Quote from: Mike the Mage;1047531Anyway, I feel okay about saying that since the original CT had no implied setting. Imperium Shmerium

Always good to read someone that understands or even acknowledges this!  Traveller (1977)

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1047512I think dragon boobs are silly fetish material and wrote them out of my setting. It's a running joke that mammals automatically assume female dragonborn are male because they lack boobs.

I always tell people dragonborn are like sea horses and the males carry the eggs in sacks on their chests.

Quote from: Kuroth;1047532Always good to read someone that understands or even acknowledges this!  Traveller (1977)

The name escapes me right now, but there is a wonderful blog on this very topic.

Quote from: HappyDaze;1046650I tend to play around with the races until I like them. For example, I do not have half-elves as a biological crossing of humans and elves (which I do not have as being interfertile). Instead they are humans that lived and bred in the Feywild (where I have elves originate as per Fey Ancestry) and were changed (much like how TORG cosms can alter people, except the change sticks even after the half-elves leave the Feywild). They are referred to as half-elves because the changes make them "elf-like" not because of blood.

I tend to like this (base concept) for any race that you might consider a 'human, but with facial-prosthetic makeup and that one consistent personality trait'-race. Playing an elf? No, elves are bizarre otherworldly creatures with a truly alien mindset. I'm playing one of the people of which is a little too near the veil of the seelie court, and children born in that village have 'elfin' traits.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;1046728Excuse me, I have a question:  Why do people assume that all Kender are uniform, that every single player HAS to play the race the EXACT same way?  I thought PC's were special by the virtue that they are adventurers, meaning they step out of the social norm.

Quote from: spon;1046767As long as someone plays their character reasonably (i.e. not a d*ck) then I'm ok with whatever race they choose.

Spon pretty much provides my response. If someone can not-be-a-dick, than they can play whatever. Kender have the unfortunate status of having listed traits which one might hide dickish behavior behind a defense of 'but I'm just realistically playing my kender character!' Don't do that, and they are fine (but then one wonders what the motivation is to play them. I've not run into anyone that wanted to).

As to my preferences--I'm fine with most races, although I've also enjoyed games where everyone was human. Like most things, if you do it well, it is fine. If you do it poorly (the dicks and snowflakes and whatever people have mentioned), than anything can be problematic. But if I had my druthers-- I would include one or two standard fantasy races (no strong preferences on which, but please no overlap. We do not need dwarves, halflings, and gnomes), one or two truly alien mindset characters (be it robots, sentient slime monsters, or just reptile), and one or two of the bad guy races able to be playable, mostly such that the others can be declared not and alwaysbad (and the playable two are not misunderstood snowflakes. One can be 'sure I'm evil, but a kind of evil you can work with,' and the other can be, 'we aren't evil, we're just on the other side of military/national divide').

Quote from: The Exploited.;1047523I've never been mad on half races myself. I know its a fantasy game! But I always felt that the races would not genetically 'fit'. Like humans trying to mate with chimps or something.

I always wrote reasons for interbreeding into the backstory. Elves in my setting are literally reflections of Men in the spirit world while Shades are the shadows of Men in the spirit world so they all mate just fine. Orcs are humans mutated in an arcane cataclysm (and ogres are orcs who continue to mutate as they age). Dwarves are humans re-engineered by the Demon Empire to make better miners. Avatars (elemental spirits) and Demons (fallen elemental spirits) are both embodied spirits who helped create the world... they get to be creative with genetics of things in the world if they desire (and it should be noted that half-avatars and half-demons aren't limited to humans... Hell Hounds are the result of a demon breeding with a wolf in the days of the Demon Empire).

That's the sum total of halfbreed races in my games; half-elves, half-shades, half-dwarves, half-avatars, half-orcs/ogres and Malfeans (demon-blooded). With the exception of Malfeans they're generally considered to be humans. Technically they shouldn't even be called "Half" since the traits can turn up several generations after the fact (ex. the offspring of a human and a half-elf has about a 50/50 shot at being a human or a half-elf). A better term might be "X-blooded" (i.e. elf-blooded, shadow-blooded, avatar-blooded, etc.).

