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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 8737375" data-attributes="member: 18">I gotta be honest, this sounds like a not-great attitude on your part.In many settings, Half-Elves at the least aren't in the same situation as mixed-race people IRL. Hell in some you have some who are and some who aren't. Like, in Taladas, an Armach-Nesti Half-Elf is very much in that situation, but a Tamire Steppe Half-Elf isn't having the same experience at all, because he's part of a culture that's mostly Half-Elves (and a large and successful one). So this demand that every person playing a Half-Elf must be interested in that narrative seems strange and bordering on the repugnant. It's like demanding every Dwarf player be telling a story about hearth and family, or every Halfling has to be a story about how they left home and are unusual for adventuring. Like one-true-wayism for how you play a race, but only applied to certain ones.As for people not bothering narratively creating X, well, I mean that doesn't really prove much, because a vast number of races are picked for more mechanical than thematic reasons, and this would make that obvious with those two races, but frankly the same thing is happening with every single race that isn't a total obvious screaming disaster, mechanically. And even with people picking races for RP reasons, many pick them to in fact play "against type" in my experience.I mean, I know I'll still be playing Half-Elves because I just personally do not enjoy playing Elves, but mechanically I'll probably just use the Elf rules.EDIT - I am definitely biased here to be clear - I've played Half-Elves more than any other race in D&D (Tieflings would be next) - but I felt Tanis in Dragonlance really basically did the whole "torn between two worlds" subplot absolutely to DEATH and the very last thing I wanted be was some Tanis-esque fart "trapped between two worlds" (and utterly cliched with it). Aragorn didn't help either (being in D&D terms basically a Half-Elf whereas Elrond Half-Elven is in D&D terms pretty clearly a solid Elf). Expecting people to be interested in playing that up is like expecting every Drow PC to basically be a variant on Drizzt, imho. I always pray for the precise opposite when I see a Drow PC at my table.</blockquote>

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