How much sergeration of races are in your games?

[Hand of Evil]

In your game cities do you have mixtures of races, like orcs, drow, lizard-folk, and such roaming the streets? I tend to just keep it to selected player races (human, elf, dwarf, Halfling & gnome, do not use others) but what about you?

 

[delericho]

Depends on the setting. My last two campaigns were set in Eberron, so were very much Mos Eisley cantina style. My next campaign is likely going to be in a homebrew setting that is deliberately human-centric.

 

[KirayaTiDrekan]

It varies for my settings a lot. In one, there is a huge metropolis floating on an artificial island that has everything from humans to gnolls to flumphs hanging around and intermingling. In another, the biggest city has a few non-humans, mostly mixed-race humans, but non-humans are distrusted and feared.

In almost all of my settings, I give each race a geographical "starting point" and then, based on how much time has passed and how their culture views other races, I determine how far they've spread out from that starting point.

 

[Celebrim]

In your game cities do you have mixtures of races, like orcs, drow, lizard-folk, and such roaming the streets? I tend to just keep it to selected player races (human, elf, dwarf, Halfling & gnome, do not use others) but what about you?

It varies with the culture, but cosmopolitan societies are the exception and not the norm. Most cities and certainly all non-human cities are highly xenophobic, not only of other races but of foreigners within their own race. Only the big human cities and smaller trading posts operated by other races as points of contact within outsiders are you likely to see a lot of racial diversity. That being said, when you do see racial diversity anywhere, it's usually fairly high and certainly the experience of a PC is usually of a very high racial diversity.

However, while it's not unusual to go to harbor in one of the Storm Coast Free Cities and see humans, elves, drawves, orine, goblins, idresh, sidhe, and hill giants working along side each other, the real Mos Eisley Cantina experience you can get in some campaign settings isn't really available because of cosmology reasons. I don't really have a kitchen sink going, and if you don't belong to a familiar race - were familiar is defined regionally - you'll generally be treated as a monster. A tiefling would attract a mob and be almost certainly killed. A lizard-folk or a minotaur would be killed outright. Even something like a sorcerer is likely to be lynched if their nature is known. Occasional friendly contacts between the free peoples and the lessor servitor races are known, but kept quiet and done on the margins of civilization.

And even where races mingle, racism is ever present. Heck, racism within the races is ever present. The Har hate the Tumesi. The Concheeri hate the Tytherians. The High Elves despise the Wild Elves and vica versa. Mountain Dwarf clans fight all the time, and all collectively despise the Low Dwarfs. And so forth.

 

[Tonguez]

Fr my main city humans and halflings live together but the city does not allow access to orcs, goblins or pixies and gypsies must remain outside the city gates. Now half-orcs are legally treated as humans but face huge amounts of racism and despite the ban, goblins infest the sewers (and are blamed for disease). The city hasn't determined whether gnomes should be classified as halflings or goblins yet, but they are considered pests although not as bad as pixies (pixies should be exterminated on sight)

Dwarfs are allowed as they are considered kin to halflings, but in general dwarfs remain in the mountains and of course have extensive mines only going to town to trade.

Elves are distrusted as they are believed to be made of mist and only remain solid by feeding on the souls of children. Elves have their own cities where other races are banned or enslaved.

Giants are nomadic mountain dwellers but are nonetheless welcome in the city.

Lizard folk are considered primitives with no concept of trade and thus no reason to be in the city.

Elsewhere, the City of Bishnagar, largest city in the world is built on top of a gold dragons hoard. The city is open to everyone and even gnolls, ogres and hags can be seen there. The dragon encourages trade and accepts deposits of gold and other treasures which it adds to its hoard in exchange for enchanted Dragon Marca. Letters of guarantee which have themselves become tradeable commodities (ie paper money). Bishnagar is thus the worlds bank and controls the worlds gold supply

 

[GMMichael]

In your game cities do you have mixtures of races, like orcs, drow, lizard-folk, and such roaming the streets?

Er, no. I was asking myself "who started this madness?" and was about to blame Disney, when I realized that animal-people were started a little earlier than Disney. I believe the Egyptians worshiped some animal-headed gods once upon a time, and probably a culture or two before them.

I like to be able to explain as many things as possible in my games, and animal-people (gnolls, lizardfolk, even orcs are somewhat bestial) are too fanciful for me. I don't lack for badguys - it takes only one race (human) to supply those.

 

[Celebrim]

Er, no. I was asking myself "who started this madness?"

Animists. Basically, they are all fairies.

It was Tolkien though that I think popularized the notion that the different races of 'small gods' could be treated as different races of humanoid rather than purely magical beings, though he was hardly the first. George McDonald had gone there before with things like "The Princess and the Goblin", and Burroughs had gone there from a more science fiction standpoint. And Gygax was a big fan of pulp fantasy, from which we get via Lovecraft and Burroughs (among others) this notion of the esoteric hidden race. And, if you read appendix N, you'll find things like Hiero's Journey by Sterling E. Lanier is straight up the inspiration for Gamma World, with its talking animals. Add to that Gygax's gamist needs for setting, and you end up with the salad bar of humanoid monsters.

 

[Umbran]

It is a bit setting dependent. Historically, most of my D&D games have operated rather like Earth, when everything was still powered by horses, and most seagoing vessels weren't up to the deeps - large areas of fairly uniform racial composition, with a couple of areas or major trade cities with somewhat more mixing.

 

[TarionzCousin]

In almost all of my settings, I give each race a geographical "starting point" and then, based on how much time has passed and how their culture views other races, I determine how far they've spread out from that starting point.

 

[was]

Most of the countries are pretty segregated. The capitals have some minority populations. The only really non-segregated places are the trade guild cities.