D&D 5E What is the appeal of the weird fantasy races?

[Paul Farquhar]

We played quite a bit of Cyberpunk 2020 without a PC netrunner. Plays just fine without them between all the fun you can have with medics, solos, nomads, rockerboys, etc. There are a lot of themes inherent to the cyberpunk aesthetics that are still available to be explored. Actual hacking is such a narrow slice of it.

Not hugely familiar with it. Know Shadowrun and Paranoia better.

 

[FrozenNorth]

Don't you get tired of pulling out the same old canard? It's almost never a dislike of a specific race. It's almost always about setting, tone and campaign feel.

Why do you claim it’s almost never about dislike about a specific race? It may not be in your case, but Maxperson has confirmed that it is in his case, as did the two posters that got banned.

 

[Oofta]

Why do you claim it’s almost never about dislike about a specific race? It may not be in your case, but Maxperson has confirmed that it is in his case, as did the two posters that got banned.

Just because 1 poster said it doesn't mean much. I still think it's accurate to say that most DMs don't ban because they don't like a race.

So let me restate. It doesn't matter why a DM makes the design decisions they make. Calling a decision by the DM good or bad is meaningless. Do they create a game that they will be able to find 4-6 players for? Will those 4-6 players, as well as the DM, have fun?

If so, they did it "right".

 

[Voadam]

I am completely behind thinking a DM banning races in their game that they do not like is a valid call.

If for example a DM likes a lot of Dragonlance, say for the dragons, the knights, the wizard orders, the elven and dwarven politics, the draconians, the minotaurs as a race, and the gods, but dislikes the Kender, the Tinker Gnomes, and the Gully Dwarves I think it is fine for them to choose to offer to run a Dragonlance game with no really small folk.

It would be the same with Star Wars and ewoks or Cyberpunk and netrunning.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

While I like the use of stats, this tells us very little. Because we do not know the extent of these characters created. Was it a DM just clicking random? Does that count? Was it a DM making an entire gnome NPC faction? Was it Adventure League just creating random characters that people can use that just "pop in for a try?" Was it just a player playing around with the program to see where the numbers would fall?

Like I said, numbers are good, but we have no idea if half of these were even used. A better use of these numbers would be to ask them to publish the tracked numbers using conditions; meaning a character generated at first level, then levelled after one week's time (or more), then levelled again after another week's time (or more). Then we could probably be assured those are characters being played. I suspect the numbers would look vastly different if you did that.

The majority of active characters on D&D Beyond are likely being used in a campaign. Most people on D&D Beyond don't have a subscription to access unlimited characters, so they're stuck with the free 6 slots of characters. (This is all based on my experience with the website and being a member of its community. I cannot present any proof for this, you're just going to have to take my word unless someone else can pull up data to support this.)

People on the site that have limited access to slots are much less likely to fill those slots up with randomly generated characters, and are especially unlikely to keep them long term. Most random characters are made and then quickly deleted to free up the slots for other experiments with the builder.

Based on my lengthy experience with the system, I would make an educated guess that those stats are fairly accurate. Different variables will affect it a bit, but not enough to make those percentages void.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Dude, I'm done. Like I said, if you are just going to be bullheaded and intractable, there is literally no reason to talk to you.

I am doing neither.

I mean, you are asking for the source? How about the entire premise of the argument that spawned this. That seem like a source to you? After all, one of the responses I got back was the actual answer to why Dwarves and Elves hate each other. This thing you claim that wasn't needed was put out there.

I don't care what some other person said. If, when you said, "the relationship between them is supposed to be because of all Elves and all Dwarves." you were referring to some comment made by another poster...why on Earth even include it in the post? I am not responsible to what other people say. If you meant that in the book that is supposed to be the case, then support that claim.

But, the rules of writing are fake to you. Whatever, I'm actually a writer, I know better.

