what races in your fantasy?

[woodelf]

After a couple of discussions regarding what is "D&D", and my championing of Arcana Unearthed as being a better fit than D&D3E, i noticed that the most-common sticking point was the races offered. Skipping ahead several steps in my thought chain, we get to this thread.

Currently, i'm using Arcana Unearthed (or Arcana Evolved--we're not using the Dracha, nobody's chosen to play a ritual warrior, and the PCs haven't hit level 21 yet, so the differences between the two are negligible, and some of us own one book, some the other) with the Al Qadim setting for my "D&D" game. My initial reason for choosing AE was the magic system and the classes. But as i was writing up a setting document for my players, i realized that the PC races were also a much better fit. Al Qadim is an excellent example of shoehorning the AD&D2 races into a setting where they don't particularly fit, IMHO. A couple key NPCs are dwarves; several are elves/half-elves, done in such a way that the race doesn't seem to have any impact on teh character--they may as well be humans; and i vaguely recall a couple halfling NPCs. I don't remember any gnome NPCs when reading the setting. And humans were nonetheless the vast majority of NPCs, despite the overview of the setting talking about how integrated and multicultural the setting is supposed to be. It just didn't feel like (1) elves, dwarves, halflings, or gnomes actually belonged in the setting or (2) they were actually part of the setting.

Moreover, noble giantish rulers, mystical verrik, suspect lizard-folk, nomadic tribal lion-folk, and social urban dog-folk all felt like a perfect fit for the setting. Only the faen felt at all alien to the setting--and there's the conveniently-placed exotic lands of the jungle islands for them. And none of the setting roles felt like none of the races could fit into them. So, i changed all but one ruler to giant, made the desert tribesman roughly 50/50 humans and litorians, changed appropriate NPCs to sibeccai (urban), litorian (nomad), faen (jungle/lost empire/metropolitan), verrik (region with pre-enlightenment ancient mystic history), or mojh (hermetic loners). That's a really rough summary, but, basically, it fit quite neatly, with a minimum of shoe-horning.

Now, that's just one specific campaign. The next campaign i'm working on will feature elf, dwarf, orc, goblin, kobold, gnome, lizardman, litorian, sibeccai, ironborn, and maybe centaur or something amphibious, as options along with humans.

And, for me, this is a relatively restricted set of PC races. But the real point of this thread is:
What sorts of races do you commonly see in your D&D (or other fantasy) games?

I realized in the previous threads, and from a couple other race-related threads here, that apparently my experiences are somewhat atypical. In the 2-yr campaign i played in in college, run by someone else, i only recall 2 characters that were elves, out of 2-3 dozen characters over the life of the campaign. And i'm not actually sure they were elves--rather, those are the only two characters that i can't specifically recall weren't elves. There were several dwarves, at least one halfling (one of my characters), quite a few half-elves, possibly a gnome, and i think we had a half-orc at one point. I played a lizardman for a little while. I'm not sure how much multiclassing influenced this--i know we weren't playing with non-human level limits, but i can't remember if we had to stick to the officially-sanctioned multiclass combos, or if humans could multiclass. Upshot, however, is that elves were rare.

During the 8-yr campaign i ran prior to college, the results were similar. I had changed the rules to eliminate multiclassing restrictions and non-human level limits, allowed human multiclassing, and imposed XP penalties on some of the more-powerful races. In short, the theory was that class choices wouldn't significantly impact your choice of race, and the XP penalties were just there for balance, so everyone would choose a race that appealed to them based on aesthetics. Over 3 dozen + players and well over 50 characters, i believe we had 2 or 3 half-elves and 1 elf (and the latter was effectively a guest character, brought in for 1 session). 1 or 2 dwarves. Maybe 1 gnome (maybe none). 3 or so halflings. Between a quarter and a third of the characters, i'd guess, were humans. The rest were Everything Else--uldra, tortle, draconian, half-troll, fire giant, dracon, irda, half-orc, half-ogre, anuchu, shadow drake, and many more.

