But when I play D&D, I enjoy having wizard and elf PCs along with other fantasy elements being common.

Quote from: Effete on September 07, 2022, 01:27:42 PM

Quote from: rytrasmi on September 07, 2022, 01:02:20 PM
I remember one player in a game I was in playing an elf so weirdly that it freaked me out. Turns out he was playing the elf as written in the rules: an immortal fey creature of Chaos. It made me realize that most people, including myself, play non-humans as quirky humans in dress-up, like Star Trek aliens. Worf could be human but for the head ridges. To do a race justice, you really have to pull out all the stops and likely offend the other characters and perhaps the players, too. So, yeah, there are too many races and often humans are enough.

I'm intrigued!

Can you provide an example?

It's not going to translate well in a post. In one instance we were on ship during a storm. The humans did the usual nautical things like manning the sails and securing the Judas. Our elf ignored all that and instead communed with the storm. He went to the forecastle and basked in the fury of the storm, howling with the wind and submitting himself to the pelting rain. Elves are chaotic, storms are chaotic, so maybe it worked from that perspective? I don't know thb. I thought it was interesting and immersive. Nobody really cared that he didn't help prevent the shipwreck. But it did make me trust him less with human ideas like take thing A and do thing B.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on September 09, 2022, 09:09:33 AM
Granted, the fantasy inside the party is going to be less mysterious than the fantasy outside it, but that can be worked to advantage as well.  That is why, when I include elves as player characters in a setting, the elves aren't practically immortal, super fighter/mages.  Instead, they are "long-lived" in a few centuries, aging gracefully, a tad better at magic, etc.  Likewise, if I want the setting to have the more powerful, alien elves--then they aren't player characters.  (At least in a typical D&D-style game.  Another system with a different focus on what happens, all bets are off.)  In my view, PC elves are just a little bit "humans with pointy ears", no matter what, and I'll make that work for me instead of being a problem.  Doesn't stop me from including something more alien and fey, akin to elves but not elves.

Tolkien had both in LotR. Legolas (a party member) was still very human-esque, despite being (approximately) 3000 years old. In all that time, he had never even seen the ocean, and was less knowledgeable in many things than the much younger (but better traveled) Aragorn.

Contrast this with Elrond, or Galadriel... both strictly NPCs. One was literally descended from a Maia (angel) while the other was born in Aman, beheld the light of the Two Trees, witnessed the destruction of Beleriand, and is something like 16,000 years old. Both are more "magical" and more knowledgeable by magnatudes than Legolas, who was born in Middle Earth sometime in the late Second Age/ early Third Age and lived an incredibly sheltered life.

The point is, elves aren't even a monolith in Tolkien's writing... there's absolutely no reason they should be in a game setting. You can have the "pointy-eared human" as a playable race, as well as the nearly-omnicient, angelic "high elves" too.

Quote from: Effete on September 09, 2022, 05:30:35 PM

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on September 09, 2022, 09:09:33 AM
Granted, the fantasy inside the party is going to be less mysterious than the fantasy outside it, but that can be worked to advantage as well.  That is why, when I include elves as player characters in a setting, the elves aren't practically immortal, super fighter/mages.  Instead, they are "long-lived" in a few centuries, aging gracefully, a tad better at magic, etc.  Likewise, if I want the setting to have the more powerful, alien elves--then they aren't player characters.  (At least in a typical D&D-style game.  Another system with a different focus on what happens, all bets are off.)  In my view, PC elves are just a little bit "humans with pointy ears", no matter what, and I'll make that work for me instead of being a problem.  Doesn't stop me from including something more alien and fey, akin to elves but not elves.

Tolkien had both in LotR. Legolas (a party member) was still very human-esque, despite being (approximately) 3000 years old. In all that time, he had never even seen the ocean, and was less knowledgeable in many things than the much younger (but better traveled) Aragorn.

Contrast this with Elrond, or Galadriel... both strictly NPCs. One was literally descended from a Maia (angel) while the other was born in Aman, beheld the light of the Two Trees, witnessed the destruction of Beleriand, and is something like 16,000 years old. Both are more "magical" and more knowledgeable by magnatudes than Legolas, who was born in Middle Earth sometime in the late Second Age/ early Third Age and lived an incredibly sheltered life.

The point is, elves aren't even a monolith in Tolkien's writing... there's absolutely no reason they should be in a game setting. You can have the "pointy-eared human" as a playable race, as well as the nearly-omnicient, angelic "high elves" too.

It's very easy, High Elves live in Underhill, they are the royalty, the older, wiser and more powerful. Wandering Elves (the ones that will be a part of a party) are not High Elves, they don't belong to the High Court, are (by Elven standards) younger, less knowledgeable and less powerful. High Elves almost never leave Underhill, and when they do it's to wage war against their enemies most of the time.

Now concot a similar lore for Dwarves, and since hobbits don't have a royalty nor real magic of their own give the ones who venture beyond the shire an adventurous spirit.

There, solved it.

Quote from: jhkim on September 09, 2022, 03:06:51 PM

Quote from: ForgottenF on September 08, 2022, 08:04:56 PM
The fantasy genre is largely about confronting the unknown, and any element of a fantasy setting loses much of its mystique as soon as it becomes a practical resource for the protagonists. I suspect this is the reason that all the main characters in Star Wars are humans, and why the protagonists of fantasy stories are rarely wizards. It allows things like aliens and magic to still be portrayed as elements of the unknown. As soon as something becomes de rigueur for the POV characters in a story, it stops feeling magical to the audience.

This is fine as a personal preference, but many don't share this preference. I note that Tolkien had zero human main characters in The Hobbit, and only 2 of 9 human in Fellowship of the Ring (and 87-year-old Aragorn isn't normal human given his Númenórean blood). I don't think this is a flaw. Tolkien deliberately made his fantasy races like hobbits into something homey and familiar rather than surrounding them with mystique, and I think that was popular with many readers.

Likewise, there are lots of books with wizard protagonists, like A Wizard of Earthsea and many others. For author Le Guin, having a wizard protagonist is deliberate for exploring magic rather than keeping it a mystery.

I get that it's something one wants to do. When I play Call of Cthulhu or Monster of the Week (which I regularly do), I enjoy having humans-only as PCs and magic be more mysterious than in D&D. But when I play D&D, I enjoy having wizard and elf PCs along with other fantasy elements being common.

So I think we generally agree on this. The broad question is about which elements of a setting you want to be mundane, and which ones you want to be extraordinary. Tolkien intentionally made his hobbits the most utterly mundane characters in his universe, so that even human cultures like Gondor and Rohan could have a certain magic or romance, when perceived through their eyes. A similar thing goes on in the Elfquest comic, where the elves are the POV characters, and humans represent an alien element. Perhaps a better example would be Star Trek, wherein both the multi-species society and the fantastic technology are treated as utterly routine to the characters, because that was part of Roddenberry's vision for the future.

I'm not denying that it's a matter of preference, either. It's just that my preference is for a fantasy setting in which the supernatural gets to retain more of its sense of mystery.

I think that one extremely helpful thing, if you are trying to limit playable races but have trouble saying no to a player who wants to play something that just doesn't fit in the setting, is to have established demographics for the various lands, kingdoms, and empires. Greyhawk was my first campaign setting and it detailed % of each race, IIRC, as did other campaign settings that came after. If the Land of Purple Sand in your campaign world has 90% human, 3% gnome, 2% dwarf, and 5% half-orc, then it's easy to have them players roll d% and stick to the result - no tieflings, no dragonborn, no half-giants. Most of the time, they'll be hoomans...

That isn't to say that the DM has to be a hard-ass all the time, but certainly, eliminating as much schizophrenia as possible in character creation is a good idea. A pirate-themed campaign? Plenty of opportunities to have all kinds of outlaws which widens the aperture on race selection. The campaign had them all from the same village? Not so much.  I remember a Harnworld adventure whose premise was literally that you've been put to work by your lord to deliver a millstone and stumble upon a crime. *Everyone* in that adventure is gonna be human. In a future science fantasy or S&S game like DCC or Gamma World - have at it with talking plant and space hamster PCs...

Quote from: 3catcircus on September 09, 2022, 07:14:04 PM
I think that one extremely helpful thing, if you are trying to limit playable races but have trouble saying no to a player who wants to play something that just doesn't fit in the setting, is to have established demographics for the various lands, kingdoms, and empires. Greyhawk was my first campaign setting and it detailed % of each race, IIRC, as did other campaign settings that came after. If the Land of Purple Sand in your campaign world has 90% human, 3% gnome, 2% dwarf, and 5% half-orc, then it's easy to have them players roll d% and stick to the result - no tieflings, no dragonborn, no half-giants. Most of the time, they'll be hoomans...

Using a percentage chance to play the race is the way Dragon Quest does it. Except, it's even trickier.  DQ has fairly extreme ability score modifications for race.  For example, on a 5 to 25 scale for humans, 15 average, elves have some modifiers in the -5 to +5 range, and dwarves are almost that extreme.  The poor halflings get a whopping -6 to strength to go with their mods elsewhere.  No problem, right, you can just set the scores to compensate?  Except DQ makes you set your scores before you start rolling for which races you want to try.  You can try 3 times for a special race, but there are seldom 3 races that whose mods you want to take.  The mods really bite in that system.