Lol "I'm a writer so I'm right" is a really laughably bad take. Like, get off your high horse, bud. You know damn well the so-called rules aren't universally accepted in the writing community, for one. For another, you get bent out of shape over my tone or whatever, but condescend to me with this garbage, while assuming that I can't possibly be a writer as well, since I disagree with you?

Yeah, you have no high ground.

Heck, Lucas knows better. The newer movies might have been naughty word for other reasons (some of them because of those fake rules), but there is a reason that later books and movies cover things like "What the Clone Wars were" or "Why Han and Chewie are friends", heck, I think they get into the reasons behind droid discrimination too. Because those were gaps, and gaps exist to be filled.

You've got to be kidding. None of those works are needed to enjoy the movies. None are needed for the movies to be good works of fiction, or for the movies to make sense, or anything. They are entirely bonus material. They're fun additions to the primary work that stand reasonably well on their own, at best, and hack attempts to milk a dead cow, at worst*.

Just like with Gimli and Legolas's emnity, none of those answers needed to exist within the original work, and the original work would not be at all lessened if they'd never been answered in any work. The OT can be viewed entirely on it's own. The Lord of The Rings can be read entirely on it's own. Supplimentary work is fun, and I love the Silmarilion perhaps even more than I love the Hobbit, and certainly more than I love most later fantasy works, but it isn't necessary to make LoTR work.

You have come to propose a truly preposterous position. That being, that the original work would somehow be less good, if it weren't for the existence of the secondary work. That the Star Wars OT would be less good, if some book or comic somewhere didn't explain how Han and Chewie became friends.

You realise that is a wholly unteneble, unsupportable, nonsensical, position, yes? Even from the POV of someone who holds your previous position, that LoTR is badly written because it doesn't explain the Gimli and Legolas emnity in any detail, your new position is incredible.


*(seriously, we all know some of the EU stories are garbage written on a simplistic formula with sprinkles of nostalgia bait to desperately attempt to mask the low quality of the work. I've read amatuer fanfic in a series of connected tumblr posts that were vastly superior stories than a decent chunk of the EU. Meanwhile, other works like the Thrawn Trilogy and a few others are nearly as good, perhaps as good as the original work)

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I am completely behind thinking a DM banning races in their game that they do not like is a valid call.

If for example a DM likes a lot of Dragonlance, say for the dragons, the knights, the wizard orders, the elven and dwarven politics, the draconians, the minotaurs as a race, and the gods, but dislikes the Kender, the Tinker Gnomes, and the Gully Dwarves I think it is fine for them to choose to offer to run a Dragonlance game with no really small folk.

I think that's pretty clearly unreasonable, especially if they won't even discuss using those races with a less annoying tone, and treating the novel characters as stereotypical rather than genuinely representative.

It would be the same with Star Wars and ewoks or Cyberpunk and netrunning.

Okay cyberpunk and netrunning aren't even part of Star Wars, so including them would be the unusual call. It wouldn't even be "banning" anything to not include them, it would just be choosing not to add stuff to the setting that isn't normally a part of it, even moreso the norm than not including something in a homebrew world, because the world is already defined before the GM touches it.

 

[Voadam]

I think that's pretty clearly unreasonable, especially if they won't even discuss using those races with a less annoying tone, and treating the novel characters as stereotypical rather than genuinely representative.

I'd say a toned down thing you don't like is still something you don't like and that it is OK to not include things you do not like.

I would not consider a DM who stuck with such call as being unreasonable.

Okay cyberpunk and netrunning aren't even part of Star Wars, so including them would be the unusual call. It wouldn't even be "banning" anything to not include them, it would just be choosing not to add stuff to the setting that isn't normally a part of it, even moreso the norm than not including something in a homebrew world, because the world is already defined before the GM touches it.

Setting - disliked element of setting. Star Wars setting - Ewok element. Cyberpunk (2020) setting - Netrunning element.

