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Message: <blockquote data-quote="CuRoi" data-source="post: 5452072" data-attributes="member: 98032">The above seems to focus on your true problem IMO. I'd agree with previous posts that I'm not sure the variety of odd races and such is what is directly affecting your enjoyment. I'd wager these crazy choices were made purely for rules mechanics reasons and less for actual story reasons. With that as a basis, there is no way you wil ever see the PCs oddities become a seamless part of the overall story. So, the focus of the game is pretty much strategy (rules) and joking around (OOC social interaction). Both of which are fine, but you seem to be wanting an additional element your group isn't providing - collaborative storytelling. Last night I sat down with my 10 year old son to play DnD. He flipped through the MM and the PHB and decided he wanted to play a Minotaur. I'm a fairly "vanilla rules" but "in-depth story" sort of DM and normally I'd have a whole race selection planned out for a campaign. I'd probably not have Minotaur on the list. This was just a one shot thing for fun and I was more open to the idea and since he was the only player, I didn't have to worry about keeping things balanced for a whole group. I know many players would pick something like Minotaur because they were simply tunnel visioned on the fact that the creature gets incredibly high bonuses to strength, gets con bonuses, etc. etc. and they had probably had been crunching numbers all night for what they would do with that strength. Which is fine - I'm not at all speaking out against power gaming (nor saying you can't make a fascinating character out of a Minotaur). All of that is a part of the game. But I want to see just as much if not more effort put into the non-numeric side of the character. At any rate, my son wanted his Minotaur to use a bow as his main weapon. He wanted to have armor and wield a one-handed weapon without using a shield. All "un-optimized" choices, but the important thing was he was making his own vision of what that character should be. Nothing stereotypical about it, which inadvertently is the stuff of legends (i.e. the fat tobbaco farmer turned adventurer mentioned previously) and something you can start to develop an intriguing story around. I could have steered toward a more "optimal" character generation by letting the rules dictate things instead of his imagination - but that defeats the purpose. By letting him make those decisions and not the mechanics, he was creating something he would feel more attachment to. As an aside - once we started playing, we reached a point where he was approached by an elf maiden in distress (I was using an old ADD module). My son had read a letter (a pull-out) which he found earlier that sort of described the elf madien's plight. He imediately said "I'll help you" when she asked for his assistance. Sometimes I miss players like that...</blockquote>

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