D&D General Playable races: few or plenty, common or variable, native or outsiders?

[Jer]

Lots of talking about playable character races in the last year or two... what are your preferences regarding the following approaches? (You can specify whether you are answering from a player's or DM's point of view)

1) Few or plenty?

Many. A tavern in my worlds will often look like the cantina from Star Wars.

2) Common or variable?

Variable. In fact in my 13th age game I've removed stat bonuses from races and put them onto classes and have tweaked the racial abilities so the players can pick from a few different ones based on the theme around the race rather than being locked into a single choice. NPC members of individual races will have characteristics suitable to their roles. For 5e I would prefer more variety over less.

3) Native or outsiders?

Outsiders are fine within reason. I'm not big on people bringing characters from other campaigns into my game, but a character that starts in my game but is from another plane or world is fine as long as we talk about expectations for why the player wants that kind of character.

Bonus question (kind of a combination of questions 2 and 3): how do you feel about using different versions of a race from different settings? Examples could be allowing Zendikar elves or Ravnica goblins (assuming you already have native elves or goblins), would you be ok with allowing the mechanical variant (i.e. different stats and abilities) from another setting? If you would allow the mechanic, would you disallow, allow or even require the narrative that the race comes from another world?

Allow, and the narrative would be whatever I and the player come up with in collaboration.

Basically my attitude is always "bring me your idea and we'll tweak it to make it work" when it comes to PCs. But also my players don't try to break the campaign that we're playing in - once we decide on the campaign we're playing players come up with ideas for that campaign and I've never really had a problem with a player trying to push something that we couldn't make fit.

 

[Yaarel]

I want maybe four central species, maybe upto nine less central ones, and each one be customizable.

I want the cultures (not the biology) to do the heavy-lifting, as the main source for mechanics.

 

[jmartkdr2]

Lots of talking about playable character races in the last year or two... what are your preferences regarding the following approaches? (You can specify whether you are answering from a player's or DM's point of view)

1) Few or plenty?

Either very few or plenty. If you're whitelisting more than, say six, you aren't really creating a curated thematic set to drive home the tone of the campaign, you're just picking favorites. If you're not gonna commit, don't bother. A wide array lets players do clever and interesting stuff with the characters, and a game with boring characters is a boring game.

I'm also bored with "traditional" races - it feels more cliché than classic to me. But that's just an opinion.

2) Common or variable?

I don't like how 5e uses subraces - outside of elves, either there shouldn't be spit mechanics or there should be multiple races. I'm actually liking the direction their going with the new book (if my impressions are correct; I don't have the book yet.)

Basically, all dwarves are dwarves, I don't need four sets of minor rules changes for hill, mountain, shield and gold dwarves. Duergar are different enough because they're psychic, but take that away and dwarf subraces are not useful. Edit; and duergar should just be treated as a different race if they keep the psychic element.

Some races will have internal variety based on biology - ie dragonborn have damage types, tieflings have spells - but these aren't handled with subraces and that's a good thing.

I've been doing / pushing for race-independent ASIs for years now. I've never felt it helped the game to use them.

3) Native or outsiders?

Depends on the setting - barring a good thematic core to the setting, I prefer to let players do what they want. Not having plasmoids in FR isn't making it more coherent. The Star Wars approach gives players more agency.

Now there are exceptions but they're specific settings or campaigns that want a tightly controlled list of acceptable options - if I'm running an all-dwarf campaign, then all pc's are dwarves.

Bonus question (kind of a combination of questions 2 and 3): how do you feel about using different versions of a race from different settings? Examples could be allowing Zendikar elves or Ravnica goblins (assuming you already have native elves or goblins), would you be ok with allowing the mechanical variant (i.e. different stats and abilities) from another setting? If you would allow the mechanic, would you disallow, allow or even require the narrative that the race comes from another world?

I usually chalk these up to "internal variations within a race" - if humans can have any feat, then goblins don't all have the same bonus action options.

 

[Bupp]

From a world building point of view, I like few choices. I have taken it recently to build those few races around what the players choose for their characters, though.

In actuality, I prefer a Star Wars cantina type vibe. Not all races will be common, but no one bats an eye if a dragonborn, tiefling, or whatever 3rd party publisher race walks in.

 

[Cadence]

1) Few or plenty?

