I don't quite understand the "Tieflings are too evil to be pirates" rationale. Pirates seem to be pretty evil already. What is it about Tieflings that makes them too evil for a life of pillaging and plunder?
"Oooh whee! What up with that? What up with that?"
All magic users took daggers back in the day. The first time I encountered a dart-throwing wizard was, IIRC, in one of those Endless Quest books and I thought it was the most absurd weapon of all time.
That’s what happened to me too and ultimately the solution was to let go of my passive players and to write novels instead. Now I have active readers 😅
That's interesting too, but a different kind of interesting. In a campaign with humans but none of the vanilla races, the "other" has the potential to become strange and interesting again, instead of being business as usual.
This debate has lead me to think that it would actually be interesting to have a D&D setting where Elves, Dwarves, Halflings, Gnomes and Half-Orcs don't exist, but the "new" races like Dragonborns, Tabaxi or Tieflings are common.