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

[Incenjucar]

For many players, the only thing they need from the DM is responsiveness. There are quite a lot of DM styles out there, just as with player styles, so nothing is universal. People I play with tend to be self-selected for playfulness, so there's never an issue with engaging with the weird and whimsical along with the serious. My reincarnated fallen paladin deva invoker of love based on Ruby Rhod whose attacks were flavored as synchronized dance and summoning angelic exes still got scary and tragic when he started showing traces of rakshasa via druid multiclassing. The majority of that character ran off the lore of that race, and wouldn't work as a human or standard demi-human.

 

[jasper]

It's a big world. ........

.......

This wikipedia article indicates, in the year 1000 BCE, there was a known population of about 390 million people. This is probably very low. Assume the actual population was closer to 600 million people to cover all those places that lacked record keeping or whose records haven't survived.

Which means you could easily estimate 10 million people of each of 60 different species and it would be a completely reasonable number. And, of course, many of those species are going to be far fewer in number. Th..........

And it's entirely reasonable to say that a fantasy world is bigger than Earth, or has more land than Earth.

Reasonable world wide. Totally gonzo silly to have all 60 races sit at bar in Waterdeep and NO ONE bats an eye.
And some players would hit the freaky roof if Lif the barkeep charged the Rabbit, Owlin, and Triton double. Because Lif likes double charging the out towners.
Wotc appears to want DMs to have "Hero" over the PC head, and all NPC react like it just Jake from State Farm.

 

[Incenjucar]

It's not terribly hard to adapt to different people unless you are isolated from them. Our real world mythology is full of people having conversations with the local spirits, giants, and talking animals. D&D doesn't have to be more mundane than the stories that inspired it.

 

[Faolyn]

Reasonable world wide. Totally gonzo silly to have all 60 races sit at bar in Waterdeep and NO ONE bats an eye.
And some players would hit the freaky roof if Lif the barkeep charged the Rabbit, Owlin, and Triton double. Because Lif likes double charging the out towners.
Wotc appears to want DMs to have "Hero" over the PC head, and all NPC react like it just Jake from State Farm.

Well, first off... why is it gonzo? People get used to one another. Especially after potentially centuries or millennia of frequent contact between races. People like to say "Mos Eisley Cantina" while ignoring that the Star Wars universe has had space travel for probably tens of thousands of years.

Secondly, you could have people bat an eye or even be downright angry... if you feel like bringing in that sort of bigotry to your game. Speaking as someone who has to live in the real world, I fail to see a need to make my fantasy worlds as miserable as the real world can be.

Sure, you can have worlds where the various races have little or no contact with one another, except for the PC party, which is mysteriously mixed... but why? Does it actually make your setting or game better? If you're trying to make it so that your PCs only slowly become aware of all the different races out there, or there's something literally blocking races A, B, and C from learning about races D through Z, then sure. But otherwise?

I mean, how often have you really gone very deep into any race's culture in a game? Like, so deep it would be difficult or annoying to go equally deep with every other race? I mean, I typically have short lists of available races for my worlds, but "going deep" usually means setting an adventure in that race's homeland and having the BBEG be a member of the race.

And anyway, why would you assume that "all 60 races" would be at the same bar? It's a big world. If drow and duergar mostly live underground, and the merfolk and tritons mostly live underwater, and the haregon and owlin mostly live in the Wild Woods of the Northeast (I don't know from Realms locations), they likely wouldn't be at that bar. Instead, you'd have whoever's local and a few travelers--but there's a good chance the people at the bar would have at least met a drow, duergar, merfolk, triton, haregon, or owlin once or twice in their lives.

But let's say you do have a bar that has a representative of all 60 races. OK. So what? How does it make your setting or game worse?

Plus, you know, if you have a player who really wants to play a particular race, you can always tell them to come up with that race's culture, just so you don't have to do all the work.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Reasonable world wide. Totally gonzo silly to have all 60 races sit at bar in Waterdeep and NO ONE bats an eye.

It isn't "total gonzo silly." Enclaves exist. I gave the example of European Jews for a reason. Others have cited African samurai in Japan and more than a millennium of intercontinental trade. The Mongolians ruled an empire from China to Eastern Europe and threatened Rome itself at one point. Alexander ruled an empire from Greece to India a thousand years earlier, and left the imprint of Greek culture for centuries to come (e.g., the Japanese wind god Fujin was strongly influenced by Greco-Buddhist art of Boreas, due to their numerous similarities, even though no ancient Greek ever set foot in Japan as far as we know.) We have records of ancient enclaves, like an Armenian enclave in Beirut. Intermixing, travel, and forming local like-minded and common-heritage populations, are all simply much, much more of a thing even IRL than you are giving credit for.

In a fantastical setting, they're that much more practical, what with magic helping fulfill the needs of life (food, water, sometimes shelter, protection from the environment) and gods present to make things easier on their chosen peoples.

I can't tell you how to feel about things. But I can absolutely say that it really wouldn't be anywhere near implausible for there to be places like this, especially in the "unsavory" parts of denser urban centers, because dominant populations often enforce outsider enclave formation.

 

[CreamCloud0]

If the world is so tiny that literally every mountain is taken, there's more problems than this already.

Does some city on the other side of the world's relationship to it's neighbor matter to the campaign?

Does it matter to the campaign?

Does a goofy human fit tonally? Are PCs all forced to 'fit' in thought and action and dress?

This.... just straight doesn't matter. unless it's a plot hook.

Why not also Goliaths?

Also, if no one's playing one, they might as well not exist in the world unless the DM wants to play some as NPCs.

Basically, this is just a list of excuses to justify not just letting the player do their thing. There doesn't need to be a city, or society or history or some sort of complex agricultural infrastructure. The PC is the only thing that matters; the rest is just assumed like it is for all the other playable species and monsters.

Nice to know you can brush off someone wanting to have a living, logical and consistent setting with several variations on ‘does it matter?’ And ignoring the actual point that all those questions were leading up to, the player doesn’t consider the world when they make what they want they just make it.

A player just wanting to crowbar in an entire settlement to a constructed world to facilitate their character seems akin to someone taking a marker to someone else’s painting because ‘well I thought it would look better with a tree there’

 

[Incenjucar]

It is not logical for a world with large flying creatures, interdimensional portals, and teleportation to be non-diverse. That is a setting preference only.

 

[Minigiant]

Mine has 10 races, 10 classes, and probably 100 or more countries LOL!

100 countries!

That's a lot of theocracies! So many crusades.

 

[Oofta]

It is not logical for a world with large flying creatures, interdimensional portals, and teleportation to be non-diverse. That is a setting preference only.

If that's your preference, go for it. Others have different preferences. Not sure why this is contentious.

 

[DND_Reborn]

100 countries!

That's a lot of theocracies! So many crusades.

The history has always been the hardest part. It is a LOT of work and evolution of the world over close to 30 years. It isn't like it sprang into existence all at once LOL!