It's tricky. I've played nonhuman PCs before.

A good starting point is lifespan. A creature that lives longer than a human might take a long-term view, but conversely be less flexible if things start to shift rapidly. Diet and cultural mores are also good frameworks. Are they omnivores? Obligate carnivores? What's their home life like? Do they have family units?

Splatbooks are good for helping build on this (the old 3.5E 'Races Of' books had some nice flavor).

What about mannerisms? I once played an insectile PC who would carefully groom his mandibles during quiet moments. Dwarves might absently toy with a worry stone, and elves might go around inspecting things (NOT stealing, ffs they're not kender) out of curiosity.

Whenever I picked non-human as a player, it was honestly just for the f-ing combat bonuses. I hardly gave a crap about anything else. Murder Hobo 101.

When the "Human" choices are all boring ass crap, I feel like the game design is kind of flabby and lazy, and you're forcing your Murder Hobos to go down paths that are abnormal for the sake of abnormality... and most non-human races just end up being some version of crap, just like the Humans.

So roleplay a non-human? Fkk, no. 99% of cases, there's no point. The races are there as a stat block, with some superficial crap that doesn't reinforce anything about how the race behaves as a society... so unless you're playing TV show Klingons (probably in a stupidly full retard way, especially if you know how to pronounce Klingon words and all that), it's probably some flavor of horrible.

Just give your character a few notes of personality (regardless of "race"), and do that repeatedly. Do a small set of things and reinforce it every time. Anything more is overkill, and probably you're less entertaining than you think you are to the others at your table.

Like HK-47 in Star Wars: KOTOR. You remember he calls everyone a Meatbag. It doesn't need to be a ton more than that.

Quote from: bromides on June 27, 2022, 02:21:48 PM
Just give your character a few notes of personality (regardless of "race"), and do that repeatedly. Do a small set of things and reinforce it every time. Anything more is overkill, and probably you're less entertaining than you think you are to the others at your table.

Like HK-47 in Star Wars: KOTOR. You remember he calls everyone a Meatbag. It doesn't need to be a ton more than that.

I'll gladly subscribe to the HK-47 school of role playing.   

My non-human RP trick is to pick a quirk and a hole.  Modes of speech are an easy quirk to use.  A 'hole' is some part of human culture that they don't get or that their society adapts or twists into something different; Drax's inability to understand metaphors, Klingon honor, Ferengi avarice, etc.

Yes, but first off, like Steve Mitchell, as a GM I have to do that RP as a non-human all the time so I do think of it now as a non-issue.

That said I do gravitate to RP challenges and games asking me to play with alien thinking, like Fae, Angels/Demons, ETs, Mythos, anything Talislanta, etc. is like catnip to me. I find also things that reinforce that alienness, especially mechanical restrictions and penalties, helps get you into and stay in that headspace. Setting taboos are nice, but often I do get frustrated at other players trying to circumvent the spirit of the setting restrictions and penalties just to 'do what I was gonna do anyway -- now with bonuses!'

So I don't think of it as strange or remarkable, but I am attracted to it for the challenge and "out of body" experience (immersing myself into a mask, as it were). And I roll my eyes at the mechanic benefits versus the mechanic penalties because I care more about the suspension of disbelief that the "winning" at Let's Pretend. It's a vicarious opportunity at a conceptual vacation, moreso than the typical RP experience.

I find myself playing mostly human characters, or at least human-adjacent, like halflings and elves. I find some races kinda boring because they feel human in every way except appearance. Especially when it comes to systems that shy away from stereotyping...

That being said, I also dislike the fact that humans are so 'average' in most systems. Humans are anything but average! I really wish people noticed just how special humans are in the animal kingdom. We sweat, we have crazy endurance. We have incredible arm strength - throwing something is something uniquely, physically human! And, well, intelligence, though I suppose in a world of advanced civilizations it wouldn't be special. That being said, endurance should still be something that human characters do better.

While I don't play many nonhumans, I do of course GM, and as a GM I am often inspired by my husband. He played a mousefolk for a long time that genuinely just had a fast metabolism and needed to nap frequently and also was frequently hungry, and hunted down small insects as snacks. I really enjoyed his style of roleplaying. The physical aspects of different races are too often ignored. And yet, if you overdo it, you end up with characters that are hard to relate to because they're so distant from our experience that it's simply uninteresting.

TL;DR - my relationship with nonhuman characters is complicated, and a bit of love-hate. I like it when done right, but it's hard to strike a balance, and in the end every character has to be, in some way, human, or else you just have a bad character.