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1047512I think dragon boobs are silly fetish material and wrote them out of my setting. It's a running joke that mammals automatically assume female dragonborn are male because they lack boobs.

Why?  Why are you assuming that Dragonborn (who are of human descendants as well) don't give birth to live young?

Quote from: Christopher Brady;1047570Why?  Why are you assuming that Dragonborn (who are of human descendants as well) don't give birth to live young?

  The 4E PH does, IIRC, make it pretty clear that they hatch from eggs. If that doesn't, Wizards Presents: Races and Classes definitely does.

Quote from: David Johansen;1047535I always tell people dragonborn are like sea horses and the males carry the eggs in sacks on their chests.

OK, that's a good way to achieve some brainmelts for cheap:D!

Quote from: Mike the Mage;1047536The name escapes me right now, but there is a wonderful blog on this very topic.

Tales to Astound, by Chris Kubasik. I highly recommend it, FWIW;)!

Gnomes.  I don't like gnomes.  I don't know why I just don't.  I play with a friend who really likes gnomes.  So I included them in the world.  This is how I described them.

QuoteAnd last, and definitely least, is the gnome.  Yes, gnomes exist in this world.  Gnomes are the unfortunate offspring of a a dwarf and a halfling.  They of hairy feet and hairy face are neither fish nor fowl but fortunately infertile (much like a mule.) They seem to inherit the worst traits of their parents.  They are grumpy, gluttonous and greedy.  They live underground like their forebears but unlike dwarves and halflings they live in mud holes and are grubby and smell gamy.  They seem to dislike the world and everyone in it.  Fortunately, there are very, very few of them.

I also don't like half-orcs.  Because of my view of orcs, I can't get it out of my head that they're all products of rape.

Quote from: Narmer;1047616I also don't like half-orcs.  Because of my view of orcs, I can't get it out of my head that they're all products of rape.

My half-orcs are the product of an evil mad sorcerers attempt to crossbreed orcs and men to create super soldiers with the strength of orcs and intelligence of men. What he got was the opposite, not much smarter than an orc and barely stronger than a man. Evil sorcerer abandoned them to the wilds, where they live bleak semi-nomadic existences, shunned by both of the pure races from which they were created.

Still kind of rapey, I guess

Quote from: AsenRG;1047615Tales to Astound, by Chris Kubasik. I highly recommend it, FWIW;)!

THAT is the one. Cheers cos I was looking for that awesome sauce

Quote from: Mike the Mage;1047646THAT is the one. Cheers cos I was looking for that awesome sauce

Thanks Mike and AsenRG!

Beside all the awesome Traveller clarity, he has some pretty interesting ideas on there about point crawl adventure organization and campaign design.  

He has weapon cards for the 1977 edition of Traveller, which I have never seen before.  Very cool.  Not always sure if the various players want more in front of them (I just let them know if they succeed and the result dice they may need to roll), but definitely downloaded those for a future try out!

Doesn't 5th have little notes in many monster descriptions for player character use in the monster manual?  I really have zero interest in 5th, but I thought that was good idea, if I recall correctly.  Any of those stand out as well done or extra stupid?  Honestly, I would rather have all of the non-human types in the monster manual with PC use notes (elf, dwarf, etcetera), which would underscore how they are campaign world dependent, rather than default.

[As a call back to a DM of yore, I would have been fine with Draco Tittius Maximus. He was very creative, if totally mad! Somehow it would have worked in one of his exotic campaign worlds.]

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;1047572The 4E PH does, IIRC, make it pretty clear that they hatch from eggs. If that doesn't, Wizards Presents: Races and Classes definitely does.

So they are platypus people in disguise?

The whole "Magic dragon people cant never ever have breasts!" is one of the more retarded arguments. Right up there with "Orcs are Black People!" or "Orcs are RAPE!"

Quote from: Narmer;1047616I also don't like half-orcs.  Because of my view of orcs, I can't get it out of my head that they're all products of rape.

Thats been false since pretty much the start.