My conclusion is that the D&D versions of dwarf, and particularly elf and half-elf, are insufficiently exotic. That is, if you want to play something alien and different, they don't satisfy; and if D&D elves appeal to a player, that player will probably be even more comfortable with a human character. With D&D3E's toning down of the races (balancing them, rather than giving some of the core races LAs), i see even less playing of elves and dwarves--and, IM(admittedly limited)E, dwarves are more often played for darkvision, than because the player particularly wants a non-human character.

What about others? Do lots of players seem to choose elves and dwarves (and other core races)? Does this change when more-exotic alternatives are available?

 

[Agback]

What sorts of races do you commonly see in your D&D (or other fantasy) games?

In mine most NPCs and PCs are human, and most of them are of what you might call an Indo-Malay racial type, though there are neighbouring countries with racial types more like Polynesians, Singhalese, and even Europeans.

Then there are divers, or merfolk: a race of more Polynesian appearance, who are capable of breathing either air or water with a bit of time to adapt, and who have a few adapatations to low-light conditions.

Then there are occasional leshy, who are taller, stronger, and generally more gifted than humans, and who are unaging past maturity. Their hair is generally black, their skin colour varies with exposure to sunlight from dead white to jet black, and they tend to blue, violet, green, or yellow eyes. Half-leshy are more common PCs than full leshy, because the leshy racial package is rather expensive.

And there are flyers, who are smallish people with large wings, able to soar and (with great effort) to fly. But for some reason they have never been popular as PCs.

Also sprites (humans about half a metre (20") tall. And winged spites.

Giants (humans about five metres tall).

Were-wolves (a race, not sufferers from a contagion).

Were-leopards (based on those in the movie Cat People, ie. they are born human, change to leopard when they have sex, change back to human when they kill, and have animal intelligence in their cat form).

And finally gathin, who are born of gathin fathers and human mothers, apparently as girls. They change sex (female to male, male to female) when they have sex. Children they beget are gathin. I introduced gathin as a kind of monster, and was rather surprised when they turned out to be in demand as a PC race.

 

[Sarellion]

The times i played D&D I remeber most people playing humans in humanocentric settings. Our AE campaign has quite a lot of faen but that´s because we work for a faen kingdom as spies in our setting.

In my homebrew system most people play or played a wild mix of races. Ok , most of them are of the pointy ears faction actually.

The setting has the usual suspects and a few own races. Our groups visited three continents, one of them with quite a few more races than the standard continent and one with different but less races. Humans are the majority of the total world population but not necessarily the ruling elite. There are also powerful kingdoms with a majority of nonhumans. On the most played continent the human empire is actually one of the weaker ones as it suffered through several civil wars. Some races came from other worlds in a long gone age as servant people of two ancient races that later dissappeared (one of them killed, the other ascended).

In the ten years the setting existed we had about 83 characters + 6 one shot guest appearances.

17 were humans, 6 elves, 8 wood elves (bit sturdier but with less manual dex), 8 dark elves, 18 characters of different catfolk races (from cat to lion), 4 snakemen (lizard casters), 4 flying lizardmen, 5 Somai (a gengineered human subrace, geared for spellcasting), one orc, one troll (more Eathdawn/Sr than D&D), one minotaur, two half-elves, three dalasians, a solemn and contemplative psionic race, four dwarves and three Vendes. These are tribal, animistic people connected to the natural world. They differed mostly in their green skin color ,no body hair, empathic attunement to plants and being able to see and interact with spirits..

The main continent has humans, elves, half-elves, lizardfolk, catfolk, orcs, trolls, vendes, dalasians and dwarves.
I was actually surprised that we had so many humans, most groups felt quite elf heavy but most of the humans were actually characters that only lasted a few game evenings (interim groups that were played for a change mostly).

