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Message: <blockquote data-quote="innerdude" data-source="post: 9815901" data-attributes="member: 85870">This is a fairly excellent and concise summary of my general feeling as well. Especially when, as a GM, I'm looking for much more in terms of character realization from my players than the generally shallow/trite tropes that often arise from non-purposeful anthropomorphism.But to be fair, I do see the opposing argument of, "Well even if it isn't 'fully realized lore,' what's the harm of just letting people have a little fun and play 'physiology dress-up' as a cat-person or bird-person if they're so inclined?"I recognize there's no inherent wrong, or "badwrongness" in a player wanting to have some kind of visualization/representation of their character that appeals to them.But the tradeoff for me as the GM is that I am then committing to making any and all race/heritage representations matter, simply because as a point of emphasis for me, I don't want those things to remain non-purposeful or mere color. It places a burden on me as GM to engage with components of the setting "lore" or "backstory" that build meaning and purpose into the existence of that heritage as part of the fabric of the setting.Because---whether the player cares or not---that level of integration into the lore is important to me. It needs to make sense, it needs to have a structure and causality.But doing all of that work has almost never given me anything materially rewarding in play. In my experience, once the player makes their choice of heritage, they give little thought to it beyond the occasional, "Oh, he he, I'm a bird-person, I totally ruffle and pluck my feathers when I'm bored." As noted by [USER=7044197]@RenleyRenfield[/USER], it gets played back in shallow and trite fashion. The closest it's ever come to mattering was when we played a 4th Age Lord of the Rings campaign using Savage Worlds. I had two players who did, at some level, get a bit deeper into understanding what it meant to play a Noldor in the world of Lord of the Rings. They found a deeper level of pathos because they were really exploring what it meant to live as an immortal being in a world that has been shaped largely by the failures of their ancestors, and only partially shaped by the successes. It didn't play out all the time, but there were definite moments where we experienced them playing character traits that meshed with that history.But imagine the level of lore and backstory present to give that kind of character pathos---the thousands upon thousands of written pages of one of the great writers and philologists in modern history.To give a more modern example---despite it not being as fleshed out as I might like, I absolutely love Golarion's concept of gnomes with "The Bleaching." It's such an interesting note or tidbit of gnomish heritage that gives it such an interesting spike of connection to the lore. It's literally the only time in my life I've thought that playing a gnome sounded appealing--"Wow, that would be really interesting to explore that as a player. What does it mean to be a person who literally must seek out novelty to survive? What kind of social and biological mechanisms would such a people possess to meet that need? How would my friends and fellow party members perceive that trait?"</blockquote>

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