 

Eh... depends on the setting.

I played human-only games often.

For my own settings, I prefer to AVOID elves and dwarves (and certainly halflings and orcs), unless I can do somethign interesting with them.

I prefer something weird like Talislanta or Dark Sun than the usual vanilla.

But TBH most my players use races as cosplay (they behave exactly like humans), which I dislike but doesn't bother me enough to forbid it.

Also, "cosplay" is what MOST people use, I'd bet. I've rarely seem people playing really otherworldy elves, for example.

I don't have other good solution except just ignoring it.

"Fine, you're a tiefling, now let's forget that for the next 20 sessions".

For the same reason, I one let a player play a kobold in Ravnica. "Yeah, okay, but you`re the only kobold in the world". The setting is so weird that it doesn`t make a difference. I`d allow this in Talislanta, Dark Sun, Planescape, and any setting containing mutants.

If I were to play in Middle-earth, I'd want races to MEAN stuff.

Quote from: Eric Diaz on September 09, 2022, 09:26:50 PM
Eh... depends on the setting.

I played human-only games often.

For my own settings, I prefer to AVOID elves and dwarves (and certainly halflings and orcs), unless I can do somethign interesting with them.

I prefer something weird like Talislanta or Dark Sun than the usual vanilla.

But TBH most my players use races as cosplay (they behave exactly like humans), which I dislike but doesn't bother me enough to forbid it.

Also, "cosplay" is what MOST people use, I'd bet. I've rarely seem people playing really otherworldy elves, for example.

I don't have other good solution except just ignoring it.

"Fine, you're a tiefling, now let's forget that for the next 20 sessions".

For the same reason, I one let a player play a kobold in Ravnica. "Yeah, okay, but you`re the only kobold in the world". The setting is so weird that it doesn`t make a difference. I`d allow this in Talislanta, Dark Sun, Planescape, and any setting containing mutants.

If I were to play in Middle-earth, I'd want races to MEAN stuff.

If someone wants to cosplay, let them do some type of LARP instead.

I've never seen the appeal of playing an RPG as if I were a bad summer stock actor. I don't use funny accents or wear different clothes. In fact, most of the time, I'm using 3rd person voice as the DM "Lord Umptystink sneers and tells his guards to arrest you" comes out of my mouth more often then "Guards!  Seeez'uh themmm!" When it comes to different races, I do it the same.

Besides, everyone always seems to have to play a dwarf as having a terrible Scottish accent. Every. Single. Time. I might allow some leeway if a player played a dwarf with a French accent...

Quote from: SHARK on September 07, 2022, 03:11:59 PM
Greetings!

Well, in many ways I think that the idea of a campaign having "Too many player character races!" is the cry of a lazy or simple-minded DM. Yes, I understand the importance of theme, and also the advantage of maintaining a Human-centric campaign. However, my main point is that providing playable options is almost always a great benefit. The DM is the one that chooses which menu selections are available for the current campaign.

Same. The idiot brigades been bitching about this for ages now. Guess what? TSR was getting race and class submissions left and right. Players are allways allways going to have ideas for new things. Be it races, classes, items, places, you name it. Its D&D. Or most other RPGs that dont stupify the imagination. These games inspire creativity.

But noooooo. Tyranny of fun is as firmly in the hands of the so called OSR as it is in the storygamers clutches.

Quote from: GeekyBugle on September 09, 2022, 05:56:26 PM
It's very easy, High Elves live in Underhill, they are the royalty, the older, wiser and more powerful. Wandering Elves (the ones that will be a part of a party) are not High Elves, they don't belong to the High Court, are (by Elven standards) younger, less knowledgeable and less powerful. High Elves almost never leave Underhill, and when they do it's to wage war against their enemies most of the time.

Now concot a similar lore for Dwarves, and since hobbits don't have a royalty nor real magic of their own give the ones who venture beyond the shire an adventurous spirit.

There, solved it.

Yep!
That's what I was saying. ;)

I've always preferred humancentric games. But I'll allow Elves, Dwarfs, and Halflings in its WFRP or OSR.

Absolutely NO tieflings or bipedal flowery unicorns or any of that nu D&D namby-pamby krud.

Quote from: 3catcircus on September 09, 2022, 09:45:17 PM

Quote from: Eric Diaz on September 09, 2022, 09:26:50 PM
Eh... depends on the setting.

I played human-only games often.

For my own settings, I prefer to AVOID elves and dwarves (and certainly halflings and orcs), unless I can do somethign interesting with them.

I prefer something weird like Talislanta or Dark Sun than the usual vanilla.

But TBH most my players use races as cosplay (they behave exactly like humans), which I dislike but doesn't bother me enough to forbid it.

Also, "cosplay" is what MOST people use, I'd bet. I've rarely seem people playing really otherworldy elves, for example.

I don't have other good solution except just ignoring it.

"Fine, you're a tiefling, now let's forget that for the next 20 sessions".

For the same reason, I one let a player play a kobold in Ravnica. "Yeah, okay, but you`re the only kobold in the world". The setting is so weird that it doesn`t make a difference. I`d allow this in Talislanta, Dark Sun, Planescape, and any setting containing mutants.

If I were to play in Middle-earth, I'd want races to MEAN stuff.

If someone wants to cosplay, let them do some type of LARP instead.

I've never seen the appeal of playing an RPG as if I were a bad summer stock actor. I don't use funny accents or wear different clothes. In fact, most of the time, I'm using 3rd person voice as the DM "Lord Umptystink sneers and tells his gussets to arrest you" comes out of my mouth more often then "Guards!  Seeez'uh themmm!" When it comes to different races, I do it the same.

Besides, everyone always seems to have to play a dwarf as having a terrible Scottish accent. Every. Single. Time. I might allow some leeway if a player played a dwarf with a French accent...

Maybe "cosplay" is not the right word, I meant "costume" or "cosmetic".

My players use "I'm an elf" in the same sense they say "I wear a green robe". It rarely comes up in play - no accents, nothing.

In my latest campaign, for example, one Pc was an orc - it only came up when they were infiltrating a rebel orc camp (in Shadow of the Demon Lord, orcs are frankestein creatures or something, not servants of Sauron).

Before that, a PC was a half-giant (8 feet tall), it onyl came up when they encountered a tribe of barbarians who treated him as the leader of the PCs.

Onve a PC played a gnoll... it didn`t make a difference, except for that one time villagers thought he was in league with werewolves.

As I`ve said, I don`t like it - but if they want to use gnolls as clothing, I just let them. Unless the campign has a strong gnoll element to it (for example, in Middle-earth, nobody can be an orc just for show).

I wrote a bit about that here:

https://methodsetmadness.blogspot.com/2021/06/fantasy-races-stereotypes-vs-cosplay.html

Quote from: Rob Necronomicon on September 10, 2022, 08:33:14 AM
I've always preferred humancentric games. But I'll allow Elves, Dwarfs, and Halflings in its WFRP or OSR.

Absolutely NO tieflings or bipedal flowery unicorns or any of that nu D&D namby-pamby krud.

Or Kinder...

Quote from: Rob Necronomicon on September 10, 2022, 08:33:14 AM
I've always preferred humancentric games. But I'll allow Elves, Dwarfs, and Halflings in its WFRP or OSR.

Absolutely NO tieflings or bipedal flowery unicorns or any of that nu D&D namby-pamby krud.

If I wanted to play Tolkein, I'd find a Middle Earth RPG designed to specifically embody its themes.

The insistence that all settings must be Tolkeinalikes is, to me, a sign of creative bankruptcy... aping the master's works like a cargo cult who understands only the shapes and not its meanings.

Give me a setting where humans from the surface world and dragonborn from the hollow earth once fought a war so terrible that the human nobles turned to infernalism and became the first tieflings as part of bargain to end it... which the demons did by shattering the world; obliterating the human and dragonborn empires alike and unleashing terrible demonic monsters upon the world and leaving the survivors; humans, dragonborn and tieflings; to rebuild civilization in a world now filled with ruins and monsters.

No elves, no dwarves, no halflings, no orcs... but a solid setting for all manner of adventures with the adaptable humans, magical tieflings (descendants of fallen noble houses) and mighty dragonborn as PCs whose people are forced to work together if they hope to survive... and where scouring the ruins of civilization for lost treasures while risking deadly demonic monsters is one of the most risky but effective means of aiding civilization.

But I'm sure Tolkein-ripoff #573 has just as much to offer that we haven't seen on the other 572.

Quote from: Chris24601 on September 11, 2022, 08:21:00 AM
magical tieflings (descendants of fallen noble houses) and mighty dragonborn as PCs

Too magical for me. I like more low fantasy stuff in general.

You do you in your world, but in mine playable races are limited to the core.  Tieflings and Dragonborn don't exist so no one is playing them anyway.

A couple years ago I came to the conclusion that the races in a setting reflect the setting's themes. I had far too many, and they were muddying the waters, so I reduced them down to humans and ten other races.

Eleven is probably still a bit too many, but I needed one for each power source (of which there are nine), and through a player's actions, he conserved one of the others on the chopping block.

