Which PHB race doesn't fit into YOUR fantasy campaign?

No halvses in my campaign. Well, half-lings, but no half breeds. Elves don't fit so much, but I've given them a minor presence. Dwarves are sailors, if you can stomach that. Halflings are industrious, if you can believe that. And gnomes are still the coolest race around. I can't believe they're highest right now in the poll. Gnomes are the most common of the non-humans in my campaign city. There's a quarter that is colloquially known as "Gnometown," which is really a ghetto for short folks of all kinds. And I don't buy into that preferred class of bard. My gnomes are generally tinkers or scientists of a mechanical bent. My campaign is renaissance fantasy, so there's science and enlightenment philosophy to be dealt in, and the gnomes fit in perfectly.

I picked elves, because fanboy elf players have soured me on that race.

I've been working on a homebrew setting for a while now where elves were wiped out millenia ago when the orcs and hobgoblins united against them. Hopefully, I can run it someday. The idea of a setting where there are no elves is extremely appealing to me.

My campaign world is relatively anthropocentric.

- I don't have halflings, because I don't think they have any flavour.

- Although a dwarf is a strong archetype, I don't have any, either. Actually, human berserkers or smiths with a good taste for ale fit the bill nicely. And, their underground dwellers' niche is already taken by someone else .

- Half-elves and half-orcs are nearly non-existent. They are not available as player races, they are sterile, and sometimes they have some peculiar abilities which make them unsuited for players.

- Elves use more or less gnome statistics and dwell underground, be it in the forests or in the mountains. Think the "King under the Mountain" from "The Hobbit", or just European folklore. Their different cultural subdivisions cover very much the archetypes from woodelf to dwarven smiths deep in the mountains. Of course this means that the preferred class had to go. Although they get a bit older than humans, their exceptional longvity had to go, too.

- Orcs/goblins (cultural subdivisions of the same race) are the third intelligent race. The statistics are somewhat changed. They have their own kingdoms and -except the seafaring ones - don't fare well within human society.

As far as intelligent races go, you might also count trolls/ogres (who are the same in my campaign), some ratmen on the islands of the great sea, a feline race, some strange arachnoid colony builders and an illithid-like race on the southern continent. But these are either rare or far away, if the players don't go to the unknown territories beyond the horizon .

The only playable races in my campaign are humans, dwarves and halflings. No half-breeds, no gnomes and NO ELVES!

Doc_Klueless said:

In my campaign and all the others I've run over the last 20+ years, gnomes have never played a part. Just don't like the little buggers! I can't seem to figure out what niche they fill.

How about you?

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I had a similar problem - but I figured it out. In my world, the Gnomes are the People of Passion. I don't mean romantic love, or sexual passion, but the kind of Passion that inspires you to devote your life to a single study, thing, or person.

The gnomes are single-minded, obsessed fanatics - about something. They represent the side of humanity that comes out in otaku and sci-fi fan boys. And also in the great writers and artists.

The rest of the races follow a pretty standard breakdown. Except I got rid of the half-breeds.

I do not care for halflings, but I despise gnomes.