D&D 5E What are your world Races?

[steeldragons]

Not just PC available - though, certainly, include those - but I was thinking about the broader/larger world context.

Preferring a homebrew world setting and a "sandbox" style of play, the impulse [most of the time] is to go with the D&D trope of "if it's in D&D, it's in the world somewhere"...even if that means there might be, say, ONE tribe left of a particular people or multiple clans/groups/settlements [even multiple cities!] them, but only found in ONE [possibly quite small] area of the world.

There is a kind of "maximum density", though, I feel, both from a "plausibility/suspension of disbelief" angle: "AnOTHER ever-so-slightly different culture and appearance for a race of goblinoids[elves/reptilians/whatever]?! Come onnnnn Mr./Ms. DM!" ; and a "maintaining interest in the game"/immersion angle: [hyperbolic example numbers] "So there are 142 different species of acknowledged sentient 'peoples' that coexist in this world?"

How many is too many, actual, "races"? Do you curb what you put in a particular setting or even just game -both pc and npc? What is your criteria for doing so, if you do. Why don't you, and -follow up- How do you explain/get around it, if you don't?

And, if not obvious from the thread title, if you are inclined to share, what ones do you use...or not?

Just something I got to wonderin' on a lazy Saturday afternoon.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

In my campaign Dwarves, Elves, Humans, Gnomes, and Hobgoblins have political areas of control on the map. Halflings, Orcs, and Lizardmen are mainly found in certain areas but aren't a political force. All other intelligent species aren't large enough to have areas to themselves, but instead live in either "the wild" or in areas controlled by others.

For example, the Hobgoblin lands host a lot of tribes of goblins and bugbears which live outside the cities and towns proper. The hobgoblins allow this because its a good pool of conscripts if they go to war. The halflings live in a shire that is technically half in the elven and half in the human lands. Since they are peaceful and productive citizens they aren't pushed out, but neither do they have a say in the higher level governments of their lands.

Tieflings, Dragonborn, and other weird PC races carry on as individuals in the society. Tieflings can make more tieflings, but there is not tiefling city or settlement.

 

[Paraxis]

Mostly I just use the kitchen sink approach and if it is in a rule book it is in my world somewhere. When I run a published world like Eberron I use those races and racial distributions, but then Eberron is a kitchen sink setting.

The last big multi year campaign I ran in my own world, the major races had chosen sides in an ancient demonic war and that is how the goblinoid races were made. So there were Humans, Dwarves & Bugbears, Elves & Hobgoblins, Gnomes & Goblins. Halflings were a shapeshifting fey race that could turn into small mammals.

 

[RhaezDaevan]

I've been tinkering with a setting where the usual common races(other than human) are uncommon races, and homebrew races take the top spots with the human societies. These homebrew races include a bear-like race, a living plant race and a race of spirits that possess dead humans given to them by the human societies.

 

[AntiStateQuixote]

Sandbox world. Primary setting (to this point) is Port Exeter which is a large island city à la Manhattan blended with Waterdeep and a heavy dose of Sanctuary from Thieves' World.

Races:

Human:

• Mastvani: roughly Eastern European with a strong Gypsy influence. Natives of the Port Exeter region. They are currently a downtrodden and enslaved race.
• M'Bongo: vaguely North African analog from across the ocean. A former pirate captain, Prince-Governor Andwele Omari, has ruled Port Exter for about 20 years.
• Ostoman: men from the South that are basically Anglo-Saxon feudal lords with interests and estates in Port Exeter. A king among the Ostoman ruled Port Exeter before Prince-Governor Andwele came to the city and killed him.

Hill Dwarf
Highlanders from the hills west and south of Port Exeter with a Scottish cultural influence. Renowned blacksmiths, craftsmen, and tinkers as well as stout warriors.

Mountain Dwarf
German/Austrian cultural influences. Live in high mountains west and south of Port Exeter. A large contingent of Mountain Dwarfs are the taskmasters in the slave mines beneath the city. The Mountain Dwarfs have for centuries defended their lands against the many savage humanoids and giant tribes near their home.

High Elf
My very ignorant view of medieval Japanese culture from across the great ocean east of Port Exeter. They have recently started exploring the ocean and the continent where Port Exeter is. They have an embassy and quite a few nobles at the Prince-Governor's court in Port Exeter.

Wood Elf
These plainsmen from the lands far west of Port Exeter have strong Native American (North and Central America) cultural influences. They are rare in Port Exeter.

Halfling

• Bratimala: Strong Arabian Nights influence. The Halflings come from far west (past the Wood Elf plains). Renowned traders, scholars, and explorers.
• Naviosa: From the eastern continent across the sea, the Naviosa resemble early Renaissance Spanish complete with muskets and great navies (and pirates and privateers).

