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D&D General No More "Humans in Funny Hats": Racial Mechanics Should Determine Racial Cultures

It would be bad for the growth of the hobby. New players can understand a dwarf or an elf. They won't get the nuanced stuff you propose.
I don't think new players are quite a stupid as you seem to think. They can understand nuance, like Elves not having beds and being diurnal because they don't need to sleep. They can understand Eberron and its races' cultures. I have quite a few new players in my group (I count as one when compared to the rest of you folk!), and they can understand why Vezyi don't have graves (because their bodies are all sent to Vecna's undead army when they die) and the visual difference between a Vezyi Vulek and the rest of the Vezyi (Vuleks have a black circumpunct mark on their forehead and the palms of their hands, symbolizing the Eye of Vecna).
But if you think your ideas have merit then start publishing stuff. Do the groundwork to show it can work and that players will accept it. Earn your million dollar Kickstarter and change the hobby that way.
I believe that I already have shown that it can work, and my players have accepted it. However, I'm absolutely certain that some internet rando like me won't make a million dollar D&D Kickstarter. That's almost exclusively for famous D&D streamers and Youtubers, and I'm neither of those.
 

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I'm not very fond of the "you people" here, but perhaps I can explain how many that feel that options should have justifications feel.

To put it bluntly (and fairly extremely): If a race/class/whatever-part-of-D&D doesn't justify it's existence, it may as well not exist. If a race acts like a human (diet, culture, language, etc) and looks like a human (more or less), it may as well just be a human. It doesn't matter if they have rainbow hair, green skin, or are covered head-to-toe in shaggy hair, they may as well just be a human. Sure, real world humans can't naturally have rainbow hair or green skin, but that doesn't matter in a fantasy world, where literally anything is possible.

However, if there is something else to further differentiate the races - maybe the rainbow-haired race is actually a subrace of Aasimar that are descended from Unicorns, or the green-skinned race are actually photosynthetic and have a bond with nature (probably being dryads), and the overly-hairy people are actually Bugbears - then that helps "justify" their existence.

Sure, this isn't needed. It's a perfectly fine and valid way of playing D&D by having 70 different races for humans that act like humans and look like humans in everything but minor cosmetic differences (unnatural skin/hair/eye color, hair on unnatural parts of the body, language, minor mechanical differences (like size), etc), but that's not what many people prefer in their games. I like my world-building and homebrewing to be more in-depth than "another human race, but with purple skin" or "a homebrew class with innate arcane magic (like the Sorcerer), but it's a Half-Caster". I'd be fine with an Arcane-Half-Caster similar in theme to the Sorcerer, or a race of people that look like Humans but with Purple Skin, but there has to be more to them than just those minor differences (Felshen in my world often have vibrant purple skin and other multicolored skin tones, like cyan, cream-orange, turquoise, and so on, and their psionic nature sets them apart from just being "multicolored humans").

The same also applies to creating new animal races. If Lizardfolk already exist, I don't need Crocodilefolk (Lizardfolk mechanics already work perfectly for crocodile people), Dinosaur-People, or Tuatarafolk. If Grung are playable, I don't need playable Grippli, Bullywugs, or Toadfolk (okay, I will admit that having one broader frog/toad-folk race with subraces for Poisonous Frogs, Toadfolk, and Wolverine=frogfolk would be cool). If Aarakocra are playable, I don't need different races for Hawkfolk, Eaglefolk, and Falconfolk. If Tabaxi and Leonin are playable, I don't need Jaguarfolk, Tigerfolk, and Ocelotfolk. (There are some animals that do deserve their own separate races, even though the concepts have some overlap, like Owlfolk and Aarakocra, Leonin and Tabaxi, Lizardfolk and Dragonborn, etc, but there is a line that has to be drawn to avoid crazy explosions of every different "animalfolk" variety of different types of birds, reptiles, and mammals.)

And I absolutely love stuff like this! It makes Elves seem unique and cool, and also helps inspire how to roleplay an elf (for both DMs and Players) differently from humans! The "I don't need to sleep, so my race is Diurnal" is an awesome hook for a reason to roleplay an elf! This is kind of thing is exactly what I'm asking to be more common in D&D races! This isn't even setting-specific, although it's specific to the elven race!

