D&D General What are your Core races?

[Blue]

Every campaign I run is in a new homebrew world. In the current one there are no dwarves (genocided), drow are a manufactured race to replace them to mine the (literal) bones of the world, and halflings are also a manufactured race. Wood elves have wrangled vast reservations of land that others can not use from the Imperium. And there's a near-hostile empire of xenophobic blood-sacrifice forest gnomes who use all their wonderful community things to keep everyone else at bay. All of these fit the story.

So my answer to this is - what's the world/story I'm creating for the players to grow? What interests are there Session 0? Picking these in a vacuum does not fit my creative journey.

So let's try and example. I'll open my document of setting and campaign ideas and pick one.

Okay, here's one of my setting ideas - the material plane was filled with portals and rifts and it was used as part of a vast interdimensional battle (who is open - Blood War, Modrons vs. Slaad, celestials vs. fiends, whomever). In order to preserve the plane a great magic was done and sealed it off some time ago. No inter-dimensional hopping anymore. Some sort of ethereal shadow of the local to allow some spells and incorporeal beings to work, but otherwise nothing. Clerics and paladins get power through shared, institutionalized belief. Warlocks from pacts with beings stuck here.

So from a races perspective I'd love to focus on all of the extraplanar hybrids, and the story of this new home. I'd heavily push Genasi, Aasimar, Tiefling, but also Eladrin, Satyr and Firbolg stuck here when the Feywild cut off. Gith(yanki/zerai) could be in the mix. And I could easily have mortal shock troops from the war that are now stuck here and free - hobgoblins, tabaxi, minotaurs, leonin, dragonborn, half-orcs, or bugbears.

I could leave off the three demihumans. Heck, I can allow human as the original inhabitants but disallow the variant human, so most likely there will be no humans at all in the party and instead it's a group of outsiders who are descendants of real Outsiders, and they need to figure out how they and their people fit in. I'd use Tasha's ability to rearrange so there's no classes that get the short end of the stick, and I might open up some racial feats from races that aren't part of the setting to other races. Heck, from the description the only definite from the PHB races would be Tiefling, and possibly Dragonborn and Half-Orcs as shock troops.

But that's to fit the theme of the setting and the story to be told, it's not a judgement on the races themselves. A different setting could have a completely different set.

 

[bedir than]

One thing I'm confused by is the people who run multiple homebrew worlds. What is it that you are trying to learn/discover/answer by running a new world with every campaign?

My homebrew world has been the same, across systems, for about 25 years

 

[DammitVictor]

One thing I'm confused by is the people who run multiple homebrew worlds. What is it that you are trying to learn/discover/answer by running a new world with every campaign?

D&D with collaborative, improv-style worldbuilding, taking turns whitelisting and blacklisting the debris of forty years of D&D lore is amazing.

My Shroompunk game and likely the generic OGC version of the rules will likely include a semi-random and a collaborative model for worldbuilding instead of a coherent default setting.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

One thing I'm confused by is the people who run multiple homebrew worlds. What is it that you are trying to learn/discover/answer by running a new world with every campaign?

My homebrew world has been the same, across systems, for about 25 years

One world can't fulfill all possible D&D playstyles. If I want to play a pre-historic D&D campaign, Ravnica's not going to work for that. If I want to play a futuristic/modern campaign, Dark Sun won't work for that. If I want to play in a post-apocalyptic world, Eberron will not work for that campaign (and, no, the Mournland doesn't count, as that's just a small part of the world).

 

[NaturalZero]

One thing I'm confused by is the people who run multiple homebrew worlds. What is it that you are trying to learn/discover/answer by running a new world with every campaign?

My homebrew world has been the same, across systems, for about 25 years

Right now I'm planning on what to run next and my 3 campaign ideas are:

• An astral sea campaign. The party starts on a planet and discovers they they are part of a larger universe where the most powerful consciousness of any world dictates the rules of reality. High concept space fantasy.
• A homebrew Ravenloft domain based on a Victorian London sort of city. The populace is trapped in a world of gothic horror ruled by a secretive cabal.
• A post-apocalyptic Earth campaign set after a civil war with the Feywild. Postapocalyptic survival and direct referenced to real Earth history play a big role.