Elves and dwarves and such are still part of the history of the setting, because I can't reasonably erase them completely. But they aren't around anymore. At best humans can take a "half-" feat that represents having one of the lost races in their lineage somewhere.

I'm not Tolkien, and I'm not interested in attempting to retread his ground. My setting is different and has different stories to tell, and so it should be inhabited by peoples that can tell those stories.

Here's another thing:  If there are 12+ races in the game, I bet you that at least 2 or 3 of them aren't put together very well. That is, they are forced into the game despite not having a good plan.

In a draft stage for a setting, I'll often have more than that.  Then when I get ready to make my final decision, one of the deciding points is what works and what doesn't.  Might be a place for hobbits in this game, but if I don't have a good plan for hobbits, then no go. 

No, there aren't too many. You can't have too many playable races as long as your DM knows how to say the world "no" and if he can't do that, a proliferation of weird races is the least of your problems.

If a DM is running a campaign where only humans exist, he just needs to say that there are only humans and no other races are allowed. It doesn't matter if a million other races are listed in books somewhere, all characters have to be human. Likewise if the DM has more traditional limits on race options: humans halflings, elves, dwarves, or gnomes.

Having those other races in a book somewhere does no harm if the DM limits his campaign as he desires. Though, potentially, having the option of using those races as player character options or even NPC options could be useful. We don't want everybody to be a silly snowflake, but that isn't a problem of race options, it's a player and DM problem.

Quote from: Avus on September 07, 2022, 12:52:04 PM
Seeing the other post about too many classes brought this question to me. I personally think there is entirely too many playable races in TTRPGs now. I witnessed this when the owner of a group I DMed for about 3 years ago, allowed them to select from every 5e race. I realized this was a horrible idea as soon as he said this.

I never got why Gary Gygax had a special page in the AD&D 1e DMG (I never played AD&D, although I enjoy referencing Gygaxian wisdom) on page 21 talking about player characters as monsters (or I guess in my case, monster races) up until that point. What was supposed to be a eastern style setting the owner came up with, quickly became a mess of edgy monster race characters that didn't fit into the setting at all and all the players wanted the special treatment for being "unique". I get banning races is a semi-common practice, I do it myself quite a bit even with the core 5e races (fuck Dragonborn and Tieflings), but when is it time for there to just be enough races period in a game?

Real life has but one playable race. Personally, I'm OK with that.

Quote from: Rob Necronomicon on September 11, 2022, 08:24:10 AM

Quote from: Chris24601 on September 11, 2022, 08:21:00 AM
magical tieflings (descendants of fallen noble houses) and mighty dragonborn as PCs

Too magical for me. I like more low fantasy stuff in general.

So Arthurian legend is right out I guess. Merlin was essentially a Tiefling after all.

Quote from: Omega on September 09, 2022, 09:55:45 PM

Quote from: SHARK on September 07, 2022, 03:11:59 PM
Greetings!

Well, in many ways I think that the idea of a campaign having "Too many player character races!" is the cry of a lazy or simple-minded DM. Yes, I understand the importance of theme, and also the advantage of maintaining a Human-centric campaign. However, my main point is that providing playable options is almost always a great benefit. The DM is the one that chooses which menu selections are available for the current campaign.

Same. The idiot brigades been bitching about this for ages now. Guess what? TSR was getting race and class submissions left and right. Players are allways allways going to have ideas for new things. Be it races, classes, items, places, you name it. Its D&D. Or most other RPGs that dont stupify the imagination. These games inspire creativity.

But noooooo. Tyranny of fun is as firmly in the hands of the so called OSR as it is in the storygamers clutches.

Fair enough.

The issue I personally have with the race proliferation is that traditionally the game has operated on a scheme where you can tell good and evil races on sight by their appearance. The good races look like humans in the cheapest Star Trek makeup. The evil races look like contestants on Face Off. When you muddy this then it becomes difficult to imagine how people in the game world keep their kill-on-sight lists straight. How do you know that those orcs, drow, or dragon-snails are actually evil without asking them? It exposes the artificially of the game world by having players rely on the DM telling them which targets they can kill without bothering to pay attention to appearance.

You can't just mix up contrasting conventions from Star Trek and Middle-Earth and expect the world to still make sense, because Tolkien's and Roddenberry's worlds were created with dramatically different intentions. In Middle-Earth, it's okay to kill orcs on sight because they're all evil. In Star Trek, it's wrong to shoot first because you can never be sure the other ship are bad guys and even known bad guys like the Borg might straight up ignore you if you're inconspicuous.

Quote from: Chris24601 on September 12, 2022, 09:21:15 AM
So Arthurian legend is right out I guess. Merlin was essentially a Tiefling after all.

Merlin is an NPC.  :D  I get your point, but there is some room for nuance here.

Quote from: Chris24601 on September 12, 2022, 09:21:15 AM

Quote from: Rob Necronomicon on September 11, 2022, 08:24:10 AM

Quote from: Chris24601 on September 11, 2022, 08:21:00 AM
magical tieflings (descendants of fallen noble houses) and mighty dragonborn as PCs

Too magical for me. I like more low fantasy stuff in general.

So Arthurian legend is right out I guess. Merlin was essentially a Tiefling after all.

According to whom?

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Merlin-legendary-magician (https://www.britannica.com/topic/Merlin-legendary-magician)

Quote from: Chris24601 on September 12, 2022, 09:21:15 AM

Quote from: Rob Necronomicon on September 11, 2022, 08:24:10 AM

Quote from: Chris24601 on September 11, 2022, 08:21:00 AM
magical tieflings (descendants of fallen noble houses) and mighty dragonborn as PCs

Too magical for me. I like more low fantasy stuff in general.

So Arthurian legend is right out I guess. Merlin was essentially a Tiefling after all.

I don't think Merlin is a teifling, just being a devil child isnt quite the dame imo, a tiefling is a specific thing.

Quote from: GeekyBugle on September 12, 2022, 10:36:50 AM

Quote from: Chris24601 on September 12, 2022, 09:21:15 AM
So Arthurian legend is right out I guess. Merlin was essentially a Tiefling after all.

According to whom?

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Merlin-legendary-magician (https://www.britannica.com/topic/Merlin-legendary-magician)

Your brief source still mentions:

QuoteThe author of the first part of the Vulgate cycle made the demonic side of Merlin's character predominate

Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merlin) has more details about Geoffrey of Monmouth's version, who first created the character of Merlin.

QuoteTherefore, Geoffrey's account of Merlin Ambrosius' early life is based on the story from the Historia Brittonum. Geoffrey added his own embellishments to the tale, which he set in Carmarthen, Wales (Welsh: Caerfyrddin). While Nennius' "fatherless" Ambrosius eventually reveals himself to be the son of a Roman consul, Geoffrey's Merlin is begotten by an incubus demon on a daughter of the King of Dyfed (Demetae, today's South West Wales). Usually, the name of Merlin's mother is not stated, but is given as Adhan in the oldest version of the Prose Brut,[16] the text also naming his grandfather as King Conaan.

This was continued and embellished by later authors.

QuoteSometime around the turn of the following 13th century, Robert de Boron retold and expanded on this material in Merlin, an Old French poem presenting itself as the story of Merlin's life as told by Merlin himself to the author. Only a few lines of what is believed to be the original text have survived, but a more popular prose version had a great influence on the emerging genre of Arthurian-themed chivalric romance. In Robert's account, as in Geoffrey's Historia, Merlin is created as a demon spawn, but here explicitly to become the Antichrist intended to reverse the effect of the Harrowing of Hell. The infernal plot is thwarted when a priest (and the story's narrator) named Blaise is contacted by the child's mother. Blaise immediately baptizes the boy at birth, thus freeing him from the power of Satan and his intended destiny. The demonic legacy invests Merlin (already able to speak fluently even as a newborn) with a preternatural knowledge of the past and present, which is supplemented by God, who gives the boy a prophetic knowledge of the future.

Quote from: Rob Necronomicon on September 11, 2022, 08:24:10 AMToo magical for me. I like more low fantasy stuff in general.

I mean reasonable, and why I think pure human camapigns can be preferable. But I find Tolkien low fantasy, thats not Middle earths 3rd age, to be a terrible basis for it.

Quote from: GeekyBugle on September 10, 2022, 12:13:52 PM

Quote from: Rob Necronomicon on September 10, 2022, 08:33:14 AM
I've always preferred humancentric games. But I'll allow Elves, Dwarfs, and Halflings in its WFRP or OSR.

Absolutely NO tieflings or bipedal flowery unicorns or any of that nu D&D namby-pamby krud.

Or Kinder...

Kender are usually the worst things at the tables they're at not because they aren't RP'ed (See the "only mention they're an elf as much as mentioning they're wearing a green robe" comment earlier in the thread), but because they're RP'ed too much....as monstrous little thieving shits.

I hate them, but thankfully, not playing Dragonlance takes them off the table. (If it weren't for Kender, I'd rather like the setting.)

I'm alright with player characters with demonic ancestry, but they should be called cambions instead of tieflings.

