I have been running a humanocentric OD&D game for some time, but I have recently learned that several potential players haven't joined my game because they "only play elves" or "only play dwarves".

I personally don't get that, but I have met really good gamers who will only play Character XYZ and for them, having fun playing D&D means playing their favorite race and/or class.

I have to respect that. If someone's fun is "being a dwarf with an axe and Scottish accent", then as long as they're fun at the table, I guess as a GM, I should make room for that PC in my game world.

I just feel a bit odd having to make every OD&D setting into something where Bilbo, Gimli and Legolas somehow make sense as PCs. I can do otherwise, but then I diminish the potential audience for my games. And as a OD&D GM at FLGS game days and conventions where nobody has heard of the OSR, it does not make sense to turn a potentially good player away from my table.

I would love to hear your thoughts.

I think this goes both ways.

You're willing to respect their preferences as players, but are they willing to respect your work as a GM? Are they willing to work with you at all?

My personal favorite D&D race is tieflings. I had one GM tell me flat out "No. Tieflings in my campaign get hunted down and killed by angry mobs because of their heritage." I still wanted to play. I shrugged and said "Fine, I'll play a Revenant. In his previous life he was a Tiefling who got hunted down and killed by an angry mob." (yes this was 4E, don't freak) The GM rather liked this idea, and I got to play an undead Tiefling who fit into his campaign.

My point is: your players need to at least try to find a way to compromise with you rather than insisting that you change your entire setting to accommodate their fixations.

I'm not sure what you're asking.

Why are elves and dwarves ubiquitous?  Well, they're a stock part of D&D and I suspect it's become self-reinforcing now; elves and dwarves are in all D&D settings because they're part of the game and they're part of the game because they're in all settings.  I doubt many DMs or players really think much about whether having Tolkienesque elves and dwarves in Every Single Fantasy World makes any sense, they just take it for granted and go.

Why do some people only play elves/dwarves?  I suspect that it's an easy cliche they've latched on to that appeals to them and is easy for them to get their head around.  Elves and dwarves as defined in Tolkienesque fantasy are pretty shallow and one-dimensional.  Plus there's some of that leftover "elves totally kick ass at 1st level and sod the level caps" thing from 1st ed AD&D going on, I'll wager.

I don't know what to tell you about your player pool; the first thing I do any time I run a fantasy game is chuck out all the Tolkien races and start over, a la Cook's Arcana Unearthed setting.

Elves and dwarves embody archetypes that strike strong chords with people.

*ahem*

To be less farty about it:
*lotsa folks love elfs because purty and cooler than thou and other reasons
*lotsa folks love Dwarfs because drunk rude dude w/o social skills w/axe

Both Are very wish fulfillment, one in a "way cooler and prettier and so on than any person can ever be PLUS can be angsty about Being cool and purty" way, the other in a "total basement dweller but still considered cool and badass" way.

Also of course in AD&D elfs and Dwarfs have great big advantages at low levels and the party might never reach High levels anyway (and in 2e they stay cool for way longer than in 1e Even if the party does reach High levels).

At the risk of being completely unhelpful: this is the most retarded thing I've ever heard.

I enjoy playing the boisterous dwarf fighter or haughty elf wizard as much as the next guy, but it would never, ever cross my mind to skip a game because the GM won't allow My Favorite Race (or class or vampire clan or whatever) because the people I game with are friends; gaming is a social activity; and I'm perfectly capable of enjoying myself playing a boisterous warrior who's over 4' tall or a haughty wizard without pointy ears.

I'd try and talk it over with them, but if they insist, I'd be on the market for a new gaming group.

I approach games a little differently as a GM. I find out what my players want to play and then build the world from there. Sometimes players will request certain settings. The upside to this is that if its not a setting I own then the onus is on them to provide me with the materials. If its something I have no interest in then I say so. Ive turned down running a Vampire game recently but ran a Godlike WW2 game on request when one of my players gave me the book. However, I changed things to fit my tastes. I ditched the game's background and came up with my own, incorporating Greek Myths, The Illiad, and WW1 folklore about the Angel of Mons and picked up a book called WW2 Plans That Never Happened for adventure seeds.

anyways, I guess my point is I tend to find that if the players are getting what they want in a character they tend to invest in the game much more readily, and I can work with that to find my own enjoyment. Not saying everyone should do this, just my approach.

That said, theres time I "pitch" a game Id like to run. I really love supers, but many players dont (though they dont see playing a magical D&D character as a contradiction, which baffles me, but whatever), so when I run that sort of game I know the player base is going to be smaller. But if thats really what I want to run, Im ok with that. Generally all I need is a minimum of 2 players for a game. Prefer 3-5, but smaller groups have thier advantages too.

I don't really get this either. I'm much more interested in human-centric games where, if elves and dwarves even exist at all, they're legendary, incomprehensible fay and only-encountered-through-a-quest immortal forgers of unobtainable magic weapons. I think that they provide lazy players with a personality template that they think is cool, whereas humans are a blank slate on which they have to actually come up with some kind of character.

Then again, at least they have defined personality traits. In games with character classes, some of the other classes are worse, providing "roles" in the party, but no actual defined personality, though they are often used in lieu of such...

It can all be quite fun, from time to time, to play an old-school party with the Elf, the Dwarf, the Fighter, the Cleric, etc. I think Dungeon World goes some way towards making this a feature rather than a bug, and Burning Wheel's dwarves and elves are at least turned up to eleven ....

