James Heard
Explorer
Generally any consideration of the "fluff" in a race gets tossed aside when I'm figuring out the mechanics of what I want to accomplish and find out that I'm almost always better off playing a human than anything else because of the extra feat. When I play a game with a significant level start off point though, sometimes I'll throw in the odd elf or halfling for personality or combination of abilities. I've played a dwarf just once in 3E and it didn't suck, but it didn't do much for me. I've had a lot of fun with gnomes on a lark, but mechanically there's really not much going on for how I end up using them versus what they're really good at. I've never had so little interest in non-combat that I decided that throwing away all of my skill points in exchange for a +1 damage mod was worth playing a Half-Orc. And after watching half-elves become suspiciously rabbit-like during years of nice multiclassing options in AD&D, I've yet to see anyone play a Half-Elf outside of Eberron where they at least can borrow into some nifty Half-Elf only abilities.