Dwarves have a low center of mass and they live underground, so they sleep standing up, Forest Gnomes are friends with nature fey and small animals that can alert them if enemies arrive, so they just take naps in the middle of the forest, curled up with a blanket of moss, and stuff like this creates a lot of really fun and interesting bits and pieces of the races that you can use to further differentiate one from another. Humans can't be as diurnal as elves. They (typically) can't sleep while standing up. They can't just face-plant out in the middle of a grove without fear of pests or predators disturbing them. These kind of things help give the races more unique identities, and are exactly the reason why I created this thread!

Diurnal means active in daylight which humans are, so I think you mean Elfs might be nocturnal. The only issue with that is that with darkvision the Elf can only see shades of grey, which might be fine, but it does bring in to question the Elf use of bright colours, not to mention Sun Elfs:) Of course it may suggest the Drow retain the natural elf skin tone and other species are unnatural :)

I do like the idea of Dwarfs squatting down to sleep. I suppose it could be quite creepy for your adventurers to find a layers of small alcoves going up a wall with 100 sleeping dwarfs squatting there like a statues.
 

But those four traits could equally apply to Ogre or Saurian or Leonine or Loxodon, so whats the real beefy flavour of Minotaur that make it stand out from other big, virile, bestial creatures with mystical origins?
None of those things evoke virility. Lions evoke nobility, Loxodons evoke... uh... not forgetting things, maybe?

Meanwhile Minotaurs and bulls in general hit the notes I specified.

There's also specifically Antiquity that should get called out. Leonines and Loxodons and Ogres don't make one think of Hellenic Greece or Ancient Sumeria. Heck, those two make me think of "Modern AF anthro stuff"
 
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ENworld in particular has a climate that rejects expansion and thrives on limitation. For some reason, "kitchen sink" is looked down on and "carefully curated" is highly praised as peak DMing. Thus, every option must justify it's inclusion into the walled garden or into the rubbish bin it goes.
There are quite a few of us that subscribe to the idea of "limitation breeding creativity". I know that this is anecdotal, but when I place my players in the middle of nowhere with infinite options, they typically have absolutely no idea what to do. However, when I start closing off their options (it's dark outside, there aren't any roads, only tracks to follow, a group of monsters attacks), they start thinking creatively (let's make a fire/dancing lights, let's follow the tracks, let's find out where those monsters that ambushed us came from).

The same applies to races. If you give players a whole slew of races that have very little cultural (and sometimes mechanical) differences between them, players can get overwhelmed by the options and not be sure what to pick. The game doesn't need 3 different types of frogfolk. The game doesn't need Lizardfolk and Saurials. The game doesn't need Tritons, Sea Elves, Merfolk, and Koalinths. IMHO, a lot of these are just redundant, and therefore unneeded.

And I say this as a DM whose homebrew world is a huge kitchen sink. I love kitchen sinks. However, I don't love unnecessary redundancy.
 
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There's also specifically Antiquity that should get called out. Leonines and Loxodons and Ogres don't make one think of Hellenic Greece or Ancient Sumeria. Heck, those two make me think of "Modern AF anthro stuff"

88674E71-35E8-4032-92A1-49BA279CCF15.jpeg
5,000-year-old Mesopotamian statue allegedly found near Baghdad. Depicting a muscular leonine-human hybrid
 

With all the Cultural Weight of a ham sandwich, @Tonguez. It's not a well known conceit.

That they had a statue of a lion-man doesn't mean it has any form of cultural weight. Much less "Antiquity" or "Virility".

Meanwhile Enkidu as a Beastman fighting Gilgamesh? BIG Cultural Capital.
 
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You probably haven't hung out with many furries then, have you?
Touche'.

I'm not going to go out there into the interwebs to do searches on Lion-Anthro lemon fics versus minotaur/bull anthro lemon fics to figure out which has a greater niche appeal...

I value my sanity too much.

But for historical legends/poems/etc and the resulting cultural capital thereof Minotaurs win hands down. Which is rather the point of using them.
 

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