For my part, I never compromise a thing.  I run the system I want with the house rules I choose in my homebrew setting with the elements I want in it.  Games are at my apartment on 2nd and 4th Saturdays, 11:30 AM or thereabouts, running to 6 PM.  We've got two cats and a rabbit.  Non-smoking, non-drinking.  Break around 2-ish for a meal.

Those who can buy into that are welcome.  Those who can't hack one or more of those elements no doubt find other games than mine.  I've been running successfully with that premise for pushing 40 years now.  I have never run a system I didn't want to run, never ran at a location I didn't want to run in, never ran a milieu I didn't like.  I've likely avoided some ulcers doing that.

Why elves and dwarves?  Because people expect them; you could with as much success, I expect, attempt a D&D game where you told people they couldn't play fighters.

Quote from: The Butcher;720862At the risk of being completely unhelpful: this is the most retarded thing I've ever heard.

I enjoy playing the boisterous dwarf fighter or haughty elf wizard as much as the next guy, but it would never, ever cross my mind to skip a game because the GM won't allow My Favorite Race (or class or vampire clan or whatever) because the people I game with are friends; gaming is a social activity; and I'm perfectly capable of enjoying myself playing a boisterous warrior who's over 4' tall or a haughty wizard without pointy ears.

I'd try and talk it over with them, but if they insist, I'd be on the market for a new gaming group.

Ayup. As a player, If I want to play in a game then I accept the setting as the GM presents it and select the character type I want to play from what is available. Not a terribly difficult concept.

I cannot think of anyone who I would be willing to game with in the first place, that I would present with an ultimatum on character type.

So you prefer playing dwarves, big deal. If you are about to join an AS&SOH game that promises to be really fun are you really going to quit because you might have to play a barbarian human instead of a dwarf?

Have been running a dwarf fortress D&D game for the last few months in which the only PC clasd allowed is dwarf? It has beeb glorious. I think a lot can be said for the classic D&D races but I like random grab bag adventuring parties less and less. Having a unified theme to riff off is fun.

If there's an alternative, I will on occasion skip games that have elves in them. Dwarves not so much.

Let me point out--I'm a player that likes the fantastic. I'm a human in everyday life and I like to be something else. I don't necessarily need special abilities/bonuses to play the fantastic, I just like the option to play something different and distinct from my core self.

I've a friend who adores dwarves, two of them actually--one has always loved them, the other its a recent thing since WOW. Now either one will play other things but those are there preferences in fantasy.  I think its just a thing--we like something like vanilla ice cream but with mint chips inside, some prefer vegetarian dishes without being strict vegetarians, and like those preferences for food or treats, we've preferences for character types.

I like mystery, and mystic elements and a connection to nature--thus the classic elf is a preference for me. I've played a little bit of all the classic races. Including some weird ones from Dragon magazine like Wood giants and Fox-Folk (Anachu?)  In the end I just have taste preferences. I'll try other games, without those things, but I'll try a lot of stuff, because while I've preferences they're not overwhelming. For others though they want what they want, and without that, well, its less fun.

I always play humans in D&D.

Lord Hobie

Quote from: The Butcher;720862[...] and I'm perfectly capable of enjoying myself playing a boisterous warrior who's over 4' tall or a haughty wizard without pointy ears.

Reminds me of a joke we used to tell about one of our players.  "Rich is a great roleplayer.  He can play an arrogant high elf mage, an arrogant high elf who thinks he's a mage, an arrogant mage who thinks he's a high elf, a high elf mage who thinks he's arrogant..."

Quote from: Spinachcat;720846I have been running a humanocentric OD&D game for some time, but I have recently learned that several potential players haven't joined my game because they "only play elves" or "only play dwarves".

I personally don't get that, but I have met really good gamers who will only play Character XYZ and for them, having fun playing D&D means playing their favorite race and/or class.

I don't bother to argue, I just glad that 90% of these cases are the bog standard stuff and not something like a Thark from Mars. I don't get it either and just throw it into that mysterious pile known as personal preference.

I designed the Majestic Wilderlands to be a pretty diverse place so it is rare where I can't find something to accommodate a player's choice. For example while I have bog standard races they are not all mono-culture societies. So I can accommodate folks who like to play Tolkien Elves, or Elfquest Elves if need be.

Mind you I don't precisely have Tolkien Elves, Elfquest Elves or other various specifics. I have equivalent that I feel embody the spirit of those tropes. And the one thing I require is that they have to compromise on fitting their characters background within my campaign.

For those with my MW Supplement it why I have "Prehistoric Land", "Japanese Land", type regions. Many them started off as areas of the Judges Guild Wilderlands outside of my main campaign area. Then came a player who wanted to play X that didn't fit. So I picked one of those regions and wrote some background and that where the character came from.

The big one was changing the Silver Skein Islands into the Karian Islands of a vaguely medieval Japanese culture to accommodate all the oriental rpg enthusiasts of the 80s.  

One player wanted to play a shape shifting werewolf similar to White Wolf so I wrote up the whole Median Pack/Blood Children mythology found under the Goddess Kalis.

It worked for me because I largely stuck with one fantasy setting, the Majestic Wilderlands, when running Fantasy RPGs. That I kept in mind that I was portraying the Wilderlands as a world and like our world it is a pretty big place with a lot of nooks and crannies with odd ball stuff.