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.