D&D 5E Am I no longer WoTC's target audience?

[jasper]

I struck out the ones I knew were not official playable races. Yes I know occasionally a fiction book, or Gary would make an exception.

• Humans
• Elves (high, grey/faerie, valley, grugach, sylvan, acquatic, dark/drow)
• Dwarves (hill, mountain)
• Halflings (harfoot, stout, tallfellow)
• Gnomes (surface, deep/svirfneblin)
• Orcs
• Goblins
• Hobgoblins
• Bugbears
• Xvarts
• Koboblds
• Gnolls
• Ogres (including merrow)
• Ogrillon
• Orogs
• Tasloi
• Lizardfolk
• Sahuagin
• Locathah
• Bullywugs
• Grippli
• Kua-toa (sp?)
• Giants (various sorts)
• Trolls (including scrags)

 

[Fenris-77]

@QuentinGeorge - The phrase "the option needs to be there" is a funny beast. You could say that and mean "in exceptional circumstance you can play anything" which has been a defacto feature of every 5e release so far. However, you might also mean "the players should be allowed to play anything they like, regardless of setting" which is a very different thing. I'm on board with the former, but the latter is madness, the worst kind of player entitlement. Which did you mean?

 

[Oofta]

In my home campaign races are limited for a variety of reasons. Drow are not allowed because they are the bogeyman. The evil ones that come in the middle of the night, burning, pillaging and dragging off an unfortunate few who are never seen again. They have never had peaceful relations with the surface races. This is a world where evil humanoid races are real and are an existential thread to humanity.

If that kind of evil was associated with something so easily identified, what do you think the response would be? A drow walking down the street would be more dangerous than a tiger. In theory, the person playing a drow could wear a mask 24x7*, but that's not practical. It wouldn't take long before people would question what they were hiding and why. Again, cue the torches and pitchforks.

So I limit races in large part because of internal consistency. But there's also a more fundamental reason. Humanoid races in my campaign can have evil as part of their DNA. Orcs (or drow) are not evil because of nurture, they are evil because that is their core nature. Yeah, that's kind of old school, but an orc is not just misunderstood human with bad makeup. They're orcs. Evil, nasty brutes. Just like that tiger will never be truly tame or a beholder will always be evil.

P.S. vampires don't sparkle in the sun in my campaign either.

*Unfortunately the technology to create one-way vision doesn't exist and even a full helm allows people to see your eyes. I don't see how a mask could be effective at close distances unless it's magic. Magical options to permanently disguise yourself are limited, and there are counters.

 

[billd91]

Just off the top of my head, here are some of the demi-human/semi-human races in GH as published:

• Humans
• Elves (high, grey/faerie, valley, grugach, sylvan, acquatic, dark/drow)
• Dwarves (hill, mountain)
• Halflings (harfoot, stout, tallfellow)
• Gnomes (surface, deep/svirfneblin)
• Orcs
• Goblins
• Hobgoblins
• Bugbears
• Xvarts
• Koboblds
• Gnolls
• Ogres (including merrow)
• Ogrillon
• Orogs
• Tasloi
• Lizardfolk
• Sahuagin
• Locathah
• Bullywugs
• Grippli
• Kua-toa (sp?)
• Giants (various sorts)
• Trolls (including scrags)

That's before we get to half- (elves, orcs, ogres at least), cambions, wererats and werewolves, Greyhawk dragons, etc.

Are we really saying that dragonborn are the straw that will break this camel's back? What's the actual argument?

Have I or have I not said, multiple times, that for me, the dragonborn are more of a taste thing? I'm not keen on them. So asking me if they broke some camel's back isn't even relevant.

But as to the Mos Eisley cantina issue - yeah, Greyhawk has a wide variety of species bumping about - just not all in the same place. The real world has hundreds of ethnic and tribal groups as well - but oddly enough, I'm not likely to encounter them all at the same time in the bar even at Heathrow, a busy international airport at the hub of what was once a global, cosmopolitan empire. The distribution of ethnic groups and tribes in the real world as well as the fantasy races in Greyhawk is regional.

I'm sure not going to see Kuo-toa in a random tavern in freaking Verbobonc. I'll probably see mostly humans, some gnomes, and halflings - maybe a dwarf every once in a while and a half-elf or half-orc or two because that's what the surrounding community is like. There aren't big tasloi communities because there aren't any jungles around Verbobonc, so they'll be a fairly rare sight in the Verbobonc taverns. And if a group of them do show up (maybe it's Tasloi night where tropical tree dwellers drink for half price), it's going to cause a bit of a stir.

