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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James Gasik" data-source="post: 9752617" data-attributes="member: 6877472">I don't know about birth rates- it's mentioned from time to time that Dwarves and Elves have lower birth rates (though in the Forgotten Realms, at least, this was rectified with the Thunder Blessing when Moradin gave Dwarven mothers a large number of twin births).  If a Chaotic culture is problematic, 1e Halflings (who don't seem to have any fertility problems) and Dwarves are typically Lawful Good.Plus, well, if some peoples should be rarer than others, it's funny that the PHB doesn't address this. Elven and Half-Elven PC's especially are pretty popular choices (although that is going off of anecdotal evidence, when my games used to be flush with them before playing more exotic characters became a more accepted practice).It always felt to me that the reason for D&D to be human-centric basically came down to "because we said it is".  You could easily come up with reasons why another culture was more influential, like Earthdawn's Dwarves, whose civilization survived the Scourge with the best infrastructure, and being merchants and craftsman, were the first to travel far and wide to explore the world and find trade routes- to the point that the "common tongue" of Earthdawn is Dwarven!And if a DM is fine with the status quo, that's fine, obviously, it's easier to describe human cities and culture to fellow humans after all.  But for most campaigns, the reasons why this is the status quo seem quite arbitrary and manufactured.</blockquote>

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