D&D General How many Races it too much?

[BookTenTiger]

That's what we agreed to when I ran Curse of Strahd. To fit a more gothic theme, we opted for Human and no more than one of elf, dwarf, or half-elf. It felt more immersive for us, especially given Barovia was almost exclusively human (with a smattering of dying elves), than throwing in a dragonborn or tiefling or even jolly gnomes. Those would fit better in another story.

I think this approach is totally legitimate. I went with the opposite approach in my CoS-inspired game. I changed the races of Barovia to match those of the characters! We wound up with villages of oppressed tortles and lots of Tieflings. It's been a blast!

 

[jmartkdr2]

I wish I could vote twice, since I'm ambivalent on this.

Either you should strictly narrow the choices (like, 1-3) or go for the Star Wars Cantina approach other have described. Anything in between tends to be both limiting but not enough to encourage creativity.

 

[Arilyn]

No particular limit, unless I'm deliberately doing an unusual campaign, in which case I'm not using much in the way of monsters either. The monster manuals are bursting at the seams with sentient creatures, so that's the world. It is, by default, Star Wars cantina. It's D&D. It doesn't make sense, but we have fun. It's kinda like super heroes. Nothing is logical, but there can still be meaningful stories told, so not saying D&D is all fluffy nonsense.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Enough PC races? It is like saying Barbie has got enough number of clothing or G.I.Joe has got enough number of characters. Always there are space for one more. Always there is a player who wants a exotic race because it's as wearing a exclusive Halloween costume.

We have to remember the planetouched races, and not only aasimars, tielflings and genasies. The feywild has got space for lots of different habitants.

We don't talk only about everybody can visit Sigil, but alien races from other planet in the same solar system/crystal sphere. Even the fraals, the litle gray aliens from d20 Future were canon in the 2nd Ed.

 

[matskralc]

I used to be more of a minimalist, but these days I invite the players to play whatever they are into! I then told their character's culture, history, and interests into the campaign world.

This right here. "Play what you want to play" is my mantra and my dumb story isn't so important that I get to take away somebody's fun because of it.

 

[Zsong]

This right here. "Play what you want to play" is my mantra and my dumb story isn't so important that I get to take away somebody's fun because of it.

I just got burned out on kitchen sink campaigns long ago. I can’t dm them anymore. They just don’t interest me as much. Unless I’m doing a planescape setting.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

There can be only one!

Hoomans!

How about two? Humans and the kender.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

But yeah, it is not any specific number. Sometimes you want more human centric setting, and for such a couple of non-human races that are rare work fine, sometimes you want more fantastic feel and need more. Though I definitely feel that one you go above ten they start to kinda blur together and lose any thematic cohesion. I prefer the intelligent species to be pretty distinct from each other, so more limited number works better for that.

 

[Tonguez]

I do 5

1 Gnome
2 Human
2a Human (Half-Elf)
2b Human (Half-Orc)
3 Goliath
4 Aarakora (Parrot)
5 Goblin/Halflings (different culture, same beastie)

 

[grimslade]

I think it really depends on the campaign. I tend toward a lot of races with space in the world, very star wars cantina, in my own campaigns. But, I have run human-only campaigns in a pulp Sword and Sorcery campaign. There is always a way to fit more in the world if your world-building is soft enough. People with hard detailed worlds will have a harder time, but players can work with those DMs to pick something that doesn't break the immersion in the world.