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

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

@AcererakTriple6, @Scott Christian you can also "deactivate" a character to open up slots in DndBeyond.

The data says "Active Characters", so those wouldn't be counted in the graph.

 

[Hussar]

Good roleplaying is better than bad roleplaying. No roleplaying is also better than bad roleplaying.

Disagree. I'd MUCH rather see bad roleplaying - which can be helped with some guidance - than no roleplaying, which, IME, means that we have players that we could replace with a dice bot and no one would notice. No roleplaying is treating the game as just another tactical board game where we're there to power up our character so we can kill the next bigger monster. No thanks. I just left a group like that and I'd rather stick a screwdriver in my left ear than go through that again.

Roleplaying is a skill, like any other, and it has to be learned and practiced in order to get better. Sitting at the table with Fytor and Father Generic is not even roleplaying. I'd far rather sit down and play a board game with these people than a roleplaying game. That no-roleplay player just sucks all the air from the room and makes me hate playing.

 

[Hussar]

Note, here is one thread from the stats:

D&D 5E - D&D Beyond: Updated Character Popularity

In the latest D&D Beyond broadcast, they updated the lists for the most popular character classes and races on the platform. Out of 8.8 Million characters(!), and apparently "'Paid VS non-Paid' doesn't alter this dramatically, at all."

www.enworld.org

They do adjust for paid vs unpaid. And I have seen them talk about how they track the number of times a character has been altered to discount the characters that are made and then never looked at again.

 

[Scott Christian]

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.

At one point tieflings were monstrous races. So were dragonborn. Now they are in the staple (and half-orcs that made it in early). So there is change. It might not be fast enough for you, but no doubt, there is change.

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.

Yeah, sorry Chaos, we just really have a different view on these things. From your take on Tolkien to your take on DM, we just disagree. I often find your word choice off-putting. For example, you imply the above DM isn't really doing the work. Or, if they did they and you don't directly see it, they "wasted (their) time." As a DM that tries to use show don't tell, and one that tries to limit their explanations of the world, I find it a bit rude. Maybe I'm just soft skinned though.

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.

Yes. I understand. This is your style. No DM should be beholden to your style though. It's great you have done the work. But the key is, you have done the work. In your example, you have done the work. The work is done. If a DM has done his world building work, and is now going to focus on the nuances, such as NPCs and character arcs and dungeon design and accents they want to try and painting their minis prior to encounters, etc. Then they are allowed to say no to the player.
Time is limited commodity. DMs should be allowed to use it how they see best.

 

[Scott Christian]

Note, here is one thread from the stats:

D&D 5E - D&D Beyond: Updated Character Popularity

In the latest D&D Beyond broadcast, they updated the lists for the most popular character classes and races on the platform. Out of 8.8 Million characters(!), and apparently "'Paid VS non-Paid' doesn't alter this dramatically, at all."

www.enworld.org

They do adjust for paid vs unpaid. And I have seen them talk about how they track the number of times a character has been altered to discount the characters that are made and then never looked at again.

Interesting. Thanks for the info. Very much appreciated.

 

[Scott Christian]

But, therein lies the problem. 45 years and nothing other than the original races that were presented in the 1978 PHB are seen as "normal". The massive backlash over adding two races in 4e shows just how prevalent this notion is. Heck, those two races are now apparently among the most popular races in the game. All it took was adding them to the PHB and not only have they thrived, but, they've surpassed all the "normal" races.

So, maybe, just maybe, if we stopped treating the 1978 PHB races as "normal" and everything else as "exotic", other races wouldn't be seen as problematic either.

I just don't see how you can discount all the splat books they make. Like they are just handwaved, as if they are not even a part of the game , but some third party spin off. And I mentioned logistical reasons as well. I really have a hard time with referencing them as normal, but do so so everyone understands. Common would be better. As in:
Player: "What is the population of the realm?"
DM: About 50,000.
Player: What is common?
DM: It's approximately 60% human, 20% elvish, 15% halfling, and 4% dwarven and 1% other.
Player: So my dragonborn will stand out?
DM: Yes, but people have seen them before. They are not common though.
Player: Excellent. That is what I am choosing.

Of course common would vary by campaign setting.

See, this is the issue. "Cantina" is the standard buzzword for "shallow campaign where race doesn't matter and not really D&D". No one ever uses Cantina in a positive context. "Cantina on steroids" is hardly a positive context.

