billd91
Not your screen monkey (he/him) 🇺🇦🇵🇸🏳️⚧️
There is far too much truthiness in this post.
But, the point about the Star Wars Cantina is well made. And it's funny because if you actually play Star Wars, no one plays aliens that are just humans with funny ears. No one plays a Wookie and doesn't play up that fact. Or a whatever race. Star Trek as well. You don't see Vulcan characters that are just identical to the humans. People play Vulcans because they want to play VULCANS, not just a really smart human.
As soon as the D&D books come out though, all that goes out the window and far, far too many players are playing whatever race happens to fit their power gaming needs. Like others above, I'd far rather just use Variant Humans than the constant nails on the chalkboard of having yet another human that can see in the dark with pointy ears.![]()
I think that's true... for some like Vulcans, Klingons, Wookies, Aslan, Vargr, K'Kree... but I also think that's because they're relatively distinctive in development. They have strong stereotypes to play on. Ill-defined races like Duros, Orions, Nautolans, Vilani - not so much. The same's true in D&D - dwarves, elves, orcs, halflings (as long as you hobbit them up) - all are pretty distinctive. Gnomes have been through so many different iterations they've become a kind of gray wash... until a player picks one up, chooses their behavior hook, and strongly plays it.
I also think there's an element of community size. D&D can be figured to have, by far, the largest community of players. It takes someone with the next level of interest to branch from there into other RPGs. It wouldn't surprise me if there's a certain amount of selection bias going on with players with just a skosh more willingness to play out a character's behavior.
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