D&D 5E What is the appeal of the weird fantasy races?

[MGibster]

Well, humans don't generally have daemon blood in their veins and don't live long enough to see empires crumble and generations of people pass, so I can't say that this is true.

Speak for yourself. I've got plans. Oh, yes. Plans. Mwa ha ha ha ha ha ha!

 

[Minigiant]

I'm going to add a big and important use of race that isn't in the above 4 but I've seen used a lot and have used a lot.

5. Race as a reflection of the character's inner struggles

This particularly comes into effect for the races that often don't have a separate culture, with tieflings, warforged, shifters, changelings, and to an extent vampires on the list. Changelings, who change their form and may not even have a fixed one are a natural for identity issues and issues fitting in, exploring them in ways that humans struggle to. Tieflings are visible outsiders and either reinforce dark pasts or are blamed for the sins of their family - you can do the same with humans but tieflings reinforce the theme. Shifters are about the beast within. And warforged were either (a) created for a war that's now over - now what? or (b) created illicitly and for whatever reason and are probably out of contact with their creators - now what? You can do both these stories with humans, but the metaphorical nature of warforged (right down to the name) makes the theme more immediate and relevant.

And these themes are all IME far more vivid and immediate than the Tolkien Four and as such tap aspects of RP the Tolkien ones don't.

Also all these four approaches work in part because they are rare. When a DM says that "My world only has certain races" they are telling me that there are no mad scientist high level wizards who'd create warforged even in small numbers for any reason. They are telling me there are no magical curses that would create shifters or tieflings and that there are no dark bargains that would create tieflings. They are telling me that there's no such thing as a doppelganger or half doppelganger. Even Tolkien had a shifter as an ally who would be suitable as an adventurer - Beorn.

And no, the problem isn't that the player base is bigger than the DM base. This thread isn't DMs vs players. It's DMs in favour of rich and diverse worlds and empowered players vs DMs who want pretty exclusive control over the vision of the setting.

I think you missed my point.

My point is the current crop of passionate DMs are not serving the need of the expanded player base.

We are creating DMs too slow and too many are repeating the ideas of the old or veteran.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I think you missed my point.

My point is the current crop of passionate DMs are not serving the need of the expanded player base.

We are creating DMs too slow and too many are repeating the ideas of the old or veteran.

Interesting idea. What do we think would be the best way to get people who are engaged in the needs of the current player base passionate about DMing? One problem is that DMing is most often a mentored activity, so a person is likely going to learn from an older player, who may hold the "old and veteran" views you mentioned. I'm legitimately curious about this question. We need DMs of multiple attitudes.

 

[Oofta]

I think you missed my point.

My point is the current crop of passionate DMs are not serving the need of the expanded player base.

We are creating DMs too slow and too many are repeating the ideas of the old or veteran.

So all the DMs who don't agree with your preferences are bad DMs?

I mean, have you done a scientific study to prove that a curated world vs kitchen sink adds to or detracts from the hobby? Is it published and peer reviewed? If no, then you're just making up a justification to support your preference.

 

[MGibster]

My point is the current crop of passionate DMs are not serving the need of the expanded player base.

I'm comfortable with that. I don't exist to serve the needs of every player.

We are creating DMs too slow and too many are repeating the ideas of the old or veteran.

However, I would like to see the current crop of players have enough DMs to serve their interest. What do you think we can do to churn out new DMs?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

So...all humans are the same?!?!?

Sure. You seem to be set on the idea that all dragonborn are culturally the same, or whatever. Why not all humans? This is all chosen; fiction is creationist. Why choose humans to have diverse cultures, while forbidding them to any other species?

I'm not convinced that non-human characters are anything other than humans who look like non-humans with some mechanical bonuses.

Because...that's what they are? Dead serious. They're sapient beings--all of them. That means they're all capable of good and evil, they all belong to a culture and an origin, they all had childhoods and challenges growing up, etc. You admit to presuming that non-humans will necessarily be over-the-top stereotypes, all cut from the same cloth, but why can't they have cultures that cut across species lines? Arkhosia, for example, was the "Dragonborn" empire in 4e--but it had many human, dwarf, elf, etc. citizens as well. That's unavoidable with an imperial culture.