Dragonborn
Extremely rare. Most often born human and under go an apotheosis during adolescence. Some rare few are born as Dragonborn, the product of a Dragonborn mother mating with another Dragonborn or with a human. They have no culture or homelands. They are "freaks" in the human cultures. Most common among the Mastvani, but some few are born to the other human cultures.

Drow
Unknown in the world for now.

Gnomes
Unknown in the world for now.

Tiefling
Devilbred humans from a lost culture at least a thousand years ago and forgotten by everyone. Very much 4th edition Tieflings but with no cultural knowledge of Bael Turath.

"Savage" Humanoids
Goblins
Well, Hobgoblins really, are a decadent and fallen race à la Ancient Rome. Their civilization fell to some forgotten natural disaster. They recall some greatness of the old times, and still run a disciplined military, but they have lost their way and fallen to barbarism in all except their martial pursuits. They drive their goblin and bugbear servants in war. They have vast lands in the far south west, but there are small outposts and minor clans spread throughout the main continent.

Gnolls
Viking-inspired raiders from the lands north of Port Exeter.

Orcs
Roughly Irish-influenced but with a lot more savagery and lack of any civilizing influence. They live in the lands west and north of Port Exeter and raid the farmlands nearby regularly.

 

[Mercule]

Very humanocentric, with other races in play. Standard races presented at PC creation are human, elf, dwarf, hobgoblin, Kalashtar (renamed, but the stats were a perfect fit for something), trollborn (see 2E Viking book). I actually like dragonborn, so I'm looking for the right way to add them in.

Also present as some level of "civilized", but not available as a PC race unless specifically requested, are: orc, goblin, gnome, gnolls, kobold, and various giants (including ogres and firbolg).

Worth noting: Tieflings exist in the 2E context and appearance. There are no drow, but there is a nation of evil elves. Gnolls are scavengers of other civilizations and their major arcanist are warlocks who make pacts with dead/forgotten gods. Half-orcs and half-elves exist, but are rare and don't form societies of their own.

There are very few things that I'd say are absolutely non-existent (except gnomes that have any affinity for mechanical tinkering), but anything beyond the above is unlikely to be a major mover in the world, racially speaking (dragons and planar powers tend to be individually potent, but rare).

I definitely think there's a saturation point. At a certain level, races lose their distinctiveness. I'm definitely a believer that, if the only thing that makes a race stand out is its stats, it shouldn't be included. There are no "big, strong humans", "androgynous, lithe humans", "short, surly humans", or "humans with tire treads on their forehead" IMC. You can play them any way you'd like, but each race has unique aspects that are hard to escape.

 

[Lackhand]

My campaign is pretty standard fantasy, but a bit off the track for d&d.
I have:
Humans.
Elves of 3 types: Sea Elves, which are high elves, Wood Elves, and thirdly Fomor the foe-elves, mutated and fishbelly-pale. The first two are blue-green in coloration; the fomor use the stats of drow, kuo-toa and D&D's Fomor giants. Lots of other fey too; hags, sprites, etc.
Vor: my Klingons, use the stats of dwarves or half-orcs but their role in the world is less natural-ally-of-human and more competitor-culture. They're human-ish sized, love to drink and fight, and can grow horn ridges. Ogres and Ettins are natural true-breeding mutations amongst particularly fierce Vor. Descended from the once pure race which only exists now as the Oni.
Gnomes: wee folk. They adapt to the land around 'em and can be found in many types, from the hordes of chaos worshipping goblins to pastoral farmers or the forest or rock gnomes. One big fractious family.
Gnolls: My feel-good-to-slay race, uplifted wolves. They also occur in a few other forms, uplifted farm animals like goats, sheep, cows etc. Always somehow engineered; created by a mad scientist, servants of a godling, demoniac byproduct, etc. Since they're pack animals, only their leaders tend to have much going on mentally. They know beast speech and can pass along lycanthropy. They are found alongside giant or intelligent animals as well.
Kobolds: more like bats than dragons. Lore says they were once bat-based gnolls that escaped; nobody's sure but they've got wings for arms, some can use them to fly but most can't; cowardly, verminous, etc; they're a pest animal in large cities.
Giants. Since I've peeled off all of the other giants, this is just d&d's true giants. Ordning. Yay.
Dragons: chromatic, silver and gold only. Dragons are extreme heterozygotes (like apples!), so you can't tell what you'll get out of an egg until you hatch it. Dragons lay huge clutchces of eggs, almost all of which hatch into dragon born (of various hues), who usually then go on to form their own societies. Most dragonborn are copper, bronze and brass, but any color is possible. Half dragons aren't actually dragon-parented, but instead exposed to true ancient dragon's blood, a potent transformative reagent.

