D&D General Do you like LOTS of races/ancestries/whatever? If so, why?

[Crimson Longinus]

In context of D&D I have to say I like more limited sets. I actually like settings with a bunch of different playable species, but D&D doesn't have a lot of species, it has a totally crazy amount. To me ten would be a lot, forty is madness. I feel that such high amount leads to either massive thematic overlap of super narrowly defined species. So I like a good amount, but I want the species to be actually distinct and not super narrow. I also want different settings to have different sets of species.

 

[schneeland]

My personal preference is either humans (of multiple ethnicities) only for PCs and most NPCs with a bit of wiggle room for lizard or bird folk on the NPC side, or classic Tolkien-/B/X-D&D-style races with Hobbits Halfings being rather rare and Elves and Dwarves also mostly appearing in their respective communities and goblinoids on the NPC/opponent side (I'm a bit more open to playable goblinoids in hybrid settings like Shadowrun).

That being said: I like the Mos Esley feeling, but only specifically in Star Wars or Star Wars-adjacent games.

 

[Reynard]

Pirates of Dark Water was a super niche cartoon that only had 2 seasons and no reboots.

The fact that it is constantly brought up in nostalgia and mentioned for reboots displays the very high appeal it had despite only being incomplete due to production and cost issues.

That's what you want as a DM. A setting that hooks into players' memories without needing a bunch of sessions to do so.

Absolutely, but it wasn't the weirdly drawn people that hooked me. It was the setting and the tech and the themes.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Narratively... if there are dozens upon dozens of intelligent humanoids in the world itself... there should be a connective Race write-up to have one of them as a possible PC. There's no reason why any one of them couldn't become an "adventurer" in the game world. So in that regard... I'm absolutely fine with WotC continually coming up with new Races for optional PCs. It makes total sense.

That being said... I also know for a fact that few if any D&D players I've ever encountered actually play any non-human races because they desire to get into the mindset of playing something "alien" to them. Rather, almost every single one has just gone the "Human in Funny Hat" route and more often than not select their race... indeed it is true... based upon the game mechanics the Race provides.

Every single table I sit at... whether that be home games or cons or wherever... I'm never confronted with someone playing a character that does not seem human. Every single PC could be a Human so far as how the characters are played. So in that regard... I usually prefer a more constrained list because I'm a DM who enjoys having his players interacting with their Backgrounds and that often means others of their Race. And the more disparate the Racial make-up of the party is... the more far and wide I have to send the party to allow that to happen.

Trying to find reasons for a party of a Duergar, Aarakocra, Grung, Fairy, and Githyanki to not only get together for whatever reason to go adventuring, but then also meet up with other duergars, aarakockras, grungs, fairies, and githyanki is kind of ridiculous. The only somewhat useful option at that point is to design a game world where those five are the predominant Races of the world rather than Humans, Elves, Dwarves, and Halflings are, but at that point that type of game world just holds less interest to me and I don't want to run anything in it. Especially considering the fact that I know my players would play that Duergar, Aarakocra, Grung, Fairy, and Githyanki exactly the same as if they were five Humans... so what's the point?

I freely admit this is purely my own prejudices and not anything that is a problem with the game. So I'm glad WotC makes all these options available for players... I just don't usually want to play with the players who take WotC up on them.

 

[delericho]

One other thought on the number of races: just because the game has lots of options, and indeed just because the DM allows free choice of those options, doesn't mean they all have to exist in the setting in use. If, for instance, you have the players create their PCs and then create the setting, you can always build one that only contains the 4-5 options they happen to have chosen. (Maybe leave some blank space, in case you need some replacement characters later.)

(I used to do much the same thing with psionics back in 3e days - at the outset of the campaign it was an option players could select. But if nobody created a psionic character at the outset, it would never feature in the campaign from then on.)

 

[delericho]

That being said... I also know for a fact that few if any D&D players I've ever encountered actually play any non-human races because they desire to get into the mindset of playing something "alien" to them. Rather, almost every single one has just gone the "Human in Funny Hat" route and more often than not select their race... indeed it is true... based upon the game mechanics the Race provides.

Yep. Indeed, until very recently my experience meant that that actually boiled down to the ASIs offered by the race. (Hence jokes about "an elf for every class".) Which is one of the reasons I'm so glad they made the ASIs floating - the other powers are sufficiently minor that they don't seem to have the same overwhelming hold.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

I prefer few races, but with a lot of different cultures.

