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<blockquote data-quote="Li Shenron" data-source="post: 6493463" data-attributes="member: 1465">I want to play a game of D&amp;D that feels less 'kitchen sink' or 'cosmopolitan' than the mainstream.As I said in the first post, it doesn't even have to go as far as forcing human PCs. That would be one way to do a &quot;hard-reset&quot;, but at the same (to preserve player's roleplay desires and ideas), it would be also ok to just treat the PCs as rare individuals.It could follow a traditional pattern, e.g. Tolkienenque like secluded Dwarves and Elves, and wanderer Halflings (pretty much what you didn't want in your campaign). Or it could just let creativity go and make up something new and very different from tradition. This is not actually my problem...My problem has got to do with always converging to the same bland flavor. Ok you have satyr villages, minotaur cities and dragonborn kingdoms. These are cool creative ideas, but afterwards how do you manage to make them feel different from human villages, dwarven cities and elven kingdoms, besides the cosmetics?The cosmopolitan problem for me can be summarized: &quot;every race has so much diversity, that there is no diversity between races&quot;.In a sense I guess I am plotting to push fantasy races away from the center of the fantasy world into its shady borders, where a lot of stuff doesn't need to be defined. Something hard to do perhaps in D&amp;D when most of us gamers have OCD about explaining, defining and categorizing everything... But when you leave stuff undefined, there's a small hope to restore a tiny spark of wonder, for those who haven't already completely lost it. Note that in fact this also applies to monsters, magic items and groups/organizations. I am trying to see if &quot;less is more&quot; can actually lead players to leave a few habits behind, including metagaming assumptions on creatures and magic items, and the &quot;been there, done that&quot; feeling...</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Li Shenron, post: 6493463, member: 1465"] I want to play a game of D&D that feels less 'kitchen sink' or 'cosmopolitan' than the mainstream. As I said in the first post, it doesn't even have to go as far as forcing human PCs. That would be one way to do a "hard-reset", but at the same (to preserve player's roleplay desires and ideas), it would be also ok to just treat the PCs as rare individuals. It could follow a traditional pattern, e.g. Tolkienenque like secluded Dwarves and Elves, and wanderer Halflings (pretty much what you didn't want in your campaign). Or it could just let creativity go and make up something new and very different from tradition. This is not actually my problem... My problem has got to do with always converging to the same bland flavor. Ok you have satyr villages, minotaur cities and dragonborn kingdoms. These are cool creative ideas, but afterwards how do you manage to make them feel different from human villages, dwarven cities and elven kingdoms, besides the cosmetics? The cosmopolitan problem for me can be summarized: "[I]every race has so much diversity, that there is no diversity between races[/I]". In a sense I guess I am plotting to push fantasy races away from the center of the fantasy world into its shady borders, where a lot of stuff doesn't need to be defined. Something hard to do perhaps in D&D when most of us gamers have OCD about explaining, defining and categorizing everything... But when you leave stuff undefined, there's a small hope to restore a tiny spark of wonder, for those who haven't already completely lost it. Note that in fact this also applies to monsters, magic items and groups/organizations. I am trying to see if "less is more" can actually lead players to leave a few habits behind, including metagaming assumptions on creatures and magic items, and the "been there, done that" feeling... [/QUOTE]

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