 

[DrunkonDuty]

Well, if you wanna be real technical, since the Noldor showed up

 

[Chaosmancer]

That is a good response. Thank you for clarifying.
I will try to and that first question. I think the reason why is because the PHB generally becomes the default for the edition. This is due to printing restrictions, readability restrictions from buyers, purchasing power from buyers, etc. The other reason is change occurs slowly for most products for fear of not making money, because the new managers grew up on the old product, and fear of backlash.
So if we take the notion that the PHB sets the "tone" and is the default setting for D&D (no matter which edition), and the fact that change comes slowly, maybe where we are now is normal?
(I am by no means stating I am correct, juts trying to think out an answer while typing.)

Maybe, but there is a pretty basic counter-point to this.

Races other than the core four have been played since the beginning. People had rules for playing these "monstrous races" since 1e, they had more races and options in 2e, they had more codified rules in 3.X and 4e. And, I'm not even making stuff up, sure none of this was in the PHB, but some of the racial options from 1st edition include: Brownies, Sprites, Pixies, Centaurs, Dryads, Fauns, Hsaio, Leprechauns, Harpies, Wooddrakes, Tabi, Sphinx, Merrow, Kopru, Rakasta, Bugbears, Goblins, Gnolls, Trolls, Kobolds, Ogres, Beastmen, Lizardmen.

Change may come slow, but 45 years of having these monstrous races as an option, yet them still being seen as strange, exotic, weird, and new seems downright glacial. So many of these options have existed for so long, it feels strange to say that this is somehow a new thing we need to adjust to.

You are spot on. Those are two very different problems. I wasn't conflating them. They are separate. But one thing both of those have in common is the DM doing more work. And isn't it fair for the DM to say, I don't have time? I plugged 100 hours into this already before session zero. I laid out my logic and setting as best as I could?

Maybe, but I reserve the right to call out shoddy work. If you just copied and pasted FR and filed the names off, then rolled some random names for your NPCs, then you telling me you spent a hundred hours on this setting doesn't fly. Because you either focused on stuff I can't see, or you really wasted your time.

I am sorry. I must not have been clear. I am not talking about the DM's work behind the scenes. (For the record, I was discussing behind the work hours in the post directly above). In this post you replied to, I was only discussing "play time." Meaning the time the DM had in a campaign to paint their world. I was trying to bring a realization that for many of these philosophies that people bring to the table about DMing, there is only so much time to utilize them.
This is one of the reasons I am so adamant about letting a DM limit races. In my curated setting, which does not fall back on a traditional FR setting, I know much of it will be new to the players. Therefore, I have to limit the races if I want them to be able to sink into the culture. To me, it is identical to teaching. You can only teach so much in a given time period. Players shut off. Generally, in an adventure, a DM expresses maybe two, three, maybe four, all the way up to five indications of culture, history, lore, religion, etc. And to get the players to remember it generally means you have to repeat it over and over.
For example, if I wanted the players to really experience tabaxi culture, and I started them in a tabaxi village. Let's start with food. I have to do continuous food examples. The marketplace that has odd dried fish pellets, and strings of different kinds of birds, etc. A DM can't just do this once and expect that to sink in. No, it happens when the players buy provisions. It happens when they go to the local inn. It happens when the NPC invites them to dinner. There is only so much time a DM has to do these things.
So my apologies for not being clear if I wasn't. But I am talking about playing time, not prep time here.

This might be true for the DM who has new players every campaign, but even then you can build it, and then only reference it if it comes up.

I mean, I built a lot of dwarven culture for my world (now likely getting retired) and the players never saw any of it, because they never played dwarves and never really encountered dwarves. But if they did, the material was ready to go.

I just don't see a solid argument for "if I can't reference this in a single campaign, I shouldn't build it". Most of us build cosmologies, how many of us can reference all Nine Hells, all the Demon Princes, all the Elemental planes, all the Celestial planes, ect in a single campaign?

We don't. We build it, then if it comes up, we have it ready to go.