Quote from: DM_Curt on September 12, 2022, 02:40:20 PM

Quote from: GeekyBugle on September 10, 2022, 12:13:52 PM

Quote from: Rob Necronomicon on September 10, 2022, 08:33:14 AM
I've always preferred humancentric games. But I'll allow Elves, Dwarfs, and Halflings in its WFRP or OSR.

Absolutely NO tieflings or bipedal flowery unicorns or any of that nu D&D namby-pamby krud.

Or Kinder...

Kender are usually the worst things at the tables they're at not because they aren't RP'ed (See the "only mention they're an elf as much as mentioning they're wearing a green robe" comment earlier in the thread), but because they're RP'ed too much....as monstrous little thieving shits.

I hate them, but thankfully, not playing Dragonlance takes them off the table. (If it weren't for Kender, I'd rather like the setting.)

IMHO certain races attract certain types of player, Kender usually attract "That Guy" type of player.

Other races tend to attract the "Here's my character's 582 pages of backstory" and/or the "why would you kill my character just because he stuck his neck in the demon's head mouth in the wall?".

Which is why I don't allow them at my table, unless I know you as a player well enough as to trust you're not one of those.

On the other hand playing always the same 4 races/classes can get boring, so I'm making my own 3 non human races for my Mayan inspired Fantasy Game and special classes for some games that need them for the flavor.

The latter tend to always be one of the base 4 in disguise everywhere you look anyway.

Just started a new random camping yesterday. Didn't know I was gonna be DM till almost the last moment, so I went with FR as a setting to keep things simple and minimize prep. No one played human. Not that I mind, since I had an elf myself (I always play a DMPC, plus I thought I was gonna be a player initially), but someone snuck a centaur on me, and I didn't know till we were about to start, so I just rolled with it, cuz it was too late and it was just a random get together, non serious game type of deal (half the people barely even knew the game, so lots of hand holding). But, damn, that's the sort of thing I need to know up front.

It was mostly just cosmetic, though. Stats didn't even come up, but "captain of the royal guard leader of all the king's men" as a starting character type of backstory we had to tone down. That wasn't even the most annoying character, though. Someone played a stupid evil Tiefling and almost got the group killed. The Tiefling part wasn't even the bad part. Character started playing pranks on the centaur in the middle of an investigation while heading down a tunnel near a cult's hideout and ended up alerting the enemy we were there.

Main reason it wasn't a TPK was cuz we were running late and had to cut it short, so I ended it after they killed the first wave of reinforcements. But there were more enemies on the way and most of the group was near dead by then. They were one fireball away from kicking the bucket and the cult leader had that spell ready. Plus they also had a wyrmling-young black dragon they had been feeding homeless people to, so one breath weapon would've killed any survivors.

Quote from: Eric Diaz on September 09, 2022, 09:26:50 PM
But TBH most my players use races as cosplay (they behave exactly like humans), which I dislike but doesn't bother me enough to forbid it.

Also, "cosplay" is what MOST people use, I'd bet. I've rarely seem people playing really otherworldy elves, for example.

I don't have other good solution except just ignoring it.

I think if you really want races to be meaningful the best bet is a FATE-like aspect system. Expressing unique characteristics of biology & psychology is not really possible at the resolution that most game mechanics operate at. It's not possible to cover every possible circumstance, so you need both GM & players to be able to invoke those characteristics when relevant & useful.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on September 12, 2022, 09:42:54 AM
The issue I personally have with the race proliferation is that traditionally the game has operated on a scheme where you can tell good and evil races on sight by their appearance.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on September 12, 2022, 09:42:54 AM
You can't just mix up contrasting conventions from Star Trek and Middle-Earth and expect the world to still make sense, because Tolkien's and Roddenberry's worlds were created with dramatically different intentions. In Middle-Earth, it's okay to kill orcs on sight because they're all evil. In Star Trek, it's wrong to shoot first because you can never be sure the other ship are bad guys and even known bad guys like the Borg might straight up ignore you if you're inconspicuous.

As I read Tolkien, he explicitly denies this "kill on sight" principle. Seeing an evil creature like Gollum doesn't mean that it's OK to kill it on sight. There are trends, but benevolent-seeming figures like Saruman can still be dangerous, and evil-seeming figures can be important to save.

Within D&D, it has been similar. The 1978 Player's Handbook introduced half-orc PCs with no alignment restrictions, and the game soon also introduced evil elves (drow) as a common adversary and also a PC class (in Unearthed Arcana).

I agree that there are conventions one should follow or not, but it's not just a choice between pulp fantasy and Star Trek. A lot of campaigns will have something in between.

Quote from: jhkim on September 12, 2022, 07:58:58 PM
As I read Tolkien, he explicitly denies this "kill on sight" principle. Seeing an evil creature like Gollum doesn't mean that it's OK to kill it on sight. There are trends, but benevolent-seeming figures like Saruman can still be dangerous, and evil-seeming figures can be important to save.

I would second that. The Valar tried to give Melchor a second chance, and Gandalf makes the same offer to Saruman. Neither one works out very well, but Tolkien clearly thinks it was the right thing to do, so he probably ascribed to the idea that very few individuals were irredeemable.  In modern parlance, the orcs in Lord of the Rings would be enemy combatants during an active war, but when the goblins are first encountered in the Hobbit, the Dwarves at least try to parley with them. You could say that's because they've already been taken prisoner, but the mere fact that they tried always read to me like success was a possibility.

Quote from: jhkim on September 12, 2022, 07:58:58 PM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on September 12, 2022, 09:42:54 AM
The issue I personally have with the race proliferation is that traditionally the game has operated on a scheme where you can tell good and evil races on sight by their appearance.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on September 12, 2022, 09:42:54 AM
You can't just mix up contrasting conventions from Star Trek and Middle-Earth and expect the world to still make sense, because Tolkien's and Roddenberry's worlds were created with dramatically different intentions. In Middle-Earth, it's okay to kill orcs on sight because they're all evil. In Star Trek, it's wrong to shoot first because you can never be sure the other ship are bad guys and even known bad guys like the Borg might straight up ignore you if you're inconspicuous.

As I read Tolkien, he explicitly denies this "kill on sight" principle. Seeing an evil creature like Gollum doesn't mean that it's OK to kill it on sight. There are trends, but benevolent-seeming figures like Saruman can still be dangerous, and evil-seeming figures can be important to save.

Within D&D, it has been similar. The 1978 Player's Handbook introduced half-orc PCs with no alignment restrictions, and the game soon also introduced evil elves (drow) as a common adversary and also a PC class (in Unearthed Arcana).

I agree that there are conventions one should follow or not, but it's not just a choice between pulp fantasy and Star Trek. A lot of campaigns will have something in between.

Bravo, you found ONE exception and think this disproves the trend. Typical leftist thought process.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on September 12, 2022, 09:42:54 AM
The issue I personally have with the race proliferation is that traditionally the game has operated on a scheme where you can tell good and evil races on sight by their appearance. The good races look like humans in the cheapest Star Trek makeup. The evil races look like contestants on Face Off. When you muddy this then it becomes difficult to imagine how people in the game world keep their kill-on-sight lists straight. How do you know that those orcs, drow, or dragon-snails are actually evil without asking them? It exposes the artificially of the game world by having players rely on the DM telling them which targets they can kill without bothering to pay attention to appearance.

You can't just mix up contrasting conventions from Star Trek and Middle-Earth and expect the world to still make sense, because Tolkien's and Roddenberry's worlds were created with dramatically different intentions. In Middle-Earth, it's okay to kill orcs on sight because they're all evil. In Star Trek, it's wrong to shoot first because you can never be sure the other ship are bad guys and even known bad guys like the Borg might straight up ignore you if you're inconspicuous.

That's a point, but I wonder how many people are running games in which that concern ever arises. After all, murderhobos are as traditional to the hobby as evil orcs are. Even playing with grognards, and specifically telling them that my campaign rewards heroism, I'm hard-pressed to get even one character in my party that won't kill pretty much anyone if they think they can get away with it. From what I've seen of the nu-schoolers, it seems like the whole Game of Thrones grey morality thing has so proliferated pop culture that they just expect good and evil amongst every faction.

EDIT: That's probably a bit unfair to my PCs. I wouldn't strictly call them murder hobos, but I do get an overabundance of cynical mercenary types.

FURTHER EDIT: it's probably more accurate to say that nu school players don't think I'm terms of good and evil at all.

I am planning to write something on how the "elves" people play are really some kind of half-elves - not the immortal fey of legend, but humanoid with pointy ears that live maybe 200 years.

Same goes for other races, maybe even more so.

Quote from: Eric Diaz on September 12, 2022, 09:20:04 PM
I am planning to write something on how the "elves" people play are really some kind of half-elves - not the immortal fey of legend, but humanoid with pointy ears that live maybe 200 years.

Same goes for other races, maybe even more so.

Elves are very different in varying portrayals of them. In Tolkien, they are immortal human-sized supermen. In other sources, they are tiny folk who help shoemakers and similar.

I suppose this comes down to AD&D, which set the standard about how races are portrayed. I think a lot of the portrayal is driven by the "pick race, pick class" mechanic that all races are equal and balanced, and support different classes. For example, AD&D1 had -1 Strength for halflings, which seems physically quite ridiculous for being half the size.

