D&D as humanocetric ... or not?

[Blue]

I default to the officially published races, but then adjusted by setting. And player wish - if at session 0 a player really wants a warforged which wasn't something I envisioned in the setting but I can work them in to the setting as a race (or a uniqueness) from the beginning, that's good.

Mechanics should provide a good support for the uniqueness of the setting. I have no problems adding or subtracting from the list.

 

[ccs]

I guess #6 is as close as this poll can get.

Generally my games use:
Humans, dwarves, elves, halflings, gnomes, .5elves, .5orcs, tieflings, dragonborn, goliaths, Genasi, & warforged.
Sometimes there'll be limits on some of these - depending upon region or the story types we're aiming for.
For ex,
●right now the games taking place in a region that the elves have withdrawn from. So is no elven population to draw elf pcs from. There are still 1/2 elves though.
●Tieflings are not unheard of, but are definitely not a common site. So 1 in the party max barring circumstance. Warforged, Genasi, goliaths also fall into this catagory.
●Dragonborn are rare, but the real reason they are discouraged is due to one players very strong dislike of them. So its simply a real life trade off for a peacefull table. It's just easier to discourage thier use than have to listen to him.
●Drow, durgar, & other traditional "monster" races.... I dislike them. I feel that somethings should remain as monsters. And as I'm the DM, my opinion on this is the most equel among equels.
That said.... If you REALLY REALLY must try & play one? I won't say NO. But I will strongly discourage you. I will tell you upfront that your character WILL get treated as the xp yielding monster the NPCS believe you to be. And then I will deliver on that.
So if that arc sounds fun to you, go right ahead & sign up to play that drow etc. If however you'd prefer to go on world saving adventures & such, TAKE THE (not at all subtle) HINT & CHOOSE ONE OF THE MANY OTHER OPTIONS. Trust me, we'll all have more fun.
●Other things that aren't on the general list, aren't traditional monsters, but could seem like a reasonable choice? Ask. I'll probably say no, but I might say yes....

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

There is too much that got lumped into this thread in a short time and then overblown to unpack it all. suffice to say that there are several aspects to the original question that EGG had not even begun to consider and he was, IMO, being wildly overblown and overbearing in his expressed concerns.

what options do I provide for race choices? Well what’s the setting going to be for starters? If I’m running a Dark Sun game it’d be quite understandable to restrict choice to pc races EXPRESSLY associated with that setting and NOT just permit any ol wacky notion of race/class a player cooks up. If my game is a home brew setting with an intended heavy post-apocalypse feel then Gygax’ paranoia about players just using monsters solely for game-breaking motivations is pointless ranting - but it’s then on me as DM to keep things in line. Etc.

Plus: EGG came across as much a pompous ass (IMHO) when he wrote that as he does now. He spent so much trying to make others compliant and prevent bad wrong fun.

His lengthy diatribe about the evils of letting players run roughshod over the game does indeed have valid points to make, but it is entirely based on narrow-minded assumptions of where the game should start and where it should be allowed to go. Were the DMG not begun with him saying, “Others will think of things I don’t,” I’d be a harsher critic. Certainly ANYTHING being said now about RPGs as therapy or in personal growth exercises is so f’n beyond WHAT HE WAS TALKING ABOUT it’s laughable to make even remote associations. And again, how we play the game now is strikingly different from how he was expecting it to be run by others, and both those also different in many ways from how he ran his own games.

He makes it quite apparent what his concerns were when he started talking about “humanocentirism”. GIVEN that narrowed area of concern, his intent was for DMs to use “humanocentirism” of what he expected all settings to be like as the explanation for why players would be denied permission to play MONSTERS. That could be extrapolated to include Any ol variation of non-humans that were of humanOID shape but it is NOT what he was really on about. He wasn’t peering into the future to see what we see today with 2E’s glut of splatbooks, and new editions, and new and creative settings, and players wanting to use stuff they made up themselves, etc. HE was looking at just the 1E PH and the MM. He didn’t want to see one player actually being a creative role player in choosing to portray a MONSTER instead of a listed PC race, but another player doing it as an “I win!” button. THAT was the extent of his rambling.

If we have a far wider and more permissive concept of what a valid PC race is for the game, so be it. The DM is still the one calling the shots for where AND WHY the line is drawn - and that didn’t change a whit with time, nor with Gygax’s warnings and his promotion of “humanocentirism”.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Oh yes. Most of them have DM'd rather a lot.

It's not that they don't care about the campaign. They do. They get right into the plot and actions of the game. Just that the background, world building stuff is pretty much so much hot air. Which is fair. I tend to focus more on plot and character than setting anyway, so, it all works out in the end. It can be a bit frustrating sometimes, but, OTOH, it does free me up a lot as well. I don't have to ponce about figuring out all sorts of background details. No one else cares, so, why bother? All that matters is right now.

