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Message: <blockquote data-quote="SageMinerve" data-source="post: 5274329" data-attributes="member: 69067">The issue of “Race allowance” has a couple of aspects:1) The composition of your playing group: Is this a group of your close friends or a group that comes together only for your game ? Or something in between ? I find that this question is very important in how I deal with my players. DMing for my close friends, especially since I roleplay with them since forever, some things become automatic: they know what emphasis I like to put on roleplay. They know that: 1) they'll have to come up with a good story for their PC AND develop a personality frame (major traits, some minor ones); 2) all the players will develop collectively the story of how their group came together (because after 25 years or DMing, I've become allergic to the infamous meeting in a tavern). It's their responsibility to make sure that the group works, not crunch-wise (although it's still important), but character-wise.From the couple times I've DMed with strangers or acquaintances in a game that wasn't to be a simple dungeon crawl, I realized that I need to be both more diplomat AND clearer on what I expect. That means that I have to put clear boundaries on what I find acceptable or not, and one of the major aspects is the choosing of a race. Why boundaries, you ask ? Because people unfamiliar with each other will find that they're more comfortable knowing exactly what to expect, even if it might seem to limit their freedom. On the specific racial issue, I find that letting people take un-iconic races tends to inhibit their characterization of their PC, because chances are they have no idea whatsoever how a member of that race should act, while everybody is familiar with elves and dwarves (thanks, LotR !)Again, the objective is giving a maximum of freedom in characterization and roleplaying, even at the expanse of character-building options like race. And since I know full well that it's only the rare individual who'll be able to roleplay outside of 1-dimensional stereotypes, I think that giving your players all the tools to support him in his roleplay is one of the biggest responsibilities for a DM.2) Your game world: if you're like me, you like to put a lot of work and details in your game world. Limiting the number of races allows you to come up with a cohesive history, one that's easier to make sense of. The more races you allow, the more said races will fall into 1-dimensional stereotypes. Look at Dark Sun for example (not knocking on the setting, I'm preparing a campaign in Athas!): what are the Halflings ? They're cannibals ! And ?... they eat people ! If you take a look at most game worlds, humans are the dominating race, historically speaking. Why ? Because we understand them. The other races almost always fall in one of two categories: they as a race live on the fringes of civilization, rarely becoming involved in the world events, or they are live in a diaspora in the human nations.Having said that, on the proposed solution by the OP (a Common-Uncommon-Rare classification and limitation), I have to say that I disagree with him. I think it is worse to limit a weird race to one player than to allow more. Why ? Because by allowing only one, you: 1) augment the chances he turns into a loner (somebody else mentioned Wolverine, great example!), thus limiting his roleplaying opportunities; 2) having 2 or more PCs of a same “weird” race gives the players an opportunity to develop a side story involving both of them, thus involving them in a deeper way in the game world; 3) having 2 or more of a same “weird” race should change the outlook from the other PCs and NPCs. What I would do, in the OP's situation, is restrict the number of different weird races, not the number of PCs playing a weird race.</blockquote>

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