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

[Jack Daniel]

More options are most certainly good.

Right, and free verse is always better than metered poetry because the latter is just stuffy, old-fashioned, and restrictive.

I cannot for the life of me understand why so many DMs opt for autocratic rule over their groups over compromise and negotiation...

Because the 1st edition DMG says I can. ~raspberry~

 

[Don Durito]

Hold up. I can't speak for anyone else, but you've skipped a step here. You've moved straight from "my campaign doesn't have elves" to "everyone is officially in the game and someone just brought me a character sheet that says 'elf' and is getting pissy about not being able to use it." The skipped step is a player asking, "Well, why aren't there elves? Isn't that, like, a central D&D thing? I know I've seen people call it 'pretend elf-games' or something like that before. And the LOTR movies were what got me into D&D in the first place!"

Perhaps it would help if I lay out what I see as the process of play (for "live" friend/associate groups, rather than purely at-FLGS/online play).
1. DM gets an idea for a campaign, or just feels like running something.
2. DM asks people she knows if they have time and interest in playing D&D, maybe gives a SUPER short blurb.
3. Once she finds enough players, DM actually pitches the campaign properly, all the bells and whistles.
4. Players think about it and, ideally, sign up.
5. Early discussions lead into Session 0 (possibly more than one such session) where wrinkles get worked out and character ideas are finalized
6. Session 1, campaign begins.

It seems to me that you're leaping straight from point 2 (or maybe point 3) to point 6 and treating the remaining points as an instantaneous assumption, which strikes me as strange. There's going to be some delay, some thinking time, simply because people need to decide if they do in fact want to join or not. During that interim period is when a player should ask things like "where are the elves," if that's a thing they care about.


Being respectful to your friends/associates, more or less. You talk it out. You aren't "required" to do it any more than you're "required" to DM. Instead, I see it as a common courtesy thing. Players show courtesy to their DM by not raising a huge fuss about things (even when there's been a clearly bad call or the like), giving more than lip-service buy-in to the campaign premise, and engaging with the game to the DM's desired level of seriousness (e.g. some games are silly, some srs bidniz, some vacillate, etc.) DMs show their players courtesy by listening to their input and constructive criticism, supporting earnest enthusiasm to the best of their ability, and giving fair hearing when a potential conflict arises. Now, listening, supporting, and giving fair hearings don't strictly require you to do...anything. But I think we can agree that saying you do those things and then never actually acting on them in any capacity is disingenuous. A DM who claims to listen to player criticism and then consistently continues to do what they were going to do anyway...isn't actually listening to criticism. That's where the "required" comes in; it's not that you have to budge on any given thing, but that for things like "compromise" and "respect" to actually exist, you really do have to GIVE some of the time.

So: Is it an absolute, bright-line unavoidable OBLIGATION to allow elves? No. But allowing them unless you have good reason not to--and no, I don't accept "because I just don't want to" as a reason!--is one way, among many, to demonstrate that you actually DO listen to your players. That you recognize that while the game is run by the DM, it is run for the players. That both parts of that equation are vital, and that you actually do respect them as opposed to simply ruling over them.

As for why elves in particular get this attention? Well, two reasons. Tolkien looms large over the D&D space forever, because he was THE Bad Donkey worldbuilder. And because elves are listed in the core book, which (as I argued much earlier in the thread) is a perfectly valid reason for a player to assume the option is implicitly offered, and to ask for ways to incorporate it (or a substitute) if the DM has excluded it. Doesn't mean it WILL happen. But "oh, this...is D&D, I thought that meant elves?" is NOT some wacko irrational demanding thought. It's strongly implied by the game's history, the current context of gaming, and the existence of player-accessible material. Hell, you can even argue that the PHB backs me up on this with that codswallop about "scattered among these races are the true exotics," or how "Dwarves, elves, halflings, and humans are the most common races to produce the sort of adventurers who make up typical parties."