When I ran Middle Earth games using the Action System, for example, just being an elf was a high cost in addition to everything else. These days I might be tempted to do something like the Cinematic Unisystem, where being an elf is parallel to being a Slayer in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Quote from: Chris24601 on September 11, 2022, 08:21:00 AM

Quote from: Rob Necronomicon on September 10, 2022, 08:33:14 AM
I've always preferred humancentric games. But I'll allow Elves, Dwarfs, and Halflings in its WFRP or OSR.

Absolutely NO tieflings or bipedal flowery unicorns or any of that nu D&D namby-pamby krud.

If I wanted to play Tolkein, I'd find a Middle Earth RPG designed to specifically embody its themes.

The insistence that all settings must be Tolkeinalikes is, to me, a sign of creative bankruptcy... aping the master's works like a cargo cult who understands only the shapes and not its meanings.

Give me a setting where humans from the surface world and dragonborn from the hollow earth once fought a war so terrible that the human nobles turned to infernalism and became the first tieflings as part of bargain to end it... which the demons did by shattering the world; obliterating the human and dragonborn empires alike and unleashing terrible demonic monsters upon the world and leaving the survivors; humans, dragonborn and tieflings; to rebuild civilization in a world now filled with ruins and monsters.

No elves, no dwarves, no halflings, no orcs... but a solid setting for all manner of adventures with the adaptable humans, magical tieflings (descendants of fallen noble houses) and mighty dragonborn as PCs whose people are forced to work together if they hope to survive... and where scouring the ruins of civilization for lost treasures while risking deadly demonic monsters is one of the most risky but effective means of aiding civilization.

But I'm sure Tolkein-ripoff #573 has just as much to offer that we haven't seen on the other 572.

Cargo cult, that´s brilliant!  ;D

Quote from: ShieldWife on September 12, 2022, 05:02:50 PM
I'm alright with player characters with demonic ancestry, but they should be called cambions instead of tieflings.

I'm also partial to teufling (pronounced something like "toyf-ling"). It literally means devilspawn.

Quote from: jhkim on September 12, 2022, 07:58:58 PM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on September 12, 2022, 09:42:54 AM
The issue I personally have with the race proliferation is that traditionally the game has operated on a scheme where you can tell good and evil races on sight by their appearance.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on September 12, 2022, 09:42:54 AM
You can't just mix up contrasting conventions from Star Trek and Middle-Earth and expect the world to still make sense, because Tolkien's and Roddenberry's worlds were created with dramatically different intentions. In Middle-Earth, it's okay to kill orcs on sight because they're all evil. In Star Trek, it's wrong to shoot first because you can never be sure the other ship are bad guys and even known bad guys like the Borg might straight up ignore you if you're inconspicuous.

As I read Tolkien, he explicitly denies this "kill on sight" principle. Seeing an evil creature like Gollum doesn't mean that it's OK to kill it on sight. There are trends, but benevolent-seeming figures like Saruman can still be dangerous, and evil-seeming figures can be important to save.

Within D&D, it has been similar. The 1978 Player's Handbook introduced half-orc PCs with no alignment restrictions, and the game soon also introduced evil elves (drow) as a common adversary and also a PC class (in Unearthed Arcana).

I agree that there are conventions one should follow or not, but it's not just a choice between pulp fantasy and Star Trek. A lot of campaigns will have something in between.

Ok, fair enough. In my experience I got the impression that D&D typically operates on a "judge a book by its cover" aside from the occasional subversion, but I will readily accept that the experiences of others imparted different impressions.

Quote from: ForgottenF on September 12, 2022, 09:16:13 PM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on September 12, 2022, 09:42:54 AM
The issue I personally have with the race proliferation is that traditionally the game has operated on a scheme where you can tell good and evil races on sight by their appearance. The good races look like humans in the cheapest Star Trek makeup. The evil races look like contestants on Face Off. When you muddy this then it becomes difficult to imagine how people in the game world keep their kill-on-sight lists straight. How do you know that those orcs, drow, or dragon-snails are actually evil without asking them? It exposes the artificially of the game world by having players rely on the DM telling them which targets they can kill without bothering to pay attention to appearance.

You can't just mix up contrasting conventions from Star Trek and Middle-Earth and expect the world to still make sense, because Tolkien's and Roddenberry's worlds were created with dramatically different intentions. In Middle-Earth, it's okay to kill orcs on sight because they're all evil. In Star Trek, it's wrong to shoot first because you can never be sure the other ship are bad guys and even known bad guys like the Borg might straight up ignore you if you're inconspicuous.

That's a point, but I wonder how many people are running games in which that concern ever arises. After all, murderhobos are as traditional to the hobby as evil orcs are. Even playing with grognards, and specifically telling them that my campaign rewards heroism, I'm hard-pressed to get even one character in my party that won't kill pretty much anyone if they think they can get away with it. From what I've seen of the nu-schoolers, it seems like the whole Game of Thrones grey morality thing has so proliferated pop culture that they just expect good and evil amongst every faction.

EDIT: That's probably a bit unfair to my PCs. I wouldn't strictly call them murder hobos, but I do get an overabundance of cynical mercenary types.

FURTHER EDIT: it's probably more accurate to say that nu school players don't think I'm terms of good and evil at all.

I've noticed something along these lines in all the also-ran tv shows. They try to ape GOT's sex and violence without understanding what made it great in the first place.

I don't really agree with the whole "no good, no evil." Sometimes individual people or ideological causes are just plain evil. That doesn't mean there's no room for nuance, but things are more nuanced than "every side has legitimate grievances that justify their actions." Sometimes people are so mistaken that they end up enabling unjustified horrific evil causes, without even realizing what they're doing is horrifically evil. "The road to hell is paved with good intentions", and that's the really important message especially now.

Quote from: Angry Goblin on September 13, 2022, 04:08:39 AM

Quote from: Chris24601 on September 11, 2022, 08:21:00 AM

Quote from: Rob Necronomicon on September 10, 2022, 08:33:14 AM
I've always preferred humancentric games. But I'll allow Elves, Dwarfs, and Halflings in its WFRP or OSR.

Absolutely NO tieflings or bipedal flowery unicorns or any of that nu D&D namby-pamby krud.

If I wanted to play Tolkein, I'd find a Middle Earth RPG designed to specifically embody its themes.

The insistence that all settings must be Tolkeinalikes is, to me, a sign of creative bankruptcy... aping the master's works like a cargo cult who understands only the shapes and not its meanings.

Give me a setting where humans from the surface world and dragonborn from the hollow earth once fought a war so terrible that the human nobles turned to infernalism and became the first tieflings as part of bargain to end it... which the demons did by shattering the world; obliterating the human and dragonborn empires alike and unleashing terrible demonic monsters upon the world and leaving the survivors; humans, dragonborn and tieflings; to rebuild civilization in a world now filled with ruins and monsters.

No elves, no dwarves, no halflings, no orcs... but a solid setting for all manner of adventures with the adaptable humans, magical tieflings (descendants of fallen noble houses) and mighty dragonborn as PCs whose people are forced to work together if they hope to survive... and where scouring the ruins of civilization for lost treasures while risking deadly demonic monsters is one of the most risky but effective means of aiding civilization.

But I'm sure Tolkein-ripoff #573 has just as much to offer that we haven't seen on the other 572.

Cargo cult, that´s brilliant!  ;D

Yeah, cargo culting has been a huge problem in the fantasy genre since Tolkienesque fantasy became its own subgenre that everyone apes. E.g. The idea of fading elves made sense in Tolkien because of how the cosmology was designed, but it doesn't make sense in any of the clones because their cosmologies don't operate on the logic that the world is perpetually declining.

Quote from: jhkim on September 12, 2022, 09:40:08 PM

Quote from: Eric Diaz on September 12, 2022, 09:20:04 PM
I am planning to write something on how the "elves" people play are really some kind of half-elves - not the immortal fey of legend, but humanoid with pointy ears that live maybe 200 years.

Same goes for other races, maybe even more so.

Elves are very different in varying portrayals of them. In Tolkien, they are immortal human-sized supermen. In other sources, they are tiny folk who help shoemakers and similar.

I suppose this comes down to AD&D, which set the standard about how races are portrayed. I think a lot of the portrayal is driven by the "pick race, pick class" mechanic that all races are equal and balanced, and support different classes. For example, AD&D1 had -1 Strength for halflings, which seems physically quite ridiculous for being half the size.

When I ran Middle Earth games using the Action System, for example, just being an elf was a high cost in addition to everything else. These days I might be tempted to do something like the Cinematic Unisystem, where being an elf is parallel to being a Slayer in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Yup, I agree - and in most systems, elves are not immortal, nor shoemakers, and not even (necessarily) magical. They are just humans with pointy ears.

I'm not saying that is good or bad - it is just how it is, and I think that people who can roleplay alien mindsets are rare. I'd love to try this, of course, but I'm okay with letting my player use elves as "costumes", or even an elven stereotype.

For example, I had a friend who resented my mage for burning some trees, by accident, with a fireball, while he never said a word about the sentient creatures my PC had blasted - I found that irritating, TBH.

