Campaign Choices You've Made On Races

[Infiniti2000]

I'm kind of with Stumblewyk here. Don't think of it as a restriction on the PC who wants something different, but as a reason to maintain some reasonableness of the game world. Let's say the player picks a minotaur. Well, it just so happens that minotaurs are monsters and 99.9% of the time, those monsters will be killed or captured. Why is this one different? Must the DM (and other PCs) roleplay this all the time, everytime they go into town? That may be interesting once, but it quickly becomes a massive drag on the whole party. IMHO, it becomes a "hey, look, I'm always the center of attention here."

The only way that monster races as PCs don't suck is when everyone, not just the DM and PCs, but all NPCs always look the other way. Forget the hassle of always roleplaying and explaining why it's okay to bring a monster into town and sell him magical items and let him sleep in the inn. Just treat it as normal, as you would an elf or any other normal race.

 

[Infiniti2000]

In retrospect, I think he chose his re-skin target for game mechanics more than role-playing, ...

Of course. That's always the reason. The only roleplaying reason would be to be the center of attention. Do you really think people want to play (e.g.) a bugbear because they're cool? Surely not. Bugbears suck in terms of flavor. The only cool thing about big teddy-bear like goblins is their mechanic for over-sized weapons.

 

[Gradine]

Of course. That's always the reason. The only roleplaying reason would be to be the center of attention. Do you really think people want to play (e.g.) a bugbear because they're cool? Surely not. Bugbears suck in terms of flavor. The only cool thing about big teddy-bear like goblins is their mechanic for over-sized weapons.

This is not at all my own experience. Players almost always have a concept for a character before they choose anything related. When players makes choose with gameplay implications it's because those implications fall in line with their concept. Obviously, if the player wants to play a big hulking brute wielding huge weapons, they're going to be drawn to the Bugbear (or Minotaur, or any other large monster-esque race.)

As for the "center of attention" argument, that doesn't really need to happen. Like you said, it can be fun once or twice, but that should be all that is necessary. Remember that PC's are special, which bears with it a certain amount of notoriety. Do you think Drizzt gets crap every town he walks into at this point? No... when word gets out about a heroic minotaur, that's the kind of rumor that spreads like wildfire. Sure, people are going to still look at him or her crosswise, but that doesn't need to be some big dramatic moment every time.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think its totally a matter of group preference. If I'm going to create a specific setting for a given campaign I'll first pitch it to the people I expect will be playing in it, so if they have specific things they want to try then we can work that out ahead of time, assuming its not something that is already easily accommodated. Saves a lot of trouble.

For my main 4e campaign I chose to use my standard default campaign world, which makes dropping in random stuff reasonably easy. Its pretty much a PoL-like setting anyway. There are some things that don't match standard 4e canon exactly though.

Halflings- Oddly nobody had played one in a LONG time anyway and they were never described as a common race, so when we went to 4e I just retconned them to the 4e fluff. A couple of villages of halflings sprang up along a major river and if anyone wants one they're welcome to it.

Elves, dwarves, and humans are no problem as they are long standing standards. In the area the players mostly frequent there are regions where all 3 races (and half-elves) live, so no problem there and they pretty well conform to 4e standard.

Eladrin- Exist in a slightly divergent form. They are an ancient race, related to elves in some fashion but more like Moorcockian Eldar crossed with legendary fey. A rather remote and decadent race that maintains a few outposts in the world but is rarely seen. Standard 4e mechanics works pretty well for them. Better really than what I had done up back in the 2e days.

Tieflings have been worked in as the last remnant of survivors of an ancient kingdom. Again 4e's assumptions work pretty well, the history of this civilization already existed and it was a well established fact of the setting that they destroyed themselves by diabolic corruption. Nobody has asked to play one, but if they did they're of a family that still has the taint of ancient Civarian blood.

Dragonborn I simply dealt with by establishing a story that there is a Dragonborn civilization FAR to the west. Nobody has ever traveled there anyway, so it was no problem. The one DB that I've had in the game came with a good backstory to explain how he got so far from home. He did get a lot of odd looks but the character was fun and worked out fine. This was an example of working in something new.

