I can't think of a single PC race in D&D that isn't just a human with a funny hat but I don't see that as a bad thing. The truth is that I could replace just about any race in D&D with human and tell the exact same story. But the game is a fantasy so I get to replace humans with other people like halflings or orcs.
Thri-Kreen.
Created from the start to have an alien mindset, to be a hunting animal with humanlike intelligence and a wildly different culture.
The result is: Most players either play them as a Human with a Funny Hat and a fixation on a few words that describe their cultural identity. Clutch being a key one.
And those who -do- play the wildly different from human alien psychology are incredibly hard to play with. Both from a player to player perspective (Talking to someone who does their best to have no shared frame of reference) and from a player to DM perspective (It is super hard to get a Thri-Kree that is sincerely alien to do anything to carry the story forward).
The most we can reasonably do is do "Humans" with different cultural traits and identities. In short: Different hats.
But as noted in the previous thread: You can do a -lot- of hats.
Lifespan as a narrative trait/outlook.
Types of Vision and resulting societal/technological changes.
Cultural traits lifted from real world societies rearranged mad-libs style.
Height differences and the resulting architectural differences.
On and on and on and on.
The issue comes from the players. How many hats they're willing to keep track of. Most are happy with 2-3 hats. -Maybe- 4 or 5.
But once there's more Hat than Elf under it, once it becomes a new psychology, it becomes incredibly hard to keep it all together.
That's one of the few ENworld quotes I've saved from before the crash for moments like this.
@barsoomcore hit the nail on the head for me. Ymmv.
That said, I have nothing against walled garden games. I have a problem with the two corolaries that come up when discussing them.
1) they are inherently better than a kitchen sink
2) D&D's rules should cater to this by keeping everything DIY, generic, and limited and it's the role of supplements to add all the necessary connective tissue.
But this is a tangent so if you want to discuss the merits of walled garden vs kitchen sink, we can do that elsewhere.
One more thing:
"I'm inherently suspicious of people who quote themselves As if they were a third party." - Remathilis
1) They -are- inherently better than kitchen sink settings... at telling a specific story. Which is what the people who tout them as being better than pretty much always portray.
2) I haven't really run into that. I believe you, of course, our experiences differ, there... But doesn't a "DIY Generic" setup -benefit- the Kitchen Sink setting way more than the Walled Garden?
If I'm making a walled garden I want -specific- things that fit into it. Having a gummy paste of bland melange doesn't really work. But that simpleness of narrative lends itself well in settings which don't have a particular narrative to carry forward... Doesn't it?
Or, perhaps, it doesn't benefit anyone, since the Kitchen Sink relies on external narrative sources and the Walled Garden has no issue overwriting something they don't like to fit something they do like into their setting... like Athasian Elves being -vastly- different from the elves of other settings.
I think the bland melange is just WotC's way of trying to avoid controversy in the most basic and corporate way possible: Make everything flavorless and hope no one complains about the spice.
Rather than, y'know, giving things their own flavor -without- the loaded real world politics tied to it in order to make a truly exceptional dish.