 

[TwoSix]

But as to the Mos Eisley cantina issue - yeah, Greyhawk has a wide variety of species bumping about - just not all in the same place. The real world has hundreds of ethnic and tribal groups as well - but oddly enough, I'm not likely to encounter them all at the same time in the bar even at Heathrow, a busy international airport at the hub of what was once a global, cosmopolitan empire. The distribution of ethnic groups and tribes in the real world as well as the fantasy races in Greyhawk is regional.

I feel like there's a deeper playstyle difference at work here; primarily, do the rules for PC generation influence your worldbuilding? Are the options open to PCs meant to be reflective of the campaign setting at large, because the PCs are meant to be a representative subset of the campaign world as a whole?

Basically, does the fact that the PC party looks like Mos Eisley cantina mean that every inn also has to look like that? Or is it OK for the PCs to be off the norm for the world?

I'm pretty solidly in the middle. I have no problem banning races outright if my overall image of the game precludes their existence. But, if they exist in the game world, I have no problem allowing the option as a PC. And, if the mechanical expression of a race is particularly important to a player, I have no problem with reskinning the race into something that does fit into the campaign setting. Just as an example, I didn't allow Yuan-ti as a race in my Ravnica game, but I had no problem reskinning the race as a Human experimented on by the Simic for one of my PCs.

 

[PsyzhranV2]

For one thing, since day 1 the intent has been that the game be at least vaguely human-centric. As time's gone on that has "centrism" expanded to include at least Elves and Dwarves; but the farther you stray from that the closer you get to - as someone very aptly put it upthread - the Star Wars Cantina party.

That, and IME any time someone has come to me wanting to play an oddball race it's been because they're either trying to jump the power curve or are operating (intentionally or otherwise) in ignorance of how the rest of the party is likely to react, or both.

Yeah, I don't think that's a thing anymore, and RPG culture is much, much better off without that humanocentrism.

Honestly, Drow these days are passé. Dragonborn struggle among experienced players due to how mechanically boring they are, but new players find it fun to play the big lizard man.

As for Tieflings, players in the latest generation go for them either because they like the Tiefling aesthetic, or because they find their baked-in roleplaying hooks evocative and relateable. Trying to relegate them all to being power-gaming "those guys" is inaccurate and kind of callous.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I don't think it's really apposite to compare Gygax's knowledge of folklore to Tolkien's.

Is that what I did? All I’m saying is that we’re bound to find similarities between Tolkien and D&D beyond the direct lifting that Gygax did of some elements because they were both drawing from the larger pools of folklore and myth.

The fact that one was a scholar and another was “just” an enthusiast doesn’t change that.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

I remember in Savage Species some feats with special effects in the case of those character dies. When I read them the first time I thought in the draconians from Dragonlance.

The true D&D version of the Star Wars Mon Eislay cantina is Sigil, and from here all races can go to the rest of the multiverse, even to Eberron if I am the DM and I don't respect the canon too much.

Tolkien and Gygax are different styles, this is like talking about Opera, Jazz and country music.

Demography in D&D has changed, not only about dragonborns or tielflings, but also non-Causacian human communities.

In the TTRPGs if something is too cool and popular then the official canon may be forgotten. It is like little children playing with playmobils from different historical ages. It is his story and they don't worry about logic.

* I know it is a crazy idea but I start to think WotC is going to publish in the future a PC of centaurs with equine heads but cute facial traits (like "My Little Pony" first generation). They would dare only because they hope to be a good hook for new players.

 

[Maxperson]

In 3rd Age Middle Earth what great deeds did elves achieve? I think it should be quite possible to have a RPG that accurately represents JRRT's elves and is still quite playable. Burning Wheel goes at least some of this way.

They accomplished nothing due to apathy, not because they weren't physically and mentally superior to men.

 

[Oofta]

Yeah, I don't think that's a thing anymore, and RPG culture is much, much better off without that humanocentrism.

Honestly, Drow these days are passé. Dragonborn struggle among experienced players due to how mechanically boring they are, but new players find it fun to play the big lizard man.

As for Tieflings, players in the latest generation go for them either because they like the Tiefling aesthetic, or because they find their baked-in roleplaying hooks evocative and relateable. Trying to relegate them all to being power-gaming "those guys" is inaccurate and kind of callous.

I would say that there's nothing wrong with a player creating a PC that feels like an outcast or struggles with (potentially real) internal demons. But you could do that with any race, you don't have to be a tiefling. To me, if there are too many PC races, race becomes just a costume. I try to make it mean more than that.

If playing a Sigil campaign (or similar) then open the floodgates because it makes sense for that setting. But for every campaign setting? I don't see that as a good thing, then every campaign just becomes a generic mish-mash with no unique feel.