Making Race Matter

[pogre]

WFRP had negatives for Fellowship checks that involved different races. A big penalty for a Dwarf dealing with an Elf, a minor penalty for Humans dealing with any other race.

You could do something similar for social (CHA) checks.

Races do not matter much in my game. I do ban certain races that do not fit into a campaign world, but it's for flavor reasons - not mechanics.

 

[Oofta]

I try to make personalities of NPCs reflect their background and take race into consideration when determining motivation, style and interactions. Race definitely influences how others react, and it should be perfectly clear to anyone when I describe a scene whether it's a dwarven keep, elven town or gnomish city.

But other than that? I don't force anything on my players. Whether or not they want to emphasize their background is completely up to them. I'm not going to force my style of play, where race is a huge influence on my character's attitudes, on to them.

So I encourage and reward people for being true to their roots, but I don't punish them for not playing the "right" way.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Difficult one to answer, but first a question, it sounds like you want more rp and race to matter in rp.

If you want more rp then rp at the party. Run a less fighty campaign but talk about it with your players first and get them to see your point and at least meet you part way.

The other way would be to narrate what is happening differently depending on the race of the character doing.
So the human mage doing a History check, you might narrate, "That it says in the Annals of Meenthoughes, that on the 23 year since the founding of the monastery that in the nearby town of Togher was destroyed by the dragon Draoightdearag and...."
Where as a elf making a similar check might say "There is something about that in the Song of Maeglin... " and he starts singing in High Elvish

and encourage the players to add details like that in their rp.

 

[Guest 6801328]

I would say think about making the character matter, of which race is one part. As an earlier poster suggested, think of ways to tie the character's race (and everything else about them) into the story.

 

[cbwjm]

If you want race to be important, have little rewards that benefit players of certain races throughout the campaign. If you are in an elven city, the elf player has the basic knowledge to get around. Perhaps the dwarves in certain areas have vaults that require specifically enchanted rune stones to open and when the players encounter the vault, turn to the dwarf player and tell them that they know exactly what this is and how to open it. Half-orcs might have a good understanding of orc tribes and which ones might be sympathetic, or at least not openly hostile, to the parties goals.

Of course, players might still not care about their chosen race in which case, why worry about it, just play and have fun with what's in front of you?

 

[Shiroiken]

The best way IMO is based on how NPCs act, and making sure cultural references can be found during adventures. You don't have to beat the players over the head with it, but you can at least incorporate it into the game in a way that they become aware of it, even if they choose not to roleplay it themselves.

If you want to have a plot hook where an NPC comes looking for aid from the party, have the NPC be of the same race as on of the PCs, and have them seek that PC out. This can be especially true if one race is fairly mistreated/disliked (such as halflings in my own campaign), where help may be harder to come by. The NPC won't have a problem with help from the other PCs, but assumes that the PC will help out of racial loyalty (very useful for dwarves or dragonborn, who are seen as loyal).

Have the PCs meet with an NPC at a tavern that caters to a specific race (especially one the PCs have). While they don't turn anyone away or treat them badly, the setup is designed for that race, making it uncomfortable for other races. Dwarves have short, but wide chairs, while elves have narrow ones; halflings and gnomes are all small sized. Perhaps the food and/ or is culturally designed, such as elvish feywine (mildly alcoholic to elves, but puts everyone else into a stupor) or hardened food designed for dragonborn teeth.

Have part of an adventure be based around a racial tradition or celebration in your world. If the killer knew that the elven merchant would be returning from the graveyard at midnight, they had to know about the elven tradition of meditating with one's ancestor's on the Eve of Passing, indicating an elf, half-elf, or someone who lived among the elves.

 

[Riley37]

I hope you get useful answers for your purposes. Here's something to keep in mind. Last month a discussion of race and ancestry in D&D went on for many pages before it got so toxic and/or partisan than a mod closed it. Apparently there is a range of opinions among EN Worlders about race and racism in the USA and elsewhere in real world; for example, "there is still racism in the USA" is a majority opinion but not a consensus. There is also a range of strong opinions about how real world race and ancestry interacts with race and ancestry in D&D, and how it *should* interact. Plus a variety of quibbles about vocabulary. Not to mention the relationship between race in Tolkien vs. race in D&D, let along the difference between race rules in 1E through 5E. So I recommend that you read whatever responses arise, in light of a very wide range of perspectives and assumptions.

 

[Imaculata]

Race matters only when the world acknowledges the race chosen by the players. That means npc dwarves would react differently to a dwarf PC, compared to a human PC.

