D&D 5E What are your world Races?

KirayaTiDrekan · Oct 26, 2014

I have two major 5E homebrew settings going and they are both kitchen sinkers.

In my "Everything D&D Ever" world, humans are the major dominant race as the planet is Earth after a magical war/apocalypse. Elves, dwarves, halflings and a couple of others were all slaves of the invading dragons and were left behind. All the other humanoid races are corruptions of the major races, claimed and altered by a demon lord. Gnolls, for example, were human once but were corrupted by Yeenoghu.

In my "Fantasy Babylon 5" world, every race has at least one island in a continent size archipelago that is their home island. The major races (humans, tieflings, dragonborn, and elves) have several islands in their domains. There are no inherently evil races, though goblinoids are viewed that way by most races (and are mostly extinct after a major war and then their home island going volcano on them).

was · Oct 26, 2014

Joe Liker said:
A better way to approach this is to find out what the players want to play and adapt your world accordingly before the campaign even begins.

Homebrew D&D is a lot more fun if the DM and players collaborate and compromise to build the setting together, rather than having a totalitarian DM who will brook no deviation from the perfect world he has envisioned. (I'm not saying that's you, but it does seem to be a common attitude among certain DMs who post here.)

I have to respectfully disagree with you here. There is an immense amount of work that goes into a home-brewed campaign world and the vast majority of it will always be done by the DM. Home-brewed worlds are their passion and it is simply not feasible, or reasonable, to expect them to constantly rewrite the entire world to reflect the individual preferences of every single player. For example, a DM having to resurrect an extinct race, or create one that doesn't exist in this world, simply because one player insists on playing that race.

I think that if the majority of players aren't happy with the home-brewed world, most 'good' gms simply turn to running a campaign in a pre-published setting which accomodates their players' wishes. It is not 'totalitarian', however, for a DM to say that I am not changing years worth of effort put into building a home-brewed world because one player wants to play X race.

I see lots of people on the boards like to talk about what a 'good' DM is and complain about a lack of them. Few people, however, want to talk about what attributes make a 'good' player. Remember that the DM, except in rare instances where they get paid, is a voluntary position that requires a ton of work. Especially, in a home-brewed campaign where things are not pre-canned for them to run. If they're not also having fun, there's no incentive to take up the role.

This constant argument over player 'attitudes' of entitlement vs. the power of DM's position to create and run a campaign has gone on since first edition. It's unlikely to change anytime soon. Disparaging those who disagree with your postions, i.e. "certain DM's who post here", is hardly likely to garner support for your position.

prosfilaes · Oct 27, 2014

was said:
Few people, however, want to talk about what attributes make a 'good' player.

Whereas I see a lot of people willing to talk about why players suck. I think your biases are showing through there.

was · Oct 27, 2014

prosfilaes said:
Whereas I see a lot of people willing to talk about why players suck. I think your biases are showing through there.

Not particularly. I enjoy both sides of the screen and end up on the player side more often than not. These boards, however, have seen an influx of new posters in the last few months who seem to delight in DM bashing for whatever particular reason. Having been on both sides of the screen, I simply think that both sides deserve fair representation. Yes, there are bad DM's. There are also bad players. I think that if everyone could accept that, we'd see far fewer threads derailed by the argument.

..and yes, I now recognize the irony of talking about thread derailment when currently involved in a discussion which threatens to derail a thread. :erm:

My apologies to the OP.

Hereticus · Oct 27, 2014

The DM is the moderator for the players' stories, not their own. Their principal job is to create scenarios and interpret what happened.

steeldragons · Oct 27, 2014

*sigh* ...annnnnd I guess there is where I step in. Kinda hoping this would fade away on its own, but before it goes any further...

...respectfully, take it outside.

This thread isn't about what or whether a DM should or shouldn't allow, or their inclusion/exclusion of player wishes, or whether that makes them a "good" or "bad" DM, or those who deliberately go out of their way to request things (races, classes, whatever) not on offer in an established setting are "good" or "bad" players.

