D&D as humanocetric ... or not?

[Zardnaar]

We still use the concept of comliness if you want to describe how hit you are without making something up.

From memory a super hot elf had a supernatural fey like fascinate ability. Most women and some of the guys would come running.

 

[Eltab]

I limit to "official" (published) races, and/or setting limitations.
1) I as DM want to get a handle on what the characters can do, cannot do, how they work mechanically. Usually this means I want to read the sourcebook in which your race appears - at home, while I am prepping the next week's worth of adventure.
2) For rule-of-thumb starting near the same power level of capability on Day One, I ask for AL-legal first level characters. Usually.
3) When playing campaigns in a published setting, I want to evoke that setting's flavor and play with its neat toys, not a different setting's. Warforged, scion of Ebberon, will be available in an Ebberon campaign - not in Dark Sun.

 

[The Green Hermit]

I voted to allow all official races, but sometimes I do limit them. For example, in our current campaign, I didn't allow dragonborn, because that would have caused too much havoc in one of our stops along the way. If I was more experienced, I might have allowed it, but as a relatively new DM I know I would get stuck there.

My player that wanted to be dragonborn is a tiefling instead and is happy with her choice.

 

[Charlaquin]

In my homebrew campaign:

The god of humans died fighting off an incursion from the far realm, nobody even remembers their name now. As a result, humans lost their divine protections and most of their rights, and now they are treated as second class citizens or pets, at best. The old races (dwarves, elves, and the other traditional races) imperialistically carve up map, while the new races (who rose from the blood of the fallen god) learn what it means to be a sentient being, while being exploited by the old races.

I even went so far as to ban variant humans explicitly.

And one of my players still wanted to play as a human. It was quite shocking to be honest.

Cool! Nentir Vale inspired, by chance?

 

[Leatherhead]

Cool! Nentir Vale inspired, by chance?

It was more inspired by Pirates of the Caribbean, to be honest.

 

[Charlaquin]

It was more inspired by Pirates of the Caribbean, to be honest.

Haha that works too!

 

[Beleriphon]

In fairness, alien is what I imagine everyone else to be. I was told, once, by a doctor that there's like ... a name for that.

But why should I trust the doctor? Probably just advancing the alien agenda.

What doctor Dr Tsoukalos by any chance?

Spoiler

 

[WayOfTheFourElements]

I think you may still be missing something, though. It’s not just the scrawny kid playing the big strong guy.
It’s also the bullied ugly kid playing an “ugly” race and either getting to play in a world where people mostly don’t care how he looks, or where he can do something about the naughty words that do try to bully (or attack, or discriminate) him for his appearance.

If someone tried to pull something in my game, I'd show him/her the door. I don't want to play Freude. I want to play D&D. I expect my players to keep their personal problems to themselves where they belong. Or maybe I should start calling my gaming group "The Stoics."

 

[WayOfTheFourElements]

By the way, in my game 100% of NPCs are human, though I allow my players to choose any race they want. After that, it's up to them to deal with the consequences of their choice - for better or worse. The NPCs might start worshipping the character as a god or burn him at the stake. It all depends on the dice.

 

[Hussar]

Heh, it's funny how experience shapes our games.

Way back when, when I played 1e and 2e, I would often play humans because I would be the only one in the group. If we had six or seven PC's, it was pretty much guaranteed that 5 of them would not be human. Elves, dwarves and that oddball and then me as a human. So, to me, AD&D was never humanocentric. No one I played with played humans.

Fast forward to our 5e group. Lessee, Dragonlance, 6 PCs - gnome, elf, minotaur, 3 humans. Now, my Primeval Thule game was mostly humans because I really wanted to showcase the setting before adding in other stuff. But, that was definitely the exception. Our Waterdeep/Undermountain campaign features a sentient skeleton, a war forged, an aasimar and 2 humans. Our Greyhawk Ghosts of Saltmarsh group (only 4 PC's now) has a Firbolg, an orc, a gnome and a human.

So, I find it rather strange when people talk about D&D being humanocentric. It just never has been for me. Forty years of gaming, across several countries (and even a couple of continents), literally hundreds of different players, six editions if you count basic/expert, and D&D has never been humanocentric. I've never played in a group where humans were the majority of PC's.