D&D General What races/species populate your DnD world?

[Jaiken]

Hey guys, got another question for EnWorld regarding Dungeons and Dragons. What races/species populate your world when you create them?

Do you mix things up like having Dwarves in Fey Forests, do you keep things by the book, or a mixture of both?

As for me I tend to populate my worlds with majority of Bugbears and Dwarves. Bugbears tend to appear in normal everyday human society as body guards and adventurers.

What about you?

 

[el-remmen]

I usually start with the standard and add (or subtract) from there in terms of playable peoples (I use Peoples, instead of "race" or "species"). In terms of non-playable Peoples, I have a few I start with but will add more as needed for the scope and direction of the game.

The setting I am currently working on has these for starting Peoples (for PCs):

Dwarf
Fey-Touched (replaces half-elf - folks swapped at birth or part of a secret fey tryst, etc)
Gnome
Halfling
Human
Lizardfolk
Orc-Born (descendants of the neanderthal-like and extinct orcish people)
Tiefling

I don't do "sub-races."

The other Peoples the PCs know exist from campaign start include

• goblinkind (goblins, bugbears, and hobgoblins are three gendered expressions of People with a high degree of sexual dimorphism (trimorphism?)
• kobolds
• xvarts
• bullywugs

But there are variety of others, including merfolk and locathah, sahuagin, firbolgs (the old 1E/2E giant version, not the version that can be PCs), giants, and trolls. Oh and tabaxi. There are also needlemen (which is the common name of the Cactoi, a plant People).

I would open up allowable PC peoples for replacing characters to include: goblin, hobgoblin, xvart, or bullywug. Or maybe even Cactoi.

 

[KYRON45]

I like to start a campaign with PCs all from one race and location with a singular cause for those restrictions. With the intent that all subsequent PCs can be whatever anyone wants.

Before I even get to finish explaining my expectations just about everyone has a reason why their character should be the exception.

 

[Shiroiken]

The Flanaess in my Greyhawk campaign is about 40% humans, who dominate the political landscape. Even places that are ruled by other races are predominately human in population. About 40% is made up of the various "evil humanoids" (kobolds, goblinoids, gnolls, etc.). They actually outproduce humans, but their brutal societies keep their lifespans short. The classic "demi-humans" (dwarf, elf, gnome, and halflings) make up the next 15%, with everything else making up the last 5%.

 

[Uta-napishti]

I have a similar approach to @el-remmen . I just trim off species that don't fit the theme / history of the world for whatever reason. There is then a list for players to choose from. I will negotiate if someone really wants to play something that isn't on the list. But we have to find a place for what they want to play in the fiction of the world.

An example: Right now I have a campaign in a world that is not planar i.e. there are no celestials, fiends etc.. only the prime material plane exists. It is a very magic rich material plane with all kinds of strange creatures twisted by magical forces. Now, the impact of that reality on player choice is present because there aren't any aasimar or tieflings -- again since extra-planar influence makes no sense. BUT one of my players has a thing for playing characters with horns... So we made a deal and she is playing a human mechanically, who is from a region where magic seeping in over centuries has cause the population to grow horns. We are both happy, she is rocking horns, and the world stays consistent.

The second thing I do is condense/blend peoples that my players aren't dying to play into families with shared origins. Gnome and halflings are just all smallfolk, a branch of humans with some custom mechanics. Dragonborn and Lizardmen are the same thing as each other. Most giants are just the 1% of humans born with "immensity" etc...and are playable with goliath mechanics. I find it easier to have a few cultures and origin stories of peoples that diversify into various forms rather than thinking up one per playable D&D species.

Otherwise, you can just pick some cultures and origin stories from various published settings and toss them together into your world. It's the curation of the combinations and what you leave out that makes your world unique.

 

[Clint_L]

Basically, my world includes any official or Critical Role species that a player is inspired to choose, except for Aaracroa because I don't want to deal with flying out of the gate. I definitely mix things up; I keep some of the more traditional cultural stereotypes, but there are plenty of exceptions. So there might be dwarven sailors, goliath bards, or whatever.

I just ask my players to come up with a character concept, and then we figure out how to make it work.

 

[Xamnam]

Here's the list from the world generator for my homebrew world, ordered roughly by prevalence:

It doesn't cover Tieflings, as they don't have a significant local territory, and it is certainly not exhaustive beyond that. Any of those would be fair game for a player to roll up a character as, but not the limit.

 

[The Firebird]

I like to run human centric campaigns, with the other species kept as something very odd and different. I don't like variant species as humans in masks, or humans of a different culture, and I find a lot of what established settings use different species for can be replaced more easily by humans.

I do still have fantasy species, especially Dwarves and Halflings. Usually I'll make these unavailable at campaign start, but open as options once the players have encountered them.

 

[Umbran]

What about you?

I don't have a standard.
I typically ask what races the players want to play, and build around that.

 

[aco175]

While I play using the Forgotten Realms (FR), I like to keep the PCs to the PHB races. I might allow something else if a player wants, but we tend to stick with a more Lord of the Rings (LotR) looking party, which is fine with me.

When placing monster races in the campaign, I like to have one smaller race like kobolds or goblins and one more human such as hobgoblins, orcs, or gnolls. I'm still debating how much orcs will be a player race in the game vs a monster race. I like having one or two big groups of monster races and might add a few pockets of the others to add flavor. I always thought that if too many races competed for the same lands, they would fight for control and one would win. There could be border regions where both the orcs and gnolls still clash, but mostly they compete with the humans and other PC races.

Big monsters such as giants, dragons, and beholders are set pieces with their own dungeons and such and come up at the need of plot.