Elves are consistently the second-most-popular race in 5e after Humans, according to data collected from D&D Beyond. Humans are always just above 20%, elves are around 13%, and half-elves are just a hair below that. The next three races are usually dragonborn, dwarf, and tiefling in varying order; as of the most recent shared numbers I could find (from 2019), tiefling is #4 and dragonborn #5, each slightly under 10% of "active" characters on D&D Beyond IIRC.

So yeah, when almost as many characters are elves or half-elves as humans, at least from what limited data we have? You're probably gonna have issues if you exclude them from the game. Odds are extremely good SOMEONE in the party is going to want to play SOME kind of elf-related being.

You’re assuming all sorts of context here. If we’re going to agree to discuss a specific situation with a specific relationship between players and gm rather then anyone bringing in assumptions then we can discuss that.

But this thread has remained focused on the general so only general things can be said.

 

[prabe]

Right, and free verse is always better than metered poetry because the latter is just stuffy, old-fashioned, and restrictive.

You're being sarcastic, I hope, because my first thought was, "Have you ever tried to write a villlanelle?" I mean, I love good free verse (I mean, i did a site-based thing years ago themed to "The Waste Lands") but the tight structures are difficult.

 

[Zardnaar]

It's not an entitlement, it's negotiation. We, as reasonable adults, are committing to an activity. You are putting limits on my options for enjoyment. I counter that if you wish to have X (x being the removal of an option I want) than you should compromise and allow me Y (where Y is allowing an option I do want). We can go back and forth until we reach a value for X and Y we both agree with. However, if you wish to remove X and not allow Y for a compromise, you have stopped treating me as a reasonable adult and have assumed a superior position over all other players, creating an imbalance. You become dictator rather than a first among equals.

I cannot for the life of me understand why so many DMs opt for autocratic rule over their groups over compromise and negotiation...

It's because we have tried the hands off approach lol.

More options are good as long as you're not forced to eat it.

 

[Don Durito]

The very idea of negotiation assumes an existing group to begin with.

Consider the following situations:

• GM puts out a request for interest to a variety (let’s say between 12 and 20) gaming friends and acquaintances on Facebook.
• GM puts an add for players on Roll20
• a new player joins an existing group.
• GM in a long-term group of friends most of whom are also GMs pitches an idea for a new game.
• Players in an existing group put out an add for a new gm in meetup to take over running a game at their house.

The social situations in all these are wildly different.

 

[Maxperson]

It's not an entitlement, it's negotiation. We, as reasonable adults, are committing to an activity. You are putting limits on my options for enjoyment. I counter that if you wish to have X (x being the removal of an option I want) than you should compromise and allow me Y (where Y is allowing an option I do want). We can go back and forth until we reach a value for X and Y we both agree with. However, if you wish to remove X and not allow Y for a compromise, you have stopped treating me as a reasonable adult and have assumed a superior position over all other players, creating an imbalance. You become dictator rather than a first among equals.

I cannot for the life of me understand why so many DMs opt for autocratic rule over their groups over compromise and negotiation...

It isn't a negotiation if you are approaching it from the standpoint of, "If you remove a water option, you need to put in another water option for me." That's just you taking the superior position to force the issue into your favor. Now, if you aren't going to insist on another similar option and just want to find something fun, then THAT is a negotiation. "You don't get to play the Triton you want, but I'll add in Tabaxi for you since you'd enjoy that race, too."

 

[Maxperson]

Because the 1st edition DMG says I can. ~raspberry~

So does the 5e DMG.

 

[Remathilis]

It isn't a negotiation if you are approaching it from the standpoint of, "If you remove a water option, you need to put in another water option for me." That's just you taking the superior position to force the issue into your favor. Now, if you aren't going to insist on another similar option and just want to find something fun, then THAT is a negotiation. You don't get to play the Triton you want, but I'll add in Tabaxi for you since you'd enjoy that race, too.

Well there we go. I might not get my triton storm sorcerer this game, but I get my tabaxi shadow monk. I'm not so unreasonable.