I'm sure we could have a lovely few dozen page thread about it...elsewhere.

Everyone else, continue to talk about what races you offer, what/why you offer them, how many you think might be too many...races -pc or not- in your games.

Please and thank you.

DMZ2112 · Oct 27, 2014

I have three homebrew settings:

- One has only the six AD&D2 PHB PC races plus dragonborn (all the humanoids from the D&D5 MM are in attendance as monster races, as that's the system I use to run this setting),
- The second has every PC race ever released for D&D along with most every monstrous humanoid race available to PCs (it started out as a D&D4 setting but is now very Pathfinder, thanks in part to the ARG), and
- The third has modified versions of humans, dwarves, high elves, half-elves, and halflings and five custom races: two kinds of cat people (forest and plains), plant people, undead people, and demon people. Lately I've been mapping these to wood elf, half-orc, gnome, aasimar, and tiefling in 13th Age, due to an unplanned but happy coincidence. 13th Age has also got me thinking how I might incorporate dark elves, dragonspawn, and forgeborn just to fill out the dance card. The only monstrous humanoids are mutant humans that have taken on bestial aspect.

In the first world, I justify exclusion by the fact that I explicitly run D&D5 Basic, with some optional rules from the PHB. I don't expect folks to forgo their half-elves, and I love dragonborn, but I draw the line at populous half-orcs and tieflings. The net result, including monstrous humanoids, is pretty standard D&D so I don't get a lot of disbelief at the table. You didn't ask about this specifically, but in this setting settlements tend to be homogenous, with few representatives from other races.

In the second world, I don't have to justify exclusion because I've done very little of it, by design. The world is crowded, but I've mitigated this somewhat by grouping the individual races into societies -- for instance, tieflings, humans, and halflings make up one society; bugbears, hobgoblins, and goblins a second; and dragonborn, lizardfolk, and kobolds a third. Play here tends to be political, or have strong political undercurrents, because of the struggle for space. I definitely don't handwave the conflict. Settlements in this setting tend to be heterogeneous, because most hubs of civilization have found themselves under different proprietorship several times throughout history.

In the third world, I'm basically running baseline 13th Age, so I'm not sure there's much justification to do in any case. There's still a strong undercurrent of interracial conflict, however, as a central concept is that some races are native to the world and others are not. Generally, if you're fighting a humanoid, it's probably a member of another PC race -- the mutants are pretty thin on the ground in most eras. The makeup of settlements depdends on the era, as well, but in general native settlements tend to be homogenous while invader settlements are heterogeneous for the invader races but almost never host natives.

Jack99 · Oct 27, 2014

was said:
Humans are the only remaining player race in my campaign world. The rest have been systematically wiped out in various wars. However, all humans start with one of 10 home-brewed ancestry feats which allows them to expand a bit.

Sounds interesting. Would you mind sharing those?

Hand of Evil · Oct 27, 2014

Playable Races:

Human
Elf (all but drow)
Dwarf
Gnome
Halflings
Half-Elf
Half-Orc

Non-Playable Races:

Drow
Tifling
Dragon-born

Other Races in the game:

Lizard folk
Orc
Hobgoblin
Ogre
Gaints

JWO · Oct 27, 2014

Jack99 said:
Sounds interesting. Would you mind sharing those?

I would also like to hear more about this.

All these amazing ideas are really making me wish I had more time to put stuff like this together! As it stands I barely have enough time to put together even a basic dungeon crawl (and even then I need to pull help from these boards: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?368757-Help-me-write-a-tomb-crawl! ).

So yeah, I'm just sticking with the standard Forgotten Realms races from the PHB, but removing tieflings and dragonborn. They just seem too monstrous to fit in to me. Apart from that, there are no truly "evil" races. Orcs, goblinoids etc might commit evil acts when under the rule of an evil leader but it's not an inherent thing.