Racial characteristics most likely to be played at your tables?

[Blue]

This is hard - almost every character plays up their race, both in the games I play and the game I run. The human PC, which are most "generic" as a race, play up their culture.

Of course, I play in and run games with strong cultures/races. For instance, in the game I run even the monstrous demihumans have unique cultures (ask about my socialist caste-driven hobgoblins, with their LN druids who think the best way to protect animals and plants are to domesticate them.)

Another example is I play in FR. So you aren't just a 'human', you're from Calimshan or Turm or Amn or Cormyr or Tethyr or ..., and each gives you a specific flavor of character.

I did chose dwarves just to pick something. Mainly because I can picture a few "blah" of most other races, but every dwarf you'd know was a dwarf just listening to them played for half a session.

Cheers,
=Blue(23)

 

[Eltharon]

Dwarves (which I chose) or Orc/Half Orc. But I'd imagine that orcs and big, dumb humans are incredibly similar in RPing terms.

 

[Angel Tarragon]

Scottish Dwarves. I don't like it.

I once played an Irish inspired Dwarf.

I also played a Germanic inspired Dwarf.

 

[Masquerade]

Dwarves are stereotyped the most IME. I haven't seen this problem at all with the other options.

 

[dpmcalister]

Scottish Dwarves. I don't like it.

Horses for courses, I love it (but, then, I'm a Scot living in England so can really ham up my accent )

Currently playing a halfing who is, more or less, stereotyped to the original, pre-3e, halfling mould. Even down to dumping skill points in Profession (Cook) - but then, as I'm playing a beguiler, I have enough skill points for that

 

[Phlebas]

I went for Halfling as well, due to my halfling conjurer (second breakfast anyone?) who always has unseen servants and secure shelters for that just like home feel to 'roughing it'.

My Shifter is a little primeval - tendency to growl when annoyed and then describe every situation in terms of the hunt

Dwarves have always been 'celtic' to me - but then i'm from london orig. so my best efforts at accents drift from scottish, to irish and to welsh via pakistani....

 

[Clavis]

The basic cultural inspirations for the non-human PC races in my Campaign are:

Halflings: maudlin, overly religious, ignorant, thieving American rednecks. The Halfling player really loves the stereotype and role-plays it.

Elves: polyamorous, bisexual, drug-addled hippies. Elven neighborhoods in cities are like Haight-Ashbury during the Summer of Love, and Elven villages in the countryside are like an eternal Woodstock. Most elves are stoned most of the time. They have an extremely casual attitude towards sex, and only really draw a line at necrophilia and non-consensual acts. There are two Half-elven players; one who plays up the elven stereotype, and one who generally plays against it. The one who plays up the stereotype is a "Tantric Monk"; like the regular Monk class, but he draws his powers from his sexual energy and "meditates" with prostitutes!

Gnomes: I present them like Swiss Jews with an odd sense of humor. The Gnomes are a major focus of the campaign, and (due to their prominence in banking) are constantly the victims of conspiracy theories about how they secretly run everything. The woman who runs the Gnome in the party really plays up the whimsy and strange humor, but also a "survive by any means" mentality.

Dwarves: dour, greedy, bigoted, sexually repressed German industrialists. I don't present the Dwarves very sympathetically at all, and the campaign has no Dwarven PCs.

Half-Orcs: Orcs in my current campaign are a vile mongrel race formed centuries ago by the interbreeding of criminals and outcasts from the other races. Orcish "culture" is like American prison culture, and has no redeeming features. Orcs are not "noble savages" in my current campaign, although I've presented them that way in previous campaign world. There are no Half-Orc PCs at the moment, however.

 

[Slapzilla]

In my games, there have been two major, memorable racial types.

1) Dwarves have been portrayed as either 19th century Irish immigrant dockworkers that nobody in Boston would hire so they have to prove themselves by being the toughest, most stoic and stubborn s.o.b.s you've ever seen, or, Samurai with hammers and beards.

2) Half-orcs have been played as drunken, loud-mouthed, chip on the shoulder, Deliverance-y, brawling b@$t@rds, too uncouth for barbarians.

I'm just as guilty of playing the stereotype too. I usually DM, but when last I played regularly, I wanted to play a hard-@$$, so I played a Dwarven Monk of Klangenden who learned 'the way' in a Drow prison. Made it to 14th level before life intruded and we had to stop playing. I played up the stone cold hard-@$$ thing by being matter of fact about grappling vampires, mind flayers and liches.

I'm looking forward to playing a half-orc bard soon. Just to play against type.