The game is quite caster heavy, spellcasting offers many options and adding a weapon to a mage is expensive but feasible in higher point(level) games.
That´s probably why many people took dark elves. They fit quite nicely in that niche of nimble fighter and combat mage, both popular character types. The high number of snakemen are all from the early incarnations of the game and were good spellcasters but very alien in their thoughts, very slooowww in movement and initiative and very rare. They are all from the same player who took a powergamer approach to them and forgot the alien mindset. He turned them into some kind of weed smoking tinker gnomes. So I later left them as a NPC race.
The dwarves were quite unpopular in the earlier incarnations of the game, before some rule changes they were only mediocre fighters and people tended to overlook the nontraditional possibilities. But with their nimble fingers and their stubborn will, they took the role of archers and are quite good in spellcasting too. Human characters are a very diverse lot with priests, fighter types and spellcasters.
Interestingly enough when I opened another continent and started new group we always had two out of five people playing panther people. I think it was mostly the style.

What I´ve never seen from the races which were there in the beginning were normal lizardfolk. The psionic dalasians also ever really appealed to people. I think all of them were taken as the optimal choice from a numbercrunching point of view. At least none of them were from original dalasian lands but immigrants living in human lands. The Vendes were actually taken for style or to play spirit warriors or shamans.

The elves were mostly the kind of character most people would expect, spellwielding or shooting types. Half-Elves were rare and only stayed for a few sessions(campaign stopped or player lost interest).

I think the races shifted in the years, resulting out of rule changes and the more the group explored different kinds of possible characters. Some choices were weak in the beginning or were not introduced, humans for example were (perceived as) weak and turned into more interesting choices later.
The most recent group has a dalasian psion who wants to test out the psionic rules as a PC instead of being at the receiving end, one human and one elven combat mage who try to supplement their feeble spellcasting with their weak melee attacks, one orc tribal warrior who tests the revised and expanded tribal warrior rules and one elven priestess of the goddess of love who likes to play odd characters.

I think that another important factor in our elven centric campaigns that most people liked sometthing different than human but not too different. Elves and dwarves and other near humans were ideal for that and I think the catfolk fell into that category, too. The odd choices were it´s hard to play properly or where you didn´t have some kind of established rolemodel were rather unappealing.

 

[Nyaricus]

Well, I have a few different campaign settings, so follow

Forgotten Realms - we commonly game in FR, as it is my favourite published setting with great 3.xe support. Races are anything from any suppliment that we have. Nothign too crazy yet, as we usually start out in the dalelands, but the diverse lizard races are fair game, all those other crazy humanoids (armadillofolk, anyone?), thri-kreen, loxo, centaur, etc etc. Mostly, we play pretty standard though.

Ascension: Paths of Power - my own homebrew that I've been creating for the past 6 years, it is inspired by Tolkien and real life mythology, folklore and religions. There are the following races:

• Dwarf and Petty Dwarf
• Dark Elf, Light Elf, Sea Elf, Wood Elf, Half-elf
• Giant (various types, too many to remember all at once)
• Lightfoot Hobbit, Stoutheart Hobbit, Tallfellow Hobbit
• Human
• Coblyn, Goblin, Goblin-man, Hobgoblin, Ogre, Orog, Orc, Half-orc

A mentionable thing is that while these races all share similar names to standard D&D ones, they all, ever single one, have different abilities. Well, except humans, but yeeeah...

In a new homebrew I am creating with my players, races have not come up too too much just yet, but we are about to breach the subject. I plan to have a bunch of diverse races, like Ibixians (goat people), Lidras (lightning-based fey akin to Uldras), Chitines (four-armed spider men, merchants and wizards extrodinaire), Frey (a catfolk which steals this appropriate-enough name, but has little else in common with 'em), a minuature version of gnolls, small sized, with a HUGE gaping maw that delivers a nasty bite attack, Sharvellans (shark-based Darfellans), LA+0 Thri-Kreen and a bunch of others. I had a thread with ALL of these before the crash, but alas, I lost it all

And that's all, folks. I like a variety, and tend to have a clear concept in my mind for each of my campaign settings.