Ya know, that’s fair.

And seeing how deep some folks dive...I can definitely see the downsides to the opposite end of the spectrum from your players! ‍♂

There are always comments in these threads about how “you can’t play a gnome because there aren’t any in the region the game starts in, but as they explore the world more races get unlocked as PC options”, and similar sentiments.

For my group, the group has to buy in for a campaign to start. If someone wants to play an elven samurai, we figure out where an elven samurai can be from. But also, if the game starts in the far northern reaches of the continent in a fairly sparsely populated mountainous peninsula dominated by humans, dwarves, gnomes, and Goliaths, and one player wants to play a Drow dervish from the far south because they thought the nomadic nocturnal desert Drow culture with a scorpion god was rad as hell when we told them about the world, we figure out why they are so far from home.

 

[ccs]

Exactly. Mothers, wives, and husbands are for loving you. Shrinks are for talking to when all else fails. Friends are for laughing with. D&D is for playing. I don't want be my friends' mother, and I certain don't want to be my D&D player's wife.

That's a pretty stunted view of what a friend is.

 

[MGibster]

My groups, over the years, just have never, ever given the slightest rat's petoot about the setting. They simply do not care. Getting a player to read more than a paragraph or two about the setting has proven to be a fools errand, regardless of who I've played with. They simply DO NOT CARE.

Testify, brother! Like you, my players actually enjoy the game but most of them aren't all that invested in the setting.

So, while I could continue to beat my head against this wall, I choose to try to care a lot less and get on with running the game. It seems to make them a lot happier even if it is somewhat frustrating to me.

Bingo. When running a campaign setting I've created I leave a lot of blank spaces because my players just aren't going to give a rat's patootie about it. Why come up with a fully developed pantheon when only the cleric will care? And he might not even care all that much since cleric abilities are pretty much divorced from deities these days. Are my players going to care about the delicate political balance between the triple alliance of gnomes, halflings, and dwarves and the nearby human kingdom? Hell no! Not unless I slap them in the face with it to let them know it's important for the adventure. So I tend not to add some things to my settings knowing they're likely to be ignored anyway.

 

[reelo]

If you're on a typical world (including Faerun, because I don't run these re-envisionings of it), humans, elves, dwarves, half-elves, halflings, and gnomes are your baseline for PCs. People know who those races are (even if they've never met one) and they don't elicit fear. Playing a half-orc means accepting people might be afraid of you. Playing a drow is going to be really difficult, because drow are generally feared as "the enemy" to just about about anyone else. Dragonborn aren't native to any worlds except the 4e one, and therefore aren't present unless we're playing one of those worlds. Tieflings are a thing, but they are rare in a typical campaign world, and you had better hide your heritage or you'll be worse off than a half-orc. Also, most of them don't look anything like the ones in the PHB--I go with the older lore. Aasimar and other planetouched races are at least as rare as tieflings on the Material Plane. [...] I'm probably not going to allow more than one race outside of the (2e) standard human, elf, dwarf, halfling, gnome, and half-elf. And that one race is going to have to be workable. So if you're a drow or a tiefling, you're going to need to constantly disguise it. If you're a half-orc, you're probably okay to go, just remember people are going to react to you.

As someone who's started out with 2E (and who's rather been gazing back towards BX, rather than forward to 5E, lately, at least for rules) this reflects my sentiments as well.
My vision of fantasy more closely resembles the artworks of Elmore, Easley, Parkinson and Caldwell, and not the ones of Wayne Reynolds or Samwise Didier.
Players who insist on playing furry races, monster races, or "edgy" races are just red flags for me, signaling that their vision of fantasy does not really mesh with mine.

 

[Zardnaar]

As someone who's started out with 2E (and who's rather been gazing back towards BX, rather than forward to 5E, lately, at least for rules) this reflects my sentiments as well.
My vision of fantasy more closely resembles the artworks of Elmore, Easley, Parkinson and Caldwell, and not the ones of Wayne Reynolds or Samwise Didier.
Players who insist on playing furry races, monster races, or "edgy" races are just red flags for me, signaling that their vision of fantasy does not really mesh with mine.

I'm fine with either one but don't like mixing them. It's like surf and turf bleah. I'll eat the beef or the fish but not together.

 

[Lanefan]

Hm that doesn’t sound very neutral of you.

Yeah, but what I hope for and what I get aren't always the same. And, one can still remain neutral in one's actions while internally hoping or cheering for one outcome over another.

 

[Zardnaar]

Yeah, but what I hope for and what I get aren't always the same. And, one can still remain neutral in one's actions while internally hoping or cheering for one outcome over another.

Yeah this. I got described as a LN DM. If bad stuff happens tough luck, I don't go out if my way to kill them off and run it close to RAW.