D&D as humanocetric ... or not?

[lowkey13]

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[robus]

While I checked any option in the official books (as that's true for my current campaigns) I reserve the right to restrict options in future campaigns. For example, if I ever get to run Curse of Strahd I will insist on an all human group of PCs. (And that probably ensures I'll never get to run it ! )

 

[Michael Silverbane]

All games are humanocentric, as all of the players are human. If I am running a game, and another player wants to play creature type X, I find a way to make that happen. The game belongs to all of the players, not just the referee.

 

[prabe]

I have told the players several times that humans are the most numerous and arguably the dominant of the PC races, but in two parties of 6 PCs I have ... one human. No one is playing anything arguably monstrous, so I don't (haven't anyway) made a big deal about it. They run in to a lot of humans, but even in the backwaters they're pretty cosmopolitan and egalitarian.

 

[Fenris-77]

I don't limit race choice generally, everything is potentially in play, official, 3PP, whatever. However, I do sometimes limit races in the context of individual campaigns in one of two ways. First, some campaigns types mandate an at least mostly X race party - too many monster PCs isn't the right feel for courtly intrigue, for example - so I might limit it to one per party, or even none. Similarly, some campaign settings mandate for restricted racial choices. Again, here I'm not going to allow every player to play a race that isn't native to the setting unless that was the idea in the first place. In both those examples the restrictions on race for PCs is part of the initial contract between DM and players, and they would be made explicit.

 

[Salthorae]

I checked the option of being the bigger man because I can laugh at the big men who cry.

I say that because when it comes to my games and races available to players for characters it depends on the world in which I'm running the game.

Sometimes I allow free-range race options, sometimes I restrict one or more races, usually from the non-PHB sources. Other times I'll even restrict PHB race options like dragonborn and/or drow and/or tielflings just because they don't fit the milieu of that particular world or city/setting.

 

[Umbran]

So, what about you. How are your campaigns run/played? I am throwing in a poll here to see what people are actually doing. In order to avoid discussions of "humanocentric" in terms of the world, this poll will only be about player options for races.

Please try and answer it with either what you are playing, or generally playing.

In my current campaign (sci-fi, Ashen Stars), not a single PC is a standard human. One character thinks of himself as one, but isn't.

In the campaign before that (weird west - classic Deadlands) every PC was a human. There are no other races in the game.

In shorter subjects in between Shadowrun, Atomic Robo, and a couple of others, non-humans were available, but were not the majority of the party.

I largely run games in which the game world is humanocentric, and the players choose whatever they want. Sometimes that'll be a bunch of humans, sometimes not.

 

[Arilyn]

Mostly anything goes, and it works fine, but my group focuses on story, so we don't have players doing stupid things with their wacky race or picking a race purely for the baubles.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Gary’s game was quite different from today’s game, or at least from what seems to be the majority.

I think over time, fantasy and science fiction have inevitably made the fantastical more familiar, and the alien more...something we can imagine ourselves as.

If someone wants to play Ludo, I’m all for it.
I voted “everything”, though I’ll say that I mostly want to see official races, so I don’t have to homebrew or vet someone else’s homebrew, but I do encourage my players to ask me about other options, and especially if it’s something playable in another edition or something like that I’ll work it out.

 

[lowkey13]

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