D&D 5E 5.0 Retrospective. Races Most/Least Popular (anecdotes).

[Zardnaar]

I've seen a lot of humans, elves, half-elves, and dwarves. Gnomes, halflings, and half-orcs haven't been really popular, but have seen some play. I've been the only one to play a teifling, and I don't think we've seen a dragonborn (if we have, I've forgotten). Non-PHB races have generally been one-offs, except for goliath, which got played twice.

I didn't list one offs as ove forgotten a few. Partial list Tortle, Minotaur, lionfolk, genasi, few others.

 

[GrimCo]

Humans, elves, half elves and dwarfs make more than 95% of characters in our games in last 10 years. 5 dragonborns, 2 tieflings, 1 warforged, 1 shifter, 1 tabaxi. That's it.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Humans and Tieflings have probably had the most play in groups I've been in, but there have also been a lot of Half-Elves, some Elves, and some Dragonborn and I think one time a Dwarf (the latter used to be very common). Not a single halfling or gnome actually made it to being played as a PC, nor any Half-Orcs (or Orcs, for that matter).

Outside the PHB races we've seen multiple Goliaths, but the rest have pretty much all been one-offs - Satyr, Yuan-Ti, Hobgoblin and probably a couple of others I'm forgetting.

The most "diverse" edition, species-wise remains 4E, for my experience - really saw an an absolutely wild selection there (including short PCs).

 

[Jaiken]

Throughout my DM career I have mostly hosted games that consisted of Humans, Elves and Dwarves. My bother is the only one that plays a Half Orc and my nephew plays a Reborn Dragonborn. My sister is the only one to have played a homebrew race the Pompup, a bipedal Pomeranian race.

 

[payn]

I've seen just about everything at some point in time. The big popular ones are human, elf, halfling, dorf, or I guess what you could call the Tolkien usual suspects. I noticed going rare or strange more often in PF1 because they had such a neat package way of delivering ancestries that hasnt really been rivaled in the Fantasy RPG space since.

 

[Alzrius]

Somewhat tangential; a player in our current campaign (which is PF1) who also runs a 5E game lamented that 5E didn't have a dog/canine PC race. Apparently that idea isn't particularly popular.

 

[Jaiken]

Somewhat tangential; a player in our current campaign (which is PF1) who also runs a 5E game lamented that 5E didn't have a dog/canine PC race. Apparently that idea isn't particularly popular.

Which is sad since dogs could be customized as a race to have unique skills and flavor.