A multitude of disliked races

[Nifft]

In my experience, non-human humanoid races exist primarily so PCs have things to kill whose stuff will fit them. This is also why the PCs are less excited about killing giants.

Cheers, -- N

 

[Kae'Yoss]

Human

You want something else?

Roll d100
01-97 Human
98 Sindarin (elf)
99 Khuzdul (dwarf)
00 Let’s talk

So far, human and it looks unlikely to change. The ‘let’s talk option could, I suppose result in a player with a ‘different’ off world character, but I’d need to be happy with the backstory. I’d take a lot of persuading.

Do you allow rerolling as often as the players want?

I'm personally not a friend of forced character options like rolling for race or class, but to each his own.

 

[Shade]

Yeah, most of the people in my group (myself included) suffer from "humanitis". Typically, at leasy 75% of the group is human. That doesn't really stand in my current game, where 40% are non-human, but that's an abberation. Mostly, we're human freaks.

We're thankfully free of that debilitating condition. In two campaigns, there's nary a human PC in sight.

 

[sjmiller]

We're thankfully free of that debilitating condition. In two campaigns, there's nary a human PC in sight.

In the initial setup of my current campaign we had nine characters. Two were human, two Faen, one Litorian, and four elves. One of the human players left the game, as did an elf, and we added a new elf. So, not a humano-centric group at all.

It's weird not to have a dwarf in the group. My previous gaming group always had at least one dwarf. Nobody in this group seems to like them.

 

[GrumpyOldMan]

Human

You want something else?

Roll d100
01-97 Human
98 Sindarin (elf)
99 Khuzdul (dwarf)
00 Let’s talk

So far, human and it looks unlikely to change. The ‘let’s talk option could, I suppose result in a player with a ‘different’ off world character, but I’d need to be happy with the backstory. I’d take a lot of persuading.

Do you allow rerolling as often as the players want?

I'm personally not a friend of forced character options like rolling for race or class, but to each his own.

No re-rolling.

To be honest, I was being a little flippant.

I’m a big fan of the pregame, suggested in the HârnMaster rules. The players know that they’ll be playing in a human-centred medieval setting, I alway suggest human as the only available option and the players have, so far gone along with this. If anyone came up with a great background for an elf or dwarf character, which fitted the campaign background, then I’d run with it. Any other race, as they don’t exist on Hârn, would require a real hard-sell and a lot of work from the player.

HârnMaster uses rolls for background, occupation and even place of birth. I tend to make my players local to the campaign starting area, and let them choose (within reason) any freeman occupation. But I’m a let the players explore the created world GM so the characters need to fit the world.

 

[The Green Adam]

We're thankfully free of that debilitating condition. In two campaigns, there's nary a human PC in sight.

Yeah that sounds like us. More so in our SF games then our fantasy games but still, humanity definitely takes a back seat to the other races and the many exotics available.

In one Star Wars game one of the players decided to go out on a limb and play a unique and freakish creature rarely seen in our adventures. A Human.

My best friend had a copy of Wares Blade about fifteen years ago. There were mecha in it, right?

Correct! D&D meets giant robots waaay before it was considered here in the states. Plus its not those wussy steampunk mecha but golem/robot things powered by magic. Great art too.

 

[Dragonbait]

I've been fortunate in my groups in that they have never expressed an aversion to any particular race. Each player has a preference, but if someone plays a gnome, or a hobbity halfling, or a 3E halfling, or an animal person, no one bats an eye. My last campaign had no humans, the current one I'm in has only one non-human.

What I find odd is when people treat their race as a class: "Aw man, he's a dwarf? I wanted to be a dwarf. Damn it." and "Uh-oh! The group does not have an elf. How are we going to find secret doors now?"
I understand wanting to be unique, but when 6 players are looking at the PH for race options, there is going to be some overlapping.

 

[Crothian]

I'm sure they can, but I'm still willing to bet they're all Human.

Their *characters*, on the other hand...

You'd lose that bet.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

What I find odd is when people treat their race as a class: "Aw man, he's a dwarf? I wanted to be a dwarf. Damn it." and "Uh-oh! The group does not have an elf. How are we going to find secret doors now?"
I understand wanting to be unique, but when 6 players are looking at the PH for race options, there is going to be some overlapping.

Maybe they just like to do the old racial joke routine?

For some people, the endless "Dandelion eater!" "Gritsucker!" "Tree-shagging pixie!" "Lawn Ornament!" never gets old.

But otherwise, I don't understand it. In fact, I had some all-elf, or all-human, or all-whatever campaign, and we had no problems stepping on each others' toes (even if there were overlapping classes), and it's a nice way to find common ground.

Yeah that sounds like us. More so in our SF games then our fantasy games but still, humanity definitely takes a back seat to the other races and the many exotics available.

It's the other way around for me. I have no problems with gnomes, and elves, and halflings, and dwarves, but in Star Wars, I can't get into all those weird alien races (of course, I blame Lucas)

Any other race, as they don’t exist on Hârn, would require a real hard-sell and a lot of work from the player.

Of course, non-existant races are out of the question, and if it's a premade campaign setting where the race would not fit, they're not put into.

As long as it's no "I don't like dwarves, so dwarves are cut out of my campaign, HA!", it's okay.

 

[Stormrunner]

We don't use the half races at all. Since almost everything in D&D can (apparently) breed with almost everything else, why just the half-elf, why not a half-gnome? Why just a half-orc, why not a half-kobold/goblin/bugbear/gnoll etc.?

I believe that, as so often happens, this harks back to Tolkein. Lord of the Rings didn't have the bazillion other races of D&D, just elves, orcs, and hobbits. There are a few half-elves (Elrond is one, which is why in the movies his daughter has the ability to choose between being an immortal elf or a mortal human - and when he describes to her the sorrow of taking a mortal lover and watching him age and die, he's describing what happened to his mother). Saruman force-breeds half-orcs, the Uruk-Hai. Hobbits apparently don't intermarry much. So half-elves and half-orcs were written into the original D&D.

I do think it would be better to have some sort of process for writing up crossbreeds, similar to statting/pricing a new magic item. The current RAW attempt using templates is unsatisfactory. Frex, if you mate a dragon with a demon, do you get a dragon with the half-fiend template or a demon with the half-dragon template? The two result in very different stats; in an ideal ruleset, they'd end up identical...

As an aside, I always found it humorous that if you drop an elf in the desert, a sub-race of sun elves will spawn. If you drop an elf in the arctic, a sub-race of ice elves will spawn. If you drop a human (supposedly the most adaptive and changeable of all the races) in the arctic, you get a cold human.

jolt

Yeah, that's another thing I dislike, the tendency to create "sub-races" instead of cultures. You don't have Eskimo elves, you have "ice elves". You don't have gnoll monks, you have "flinds". Bleah.