I see it as a flaw only when it presents a clear disconnect, between the rules and setting.  I prefer human dominated but not human centric fatasy setting.  For example, there are elven and dwarven regions of power and different elven and dwarven "kingdoms" have different goals, different cultures, etc.  They may be less common of prolific than humans but thay are not some far away and seldom met species.

My personal pet peeve about non-human species is they always seem to be clearly superior to humans in the game mechanic ways that matter to players (especially power hungry ones).  In my own homebrew non-humans are not clearly superior and can be clearly inferior in game mechanic ways attractive to power hungry players, even if the non-humans are superior to humans in setting/social ways.

Quote from: Aos;372022Ironically, humans are the super rare, nearly extinct race in my setting (so much so that many think they are mythical creatures) and I've had human PCs in ever campaign I've run with it so far.

Genius.  Call it rare or a limited time offer and people will just have to have it.

Quote from: -E.;372035I'm trying to think of when this has been an issue, and nothing in recent memory is coming up... the last D&D game I played in someone played a gnome... but it wasn't a problem and gnomes aren't super-rare anyway (and the PC wasn't the only gnome around -- there were NPC gnomes in the game before I knew about the PC).

I wouldn't think it would be a huge problem though: PC parties are supposed to be at least somewhat exceptional, right?

If the PC's are *so* alien they can't have anything like a normal interaction with people it might be an issue (if everyone's playing terrifying undead, then they're unlikely to be hired to escort the Princess to her wedding unless she's totally Goth...) but that's why it's a good idea to adapt the game to the PC's.

Where's the harm, exactly?

Cheers,
-E.

Edited to add: If I had a game I really wanted to run that required a predominately human party, I'd just set that as a character parameter -- I doubt it would be a big deal unless I failed to mention it before characters were made.

Where it has been an issue for me in the past, was with all the weird monster races that everyone used in their builds in 3E afew years ago (I haven't played enough 4E to comment on whether this is an issue in the new edition). I didn't mind a little of it, but have to admit the proliferation of characters using unusual monster templates and prestige classes, altered the feel of the game enough for me that it disrupted willing suspension of disbelief. Obviously it did depend on the individual campaign. I just felt it pushed our game away from fantasy and more into anime territory. It was a little more exotic and unusual than I was going for.

I prefer humano-centric or human-dominated settings, but not to the point where I won't play other ones. In our 4e games, we tend to just reskin things for the most part so that mechanical profiles don't matter, everyone's just a human.

This sort of thing is one of the reasons I think it's always worthwhile to have a session or discussion of some kind before the game proper begins. You don't just generate characters, you discuss what the setting is like, and what it means to have these characters in this setting, and talk about ways to make it coherent and hooky for both the players and the GM.

Quote from: two_fishes;372057This sort of thing is one of the reasons I think it's always worthwhile to have a session or discussion of some kind before the game proper begins. You don't just generate characters, you discuss what the setting is like, and what it means to have these characters in this setting, and talk about ways to make it coherent and hooky for both the players and the GM.

True.

When you're playing a campaign, eventually someone is going to wonder why the guy with the flaming (or icy) hair is running around with a bunch of relatively "normal" demi-humans, and why people in villages just accept him (or don't).

I still can't think of a good way to include shardminds, though.  They're almost Exalted-weird, imo.

Quote from: two_fishes;372057This sort of thing is one of the reasons I think it's always worthwhile to have a session or discussion of some kind before the game proper begins. You don't just generate characters, you discuss what the setting is like, and what it means to have these characters in this setting, and talk about ways to make it coherent and hooky for both the players and the GM.

Definitely a good idea.

Quote from: GnomeWorks;372016I think I know why.

Most fantasy races seem to at least somewhat correspond to things we see in literature. Bob's conception of an elf might not be the same as Tom's conception, but at least Bob has an idea of what he thinks an elf is.

The vast majority of the races in SW don't have that advantage. The more hardcore an individual is into SW, the more likely they are to have heard the names, at least... but most people won't recognize them, wouldn't be able to point out where - if any - one shows up in the movies. What the hell is a Trandoshan?

That is only true for people who grew up on D&D and Tolkien. In proper mythology and folklore name elf applies to all sorts of things. First time I played D&D I thought elves were essentially like leprechauns and I found the whole experience very confusing.

