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

[Zardnaar]

The argument was that most successful literary media had a very restricted number of races. That seems overblown when even LotR has 11 different races.

The fact that some of those races weren’t playable until 4e is irrelevant. And the distinction between monstrous races and non-monstrous races is one that exists in RPGs, not in books.

I've also pointed out 8-20 is roughly my sweet spot for races.

That's still not anything goes.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

Well, technically...

LOTR:

• Humans;
• Elves;
• Dwarves;
• Hobbits;
• Vaiar; (Aasimar?)
• Half-Elves;
• Orcs;
• Goblins;
• Uruk-Hai (Hobgoblins?);
• Beorn (Shifter)?;
• Trolls;

That’s 11.

Smeagol's race.
Ents.
Intelligent spider things.

 

[Hussar]

That certainly will depend on how long you use the same setting!

Furthermore, designing a proper setting takes time. I really don't get this idea that you just create characters and then create a setting around them. How much time you will have between the character creation and starting to play? Will you redesign the setting every tine someone creates a new character?

But, in any given campaign, you will still, at most, only have as many "new" races as players who choose those new races and the races that aren't chosen generally won't feature in that campaign, even if they exist in that setting. Not every episode of Star Trek has Romulans in it after all. So, sure you might wind up with a hundred different races in your setting, but, never in any given campaign.

Why are you redesigning a setting when someone takes a new character? For one, most of the players probably will choose from the list. We're probably not talking the entire group by and large. And, why do you have to redesign your whole campaign? That's a by of hyperbole no? By and large, adding a race to a setting take s a paragraph or two and you're done. And, hopefully, the player will do the work for you.

/snip

But some of the comments on this thread are so overblown. That somehow, refusing to allow a race that doesn't exist in my campaign world is somehow tantamount to firing kittens from an air cannon*. That not allowing someone to play a kenku will destroy the PC's fun, destroy friendships and prove that I have no soul.
/snip

No. This is your overblown reading of comments and not actually reflective of anything anyone has actually said. Can you provide some actual examples of this? Can you show why you would think that anyone is arguing this way? I just read this entire thread, front to back, and no one, through the whole thread, has said anything remotely approaching the caricature strawman that you are creating here.

 

[Hussar]

I am confused. Why would you only have the races that the players choose? As a DM, you might have your world set. The races are set. Why would it matter if the PC's represented one of the races you have already built?

Sorry. Just trying to understand.

Well, sure, you're going to have NPC's and whatnot. Ok. And those will be drawn from whatever the DM feels like using.

But, since things are "set", then races A, B and C won't be seen in this campaign because we're not traveling to where you find those races. So, in any given campaign, you're going to have the PC's races + probably a dozen (ish) different races presented. Rarely any more. So, the strawman of needing a hundred different races is just that, a strawman. It won't happen.

 

[Hussar]

As for fewer races remember GoT was basically human's only and lotr is 4 maybe 5?

Notice that there's no real epic work of fantasy with a massive amount of D&D races and the protagonists are usually human?

Sure it might be because we're humans ourselves but that also applies to game logic.

Even at 30 races that's kinda annoying let alone 100 odd.

I had 30 odd but in Midgard and then kind of narrowed it down to the starting region and surrounding areas.

You need to read more fantasy.

Malatzan Book of the Fallen by Stephen Erikson - dozens of different races. Weighing in at 7 800 page novels, I'd say it counts as epic fantasy.

The Shanarra books have a bajillion different races in them.

Tad William's Dragonborn Chair setting has half a dozen different races.

Piers Anthony

Weiss and Hickman's Deathgate Cycle has a bajillion different races in it.

Anything fantasy by Neil Gaiman

Anything fantasy by China Mieville.

Never minding things like Anime where you have a bajillion different races present as well.

I'm not even a fantasy reader, particularly, my tastes run more to SF, but, even I know that the notion that "epic fantasy" is limited to a Tolkien palate is complete hogwash.

 

[Hussar]

Wasn't aimed at you specifically. Others have said it's bad wrongfun to say no.

No, they haven't. In this ENTIRE thread, not one single person has stated this. You are constructing a strawman to argue against that no one has posited.

 

[Scott Christian]

Well, sure, you're going to have NPC's and whatnot. Ok. And those will be drawn from whatever the DM feels like using.

