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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hussar" data-source="post: 6794732" data-attributes="member: 22779">The thing is, there's a difference between setting and campaign.  If the setting says X is rare, but, the campaign has X, then, in that campaign anyway, X is no longer rare.IME, what generally happens is this.  Player chooses to play something rare, in this case a Dragonborn.  So, the first time the PC's meet NPC's, the NPC's cry a shocked, "What the Hell is that?" and an interesting role play moment occurs as the PC's and the NPC's interact and the rarity of the Dragonborn PC is discussed.  No problems.But, then the PC's meet another NPC a while later and again it's, "What the Hell is that?" and you have another role play moment.However, those role play moments tend to lose their lustre after the fifteenth time.  As a 6' 2" white dude living in an Asian country, I can tell you for a fact that that conversation loses a LOT of lustre after the 300th time.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" />  So, the issue gets lampshaded because it's no fun anymore.  At that point, being a Rare X is no longer a campaign issue.  We stop dealing with it, even though, realistically, we should be having this same conversation with every new NPC, but, having the same interaction over and over again is boring.  And Rare X, in this case our Dragonborn character is no longer rare - it's common as any elf or halfling because, beyond this point, no one bothers to comment on it again.  If you don't care, then fair enough, no problem, but, it does mean that by playing X, the campaign is pretty much taking the concept of "X is rare" largely off the table.  It gives a very skewed view of the setting.  As was mentioned, the Drow, Minotaur, intelligent blob group should be a major issue wandering around the Realms.  it really should be.  But, after the second or third time, it stops being fun, and it stops being an issue.  Repeat this over many campaigns, and people have a view of the Realms that the Realms is this huge melting pot of weird races that all get along and every bar in Waterdeep is a scene from the Cantina.Playing a rare X, whatever that rare is, changes how the group views that setting.</blockquote>

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