One time I asked how people here were with Humans that had skin and hair colours that no human in this world have naturally (such as dark grey or blue skin or natural green or blue hair), along with mixtures of features that are plausible in our world but not likely common at all (like East Asians with naturally blonde hair).
Most admitted they don't think of such things, but were more willing to have "unnatural" hair colours or mixed features that are quite rare naturally in our world. Most felt unnatural skin colours might cross the line on what they feel is Human and could go too far into things such as Planetouched and other hybrid near-Human races.
It's generally my approach in
Shroompunk to assume human hair and eyes can be any color-- including multicolored and/or somewhat luminescent-- and skin runs beyond the full human range from bleached white to coal-black and wider variety in undertones, including gith-green and a corpselike blue. Many have vestigial horns/antlers, pointed ears, and/or tails. Generally, most pre-4e D&D planetouched
would be considered human by the humans of
Shroompunk, if potentially human from an unknown World.
By contrast, Goblins-- think a combination of Hobgoblin and an Ogre Mage-- have seven narrow bands of skin coloration (ROYGBIV) and seven even narrower bands of eye color. Their skin
always falls neatly into one of these seven bands, and their eye color
always falls neatly into a different one, and Goblins have a
really weird caste system based on this. You'll never be able to understand the Goblin caste system on your world, and any time you guess you'll guess wrong, offensive, and
offensively wrong. Goblins on other Worlds, it turns out, have a
completely different caste system based on their skin and eye colors and it's even harder to understand.
Goblins always have straight black hair, though.
The other kith don't really have anything analogous. Kappa shells change color to reflect their draconic influence. Vanaras and Kobolds have mostly brown fur, but other colors aren't unknown. Trolls usually have black or white fur. Dromites all look after metaphosing into adults. And the Forged start off however their maker wanted them to look... and
almost immediately start changing their bodies as they see fit.
I think it's nice to be able to, how shall I put it? Explore or maybe even flex a part of yourself like that.
In perhaps a similar but much more superficial way my characters also tend to be (ok not tend to but actually every time) a few inches taller than I actually am, or more in the case of a Goliath. It's not that I'm short. I'm above average height. It's that I'm 1-2" shorter than my dad and brothers and wouldn't it be fun if in this game 'I' (that idealized version of myself) wasn't.
It's weird how often I play character smaller than I am-- I'm just a hair under average height for an American man, a couple inches shorter than my father was, but I'm built like a tank. Most of my human characters are a couple of inches shorter than me, and not much more than half my weight.
Given a choice, I'd be
bigger. Of course, given a choice I'd also be darker, and have straight black hair.
.
