D&D 5E Do you restrict racial choices in your games?

[Ralif Redhammer]

I voted for "everything published," but I should specify that it's anything officially published (no UA) and specifically by Wizards. No 3rd party products, no homebrew from D&D Beyond (though if someone showed up wanting to play a Spudborn, I might make the exception).

One and only once did I tell people that there were no centaurs, because there aren't any horses in my homebrew. Generally speaking, I'll try to work with people if they want to play something like a Changeling in Forgotten Realms, or a Loxodon in Greyhawk.

 

[Oofta]

I restrict for may campaign world ... which I've been running for a long time.

I find it works best if the world (and the races) make sense to me. Dozens upon dozens of intelligent humanoid races (whether playable or not) doesn't make sense to me.

 

[iserith]

No halflings in any game I DM.

You want to play a super short human who is lucky (ie, whatever racial traits the halfling in the PHB has instead of the human ones) , go ahead, but there is no general culture of people like you.

 

[RobJN]

I'm running a play by post using the 5e Basic Rules: four races, four classes, has a very BECMI feel to it. Which is exactly what I was going for, anyway, being set in the mountains north of Threshold, in Karameikos.

 

[ART!]

I might restrict racial options if I was trying t emulate something much more specific than "generic D&Dishness". I'm giving some thought to a sword & sorcery game, and I might restrict races for that. I also have a game inspired by The Black Company, and I might restrict things a bit there? Maybe?

I'm actually trying to steer the group toward some 5E experiments like "we're all dwarves".

Racial restrictions are definitely something I'm actively thinking about, but for most of our gaming we keep it wide open.

 

[Ace]

I have one world where basically everything you can think of is fair game and exists somewhere in small numbers. I have another that uses five only and another with only humans.

 

[Inchoroi]

The mechanics are there, but the fluff might change, sometimes a lot.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

That's been something I've wanted to run since 2e, along with an Underdark-centric one (which I finally did get to with Out of the Abyss). One of these campaigns...

I'm actually trying to steer the group toward some 5E experiments like "we're all dwarves".

 

[opacitizen]

Restrict to suit theme / campaign. My players are OK with that, because they understand and like the themes we pick.

For example, for Ravenloft,, it's usually humans only, with a half-elf or two at most. (Well, certain domains allow more and others, but we don't usually use those.) That suits our classic humanocentric take on the gothic horror setting, in which deviation from the human form is usually both tragic and abhorrent in the eyes of the dominant human (and the almost-human) denizens of the world. Sure, for one-shots, that's okay for a PC or two as well, but in longer stories it tends to become a heavy hindrance for all, for various reasons.

YMMV, of course.

 

[jmartkdr2]

If I'm starting a new game, it's either going to be very tightly themed (I have run all dwarves, and still want to run all dragonborn, for example) or I'll let players come to me with whatever and try to make it work. That include 3PP and UA - I'll adjust as needed.

In other words: either just this one thing or anything goes. I never go between those extremes, at least when starting a new game.

However, if a player is coming into an existing campaign, the established canon of the game might create limitations. IE if all elves are extinct is a plot point, then you can't play an elf. These kinds of things are rare - it's more likely that you'll need to bend to prior characterizations (ie if the first dwarf player decides to use an Australian accent, that's the accent for local dwarves) than anything getting nixed entirely.