A dragonborn druid devoted to the Green Faith should have far more in common with a human druid dedicated to the Green Faith than she does with a dragonborn paladin of Bahamut. The first two actually share a culture. Why should having scales, or breathing fire, completely rewrite a being's potential for culture until it must be genuinely alien? It's not like they don't value the same things (they build empires, do trade, study magic, raise children, worship, eat food, etc., etc. ad nauseam). It's not like orcs are axiomatically more interested in wearing furs and hunting mammoths than they are selling silks and counting coin.

Uh...okay...all the fluff you include in your responses makes it difficult for me to figure out the point you are trying to make. I think you are trying to make a point about how humans can be good or evil. I do this too, I just don't need Dragon People or Cat People to accomplish that. As for the otherworldly horrors and such, well I use monsters in my games, and not all of them are evil with a capital E, though most monsters are there to antagonize the PCs.

My point is that EVERYONE can be good or evil. Instead of "it's Humans Only Club" for the good/encultured guys or "it's (what you call) Monsters Only Club" for the bad/non-cultured guys, it's...just people. Dragon-people and hairless-ape-people and bird-people and green-and-tusked-people. And there may be some humans who far more strongly identify with an orc, because they're both tribal nomads, than they would with other humans who are city-dwellers. Or whatever.

What's so special about humans that they actually develop distinct cultures? Why do only humans have cultures that can cross physiological lines, while non-humans are definitionally locked into one and only one culture because of their physiology?

 

[Micah Sweet]

So all the DMs who don't agree with your preferences are bad DMs?

I mean, have you done a scientific study to prove that a curated world vs kitchen sink adds to or detracts from the hobby? Is it published and peer reviewed? If no, then you're just making up a justification to support your preference.

I don't know if that's his position, but I do think it would be good for the game to have DMs who are in line with all kinds of player preferences, classic and reform, as it were.

 

[Oofta]

I don't know if that's his position, but I do think it would be good for the game to have DMs who are in line with all kinds of player preferences, classic and reform, as it were.

I disagree. I want a DM that is 100% engaged and feels a sense of investment in their world. If that world is a kitchen sink, great. If it's goblin world and I like the concept that's fine as well. I'd much, much rather have an excited enthusiastic DM who's world feels vibrant and real than play my favorite race.

 

[Jack Daniel]

Granted, while in jest, this is the most recent instance of that idea. Even then, the joke is that Zarion is cutting Neon's comment to fit with a previous argument of his. Neonchameleon was being sarcastic, and this line from him was individually quoted and responded to. I'm afraid you'll just have to take my word that this was an actual position being argued at some point, I don't want to leaf through a thousand comments for something I remember well enough. I can look again if I need to, to prove it.

Jokes aside, I actually don't think that point is all that unhelpful. I really would prefer that human characters be the presumed default and that all other species of player character, explicitly including the Tolkien races, were opt-in. D&D will never go that route, but I'd be the first to jump for joy if it did. Because, like I said above: toolkit.

Wait a second: I just had a small epiphany here. Do you see the D&D rules as less of a "toolkit for making a game" and more of "a game that you just play out of the box"?

So all the DMs who don't agree with your preferences are bad DMs?

I mean, have you done a scientific study to prove that a curated world vs kitchen sink adds to or detracts from the hobby? Is it published and peer reviewed? If no, then you're just making up a justification to support your preference.

We all lack actionable data here, which places everybody's preferential claims (particularly between "new" ways of DMing and the tried-and-true "old and veteran") on equal footing. It's not resolvable.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I think you missed my point.

My point is the current crop of passionate DMs are not serving the need of the expanded player base.

We are creating DMs too slow and too many are repeating the ideas of the old or veteran.

The interesting thing here is that the edition that was best at creating DMs was, in my experience, easily 4th. Partly because there was no real need for pruning and the mechanical side of DMing 4e was far the easiest. 5e's "DM empowerment" has always struck me as DM Makework - and although vastly improved on 3.X it's not good. (The 1983 Red Box may have been even better to be fair).

I've also seen things that would be a minor DMing nightmare in other editions just flow in 4e; everything from an all-martial party (because there isn't the lack of healing issue when hit points are taken seriously and the primary means of endurance is the character's own stamina, not a cure spell) to a defenders of the wild party with a wood elf, a wilden, a shardmind, and a shifter in which all ended up primal or primal-adjacent (there was a ranger in there).

Of course the launch of 4e was a mess - it needed at least six months and probably a year more's work before it was ready and Keep on the Shadowfell was the worst D&D adventure I think I've ever read (way worse than The Forest Oracle). But if D&D is going back to the ideas of the old and veterans it's because when it tried to do something new there was a massive toxic backlash.