Heroes of Unlikely Places (Hopefully?)

[Klaus]

One can always look to Thundercats (specially the new one) for a look at world where shifters are the main race.

 

[Quickleaf]

[MENTION=90804]OnlineDM[/MENTION]
Aren't we all? I asked my players in my homebrew campaign not to choose monstrous races and it worked out fine - I ended up with 2 shifter and made their racial heritage a theme of the campaign with a lycanthropic-esque curse afflicting a princess, increasing unrest in a shifter ghetto, and a debate around a dead saint's race.

Overall I've seen more players choose race for mechanical benefits/optimizing than for roleplaying opportunities. In particular I've seen minotaur, dragonborn, and githzerai as chief offenders. It's easy to play the stereotypical elf or dwarf, but these monstrous races don't have examples in popular media of archetypal characters.

 

[Shemeska]

Of all monster races, I think the most overdue are goblins/hobgoblins

Goblins of Golarion
We Be Goblins (module)

Not 4e, but could be converted (or the fluff used for inspiration) certainly if you wanted.

 

[WalterKovacs]

@OnlineDM
Aren't we all? I asked my players in my homebrew campaign not to choose monstrous races and it worked out fine - I ended up with 2 shifter and made their racial heritage a theme of the campaign with a lycanthropic-esque curse afflicting a princess, increasing unrest in a shifter ghetto, and a debate around a dead saint's race.

Overall I've seen more players choose race for mechanical benefits/optimizing than for roleplaying opportunities. In particular I've seen minotaur, dragonborn, and githzerai as chief offenders. It's easy to play the stereotypical elf or dwarf, but these monstrous races don't have examples in popular media of archetypal characters.

The Minotaur at least has WoW's Tauren as a kind of archetype ... while there isn't a character to point to, they do have a bit of a racial identity with the way they live, lending themselves to a sort of primal background in that respect.

 

[Klaus]

The Minotaur at least has WoW's Tauren as a kind of archetype ... while there isn't a character to point to, they do have a bit of a racial identity with the way they live, lending themselves to a sort of primal background in that respect.

Plus, we've had minotaurs-as-PCs in D&D since Dragonlance and Taladas.

And now that I think of it, hobgoblins go further back, to Birthright.

 

[Incenjucar]

Plus, we've had minotaurs-as-PCs in D&D since Dragonlance and Taladas.

And now that I think of it, hobgoblins go further back, to Birthright.

And of course the Complete Book of Humanoids, which included hobgoblins, and Planescape predate Birthright. And vampires predate clerics.

 

[ourchair]

I'm waiting for Heroes of the Exotic Orient and Heroes of the Nubian Realms, which will allow players to tap into the Asian and Negro power sources.

 

[Mummolus]

I'm waiting for Heroes of the Exotic Orient and Heroes of the Nubian Realms, which will allow players to tap into the Asian and Negro power sources.

While I think D&D on the whole could benefit from a bit of Asian and African influence, I doubt this is the way to go about it.

 

[Camelot]

While I don't need Wizards to make my crunch for me, I would eat up (figuratively) a book that finally had the monster races. I don't have the resources they have to playtest things, and I like balanced games. Let me be another to say that I really wish they would make a mosnter-as-PC book.

 

[Peraion Graufalke]

While I think D&D on the whole could benefit from a bit of Asian and African influence, I doubt this is the way to go about it.

It looks like you rolled low on your Insight check, or your Goggles of Sarcasm Detection are broken.