But, since things are "set", then races A, B and C won't be seen in this campaign because we're not traveling to where you find those races. So, in any given campaign, you're going to have the PC's races + probably a dozen (ish) different races presented. Rarely any more. So, the strawman of needing a hundred different races is just that, a strawman. It won't happen.

If things are as open as you say they are, where the player's help create the world. Then why wouldn't the DM need to have them in place. What if the PC's wanted to travel to the desert. Wouldn't it behoove the DM to know exactly who lives in the desert? The dangers? The culture? The geography? And then, in the next month they want to seek out those islands off the coast. Shouldn't the DM knows who lives there? Their way of living? Their gods? etc.

Again, if things are so open for these other DM's; no railroading, no forced migration, yet, an open notion in session zero of what exists and what doesn't, don't those two things create a bit of consternation?

I mean, like I said earlier, if you lean super heavily on impromptu, I can dig it. It works. But the other two do not seem to coincide.

As far as your strawman, I am not really sure any person here has argued the way you describe it. And in your said example, PC races plus another dozen is fifteen to eighteen races. That may be too much for certain DM's.

 

[Jack Daniel]

DMs must shy away from the pride of comparing their setting to those created by award winning authors. Even comparing one's settings to that of full on setting books is dangerous as the DM likely hasn't written a full book on their monoculture setting.

It's best for us good DMs to give DMs tips of what not to do or bad habits will infect the community.

Holy moley.

Of course a character is more than that. But you've narrowed that as well. Monoculture, Not!England remember? I have a single culture, a single race, and only a few possible classes.

It looks like you and @Minigiant are claiming that characters need to come from different cultures to be distinct. I don't think that's what you're actually saying—or at least, I hope that isn't what you're saying—but it sure looks like it.

 

[Hussar]

If things are as open as you say they are, where the player's help create the world. Then why wouldn't the DM need to have them in place. What if the PC's wanted to travel to the desert. Wouldn't it behoove the DM to know exactly who lives in the desert? The dangers? The culture? The geography? And then, in the next month they want to seek out those islands off the coast. Shouldn't the DM knows who lives there? Their way of living? Their gods? etc.

Again, if things are so open for these other DM's; no railroading, no forced migration, yet, an open notion in session zero of what exists and what doesn't, don't those two things create a bit of consternation?

I mean, like I said earlier, if you lean super heavily on impromptu, I can dig it. It works. But the other two do not seem to coincide.

As far as your strawman, I am not really sure any person here has argued the way you describe it. And in your said example, PC races plus another dozen is fifteen to eighteen races. That may be too much for certain DM's.

Why would it be either/or?

Ok, the PC's go off to that desert. Now, let's posit that the desert is fairly big - something that takes a few weeks to cross or more. That's thousands of square miles. The PC's could meet this, that and the other race and still have lots of empty space that the PC's haven't gone to. Do you actually map out, to the square mile, the entire desert before you use it in game? I doubt it. You have the desert, you have a couple of settlements and you have an adventure or two. The players do their stuff in the desert and then bugger off to the islands.

Again, do you have every single island detailed? There are no islands anywhere in your entire game world that isn't detailed?

Unless you have a grasp of your game world that would make Greenwood blush, you have virtually no details about 99% of your game world There are all sorts of completely undetailed areas on your game world map. Good grief, look at worlds like Farland or Forgotten Realms - even after decades, tens of thousands of pages of material, there are still vast open spaces in either one and new stuff being added all the time.

I strongly doubt anyone's home game is even remotely as detailed as either of those settings.

 

[Older Beholder]

The fact that there are DM’s out there that run campaigns with limited races is part of the reason I tend to play a non traditional race given the option.

I have no issue with a limitation on campaigns, (although the only thing I’ve ever seen banned outright was halflings and gnomes, the DM just didn’t like them.)

That’s kind of the point, I have no problem playing in something restricted, so..

If I’ve got an idea for a human or elf character I’ll save it for when the campaign is restricted to core races, because there are so many races that look cool to me that I’ve never had a chance to try. (Things I’ve wanted to try since Planescape came out in some cases)

For me, race is more important when making my character than class, because for me the race is who you are, with class being what you do. I realised my preference when I first started playing Adventurers League and had to choose between races from Volos or classes from Xanathars.
I went with the race I wanted from Volo’s every time.