I will lose 100% of my fun if I have to run a game where there are rubber forehead aliens.
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Again, what is your solution for me not wanting to lose 100% of my fun?
Non-humans that are
neither rubber forehead aliens
nor simplistic caricatures? That's what I've been trying to say (evidently poorly). Instead of those two things, players giving their characters the full breadth of individual-personality and societal-culture elements that sapient beings can have, while still having physiological differences that matter and, thus, can influence their culture and outlook.
Dragonborn prisons have to be way tougher than ordinary prisons. Dragonborn don't (meaningfully) deal with pregnancy, so there's little need to develop a "protect the women" attitude, and wet-nursing is likely extremely common. Dragonborn develop physically and mentally faster than humans, but live about the same amount of time, so their perspective on age and maturity will differ slightly. Frex, the 12-to-16 "anime protagonist" age bracket actually makes sense for dragonborn. And this speed is found at all stages before adulthood: walking within days, looking and acting like a 3-year-old human after only one year, growth spurt before age 12, and being fully adult (physically and mentally) by 15. That's going to make the childhood years even more ephemeral and special for them than they are for us--and means they bounce back faster from disasters than humans do, since a generation is ~15 years for them, rather than the ~20 it is for us. (A dragonborn could
realistically have great-grandchildren by age 45.) Dragonborn have a higher-protein diet and heal (and, apparently, put on muscle) faster than humans.
Obviously, I've thought a lot more about this than I have about other races because, as I've said repeatedly, I'm a huge fan of dragonborn. But I'm dead certain nearly every race will have stuff
like this. These things then build into the kinds of words and metaphors a character might use, their attitudes toward sex and child-rearing, their preferred foods, etc. Further, this is all without getting into speculative stuff like, "given their breath weapons, do dragonborn have less tongue sensitivity? If so, their food may be notoriously spicy/intense to compensate," or "given their higher need for protein, do dragonborn need more ranching space, or do they supplement meat with other protein sources like fungi, milk/cheese, spirulina-like algae, beans, etc.?"
I think long and hard about these kinds of questions, because doing so helps me make a character that ISN'T just a cartoonish stereotype. A character that has reasons for being the kind of person he is, that has believable and fleshed-out motives, that can respond in a natural-feeling yet not strictly
human way because I've done the
work to know what kinds of responses would
be natural. I think about these things
as a player because doing so empowers my ability to play a fleshed-out
person, not just a stereotype. If dragonborn food is spicy, then a dragonborn character that cooks for his party-mates may err in cooking and make stuff too spicy for his fellows. If dragonborn childhood is seen as ephemeral, a dragonborn bard may wax poetic about the "snow" of youth rather than the "flower"--something that vanishes even more quickly. Etc.