OTOH, I had fun playing the religious nut stereotype with a Vengeance paladin, facing suicide missions with glee. "Our lives are relatively unimportant in the face of the destruction of this great evil". And disregard for your own life, for me, is almost as alien as the tree-hugging fellow. (Eventually my paladin died for refusing to leave an ally behind against an impossible foe. It was fun!)

One think I've noticed is that MECHANICAL differences make races matter more. For example, if a PC has to face some benefits/drawbacks every session for being big, or if the PC doesn't have to eat, sleep, etc., it reminds him of his origin more often.

Overall, I think it is too much of a burden for the GM to keep reminding the PCs, and I find that process tiresome. "So, as you enter this new town, you see people are looking at you sideways, as always, because you're a half-orc...".

In other words, if the player wants his race to matter, it is his job to make it relevant, and I won't police it.

Quote from: Eric Diaz on September 13, 2022, 11:03:27 AM
One think I've noticed is that MECHANICAL differences make races matter more. For example, if a PC has to face some benefits/drawbacks every session for being big, or if the PC doesn't have to eat, sleep, etc., it reminds him of his origin more often.

Overall, I think it is too much of a burden for the GM to keep reminding the PCs, and I find that process tiresome. "So, as you enter this new town, you see people are looking at you sideways, as always, because you're a half-orc...".

In other words, if the player wants his race to matter, it is his job to make it relevant, and I won't police it.

I think there's several sides to that same idea.  For example, should you allow a centaur race in the campaign?  Well, my first question is it going to matter?  If you are never going to have locations where a centaur finds it difficult to go, then maybe, maybe not.  The opposite is true, too.  If it's going to be a mega-dungeon campaign, where a centaur won't really work because of a lot of narrow, vertical spaces, then own it.  Ban the centaur because it won't work.  Of if you really want the centaur in, run a different campaign.

The sweet spot for me is mechanical differences that matter, but don't matter so much that they can't work in the campaign.  Matter too much, they never come up.  Gloss over them, they never come up.  GM doesn't want to fool with it, never comes up.  So I advocate for picking things that the GM doesn't mind dealing with, preferably because the nature of the thing puts it back on the player, but the situation that causes it to come up is something the GM is going to do anyway.  In the extreme case, going humans only is certainly one answer.

For example, I don't like "small" races if there is effectively zero trade-off with being small.  I do like it if there is meaningful encumbrance and a likely need to haul allies out of losing fights.  Being small means you are easier to haul to compensate for your lesser damage dealing and carrying capacity, but also less capable of doing the same for your allies.  I like it more when there is a fair amount of dungeon crawling in semi-realistic locations where the confines are cramped, maybe even occasionally too small for humans to navigate easily.  I don't need to monitor "being small" during a game.  I merely need to think about it a few minutes before setting up the campaign, and then run the game I decided to run instead of something else.  Conversely, if I'm thinking about dumbing down the differences in size to not matter, then why bother in the first place?

This also touches on the whole idiotic notion of just letting the players play whatever they want and "making it fit" into the campaign.  If it's a dodecagon peg in a round hole, maybe.  If it's a square peg in a round hole, absolutely not.  If it's round peg in a square hole, I could probably make it work, but I don't want that extra work.  So again, no.

Quote from: Eric Diaz on September 12, 2022, 09:20:04 PM
I am planning to write something on how the "elves" people play are really some kind of half-elves - not the immortal fey of legend, but humanoid with pointy ears that live maybe 200 years.

Same goes for other races, maybe even more so.

Oh yeah, I saw similar on another blog: http://lonelygm.blogspot.com/2013/03/changing-gamers-assumptions-about.html

QuoteIV. Dwarves are actually half-breeds. They're descendant form exiles, criminals and slaves who fled their overlords and reached the Brightlands (the surface). To survive under the blazing light and cold weather the dwarves united with the most populous surface race – humans. True Dwarves never left the depths and are still proud, stern and strong. They call themselves Duergar ("True Folk") and they won't suffer their mongrel cousins of the Brightlands.

V. What most people call elves are actually half-elf/half-human. True Elves are an outsider race of chaotic, care-free and amoral fey who accepted a pact with the gods to banish a common foe of old (demons, titans, pre-humanoid deities... the legends aren't clear). Half-elves are just humans with even less elven blood.

VI. Elves are actually a dream given flesh. That's why they can't sleep and must trance to rest. Some believe that the first elves were taken from the bright dreams of mankind (the first human tribes, who believed in the fair gods of the woods, glades and lakes); others think that they're taken from a god's last dream. Elves believe that their spirits dissolve into nothingness when they die, unless they can touch a human, halfling or dwarf's life (with wonder, love or dread) so that they can keep living in their dreams.

VII. Half-elves aren't a true race. Also called Elvenmarked, Elf-friends or Startouched, they're a special (and magic) status, bestowed upon those blessed by the elven kings (or deities) for great services and perilous quests. Most "half-elves" are humans only because they're everywhere at the present age.

I considered doing something similar in one of my settings. I'm partial to true elves being plant people or woodland fey similar to dryads and satyrs.

Quote from: Eric Diaz on September 13, 2022, 11:03:27 AM
One think I've noticed is that MECHANICAL differences make races matter more.

100% this, combined with 100% this:

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on September 13, 2022, 11:38:24 AM
Well, my first question is it going to matter?

If the differences between one race and another are primarily who-likes-who and who-hates-who, then I want to know (1) is that difference represented mechanically? (2) does it actually come up in play? (3) is it fun?

Personally, I find the whole "race matters because people are isolationist and bigoted" to be pretty boring in play, however true to life it may or may not be.

Quote from: Eric Diaz on September 13, 2022, 11:03:27 AM
One think I've noticed is that MECHANICAL differences make races matter more. For example, if a PC has to face some benefits/drawbacks every session for being big, or if the PC doesn't have to eat, sleep, etc., it reminds him of his origin more often.

Overall, I think it is too much of a burden for the GM to keep reminding the PCs, and I find that process tiresome. "So, as you enter this new town, you see people are looking at you sideways, as always, because you're a half-orc...".

In other words, if the player wants his race to matter, it is his job to make it relevant, and I won't police it.

A lot of this has to do with the expectations of play and is a topic that a GM needs to work out in Session Zero. If I describe the campaign world as one where <PCRace> is overwhelmingly bad, rapacious, and violent, then part of the roleplaying of the character is to purposefully act the part of an outsider viewed with suspicion or hostility. It's not solely the GM's responsibility to do this. Even within the context of traditional D&D voices, where players only describe their own actions, it's easy to describe your character furtively trying to attract undue attention to himself, or to brashly get in the face of NPCs, or anything in between.

The answer is no. There is never too many in TTRPGs as whole, as it's field containing countless GM, players, campaigns, settings all over the world, and far into the future.
Now... how many of them you want in your setting and your campaign - that my friend is up to you and your team.

Keep your weird races, but in my fantasy worlds I like nations to usually be racially homogenous.  If a Lion-man rides into a rat-man city, there may be a riot due to historical rivalry between them.  And yes, I'm playing up cats vs mice, but is as good as any reason you got. 

I think this is more interesting and certainly realistic.  Melting pot cultures should be the rare exception.

Otherwise traveling to far away, "exotic" lands is nothing of the kind if they're all just as jumbled up a melting pot as your homeland. 

It also gives a GM some leverage to add to lore.  IE you visit a Dwarven culture out beyond the known borders, only to find they're religious fanatics who spend all of their free time carving entire mountains into artwork that rival the sphinx of Egypt and Mount Rushmore of South Dakota.  Or visit leopard beast men who build their cities in treehouses of their jungle, prefer to use blow guns over bows, and absolutely HATE halflings for some reason.

What purpose do most TTRPG races serve? Most of them are basically just there to provide a different physical character aesthetic.

Dwarves: Tough, stubborn. Craftsmen.
Elf: Graceful, otherworldly. Magical/druidic.
Halfling: Tolkien had them so, guess we have to?
Human: Baseline.
Dragonborn: Strong, proud.
Gnome: ? ? ?
Orc: Strong, savage, anti-hero.
Half-Elf: Human with special bloodline.
Half-Orc: Human with special bloodline.
Tiefling: Human with special bloodline.

Quote from: Zelen on October 16, 2022, 07:24:44 PM
What purpose do most TTRPG races serve? Most of them are basically just there to provide a different physical character aesthetic.

Dwarves: Tough, stubborn. Craftsmen.
Elf: Graceful, otherworldly. Magical/druidic.
Halfling: Tolkien had them so, guess we have to?
Human: Baseline.
Dragonborn: Strong, proud.
Gnome: ? ? ?
Orc: Strong, savage, anti-hero.
Half-Elf: Human with special bloodline.
Half-Orc: Human with special bloodline.
Tiefling: Human with special bloodline.

Gnomes get no respect, it seems.  That's pretty common.  I think that the whole "Garden Gnome" aesthetic has ruined them in popular culture, and many seem to think that--if they were blue--they'd be Smurfs.  And perhaps individual experience that people who play them sometimes don't take their character seriously, making them TOO playful and perhaps talking in an irritating baby-girl voice with a laugh that makes the other characters want to break something.