 

[Chaosmancer]

If you really need the point to be spoon-fed to you, okay. Some of us keep brining up elves in CoC and dwarves in V:tM to drive home what is to us an obvious and absurd contradiction. If you do not mind a group of players with no elves in their Cthulhu game and you do not mind a group of players with no dwarves in their Vampire game, you do not have any grounds on which to take issue with a group of players with no elves or dwarves in their D&D game. This—

—is not a sufficient reason to just outright assume or expect the presence of elves, dwarves, wizards, or even dragons. There are more ways in heaven and earth to play D&D than are dreamt of in your philosophy, and if you do not like other people playing D&D without the dragons (or whatever), tough noogies. You're not the D&D police.

There are so many examples swirling around my head, but perhaps this one really helps drive the point home.

I went to Origins, and I sat down to play my first ever game of Warhammer Fantasy. The guy running the game was excited, and it was just the two of us, so we got to chatting. He said something about why Warhammer was one of his favorite systems.

"No matter how strong your PC is, you can still be killed by a rabid dog in an alleyway."

DnD doesn't do that. It doesn't deliver that experience. It really can't. I don't fully buy the position I saw some time ago that every character in 5e is a regenerating Demigod, but if a DnD character encounters a monster, there is an expectation that they will survive and the monster won't.

And I know, "well in my game..." I know people use the gritty rest variant, and run with half hp, and send monsters of double the normal CR and all that, but when run in the standard manner, with the normal rules, a DnD party finding a werewolf or a zombie or a vampire is going to likely end up killing the monster. That is the experience DnD promises. And as part of that experience, your character is defined by two things, three in this edition, but since second edition at least, it has been two things.

Your Race
Your Class


Just like no one is complaining that you can't get a touchdown in baseball, no one is complaining that the game designed to be about Vampires and their political machinations focuses on Vampires. Just like no one is complaining that the Skip card can't be used in Poker, no one is complaining that a game about human's encountering knowledge man is not meant to know, in a desperate stop gap measure to take one more breath of air before we are dragged under by an uncaring universe, focuses on that story.

Because that would be to go against the very design of the game.

But DnD?

DnD is a game about a group of adventurers going on adventures, and those adventurers come from a wide variety of backgrounds and skills, and they encounter other races and creatures and fight them.

And the game has always, in every edition, offered a wide variety of playable races. You can say that there are more ways to play DnD, and you may be technically correct, I could make DnD a game about political intrigue and land management and run an entire campaign with not a single sword swung or spell cast. But at that point, I've thrown out everything except a handful of skills and the d20, and if I'm not using 85% of the rules, am I playing DnD?

What is the point of playing DnD to run an Arthurian, humans only, land management game? Or to run a miniatures mass combat game? I can imagine doing it, but why? There are other tools that serve that story far better than DnD, and you've thrown out everything that makes DnD DnD.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

D&D is a game that includes fantasy races, it’s not really about that. Excising some of them doesn’t make it any less D&D.

The player characters? Usually a variety of races, we do say "the core four" after all, not "The core humans"

The Enemies we fight? Dragons, Drows, Gnolls, Orcs, Goblins, Giants, Demons, Devils, Illithid, Beholders? They are all fantasy races.


When you realize that the vast majority of the game is about fantasy races, and the rest seems to be about classes and combat, I find it hard to believe that getting rid of them doesn't start to affect things.


And, even you immediately recognize that getting rid of all of them would make it less DnD. And the original point being discussed was that if you took out 20 things.... you should probably make sure you add at least 20 more details to the things that remain. If the Forests, Plains, and Mountains are empty of all races and monsters, the Seas and Underground better be teaming with more hooks than a fishing competition, because you removed a lot of content, so you had better have put that extra design space to good use.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Yeah, sorry, not everyone sees D&D as a genre, they see it just a rule system among many others. It has rules for a lot of stuff, and not everything needs to be used any more than everything GURPS has rules for needs to be used in in one campaign.

And what is a rule system for?

Do you have rules for breeding an army? Raising Taxes on imports of Olive oil? Maybe rules for resolving a horse race that you bet on?

DnD is a rule system with a purpose. A goal. It isn't so open that it can literally be anything, and in fact, a lot of us find the points where it falls flat on its face aggravating for the uses we want to put it towards. After all, I'd love to actually be able to be an alchemist, discovering new potions and running a potion shop. Can't do that in DnD though, not without a lot of 3pp supplements.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I'm still not getting it.