 

[Aus_Snow]

What sorts of races do you commonly see in your D&D (or other fantasy) games?

Depends on the campaign.. a lot.


At the moment, there is one campaign with Dwarves, Elves, Halflings.. the whole nine yards. D&D 'as is', or very nearly so.

Another has beings from mythology, folklore and my own mind as the baseline.

In the very near future, I'll be running some Avadnu (in the Broken Isles), with the races contained therein.

I play in a number of campaigns, one of which is mainly fey, another predominantly pseudomedieval fantasy humans, another Dark Sun 3e..

Actually, I will have to get a proper list together, by the looks of things.

 

[Turanil]

What sorts of races do you commonly see in your D&D (or other fantasy) games?

What about others? Do lots of players seem to choose elves and dwarves (and other core races)? Does this change when more-exotic alternatives are available?

I allow the D&D core races, since they are such a staple of fantasy games (Harp, SW, True20, and C&C have them too for example) and players so often expect them. I included them in my next campaign setting despite I am bored with them. I also added a new race just for the sake of it. However, my experience has been in my years of gaming, that players avoid new homebrew races, except if these are core variants and give them munchkin advantages.

 

[ForceUser]

Human is by far the most common race played among my friends. For my homebrew, I use an eclectic mix.

IN BRIEF
Humans are adaptable, diverse, and industrious, and many human kingdoms flourish upon eastern Eriador. A human’s favored class is simply the class she has the most levels in.

Aelfborn are humans with traces of fey heritage, and are often magical, mysterious, and secretive. Their favored class is bard.

Anhardd are cunning survivors with little binding them to the expectations of their human or hobgoblin kin. Their favored class is fighter.

The Weretouched are loners from the far north, animalistic humans whose lycanthropic lineage has marked them for all to see. Their favored class is ranger.

Gnomes are inventive builders and thinkers with a flair for creation, espionage, and song. Their favored class is artificer.

Goblins are crafty skulkers in human society, unusually adept at getting what they want with minimal personal risk. Their favored class is rogue.

Warforged are newly-sapient living constructs built by gnomes to fight in human wars, who have begun to assert their individual freedoms from their creators and masters. Their favored class is fighter.

Other Races live in diverse regions across the world of Fionavar, such the sturdy desert dwarves of Ashana, the psionically-charged kalashtar of the hidden land of Adar, the minotaur-like tauren of far Westernesse, the feline khajiit of the Serpent Archipelago, and the shamanistic Shissar tribe of lizardfolk from the tropics. In the north, tragic half-ogres and inquisitive faen lurk on the fringes of human society, while noble aasimar and devious tieflings insinuate themselves into the great cities of the east. In Eriador, these races and more are the exception rather than the rule, and the impact of playing such a character should be carefully discussed with the DM before assuming such a role.

 

[arwink]

I tend to the usual array of Player's Handbook races in my games, although there's one player who tends to play gnolls and kobolds whenever we're willing to let him do so.

I tend to think that the non-human races are only as exotic as you (and the players) are willing to make them. AE litorians that think and act like humans really aren't any different from elves or dwarves that do the same.

 

[Elf Witch]

In the game I am getting ready to run I have limited the races because it is set in Ancient Greece okay not the real ancient Greece but one from my imagination it is a little like DnD meets Hercules and Xena without quite the silliness.

Right now there are three race open to PCs humans, Fauns and Sprates.

Sprates are the offspring of ancient warriors that sprung from dragon's teeth.

Fauns are the offspring of Satrys and Drayds but are now their own race.

Later on I might add Centaurs and some other races for players but I didn't want to start with anything to crazy at first.

 

[Mycanid]

Generally we stick with the core races, and then ask the DM if we can play either a variant of the race (like a wild elf, for example) or a totally seperate race (like a thri-kreen). The DM then decides.