I would wager that up until the LotR movies and WoW, most people we more familiar with the Star Wars universe.

Quote from: Soylent Green;372073That is only true for people who grew up on D&D and Tolkien. In proper mythology and folklore name elf applies to all sorts of things. First time I played D&D I thought elves were essentially like leprechauns and I found the whole experience very confusing.

But, see, you had an idea. Whether or not that idea corresponded to what the game presented "elves" as, you personally had heard the term and had a mental picture for it.

I am willing to bet that you cannot do the same for Trandoshan, or at least could not at the time.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;372050I prefer humano-centric or human-dominated settings, but not to the point where I won't play other ones. In our 4e games, we tend to just reskin things for the most part so that mechanical profiles don't matter, everyone's just a human.

I'm planning on a similar reskinning process for a 4e-Cthulhu campaign I'm planning. Such as allowing a player to use the stats for a Dwarf but making him a human, say a miner or an exile to the mountains, or somesuch. I'll probably have to forbid races that are too magical, such as Eladrin and Devas, but a clever player might be able to convince me otherwise.

Devas are obviously new agey spiritualists. Today we would call them Californians, but i dunno about in the 20s.

Quote from: Peregrin;372059I still can't think of a good way to include shardminds, though.  They're almost Exalted-weird, imo.

I can only do it if I make them new to the setting, for whatever reason. Or incredibly rare, but in that case PC shardminds get stared at.

Early on, someone made a post that summed up for me, clarified really, my issue with this whole thing: It breaks immersion. It doesn't seem like its something that ought to, but it does.

RPGPundit

Quote from: Thanlis;372019That's your mistake right there -- you're conflating the world design with the PC group design. Sometimes they are the same, but they don't have to be the same. If you want to have a group of PCs that stand out and it's OK for them to be unusual, you just set the party of bird men and lizard men and angels into the mundane backdrop and there you go.

Amber, of course, is the extreme example of this. In your average Amber campaign, there are only a handful of Amberite royals -- and the PCs are a huge percentage of them.

In Amber, the game is set up to be that way, and really the only two things you can play by default are "Amberite" or "Chaos Lord" (and the latter only if the GM wants you to).

I think that game SYSTEM design should consider what it wants. If you have 29 default PC-races, then you want a game world where there are 29 races that are majorly prominent all over the place, unless the premise of the entire game is that player characters ARE definitely Weird Outsiders.
If neither of those are true, and you have 29 pc races but the world itself has "mostly humans and a few elves and dwarves, and everything else is either nearly-extinct, super-rare  or far-away", and the default assumes that you're the local boys done good and not a collection of Freaks, then you've fucked up somewhere along the line.
What the game designer ought to do is say "ok, these are the major races: human, elf, dwarf, lizard-man" (or whatever) and make THOSE and only those his default PC races. He can have 25 other pc races presented as OPTIONAL races that the GM can then add or not to his own whim, depending on if the GM feels that he wants the game to have a high Freak Quotient or not.

And in any case, there is just much less sense to any game where you have a Half-angel and a Lizard-dragonman and a Midget-chickenman and a Gtaarangh'ararrri and a Darkwylde Emoling, than one where you have three humans, an elf and a hobbit.
The latter group doesn't need nearly as much explaining to justify its existence, and thus doesn't break immersion nearly as easily.

RPGPundit

Quote from: -E.;372035I'm trying to think of when this has been an issue, and nothing in recent memory is coming up... the last D&D game I played in someone played a gnome... but it wasn't a problem and gnomes aren't super-rare anyway (and the PC wasn't the only gnome around -- there were NPC gnomes in the game before I knew about the PC).

GNOME!!!

Did the rest of the party survive?

QuoteI wouldn't think it would be a huge problem though: PC parties are supposed to be at least somewhat exceptional, right?

Yes, but there's a somewhat fine line between "exceptional" and "Polly Shouldn't Be!".

QuoteIf the PC's are *so* alien they can't have anything like a normal interaction with people it might be an issue (if everyone's playing terrifying undead, then they're unlikely to be hired to escort the Princess to her wedding unless she's totally Goth...) but that's why it's a good idea to adapt the game to the PC's.

Where's the harm, exactly?

That sometimes by giving a plethora of ideas up front, rather than in a toolkit format, you are actually limiting the options instead of expanding them.

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