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.