Me?  I like them.  Call me weird.  Yes, they're kind of like Dwarves, except whereas Dwarves are stereotypically gruff beer-drinkers, Gnomes are full of child-like wonder and enthusiasm for tinkering.  They're different from Hobbits Halflings who seem more oriented to good food, drink, and comfort than tinkering and discovery.

Maybe a sufficiently varied race of Halflings or Dwarves with many different cultures could fill that niche...and that's the real thing about fantasy races in general.  Are they merely distillations and/or exaggerations of human cultures?  Like, would you rather play an Orc or, say, a stereotypical Mongol warrior?  Are Dwarves just miners with bad Scottish accents?  Are elves just British hippies?

Of course, the Woke just pee in their pants, automatically assuming that of we equate Orc culture with some exaggeration of Mongol culture in the 12th-13th century, that it's culture stereotyping, cultural appropriation, a micro-aggression, hateful, and probably contributes to global warming.  But they'll say that about anything.

There's no objective, correct answer to the question. It depends on the campaign, the players, et cetera.

However, my preference is for the vast majority of the PCs to be human, and for demi-humans to be viewed more like monsters. I wouldn't rule out another race (or even a monster) as a PC, but I want that to be unusual, at best, and "rare" as a rule. Just my opinion, of course. This is the approach that works best for my game and my preferences. I consider a lot of "official" playable races to be a downside, in that it lends weight and inertia to the idea that any of those options should be available -- and that's not necessarily what I want in my game.

Quote from: Osman Gazi on October 17, 2022, 03:42:21 PM

Quote from: Zelen on October 16, 2022, 07:24:44 PM
What purpose do most TTRPG races serve? Most of them are basically just there to provide a different physical character aesthetic.

Dwarves: Tough, stubborn. Craftsmen.
Elf: Graceful, otherworldly. Magical/druidic.
Halfling: Tolkien had them so, guess we have to?
Human: Baseline.
Dragonborn: Strong, proud.
Gnome: ? ? ?
Orc: Strong, savage, anti-hero.
Half-Elf: Human with special bloodline.
Half-Orc: Human with special bloodline.
Tiefling: Human with special bloodline.

Gnomes get no respect, it seems.  That's pretty common.  I think that the whole "Garden Gnome" aesthetic has ruined them in popular culture, and many seem to think that--if they were blue--they'd be Smurfs.  And perhaps individual experience that people who play them sometimes don't take their character seriously, making them TOO playful and perhaps talking in an irritating baby-girl voice with a laugh that makes the other characters want to break something.

Me?  I like them.  Call me weird.  Yes, they're kind of like Dwarves, except whereas Dwarves are stereotypically gruff beer-drinkers, Gnomes are full of child-like wonder and enthusiasm for tinkering.  They're different from Hobbits Halflings who seem more oriented to good food, drink, and comfort than tinkering and discovery.

Maybe a sufficiently varied race of Halflings or Dwarves with many different cultures could fill that niche...and that's the real thing about fantasy races in general.  Are they merely distillations and/or exaggerations of human cultures?  Like, would you rather play an Orc or, say, a stereotypical Mongol warrior?  Are Dwarves just miners with bad Scottish accents?  Are elves just British hippies?

Of course, the Woke just pee in their pants, automatically assuming that of we equate Orc culture with some exaggeration of Mongol culture in the 12th-13th century, that it's culture stereotyping, cultural appropriation, a micro-aggression, hateful, and probably contributes to global warming.  But they'll say that about anything.

I just don't think they have a strong archetype in the generic fantasy pantheon. Some specific settings like Dragonlance have good takes on them, I just don't see a consistent, unified idea of what they represent. The core concept seems to be to take the smallness of Halflings/Hobbits and the quirky, unlikely-hero aspects of Halflings/Hobbits, and amplify them to annoying levels. That can work fine if your game embraces goofy, zanyness, but does that belong in Ravenloft, Dark Sun, etc? For me the answer is no.

Quote from: Angry Goblin on September 13, 2022, 04:08:39 AM

Quote from: Chris24601 on September 11, 2022, 08:21:00 AM

Quote from: Rob Necronomicon on September 10, 2022, 08:33:14 AM
I've always preferred humancentric games. But I'll allow Elves, Dwarfs, and Halflings in its WFRP or OSR.

Absolutely NO tieflings or bipedal flowery unicorns or any of that nu D&D namby-pamby krud.

If I wanted to play Tolkein, I'd find a Middle Earth RPG designed to specifically embody its themes.

The insistence that all settings must be Tolkeinalikes is, to me, a sign of creative bankruptcy... aping the master's works like a cargo cult who understands only the shapes and not its meanings.

Give me a setting where humans from the surface world and dragonborn from the hollow earth once fought a war so terrible that the human nobles turned to infernalism and became the first tieflings as part of bargain to end it... which the demons did by shattering the world; obliterating the human and dragonborn empires alike and unleashing terrible demonic monsters upon the world and leaving the survivors; humans, dragonborn and tieflings; to rebuild civilization in a world now filled with ruins and monsters.

No elves, no dwarves, no halflings, no orcs... but a solid setting for all manner of adventures with the adaptable humans, magical tieflings (descendants of fallen noble houses) and mighty dragonborn as PCs whose people are forced to work together if they hope to survive... and where scouring the ruins of civilization for lost treasures while risking deadly demonic monsters is one of the most risky but effective means of aiding civilization.

But I'm sure Tolkein-ripoff #573 has just as much to offer that we haven't seen on the other 572.

Cargo cult, that´s brilliant! ;D

Not really.

The main complaint being that everyone plays Dwarves, elves halflings etc, as humans in cosplay with no regard for setting.

The solution to the tolkienesque "cargo cult"?

Dragonborn and Tieflings that everyone will still play as humans in cosplay...


Which is why I strongly prefer human-centric campaigns.

And while burning wheel was a trainwreck of a game, it still had some good ideas. Like mechanics for Elven grief and Dwarven greed. Putting a strong mechanical flavor on the demi-human races.

The only real way in RPG's to get people to play demi-human races different is by having the races tied to specific thematic archetype mechanics directly related to the setting. Which is something that D&D has never done.

"Limits" like class and level restrictions are the first things that will get house ruled out of the game.

Otherwise, just replacing Elves, Dwarves, and halflings, with Dragonborn, Tieflings, and Tinker Gnomes is nothing more than a costume change for your players.

Quote from: Jaeger on October 17, 2022, 09:06:40 PMThe main complaint being that everyone plays Dwarves, elves halflings etc, as humans in cosplay with no regard for setting.

No, thats not even CLOSE to whats being talked about. Its that they are added IN with no regard to setting. Do they add anything? Do their relationships add anything new? Players playing them bad is a group thing, not a setting issue.

Rob Necronomicon even put a thing on the pulse directly: Somehow Dwarves Elves and the AD&D pick and mix is exempt from his 'No speshul snowflakes' rule, even though his own personal preference is towards humancentrism.
"Why? I dunno, its how it was done before and excempt from any other judgement calls that might override my reasoning otherwise."

Your reasoning is consistent: No non-humans EVER. And thats fine and a way I like to play too sometimes.

But its unrelated to the central point, that many OSRians are cargo cultists. Thats how it was before, and thats how its to be done.

Dwarves and Elves are exempt from being snowflake races because they're fucking awesome! And everyone should like Dwarves and worship Elves!  :P

Tieflings and Dragonborn, on the other hand, are made up D&D races that exist to appeal to emo edgelords and people who're obsessed with the idea humans fucking dragons and producing offspring somehow.

In all seriousness, though, setting specificity applies to all races. Elves and dwarves should not exist in settings where they don't belong, and should probably be relegated to NPC races in worlds where they're rare elder races who're too powerful and rarely interact with mortals. Tieflings belong in Planescape. Dragonborn belong in Dragonlance.

The reason Elves and Dwarves are not considered snowflake races is because they're based in mythology and have become so widespread in fantasy they serve as cookie cutter examples of what fantasy races could be like. They've become so commonplace in fantasy they can't be snowflakes. And Halflings are there because apparently it's OK to steal from Tolkien. Then Gnomes somehow made their way in and now are stuck, even though no one plays them, because tradition.

And apparently, being OK with this is now considered part of primitive people worshiping airplanes cuz they used to bring them food.

i always preferred to use gnomes over halflings, halflings for me are a spot already filled by gnomes.

w/o beards how does one tell a female dwarf from a female gnome?

Quote from: VisionStorm on October 18, 2022, 12:06:58 AMThe reason Elves and Dwarves are not considered snowflake races is because they're based in mythology.

They are as based in real world mythology as Pumaman. Which is to say extremly vaugely if you squint. They are re-interpretations of real world mythology (sorta mashups of multiple mythologies really) for a specific lens for a specific setting. That have been copy-pasted mostly due to uncreativity.

I mean real world mythologies have featured adventuring parties of Monkies, Pigs, Ogres and Dragon princes.

QuoteAnd apparently, being OK with this

Well the idea is that its based around what happened before. 'Races other then humans are lame and shit. Except the pick and mix because it came before, and any other race is special snowflake garbage even if they have all the claims of legitimacy that Tolkien has as well, if not more'.

"Cargo Cult" is not "wedded to tradition unreasonably".  Rather, it is being confused about cause and effect.  The metaphor is from a primitive tribe that supposedly set up elaborate rituals around downed aircraft because they liked the supplies they were able to rescue from the wrecked cargo. 

