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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Storm Raven" data-source="post: 3260866" data-attributes="member: 307">No, actually, you can't. Not any more than you can play a non-human being. Magical powers change the base line so dramatically that your real world experiences are simply not relevant.This might be a valid point, except that the source material from whence these nonhuman races were derived was (and is) human imagination. Elves are the personification of nature-friendly humans, dwarves are hard drinking miners with an affinity for rock and stone - because that was how they were conceived in legends and stories. They are relatable to humans because if they were not, then they would not have made interesting characters in the tales in which they were placed.Trying to assert that nonhumans like dwarves, elves, gnomes, and so on are so alien that they are incomprehensible to human experience misses the point. They are human experience, that is where they got their genesis. Making them wholly inscrutable simply makes them irrelevant as players on the stage, and is a betrayal of the source material that engendered them.Actually, it would likely surprise you. Look at a game system like GURPS where you pay for your nonhuman racial abilities (it costs points to take a racial package). Lots of players play nonhuman characters in game systems like that, even though they gain no mechanical advantage by doing so.</blockquote>