Depends on the set-up of the world. Some settings have just humans, some have a small number, some have a big number, and for some it could be wide open.

2) Common or variable?

Flexibility as long as they all seem to fit what the race is. PF 1e had a bunch of options.

3) Native or outsiders?

Usually native, unless its the setting that's wide open.

Bonus question (kind of a combination of questions 2 and 3):

I would generally allow the mechanic if it fit the idea of the race, but not the fluff -- unless it was a wide open world where it didn't matter.

 

[Mallus]

1) It depends. Throughout the pandemic we played an OD&D-style campaign using Labyrinth Lord with 4 playable races. Therefore our next 5e campaign will feature between 24 - 28.

2) I'm fine with variants, but I don't feel like creating my own, so we'll use whatever variant rules exist in official 5e books.

3) Both. We currently have one PC that's a native a race, but a cultural outsider (a drow from another universe who was on a Gith planar vessel that fell through a portal).

 

[jmartkdr2]

A bit of an aside: when wordbuilding, I try to include some sort of generic origin for beastfolk. Maybe it's a thing demon lords can do because it's easier than making a whole new race, maybe the magic of one continent makes beastfolk just happen, maybe there's a whole set of nature gods who just think beastfolk are neat.

This covers a lot of ground pretty quickly - not only does it give you a bunch of new races without need to plan for them individually, it also gives a reason for other people to not have a kill-on-sight attitude towards new races. You might never have seen an elephant-person before, but you've heard of cattle-folk and lion-folk and bird-folk and lizard-folk... so an elephant is interesting not shocking. Well, until you're actually standing next to them and realizing how big they actually are.

Dragonborn usually get a separate origin when I worldbuild, but that's because I like them. They could totally fit into a generic beastfolk origin if you want.

 

[Seramus]

I'm normally very permissive about race, but it can lead to parties where almost every character is something exotic. Which forces me to make a choice of either having the world be exotic enough that their racial choices are smoothly integrated, or introducing racism to some degree. That's not always a choice I want to make, so I try to ask players what they want out of their racial choice during Session Zero. As in, "Are you looking for a foreigner in a strange land themes? Do you want people to treat you differently? Do you want a smooth integration, etc?"

Sometimes that eases the issue, or at least lets me pick some races to be integrated and others to be exotic. My personal sweet spot is only 1-2 exotics per party.

 

[Shiroiken]

1. Torn on this one. I feel that it overall makes for a better story for limited choices based on the setup, so long as there's plenty of options. However, if I have an idea as a player, I don't want to have it completely shut down either. This is why I put suggestions with the campaign handout; if someone wants to play outside of that, they have work with me to find a way. If we can't work something out, the characters has to be abandoned.
2. I feel that racial traits should be inherent and universal. Background, class, and assigned ability scores should represent the individuality of each character. Of course, this means that cultural traits (like weapon training) should be removed from the races entirely.
3. It's really hard to do an outsider and have it not be stupid (just ask anyone who's had to endure a Kender). My last Greyhawk campaign had a Githyanki PC at level 1, and while we worked out an acceptable reason, it was never quite satisfying for me. After introduction, there wasn't a good way I could ever utilize his background or history again, leaving him as a "funny looking human."

 

[Yaarel]

A bit of an aside: when wordbuilding, I try to include some sort of generic origin for beastfolk. Maybe it's a thing demon lords can do because it's easier than making a whole new race, maybe the magic of one continent makes beastfolk just happen, maybe there's a whole set of nature gods who just think beastfolk are neat.

This covers a lot of ground pretty quickly - not only does it give you a bunch of new races without need to plan for them individually, it also gives a reason for other people to not have a kill-on-sight attitude towards new races. You might never have seen an elephant-person before, but you've heard of cattle-folk and lion-folk and bird-folk and lizard-folk... so an elephant is interesting not shocking. Well, until you're actually standing next to them and realizing how big they actually are.

Dragonborn usually get a separate origin when I worldbuild, but that's because I like them. They could totally fit into a generic beastfolk origin if you want.

I was reading a (non-D&D) RPG, where the "races" were page after page of different kinds of anthropomorphic animals. Too many for my tastes. More appealing would be one generic customizable "beastfolk", and let the player decide. Of course, have two or three readymade examples, but give the players the tools to customize if they want some other variant.