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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sunseeker" data-source="post: 6748300">Some of the built-in thematic elements of certain races sucks.  There I said it.  It's pigeon-holed and type-cast so far into a corner that including the race forces you to include the racial elements.  I mean I've resolved the thematic issues by completely refluffing the races, but that's a massive PITA.  EX: I wanted to include dark elves but I didn't want traditional "dark fae" and I didn't want Drow, so I had to completely re-invent the wheel.  I ended up with a South-American styled "jungle elf".  It was nothing like the Drow so the thematic elements were completely thrown out the window anyway.Or: I resolved to include Dwarves for a change, but instead of them being mountain-dwelling folks I made the island dwelling folks, something akin to a cross between pygmies and Jamacians.  So...thematic elements?  What thematic elements!  I threw them right out the window.  And: When I do include gnomes, they're more traditional fae, where everything is a joke and the punchline to a joke is someone dies.Yes, I could have included stock Drow and stock dwarves and stock gnomes, with stock thematic flavor, but honestly when I sit down with players and they tell me they want to play a stocky, grumpy drunk with a napoelon complex and a love for rocks with a bad foreign accent I ask them: why can't you be all that and be a human?  Why does that have to be a dwarf?  And the answer is simply that they hadn't stopped to consider it.Dragonborn thematic flavor?  Ancient race from god-knows-where?  It sucks.  Tiefling thematic flavor?  The world hates you.  It sucks.  Half-orc soft-rape baby flavor?  It sucks.  The forced Greyhawk flavor in 5e?  It double-sucks.  The flavor in 5E sucks if you want to step outside the Forgotten Realms for more than 5 minutes.  If someone wants to play the thematic flavor straight from the book, I'll flat out tell them they're at the wrong table.</blockquote>

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