I do have a generic kitchen sink setting I use for new players but you can't easily run the same theme in a setting that is just mish-mash of everything. If you have a little low magic world, adding space travel doesn't make sense. If you're trying to run a historical campaign, adding magic might be a no-go. It's the same reason no one just reads one comic series or watches one TV show their whole life - people like trying different stuff.

 

[Ancalagon]

My last full 5e campaign had:

Human
Dwarf
Slugman
Crabman

(it was set in Yoon-Suin )

 

[Wulffolk]

The big problem is that, if they aren't present in the core, it's harder to include them in future or 3PP content. The core needs to support a diversity of things, because many settings will take only a selection or subset.

When writing a setting supplement, even though it shouldn't make much difference, it is often much easier to remove core things than it is to add new things not present in core.

I see that as a much smaller problem than the inverse of that situation.

When something isn't covered in the core rules it is so much easier to write it into a future or 3PP product in a way that best suits that product without any unwanted baggage mandated by "core rules". The core rules should focus on things that are most likely to be common denominators across the majority of settings, in order to keep it stream-lined and not waste space of things that stand a good chance of getting ignored.

When writing a supplement, because it actually does make a big difference, it is much easier to add core things than it is to remove things that were part of the core rules. Once something is part of the "core rules" then certain players feel entitled to use it, making it much more difficult to remove without alienating that player. "The D&D book that I paid $50 for has Dragonborn/Teiflings/whatever in it! It is NOT FAIR that I can't play what I want!"

That was part of the problem as 3rd edition added more books, too many players expected to be able to create every crazy non-sensical concept that they could come up with just because it had been published in an official book. That increases the burden on the DM.

 

[bedir than]

D&D with collaborative, improv-style worldbuilding, taking turns whitelisting and blacklisting the debris of forty years of D&D lore is amazing.

One world can't fulfill all possible D&D playstyles

I guess I'd rather run simultaneous campaigns within the same world, then try to find another group to run a completely different set of questions and themes.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

One thing I'm confused by is the people who run multiple homebrew worlds. What is it that you are trying to learn/discover/answer by running a new world with every campaign?

My homebrew world has been the same, across systems, for about 25 years

Different worlds have different vibes. They shake up preconceived notions about what is and what could be. Different PC Ps get created; different stories get told. Stereotypes get avoided. Freshness emerges.

Without delving into my homebrews at the moment, consider how you’d run Greyhawk stuff for your group. Now consider the same hypothetical for Nehwon, Eberron or Athas.

(…now into my homebrews)

Tolkeinesque elves will differ from crashlanded alien Greys who use high tech to resemble elves of myth, and whose stasis technology has become the reasons for the legends of time-twisted Underhill.

Despite having similar outlooks on life, Tolkeinesque halflings will differ from the TurtleFolk, bucolic anthro snapping turtles who travel the rivers on rafts, plying wares and transporting others.

Standard D&D dwarves will differ from psionic dwarves whose brains have been transplanted into sophisticated automatons.

Planetouched will differ from Nephilim, essentially the same thing, but using racial character levels.

And so forth.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

The 5e PHB has 9 "core" races that are assumed to be basic to D&D 5e in a general way.

For the sake of discussion, let's say that you're putting out your own homebrew campaign setting and you get to choose 9 races but CANNOT include the original 3 demihumans - elf, dwarf, halfling. Your new lineup can be from the history of canonical D&D lore or something new to the game.

What does your world's core 9 looks like?

Goliath
Gnome
Satyr/Dryad
Teifling
Changeling
Dragonborn
Genasi
Shadar-Kai returned to being their own race
Aasimar
Wildfolk/Shifters- rabbitfolk, tortle, etc