If they weren't in the phb...

[Cadfan]

I voted "none of the above," because it was closest to the correct answer, but I meant something a little unusual by it.

I like to run campaigns in coherent worlds. For me, this means fewer sentient races. This is because it is hard for me to feel like I am adequately developing an entire sentient species unless I make it actually involved in the game's plotline.

So, I would allow any of those races, BUT ONLY MAYBE ONE AT A TIME. I can envision a cool world where there are Humans, Elves, and Dragonborn. Or Dwarves, Halflings, and Tieflings. Or whatever. I am just not particularly good at worlds with Humans, Elves, Half Elves, Eladrin, Dwarves, Tiefling, Dragonborn, etc, etc, gnomes, etc.

So if a player came to me and said "can I play a dragonborn?" the answer would probably be no, because the world wouldn't have dragonborn in it. Unless the player thought to ask me in advance of the campaign, in which case I'd probably just edit my notes to add dragonborn into the game.

 

[Mercule]

First thing I'm doing is banning halflings.

Yup. Actually, I did that about six years ago.

Tieflings and dragonborn get a big shrug from me. I'll have to see how they actually read, and then whether my setting has room for them. Tieflings may end up in a re-written niche, similar to 3e elan -- which were included, not as a "reborn" race, but as an aberrant evolution of an existing group of humans that have used eugenics for centuries to strengthen their people's inclination toward manifesting psionics. Not saying tieflings will occupy the same niche, just that, if I use them, they'll probably have very different fluff than the standard. Heck, they may end up being the statistical basis for my 4e trollborn (see the 2e Vikings supplement).

The eladrin are a no-brainer, though. Eladrin are what elves are, IMC, and always have been. The better question is whether I'm going to include the new "elf" race. Other than the name, eladrin isn't any more of a "new race" than elf. It just depends on what you mean by "elf".

 

[Crazy Jerome]

I probably won't allow them, as written, in a 4E campaign, even though they are in the PHB. Does that answer the question?

Tielflings are out, period--unless my players really, really want the kind of campaign that they would fit into--and my players won't. Dragonborn probably get a bunch of house rules and a new name, and will fit in some things we will do. Eladrin get renamed "gnome" and shortened to fit the name, and probably used more or less as is. If that counts as "using them", then I guess they are the exception.

Now, if I were running a 4E campaign for a bunch of new players that I don't know as well as my current group, I'm not sure. Tielfings would probably still be out, but I'm open to other things, based on what the players want to do.

 

[lutecius]

eladrin duh .... they're the elves.

tiefling :\ as a NPC race with cosmetic and fluff changes, as PC if a player really insists.

dragonborn how unseemly! no tail? ...no game!

 

[Bluenose]

Eladrin actually fit very well with one of my elven cultural groups, while elves fit the other. Both can appear without any problems.

I'm frankly astonished at how close the Tiefling background is to the one that they have in my homebrew setting. Certainly if I run a game that's in the relevant area - it is a long way from what I consider my main "play region" - I'd allow them without question. In the main region I'd want a good justification for why they are travelling a long way from home.

Dragonborn will be much more of a problem. I haven't really get any existing regions they could come from so they either have to drop in out of nowhere or I have to detail a new region they could come from. In the second case, that means somewhere even further away from where most of the games are set. I can do it, but there really isn't that much value unless one of my players really desparately wants to play one, in which case I'll probably try to work something out with them.

The only race I really want that won't be there is the half-orc, but I should be able to do something with the MM version. Gnomes and Half-elves are the ones I would have been happy to lose, and I'm not that bothered that the half-elf made it.