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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sword of Spirit" data-source="post: 7907894" data-attributes="member: 6677017">I can't really interact with the poll because it wouldn't represent how I run it.I have the Multiverse, where stuff works certain ways. On most worlds (Faerun, Oerth, Krynn, Athas, etc) humans are the most populous and dominant species. The reason there are such things as racial pantheons (elven, dwarven, etc) on many worlds is because the setting pantheons (in Faerun or the Flanaess) are really the human pantheons of their respective settings.I think the racial distribution figures given in 1e Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms products indicate what I consider to be humano-centric (which isn't the same extreme version of it that Gygax was talking about it) settings. Non-humans have their own limited lands where they are dominant, and are found in varying numbers amongst human lands, but if you're a human who lives out in the country away from the trade roads, you might go your whole life without ever seeing an elf or dwarf.Each world tends to add some of its own unique non-human races--usually having the same relationship to the dominance of humans as the standard non-human races commonly found on many worlds have.There are other worlds out there in arcane space (Spelljammer), where humans might not even be present, let alone be dominant, but there isn't any extensive information on such worlds.Out in cosmopolitan planar places (enter Planescape with its Sigil) you have every D&D race new and old mingling together. Interestingly though, even in Sigil and its cultural satellite settlements, humans are the most common race--they just change up which non-human races are common.That's what you had by the end of 2e--which I think was the high point of D&D's multiverse-building, so it's my baseline to which I add later stuff that works with that pattern rather than changing it.So when I'm running a campaign, the valid PC options will depend entirely on where the campaign is set, and what its goals are.If you're on a typical world (including Faerun, because I don't run these re-envisionings of it), humans, elves, dwarves, half-elves, halflings, and gnomes are your baseline for PCs. People know who those races are (even if they've never met one) and they don't elicit fear. Playing a half-orc means accepting people might be afraid of you. Playing a drow is going to be really difficult, because drow are generally feared as "the enemy" to just about about anyone else. Dragonborn aren't native to any worlds except the 4e one, and therefore aren't present unless we're playing one of those worlds. Tieflings are a thing, but they are rare in a typical campaign world, and you had better hide your heritage or you'll be worse off than a half-orc. Also, most of them don't look anything like the ones in the PHB--I go with the older lore. Aasimar and other planetouched races are at least as rare as tieflings on the Material Plane. When it comes to thinks like goblins, orcs, kobolds, etc--people are going to react to you as a monster. So the question is, what sort of campaign are we running? If its going to be a fairly typical campaign, then I'm probably not going to allow more than one race outside of the (2e) standard human, elf, dwarf, halfling, gnome, and half-elf. And that one race is going to have to be workable. So if you're a drow or a tiefling, you're going to need to constantly disguise it. If you're a half-orc, you're probably okay to go, just remember people are going to react to you. If you want to play a dragonborn, that won't work unless you want to say your spelljamming ship crashed on this world, and that makes sense for the theme of the campaign.If its a Dark Sun campaign, you'll be choosing amongst those races, so thri-kreen is perfectly acceptable despite its alienness--its a standard part of the world.If it's Planescape, you can basically play anything in the multiverse that has playable stats appropriate to the party level.So the important parts for me are:1) The Multiverse is D&D for me. It's more important than any PC or campaign. It always wins.2) Campaign theme is more important than any PC. If your PC doesn't fit the campaign, then you play a different PC or we play a different campaign.</blockquote>

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