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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7904737" data-attributes="member: 42582">Duergar, svirfneblin and drow are all player-facing options in Unearthed Arcana, and Gygax also talked about playing them as PCs in a Dragon article in issue 95, which prefigured the UA revisions to demihuman level limits. Here is the relevant passage from p 8 of that volume:Players and DMs alike should take note of an important new rule change which is alluded to herein: player characters can be members of certain demi-human sub-races that are not permitted to PCs by the rules in the Players Handbook -  namely, the valley elf, grugach, drow, duergar, and svirfneblin. More will be said about this new development in subsequent articles.Also, you haven't struck out acquatic elves, but to the best of my knowledge there was no 1st ed AD&D rule about playing them.But in any event, whether or not a race is "officially playable", that doesn't change the fact that it is present in the setting. And it is the setting that I am talking about, not rules for PC building.To me, this seems to run together two distinct things - setting design, and rules for setting up a campaign. I'm talking about the former. I don't really care about the latter, in the sense that - being an experienced GM playing with experienced players - I can work with my group to start a campaign pretty comfortably.For written advice and guidance on how to do this, the best I know of is Burning Wheel, which talks about how you might approach its various cultures (humans, dwarves, elves, orcs - the latter three all very Tolkienesque) in establishing a campaign.I think in most settings cultures are regional in their distribution - upthread I suggested the Yatil Mountains as a possible home for the dragonborn. This is relevant to the design of encounter tables.In GH, if not all other settings, class also has a regional aspect to it. An open hand monk is probably from the Scarlet Brotherhood. A bear barbarian is probably from the Thilronian Peninsula. If a druid is from Velnua or the main parts of Furyondy s/he probably keeps a low profile. Paladins are probably thicker on the ground in Furyondy than southern Keoland. Etc.Again, this would be relevant to the design of encounter tables and the placement of NPCs. But I'm not sure how it relates to PC build rules. Nor to whether or not dragonborn or tiefling exist in the setting. I don't see why starting a party of tasloi in Verbobonc would be any weirder than starting a party of open hand monks in Verbobonc. Both groups clearly are from out of town. But that doesn't mean that the GH book should have a line in it saying no monks in Greyhawk.</blockquote>

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