Yes. They’re all “just people”. No matter how fantastical, the gate guard in the city of brass is more defined by being a gate guard of a magical city than he is by being a djinn. He may be bored, eager to take a bribe, resentful of those above him, or he may be amiable, unhurried, and eager to give directions and talk about his favorite place to get coffee in the city. There are elements that will be different for him than an efreeti guard, or an earth genasi guard, or a tortle guard, but the broad strokes are mostly “guard”.
And why would that be ? Djinni are a highly magical race, with powers, a history and culture, why would all that be almost negated by his "job" ?
Moreover, honestly you don't even make a good case of saying that he is defined as a gate guard, since in the following sentence, you are actually saying that, in the end, it's mostly overridden by his personality anyway. Don't get me wrong, as I am totally in line with that point, when creating an NPC, personality is probably the most important factor anyway. But race (especially when it's a fantastic one to once more avoid the funny hats, and even a factor such as longevity/immortality/destiny/reincarnation/etc. can mean a lot), religion, culture, job, family, etc. are all important factors.
So no, I totally disagree, they should never be "just people", this leads to a much flatter game where you only exploit one possible dimension of what could be a highly fantastic world. If you want to play low fantasy where everyone is "human with variations" (there have been tons of fantasy settings like this which work great for both novels and some RPG), it's fine, but there is no reason to impose this on anyone, or to pave the way for total uniformity on the basis that there should not be any discrimination whatsoever.
Once more, stereotyping and generalisation are bad in the real world, but in a (high) fantasy world, they are a very useful tool to define a varied and rich world, and unless you are striving for total blandness, they are unavoidable. For example you yourself have used stereotypes of "guards" that people doing a security job might find extremely offensive (in particular since you started by "bored, eager to take a bribe").
I really hate this trend towards total blandness in fantasy world, which goes with putting "wrong" labels on really good and useful words and concept on the basis that they are being used in a negative way by some people out there. My ideal TTRPG Fantasy World is Glorantha, where there are races and cultures and people with personality and religion, but where it all makes sense, where it's perfectly OK to hate another religion, culture, species or race because of historical/magical/divine/economic/etc. reasons, and where all of the species are certainly not equal, some a stronger, dumber, more clever, more resistant, magically infused, divinely protected, suited to environments and this reflects on their culture, way of life, relations, prejudices, etc.
It's rich, vibrant, and even more importantly, it's extremely conducive to really great fantasy roleplaying, because the stereotypes help define relations of friendship and conflict and therefore drama, which is at the core of every good story ever told. Which does not mean that you have to play according to stereotype, but because they are strong in the game, it also helps you really understand what playing against a stereotype really means in terms of roleplaying, and how to make it great in the game instead of (as is the current tread in D&D), only doing it for the technical bonuses that it gives you.
Where Stafford was more clever was in creating stereotypes that are so extreme and so different from those of our real world and standard fantasy (elves are really plants for example and reproduce as such) that there can be no confusion and it's way harder to criticise them on the basis of real world difficulties.
But for me, that's the way to go in D&D, not the "bland" way of uniformisation. Fantasy races/species can be whatever you want, it's perfectly OK for some to be stronger, more clever, weaker, dumber, whatever, this together with strong religious influences (which are usually linked, a god of fire would not create water dwelling creatures) clearly has an impact on their culture, which in turn has an impact on the way they live and the "jobs" they do, etc. And on top of that, when looking at individual NPCs, of course, it's natural for them to have a personality which might or might not be in accordance with all that precedes, but there is no such thing as a culture made only of rebels, if most of the members of a society do not conform to their stereotypes, it does not exist.
And honestly, looked at in that light, I see absolutely zero problem with sentences which I suspect will disappear from the game in the next iteration due to mostly external pressure, such as:
- The evil deities who created other races, though, made those races to serve them. Those races have strong inborn tendencies that match the nature of their gods. Most orcs share the violent, savage nature of the orc gods, and are thus inclined toward evil. Even if an orc chooses a good alignment, it struggles against its innate tendencies for its entire life. (Even half-orcs feel the lingering pull of the orc god’s influence.)
- Orcs are savage raiders and pillagers with stooped postures, low foreheads, and piggish faces with prominent lower canines that resemble tusks. [and all the rest of the Gruumsh story which is great to show how his anger came from being last and rejected]
The sad thing for me, is that people arguing against this mostly do not argue about the basis that having been created by evil deities, the creatures have therefore created a savage culture of raiders and murderers. They argue because these are
orcs, and because of the other stereotypes about orcs from other medias than D&D. There are cultures like this in Glorantha (and coming from really savage and evil deities), but people don't object because they are not linked to any real earth stereotype...
By the way, I'm French, but I can be rational and not take offense about all the stereotypes thrown even in joking over a lot of the posts above, but I can totally guarantee to you that if some racial stereotypes had been used instead, this thread would have been locked a long time ago, even if they had been used in only really good jokes. So I'm not saying this at all for you
@doctorbadwolf (this is important, it's not an answer to your post at all), but in the end people who reject stereotypes and generalisations on principle should really look at themselves in a mirror and check for their own use of them.