D&D General Race Has No Mechanics. What do you play?

[TaranTheWanderer]

Change this thread to,

"Would you play in a campaign where AGE has no mechanics?"

and people wouldn't care.

Age used to have mechanics but they got rid of that. People still play old people or kids or whatever because of the flavour it adds.

Narrative is super important.

In a campaign where every race is common and nobody cares what race you are, then race is irrelevant. Everyone might as well be human. In a campaign of only humans, where elves and dwarves were hunted and killed to (almost) extinction, being an elf or a dwarf is going to have serious narrative implications.

Being able to change your race at will matter less in the 'every-race-is-common' campaign but will have serious benefits in the 'kill-all-dwarves-and-elves' campaign.

 

[Hriston]

EDIT FOR CLARITY: The supposition here is that the raves still have lore and in-fiction impacts related to the setting, which you can either define as your preferred setting, or default to whatever bits are to be found in the core books. Dwarves are dour, elves are aloof, etc...

Hypothetical sitation: you are joining a new campaign in which all other factors are positive (you know the GM and group, it's in a setting you like, whatever) but there is one hitch: race/heritage/species is cosmetic only.

So, assuming it is a very open setting in which pretty much any reasonable humanoid species is available, but none of them have any mechanical effects (including size, vision and movement types; everyone, including humans, are basically human mechanically). What species do you pick for your character?

Would race being cosmetic only be a turn off for you?

No, it would not be a turn off for me, and I would pick the same fantasy race for my character as is my usual practice when playing D&D, which is whichever one results from rolling on this table (as long as the race is an available option in the game in which I'm playing):

d100	Race
01	Dragonborn, see subtable
02-06	Dwarf, see subtable
07-11	Elf, see subtable
12	Gnome (Forest)
13	Gnome (Rock)
14-18	Half-Elf
19	Halfling (Lightfoot)
20	Halfling (Stout)
21	Half-Orc
22-99	Human
00	Tiefling

So probably human.

 

[Celebrim]

Change this thread to,

"Would you play in a campaign where AGE has no mechanics?"

and people wouldn't care.

I generally don't care within limits. Generally speaking, I wouldn't approve a character below age 16 or above age 65 (or racially adjusted range) without some serious discussion with the player and something in the stats to justify that take, and I generally encourage characters between age 18 and age 45 because within that range you have "adult" with casual realism without regard to mechanics and with little 'ick' factor. If age choice is extreme enough that it feels like it should matter then I probably do care.

 

[TaranTheWanderer]

No, it would not be a turn off for me, and I would pick the same fantasy race for my character as is my usual practice when playing D&D, which is whichever one results from rolling on this table:

d100	Race
01	Dragonborn, see subtable
02-06	Dwarf, see subtable
07-11	Elf, see subtable
12	Gnome (Forest)
13	Gnome (Rock)
14-18	Half-Elf
19	Halfling (Lightfoot)
20	Halfling (Stout)
21	Half-Orc
22-99	Human
00	Tiefling

So probably human.

On this table, I'd choose Arakokra.

GM: "But there is no Arakokra"

Me:"Exactly. I'm the only one."

 

[TaranTheWanderer]

I generally don't care within limits. Generally speaking, I wouldn't approve a character below age 16 or above age 65 (or racially adjusted range) without some serious discussion with the player and something in the stats to justify that take, and I generally encourage characters between age 18 and age 45 because within that range you have "adult" with casual realism without regard to mechanics and with little 'ick' factor. If age choice is extreme enough that it feels like it should matter then I probably do care.

There are no rules for it. I've played Elderly Wizards and Young orphans. But, yeah, the context matters. Some campaigns it would be inappropriate to play a young 13 year old squire and others it would be fine. But, to me, narrative matters. A 10 year old with a dump stat of 8 should still be able to drag an unconscious adult out of danger - because that's what their stats dictate. Narratively, I'm not sure a 10 year old can drag an adult at all. I'd just tell my dm that my character can't do that because it makes sense to the story and is the reason why I chose to play that kind of character.

PS: What's wrong with an adventuring 50 year old?

 

[Celebrim]

I generally don't care within limits. Generally speaking, I wouldn't approve a character below age 16 or above age 65 (or racially adjusted range) without some serious discussion with the player and something in the stats to justify that take, and I generally encourage characters between age 18 and age 45 because within that range you have "adult" with casual realism without regard to mechanics and with little 'ick' factor. If age choice is extreme enough that it feels like it should matter then I probably do care.

Thinking about my own answer, I realize that I have the same take on choosing a race.

For something like Star Trek, I could care less if race had any mechanical support. In the source material, they are all just humans with bumps on their head anyway, and no race has in any sustained way been portrayed as non-human or outside the normal spectrum of human emotions. Choice of race is therefore almost entirely cosmetic for basically anything you'd have as a playable race. A few people might pick Vulcans or Andorrans or Orions or Klingons just to be a little bit different or for aesthetic reasons, but it's all just aesthetics anyway.

But the more alien the race and the less like a human it is, the more I would feel a need for mechanical support in some regard and the less I feel like it should be included as a option if the mechanical support isn't there. Like, if there is no mechanical support that makes being a pixie or a frost giant different than being a human, then it feels really silly. A lack of mechanical support therefore suggests there isn't really any meaningful difference between the species or races, which is perfectly fine if you are all just humans with bumps, skin color variation, or funny ears.

 

[Celebrim]

Narratively, I'm not sure a 10 year old can drag an adult at all.

I had a friend who was 13 with an 180 pound bench press, which is considerably stronger than most adults but not nearly as strong as a strong adult. The record at age 11 is probably something like 110 pounds, which is still stronger than many adults. So yeah, you can have a 10 year old who is quicker or maybe even stronger than an average modern sedentary adult, but they are still going to have limitations compared to the adult version of themselves. It's the rare kid that could drag a 300 lb adult, but it's possible.

But I'm going to have a serious problem with someone who wants to play a 10 year old kid just because there are no mechanical effects of age, the same way that I'm going to have a problem with someone playing a frost giant or a dragon because there are no mechanical effects of race.

 

[AnotherGuy]

"Would you play in a campaign where AGE has no mechanics?"

Age used to have mechanics but they got rid of that.

I hate those "they"
I recently added back the mechanics of age back into our high-level game.

 

[CreamCloud0]

i think humans still have too much flavour, is 'amorphous grey entity' an option?

 

[jmartkdr2]

i think humans still have too much flavour, is 'amorphous grey entity' an option?

Given the opposition to changelings, it seems that the answer is no.

Also I was assuming the options were the normal playable races, not any species the player can think of. So frost giants and dragons would probably be out.