The other PHB2 races haven't come up, but I have established that shifters live in certain remote areas, goliaths live in a convenient mountainous area, half-orcs are an established race, a Deva should be no problem as their fluff is pretty much tailor-made to drop into most settings. Gnomes I haven't really thought much about. The PHB3 races I doubt will get played but I'm sure I can work one in.

I kind of agree that monstrous/unique races don't 'realistically' fit into a fantasy medieval society all that well without special consideration, but what are you going to do? Sure, you can just banish them all but if you want to be pedantically realistic about it I really doubt humans would tolerate ANY other races all that well. Heck, we can't even get along with people that have slightly different ethnic features. There's just no point in going down that road, it doesn't lead anywhere interesting unless your group likes half the PCs to be getting chased by torch bearing townspeople all the time.

 

[Wofford]

Drow, Mintaurs, and Kalashtar
And I'm not to found of Doppelgangers.

 

[Dr_Ruminahui]

My group doesn't typically choose "unusual" races, and we don't tend to got through characters, but here are my thoughts on the matter.

IMHO, setting limits on character races matters most at the beginning of the campaign - that's when the majority of the characters to be used in the campaign will be generated (barring a TPK, of course). After that, it will usually only be the occasional unraisable death, or new player, that will require introducing new characters.

Additionally, for later characters, (except for with new players) the players will have a better idea of how the game works and what roles different races have in it. As such, they are more likely to choose something that fits in the campaign, and be aware of the RP consequences of choosing something that doesn't. For example, if the PCs in game are involved in a group of minotaurs wiping out villages and eating everyone inside, a PC who later plays a minotaur ought to know the RP consequences of doing so.

That's something I've learned from an experience with my friend as a DM - he made RP consequences for playing certain races, then DIDN'T TELL US. Another friend, who played a dwarf, was quite unhappy about all the prejudice he faced in game (the dwarves are the "evil empire" in game). In that game, I play a drow - though in that they are a desert dwelling empire who think the sun god is evil, which causes problems with the other peoples who have the sun god as the top of their pantheon.

My campaign I started when only PH1 was out. Races were all PH1 player races, plus kobolds, and no tiefling (tiefling were to appear "in game" as a new race - in fact, the eladrin paladin got changed into a tiefling by standing too long in energies spilling from the demon rhelm into the "real world"). Elf and Eladrin are the same "race", just with Eladrin being the "flying castle" elves, and Elfs being the forest elves.

Now, as things stand, the other races simply don't matter - I don't have to worry about them until for some reason a new character is needed. So, if Genasi don't fit into my world... who cares? That said, this is how I would treat the races:
- Would never have been a problem: gnomes (forest halflings), deva, half-orc (very rare, but exist), warforged (dwarf-made war machine), any goblinoid (majority race in the setting),
- Would be okay now (my campaign setting has progressed, openning up plot reasons for new races): drow, shifters, goliaths, wilden, changelings, minotaurs.
- Might be okay in future (when the PCs get to upper paragon/epic, further room opens up for wierd stuff): gitz (both types), shard minds, genasi.

Personally, I don't get a lot of the sentiment "I don't like race X, they don't work in my campaign." Perhaps they don't... but so what? After the campaign has started, does it really matter? The times when one needs to worry about new races is quite rare, and by then the PCs should have a better idea of how things work. And personally, I don't mind a PC being one-of-a-kind - they are PCs, after all, and there is no reason why they can't be the D&D equivalent of the black guy in medieval england.

 

[Tony Vargas]

What it says on the thread title.

With a particular interest in "Which races have you chosen to disallow as player characters in previous and current campaigns you have run or are currently running?"

Oh, and why?

I'm usually pretty restrictive with races. It generally has nothing to do with mechanics. It's just that a world crowded with too many sentient humanoid races gets a tad silly.

You can use races as cyphers for, well, race in the modern sense, or for culture. You can have viking dwarves, english halflings, french elves, tiefling turks, and chinese gnomes instead of just having humans with different languages cultures and appearances, for instance. Not a great idea, most of the time, but you could do it.


One time, before 4e fixed a certain quirk, I allowed all the standard races, but, because the PCs were all 'fated heros' born under a certain astrological conjunction, they all started at exactly the same age. 40. Which meant aging penalties for the humans and half-orcs, adolescence for the Dwarf, and, well, it was really hard on the elf...