I don't know whether elements of the OSR are a Cargo Cult over races or not.  But if they are, it would be because they believe there is a correlation with certain races giving a certain vibe to their setting, when the races don't in fact do that.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on October 18, 2022, 07:51:27 AM
I don't know whether elements of the OSR are a Cargo Cult over races or not.  But if they are, it would be because they believe there is a correlation with certain races giving a certain vibe to their setting, when the races don't in fact do that.

There's a reason I called it the "Tolkein Cargo Cult" and not the OSR Cargo Cult.

A cargo cult is a group who apes the form of a thing (ex. bamboo and rocks shaped to look like a plane) without understanding it purpose or function (how an airplane actually works) to achieve some desired end (food showing up).

Many setting designers seem to think that dropping surface deep versions of Tolkein's races (bamboo planes) into their setting will somehow make them successful (food turning up) without even bothering to understand the deeper themes Tolkein was exploring via the races he used (how the airplane works).

None of Tolkein's races was there just for the sake of being there; their natures and backstories and roles in the story were baked into the setting's DNA.

By contrast most rpg fantasy settings just have elves, dwarves and halflings (only because Tolkein's estate went after Hobbits) for no other reason than people aping the form of Tolkein think that Fantasy is just supposed to have tall lithe bow-wielding elves (and not, say two-foot tall cobblers or bakers)... at most they're there because "their god made them for reasons."

What anyone who's not interested in being a Tolkein Cargo Cultist should be doing is first to decide if they even NEED anything other than humans (or if even humans are right for the particular setting... see The Dark Crystal) and then deciding what role those other beings should have in the setting and filling those in with something from myth or their own imaginations.

My example used Tieflings and Dragonborn specifically because they're so reflexively despised by many in the OSR crowd to show that what's important is a setting that the included races are actually tied into thematically (which in that example they made sense) versus dropped in because it's "expected."

The problem is never the races in and of themselves... it's their lack of rooting in the setting that makes them feel surpurflous.

Quote from: Chris24601 on October 18, 2022, 09:22:16 AM

The problem is never the races in and of themselves... it's their lack of rooting in the setting that makes them feel surpurflous.

Agreed, though I think that brings up another point.

It is often the case that races (any races, not just elves and dwarves) are tacked onto a setting with no good reasons.  It of course does not follow that all settings that have elves or dwarves are in that bucket, or that the ones that lean into that bucket are all the way in.  There's a continuum.

Also, there are a lot of other factors that drive those choices, including whether the designer even wants to make a setting where a particular race has a place to root or not.  You could say that I'm biased against tielfing because I never include them, but you could also say that I'm responsibly not including them because I'd never run a setting in which they could be appropriately rooted.  How much of that aesthetic is setting driving the race list and the race list driving the setting is not strictly one way or the other.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on October 18, 2022, 01:37:38 AM
... They are as based in real world mythology as Pumaman. Which is to say extremly vaugely if you squint. They are re-interpretations of real world mythology (sorta mashups of multiple mythologies really) for a specific lens for a specific setting. That have been copy-pasted mostly due to uncreativity....

So what.

Every new fantasy race introduced to D&D since has had even less mythological underpinnings, with even shittier lore to complement them.

The "originality" of new fantasy races is vastly overrated.

Quote from: Chris24601 on October 18, 2022, 09:22:16 AM
...
My example used Tieflings and Dragonborn specifically because they're so reflexively despised by many in the OSR crowd ...

The real question is this: Why are they so reflexively despised?

And no, "cargo cult" is not the answer.

Quote from: Chris24601 on October 18, 2022, 09:22:16 AM
...to show that what's important is a setting that the included races are actually tied into thematically (which in that example they made sense) versus dropped in because it's "expected."
...
The problem is never the races in and of themselves... it's their lack of rooting in the setting that makes them feel surpurflous....

This is true. But it has been true with D&D from the beginning.

The addition of Tieflings, or Dragonborn to D&D have not fixed this. Their integration into various settings sucks just as hard, if not more so.

So what is the real complaint?

I'm gonna go with "no, there are not enough".  If I create a new setting, I often end up needing to create a new race for it.
The ideal world has an infinite number of races- or at least all the good ones, which may be a smaller infinity- plus a really great search feature. Then when you make a world you pick and choose of this ur-list and have your work done for you by this subset of the akashic records (the helpful section for DMs, which presumably is there right?).

The issue is, while there are a zillion races, many players tend to assume that any of them are there for them to iterate on, come up with a cool character with, and then find a DM's game to insert said character in.  Look at any discussion on race selection on reddit and mention you don't allow androids in pathfinder, or half-golems in 5ed, or the winged races, and watch the butthurt players roll in.  The old Giant in the Playground forums would also also talk about this.  The charop guides became totally dominated by race selection, back before you were a big old Nazi for assuming an elf had a +2 to Dex.  And this is, of course, what everyone here is discussing.

Anyway, my take is- it's not the number of well designed races, that can and should skyrocket.  It's the assumption players have that games should accommodate a much more expansive set of races than is good for the setting.

Quote from: Jaeger on October 18, 2022, 02:28:58 PM
The real question is this: Why are they so reflexively despised?

Generally intolerance of other playstyles or desires, and ideological game purism.
There are other reasons, but those are the main ones.

Its for the same reason people insist a separate table for STR rolls needs to exis based on a d6.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on October 18, 2022, 03:16:44 PM

Quote from: Jaeger on October 18, 2022, 02:28:58 PM
The real question is this: Why are they so reflexively despised?

Generally intolerance of other playstyles or desires, and ideological game purism.
...

I disagree.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on October 18, 2022, 03:16:44 PM

Quote from: Jaeger on October 18, 2022, 02:28:58 PM
The real question is this: Why are they so reflexively despised?

Generally intolerance of other playstyles or desires, and ideological game purism.
There are other reasons, but those are the main ones.

No, the reason(s) they are despised have been hatched many times over, and I included some in my last post right on this same page. Jaeger even hinted at more of the issues on the same post you're replying to. You don't even have to go back to other pages or look at other threads to find them.

These are very setting-specific made up races with almost no real mythological or folkloric underpinning* that are mostly there as fanservice to appeal to certain players, while Dwarves and Elves (for good or ill) are established fantasy races with widespread recognition that have become staples of the genre. Even if they're not 1/1 based on mythology, they're far closer to their mythological counterparts than Tiefling*, and Dragonborn are 100% made up. So comparing Tieflings and Dragonborn to Dwarves and Elves is beyond apples and oranges.

And like Jaeger pointed out, including races like Tieflings and Dragonborn has not fixed the issue of races being superfluous and not thematically tied to settings. If anything it has made it worse because they keep expanding the kitchen sink, and doing so with over-specific made up races that don't even work as generic examples of what fantasy races might look like the way Elves and Dwarves do. Which only muddies the waters further and continues to compound the issue even more than 100% Tolkienisque races like Halflings and (Half)Orcs** already do.

Most game purist OSR types don't even like demihumans very much and are always bragging about how they prefer human-centric games. So I'm not even sure who these people you're talking about are.


*other than arguably Tieflings, which deviate even more from their folkloric counterparts than Elves or Dwarves and don't even share the same name, because they're not the exact same thing as Cambions, which are also radically different from folklore in D&D.

**Though, Orcs have arguably become fantasy staples as well, with their inclusion in so many franchises, like Warcraft and such.

There is a certain irony to the references to "cargo cults" given that Tolkien's elves are heavily based on the Alfar and the Fair Folk, and his dwarves are likewise deeply rooted in Norse mythology. Some form of elf-like being is present in all manner of Western European mythology, and dwarves are also fairly ubiquitous. It turns out that Tolkien is just one of many literary sources for D&D. This was more well-understood prior to Peter Jackson.

People play D&D to experience their favorite stories in some fashion. What if you could be Shea Ohmsford? Belgarion the Godslayer? Lancelot du Lac? Sigurðr? Gilgamesh? The Grey Mouser? Conan the Cimmerian? Sinbad the Sailor? Ged?

Not all of these stories involve elves and dwarves, but elves and dwarves are ingrained in the public conscience. That's why Tolkien included elves, dwarves, goblins, and orcs into his fantasy novels.

The rejection of tieflings and dragonborn is probably rooted in the mentality of many of the fans of these two races. There is an undercurrent of, "We have to show everyone how clever we are by diverging from Tolkien," without realizing that Tolkien isn't the origin of most D&D elements. They get confused by halflings, and they completely overlook the fact that the Tolkien estate wasn't able to sue TSR over any other race or monster that appears in both Lord of the Rings and Dungeons & Dragons.

I think I've hit modifier burnout.  Just write whatever you want to on your character sheet.  I only care about your class abilities and background.  What are you supposed to be good at?  I don't care what color your skin is, what color your hair is, what color your eyes are, etc.  As far as I'm concerned; your name is Bob, and you are either a Warrior, Rogue, Mage, or Dual Class Focus.  Your character sheet for me will be very small.  Your character sheet for your own enjoyment, can be an encyclopedia.  I don't care about your rainbow shit.