I know there are others wandering around; I want centaurs and satyrs and stuff, but those might be planar interlopers; the above are the naturally occurring races.
Well, the gnolls are sort-of naturally occurring.

 

[prosfilaes]

There is a kind of "maximum density", though, I feel, both from a "plausibility/suspension of disbelief" angle: "AnOTHER ever-so-slightly different culture and appearance for a race of goblinoids[elves/reptilians/whatever]?! Come onnnnn Mr./Ms. DM!" ;

In some sense, language can be used a proxy for culture. There are around 5,000 of those in the real world, and likely many more before colonialism, nationalism, and then mass communications and high-speed/long-distance travel. There's basically one Amazonian tribes for every 2,500 native Amazonians. Among goblins, who don't have writing or horses or sailing, I'd expect that you'd be tripping over a new culture of goblins everytime you weren't running into exactly the same goblins.

Races (which means something a lot different from race in the real world) don't have any real-world analog. Still, if you want to provide PC options, it's easy to stick a whole bunch of races out there somewhere. Marco Polo brought back all sorts of legends from China, and others wrote fabricated travel reports that were accepted as fact that had many more; it was hard to dismiss whatever anyone was saying about China at that time, so if the kitsune comes from across the sea, I don't think anyone has anything to complain about. Also, extraplanar visitors or spelljammers provide a great excuse for one of just about anything.

In practice, I've run Golarion, with most of the races available. To copy from my last game:

Acceptable races:
Common: Human, 1/2 Elf, 1/2 Orc, Dwarf, Gnome, Halfling, Kobold(*K), Ratfolk

*K: In addition to their Advanced Race Guide presentation
(http://www.d20pfsrd.com/races/other-races/featured-races/arg-kobold) Kobolds
get an extra skill point per level. As many as 30% of them are LN, and
there's a large
settlement of them in Old Korvosa, right next to the Ratfolk settlement.

Uncommon: Elves, Tieflings(*T), Aasimar(*A), Lizardfolk(*L), Orc,
Tengu, Catfolk,
Ifrits(*E), Oreads(*E), Sylphs(*E), Undine(*E)

*T: Variant heritages are also available.
*A: Variant heritages are also available; both original and variants
get an addition
-2 Con except for Agathion or Archon-blooded, who get a -2 Dex.
*L: As per http://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/arg-creating-new-races#example-lizardfolk
*E: All the elemental races get a bonus feat at 1st level.

Rare: Kitsune, Vanaras, Gathlain(*G)

*G: http://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/arg-creating-new-races#example-gathlain

I didn't make a list of what non-PC races I used, but lurking behind the scenes were all the kitchen-sink Golarion races.

I do have the appreciation for neat (in the sense of orderly) campaign settings. Krynn sort of annoyed me when I was first reading it, as several more races popped out of nowhere. My current draft campaign setting has for civilized races humans, kobolds, elves, dwarflings, mountain dwarves, halflings, hill dwarves and gnomes. Gnomes are Golarion-style gnomes, whereas dwarflings are gnomes from a different tradition, where they're related to dwarves and cobble and tinker, somewhat less dourly then the dwarves. It's a closed setting, but when running it, I suppose I could permit someone of another race to wash up on shore from parts unknown if someone really wanted. And then there's monsters, which are things of chaos in this setting, and I wouldn't feel guilty about tossing just about anything at the players, the more bizarre and grotesque as they got farther into the Wild Lands.

 

[BigVanVader]

I haven't done this yet, but I had the idea for a setting world that was basically Guardians of the Galaxy, if it all took place on one planet. So you've got all these fantastic races, then you've got humans who are sort of seen as the immigrants, they're sewer rats in terms of political standing. Nobody likes them, they don't think humans have a right to anything, and if humans want work, they gotta take dangerous work like adventuring or tomb-raiding, stuff like that.

Lots of monster and beast races, haven't decided on stuff like Elves and Dwarves yet. But I do picture some robotic races. Warforges, some people have cybernetic modifications, stuff like that.

And I imagine I'd let someone make their own race if they really wanted to, I imagine a strange place like this having room for one-of-a-kinds.

Anyway, yeah.

 

[Hereticus]

The campaign world is a geographically exaggerated version of our planet, that features most of our great mythological cultures from our past.

Humans, purebloods and those with tainted bloodlines (aasimars, tieflings, various gith, elemental bloodlines, etc).
Dwarves, including gnomes.
Elves, including halflings.
Reptilians, including dreagonborn and several other variants.
Goblinoids, including goblins, hobgoblins and orcs (no half orcs).
Various anthropomorphics (animal body, humanoid head) and taurians (humanoid body, animal head).