How do you see that as a negative? Seriously. It was a great campaign. The beginning of the quote, which you left off, was me wishing Ezekiel had been a part of the campaign, as I think he would have liked it. How is wanting someone to be a part of something, and describing it to their liking (but on steroids to their liking), a negative connotation?

 

[Hussar]

Well, I see it as a negative connotation because, for the past ten years or more, every single time someone uses the term "Cantina" to describe a D&D campaign, they mean it in a negative way. It's been used repeatedly by many, many posters, over the years, and it is always negative. So, "Cantina on steroids" is hardly a positive description in that context.

I mean, even a 3 second google search turns up this thread from 2010 - look at the first post:

Who Else likes the Cantina?

I see a lot of disparaging remarks towards the notion of lots of non-human races. The typical remark is "It looks like the Cantina scene from Star Wars and I don't like that". I recall a particular poster here ranting about the PHB2's racial spread picture (pg 7) and how offensive it was to his...

www.enworld.org

So, it's hardly something new.

Hang on, did a little more digging. From 2009

PHB2 Races = Mos Eisley Cantina

I just threw up all over page 7 of the PHB2. It looks like a terrible space fantasy for little kids! The whole game store I was at tonight was laughing hysterically at it! THIS is Dungeons & Dragons? "It's a cold and rainy night. The village locals gather in the small tavern over mugs of ale...

www.enworld.org

It's just so RIDICULOUS! It's like the Mos Eisley Cantina threw up all over the D&D universe.

 

[Dire Bare]

Well, I see it as a negative connotation because, for the past ten years or more, every single time someone uses the term "Cantina" to describe a D&D campaign, they mean it in a negative way. It's been used repeatedly by many, many posters, over the years, and it is always negative. So, "Cantina on steroids" is hardly a positive description in that context.

I mean, even a 3 second google search turns up this thread from 2010 - look at the first post:

Who Else likes the Cantina?

I see a lot of disparaging remarks towards the notion of lots of non-human races. The typical remark is "It looks like the Cantina scene from Star Wars and I don't like that". I recall a particular poster here ranting about the PHB2's racial spread picture (pg 7) and how offensive it was to his...

www.enworld.org

So, it's hardly something new.

I would agree that most posters here, in my experience, use the term "cantina" as a negative.

But really, it's preference and also a style choice. There exist plenty of fantasy stories (books, comics, movies, tv shows) that have a "Mos Eisley Cantina" style to them, with a wide and diverse menagerie of fantasy creatures. Building a D&D campaign to model that aesthetic is perfectly fine of course! And easy to do, considering how many different creatures and sentient races that have been created for the game over the past 45+ years! Add in some of the third-party craziness that's out there . . .

If you take the world of the Dark Crystal, for example . . . not a human in sight! Not even any Tolkienesque elves or dwarves! The gelflings and podlings aren't too far away that though, and certainly are the point-of-view characters for the audience.

Running a D&D game where humans aren't any more common than a myriad of other races, perhaps even less so, sounds like it could be a lot of fun! Count me in as pro-cantina!

 

[Hussar]

Just as a last thought before I have to go to work to add some context here. This isn't a new conversation. This is a conversation that has been going on in D&D for DECADES. I remember being rather disappointed in 3e when 3e came out and it was nothing but the standard PHB races. So, it's not like this is a new thing. As such, the level of frustration should be somewhat understandable. When some of us have been asking for races to be normalized in the game for twenty or thirty years, it shouldn't be a surprise that some of us are just a tad jaded when discussing this.

 

[Scott Christian]

I mean, even a 3 second google search turns up this thread from 2010 - look at the first post:

I'm sorry. Are you posting me a "thread" from 11 years ago and a thread from 12 years ago to prove that people use cantina in a negative way? They might still do so today. I didn't disagree with you. I was asking you to understand the context of my post. Me inviting someone - someone who likes the cantina - to an RPG game that has the cantina, on steroids.
The term dungeon crawl has also been disparaged. If I knew someone who loved dungeon crawls and invited them to play by saying: It's a campaign that is a dungeon crawl on steroids, would you call me out on it?
I get it. Everyone has heightened senses and touchy regarding races and D&D. But, please take my statement for what it is, in the context of how it is said, rather than trying to rebut.