I may only have 4-5 races, but the places they come from vary a lot. Like in Drago Age; only 3 races, but an Orzammar Dwarf is very different from a Surface Dwarf or a Carta Dwarf or a Legion Dwarf. A City Elf will have more in common with a Human living in Denerim than with another Elf who fled to join the Dalish. Members of any race growing in a Circle will be much more closer between them than between members of their race living on the outside. Then you have the Qunari, who are a race made of any race willing to accept their precepts. Etc.

That's why I prefer to put much of the character building load on the background more than the race.

 

[Oofta]

Why do people assume that saying "Looks like Mos Eisley Cantina" is derogatory? Because to me, it's not. I have plenty of issues with how Star Wars handles aliens. But there being dozens of different aliens when there are dozens, if not hundreds of habitable worlds is not one of them. If I'm watching Zootopia (which, while not serious, I thought was fun), seeing all sorts of anthropomorphic animals just makes sense for the assumptions used in world building.

Even "kitchen sink campaign" is not inherently bad, it's just a descriptor. I may not like dozens of races for my home campaign, but it's because of the assumptions of how I envision the world. Unlike Star wars, there are not dozens of different planets (or moons) for these species to inhabit. That's all.

 

[DND_Reborn]

Ad long as they're from reasonably close.

Which was my point and why I said "most" never travelled more than a few days from where they lived. Most people didn't have the means (as in time and/or freedom) to easily travel greater distances.

Trade was more common but lots of middlemen vs direct trade.

Yeah, this matches with my knowledge of medieval Europe and Asia.

First, I didn’t say most people travelled afar. I said there is no period in recorded history in which no one did so.

Ok, so FWIW there is no reason for you to be defensive here (the tone indicates it to me, if I am mistaken--my apologies!). I never said you did say most people travelled afar.

Second, we would need to pick a region and decade to make statements like the bolded with any seriousness, but there are plenty of times throughout European history where pilgrimages were something most people did at least once, and plenty of travelers on a “pilgrimage” caravan were going to a big city to trade something, to see something important, to escape their life, or literally just to satisfy wanderlust and curiosity.
The Canterbury Road was well traveled every year by people of all kinds, very much including serfs and poor freemen, for all manner of reasons.

Yep, which is why I said:

Historically, other than pilgrimages, etc. most people didn't travel more than a few days from where they lived in general.

Anyway, my point is that Paris or London in 1300 weren’t ethnically homogenous places, they were cornucopias of diversity from all over Europe, SW Asia, Northern Africa, and smatterings of folk from further afield,

Actually, they pretty much were for the most part. The number of "outsiders" to those places was extremely small. Yes, they were there certainly, but probably well less than 10% of the over all population.

and it frankly bothers me how much modern western fantasy tries to make “realistic” psuedo medieval worlds where no one has ever met a person who has ever seen a different time zone. It bothers me when world builders make fantasy less interesting than reality.

I'm sorry that bothers you, but for myself (and others I would imagine) having a fantasy world grounded in a more "realistic" pseudo-medieval world actually makes the "fantasy" of the world more interesting because it is directly comparable and we can really feel the differences magic and such makes.

It’s like a DM not letting your acrobatic character do stuff that real world parkourists do all the time, even after you show them a video of a college student doing it as a hobby. (Or how damn slow 5e characters are using only the RAW)

Sure, that all bothers me to when I see it. RAW speed for 5E is fine for "walking" or even jogging, but their desire to keep it simple prevented such options as running (x3 speed) and sprinting (x4 speed) and even using a Strength (Athletics) check to temporary increase speed beyond that.

D&D flips that by allowing multiple races in a world.

Again, what I said.

Your preference is for more races, mine is for more cultures. Star Wars is a game of many "worlds", not just countries. It is more believable for me that in such a game (with space travel) you are likely to have dozens or even hundreds of species that can intermingle. Many D&D worlds IME are more constrained than that IMO and so have fewer races, because given "human-nature" anyway we tend not to tolerate many rivals.

 

[Micah Sweet]

A curated group of “natural” peoples with the rest available as mutants and anomalies.

I like that idea, but in practice I often end up with a party of mutants and anomalies.