In my homebrew pirate campaign for example, dwarves are considered the most loyal crew a ship can have. They never commit mutiny. Its all a matter of adding your own flavor to a race.

 

[Li Shenron]

First a bit about my group's tendency: we choose our character race based on stat boosts and whatever ability the race might grant. After that, race hardly matters at all. And, I'm trying to think of ways to make it matter.

I am not sure about whether your group tendency is because they like playing that way, or because they think they have to.

I am going to assume that you and your group are together with the idea of making race matters more. But if they like exploiting racial benefits, then you're going to have to offer more of them, while if they don't necessarily like it, you can make races matter more only in terms of story and narrative.

Classes seem to get all the love, but what mechanics aside from a few racial feats that don't really "distinguish" characters IMO does race get in the game?

Classes get more love because a class defines the functional role of the character within the adventuring group. Then, both a class and a race (and a background) can deliver the narrative role.

That's perhaps the reason why in 5e both races and backgrounds don't normally provide functional benefits beyond the first level. Of course, in older editions such as BECMI the playable races were classes, so this just proves that there isn't only one way it has to be. But the current situation in 5e is that indeed the only racial benefits you can acquire during a campaign are in the form of very few feats from a supplement, or possibly some race-restricted magic items (I don't even remember if there are any in the DMG, or if you have to design them yourself). No other mechanics officially provided.

I can't make my characters role play. I can't force them to play the differences between an elf vs. a dwarf.

That's ok, I don't think it's generally a good idea because it leads to stereotypes. Making being an elf/dwarf matter is not the same as making all elf/dwarf be stereotypical.

How do others handle the distinctions between race? Do you also just ignore it?

...

So, I ask a genuine question: what do you all do to make race matter in your games?

I don't. I have DMed 5e for 3 gaming groups, plus a PbP game. In the PbP game I let the players play races normally, but in all my tabletop games I did something different. However the main motivator was that I always had more beginners/casual players than people who actually played D&D before, and I just noticed that at first level the amount of stuff that a typical race (except Human) grants roughly doubles the character complexity... because of this, I have always either ignored racial benefits (i.e. let players pick a race for narrative reasons, but everyone uses Human stats), or simplified them to 1-2 benefits instead of the full package.

So what could I suggest you to do in your case...

Functionally there really is very little you can do with the official material. As I mentioned, there are only Xanathar's racial feats, but they are really few. IIRC each character would ever only qualify for 1 or maybe 2 feats, so there is almost no choice, you either take the additional feat for you, or you don't.

But generally speaking feats are a very good idea, because they give the player a choice, and they are already built-in into the class advancement rules. You don't need house rules to design new feats. So if you're into some homebrewing, I suggest you design a good bunch of feats for each of the races that your players are currently playing. It's also probable that some 3rd party publishers already made this, if you'd rather buy some material than design it yourself, or look around this forums for shared material.

Beyond feats, you could introduce racial backgrounds (not good, they are again a 1st level choice, and of minimal impact), racial subclasses (much harder to design) and even racial equipment (not just magic items with a label "elves only", but also mundane items that only a specific race is proficient with).

edit: There's another "trick" but I don't think it works in your case, since you've already started playing and your players probably already have the PHB... but when you play with beginners who don't even have the PHB or know the game in advance, you can always present character options as race-exclusive (or also class-exclusive, but that doesn't matter here), even if by default they are open to everyone. So you could for example say that the Assassin subclass is half-orc only, that illusion spells are gnome-only, or that the Magic Initiate feat is elf-only. If instead of ~80 feats open to everyone you had maybe 10-12 open, and all the remaining feats split up into the different races, it definitely deliver the feel that race matters more!

Narratively instead, the sky is the limit... you could start by allocating territories and nations to specific races in your fantasy world, instead of the usual cosmopolitan standard, and then strengthen the ties of all members of each race to their kingdom and culture, for example in terms of call of duties, bonds to NPCs, seasonal affairs etc.

 

[Ymdar]

Usually dwarf strongholds would not let any other race enter than dwarves. The dwarf PC might have to convince the guards to let them in. Once inside the dwarves would be one attitude more negative to characters of other races.
I often penalize PCs playing with rare or unknown races: If the PC pretends to be a guardsman in a human town as a tabaxi, they will get disadvantage. Tieflings would be often considered evil and would be blamed for any crime. Drows would get hunted with pitchforks. Some times this would result in plothooks, other times this would present the players with examples of the drawbacks of their "better stat" races. On the other hand nobody would really notice halflings outside halfling lands which could make things easier for a sneaky PC.