The argument seems to be "people expect D&D to have elves". Fine. So if I say, "my campaign of D&D doesn't have evles", then you know not to expect elves. Just like you know not to expect elves in Call of Cthulhu.

And yes of course the players can just walk. As can the DM. What else is there to say? The DM should allow elves even if they don't want to? Why? Are they being paid? If they don't have to run the game unless they choose to, then everyone involved, players and gms can set whatever conditions they like. What else is there?

If the GM has some kind of moral obligation to include elves, what is it based on? Fidelity to corporate branding? Some kind of weird semantics?

No. Go back and read the original point.

"My campaign doesn't have elves"
"Okay, what did you add to replace that design space"

That was the initial question. That was the thrust. But people immediately go to "why do you care if I take out elves, I don't have elves in Vampire the Masquerade, what's the difference?"

Well, the difference is, we are playing DnD not Vampire the Masquerade. And you had to take something out of the game, not add it in. Those are big differences. Entirely different game, with entirely different goals, and you are talking about taking an aspect of the game out instead of adding a foreign element in.

So, can we stop bringing up V:TM and CoC and SW and M&M. They aren't DnD, so I don't see why they have any bearing on DnD, unless we want to say that DnD is so generic that it has zero identity in the gaming market, and can be just as easily used to run a Pulp Comedy Anime Girl adventure in space as it could be used to run a dark and gritty kingdom building game.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Words cannot express how sick and tired I am of the contention that "D&D is its own genre"—to say nothing of the pity I feel for those who seriously believe it.

So you can run a Bishouji Anime Dating Sim game, complete with various affection scores, in core DnD?

Or maybe a world builder where you are a god working your way through the evolutionary chains to build a space faring empire and conquer the galaxy?

After all, if DnD is a generic rule set that can do anything, then it can do that, right?

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

More options being good is completely subjective, though. I hate Sushi. Those options are not good for me. People have the option to sell feces in all manner of ways on street corners. Those are not good options. Whether options are good or bad and how many are good or bad is completely a matter of opinion. That makes @Jack Daniel correct in his statement that they are not a universal good. To be a universal good, more options would have to objectively good and we know that simply isn't the case.

You don't like sushi? But Jimmy does. So the game allowing a sushi option is good, because it gives Jimmi an option that he wants to utilize.

And you got whatever it is you wanted.

The issue is that a lot of people seem to think that the game is better if the things they don't like aren't in it. Because they don't want those things.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Right, and free verse is always better than metered poetry because the latter is just stuffy, old-fashioned, and restrictive.

Ever wonder why both Free Verse and Metered Poetry exist? And Haiku's and Sonnets? And Lyrical poems?

It could be... that options are good.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The very idea of negotiation assumes an existing group to begin with.

Consider the following situations:

• GM puts out a request for interest to a variety (let’s say between 12 and 20) gaming friends and acquaintances on Facebook.
• GM puts an add for players on Roll20
• a new player joins an existing group.
• GM in a long-term group of friends most of whom are also GMs pitches an idea for a new game.
• Players in an existing group put out an add for a new gm in meetup to take over running a game at their house.

The social situations in all these are wildly different.

Which one of those scenarios is the one where you don't have to listen to people? The one where you can just make demands of them and their time?

Because it seems that aspect of it is fairly universal. In fact, the only one of those that the DM telling the player a flat out no from the outset even makes a lick of sense is the third one. In that last one the GM saying "it is my world" gets them fired.

 

[Maxperson]

You don't like sushi? But Jimmy does. So the game allowing a sushi option is good, because it gives Jimmi an option that he wants to utilize.

That's not a good option. That's a good for Jimmi option. There's a difference. For me it's a bad option. How bad depends on how much I dislike sushi.

The issue is that a lot of people seem to think that the game is better if the things they don't like aren't in it. Because they don't want those things.

It is better for the person who dislikes it. Better again being completely subjective. It's not a solo game, though, which is why only Dragonborn get the axe in my game, and not every race that I don't like.