Quote from: Kuroth;1047659Doesn'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.]

No mention of that at all in the MM. Theres no notes on any race about using them as PC races in the 5e MM. There is though Volo's Guide which adds several new monster races as PCs.

Quote from: Omega;1047703No mention of that at all in the MM. Theres no notes on any race about using them as PC races in the 5e MM. There is though Volo's Guide which adds several new monster races as PCs.

My bad.  I think I was recalling Heroes and Other Worlds, which I was making campaign stuff at the same time as the draft copies of 5th were about.  Something I would have liked, I suppose.

Quote from: Chris24601;1047562I 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.).

I think it could work if you run it like that as you've said... And that you've worked compatibility into the background of the world.

Quote from: Nerzenjäger;1046215Tieflings and Dragonborn are awful.

Agreed, as are those quasi-elemental races.

Quote from: Omega;1047702Thats been false since pretty much the start.

Maybe in whatever world you play in.

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

Quote from: Kuroth;1047647Thanks 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!

Glad to help, and to spread Tales to Astound. It's certainly worth reading, IMO;)!

Quote from: The Exploited.;1047706I think it could work if you run it like that as you've said... And that you've worked compatibility into the background of the world.

Yup, it also let me lump all the "half" races under the human entry.

Frankly, in terms of world-building I'm kind of the opposite of the "hate dragonborn and tiefling" sentiments. The classic D&D races (elves, dwarves, halflings) minus their extended lifespans and minor cosmetic features (akin to Star Trek's bumpy foreheads) may as well just be stereotypes of various human groups. You could replace the elves of most settings with an aloof society of nature magic wielding humans who live in the woods (and extend their lives with magic if necessary), the dwarves with gruff hard drinking human mining folk in the hills and the halflings with idealised pastoral common folk humans and nothing would change about the setting.

Why even bother including fantasy races like that? Why even pretend they're anything other than humans with a Hat (in the tv tropes sense) so you can use the Hat instead of developing a real human personality for a character? To the credit of the 5e "Adventures in Middle Earth" did just that; the Dwarves of the Lonely Mountain, the Elves of Mirkwood and Hobbits of the Shire are listed right in the middle of the Bardings, the Dunedain, the Men of Bree, the Men of the Lake, the Men of Minas Tirath and the Riders of Rohan as "Races of Men."

As such, unless they've got something really specific to set them apart I wouldn't waste page count on them and would focus on something meaningfully distinct... like dragonmen or a 4e-style tiefling species where they all got warped into semi-infernal forms that breed true and have innate infernal abilities.

This doesn't mean don't include elves, dwarves or halflings, but for God's sake make them something more than a human with pointed ears. Make them something a human couldn't be just by being born into another human culture.

For example in my setting the demons were sloppy when they warped men into dwarves. The demons considered them expendable and didn't expect them to live long in their hellish mines. It wasn't even noticed until they'd won their freedom, but because the process of creating them was so sloppy their body parts (organs and limbs) actually wear out at different rates starting in their twenties (life expectancy in the mines was about 20-25).

To combat this, the dwarves started replacing the parts as they wore out with arcane artifice... and not content to simply replace when they could improve, this artifice allowed them to exceed the baseline abilities of their frames; see in total darkness, lift great weights, hold their breath for an hour, etc. They became in essence arcane cyborgs.

Culturally they also differ from humans because, due to the progressive risks of organ failure taking out their reproductive organs, they start families VERY early... 15-16 years of age and most are grandparents (i.e. early to mid-thirties) by the time they even look to start an adventuring career with all familial duties long behind them (as a contrast with the late teen/twenty-something human adventurers leaving home to seek their fortune so they can eventually settle down).

That's a dwarf species worthy of being its own entry instead of a sidebar under the human entry which dwarves in most fantasy settings probably should be.

So yeah, even if I almost entirely play humans, give me settings with playable giants, minotaurs, magitech cyborgs, sapient golems and even dragons. That's something that actually sounds interesting to play in to me.

Quote from: Omega;1047701So 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!"

How often were you offered a fantasy race whose females did not have prominent boobs, much less played one?

The complaint concerns the annoying trend that fantasy races always conform to human ideals of beauty and sexual dimorphism (i.e. anorexic barbie dolls with impossibly large boobs) regardless of whether they are reptilian, invertebrate, made of rock, lack mouths, etc. The only reason you would ever want to draw boobs on those hideous xenos scum is if you entertain sexual fantasies about drinking nice, warm dragon/rock/demon/zombie/whatever milk fresh from the tap. That is furry magical realm bullshit and I want no part of it outside of deliberate fetish porn.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1048067How often were you offered a fantasy race whose females did not have prominent boobs, much less played one?

The complaint concerns the annoying trend that fantasy races always conform to human ideals of beauty and sexual dimorphism (i.e. anorexic barbie dolls with impossibly large boobs) regardless of whether they are reptilian, invertebrate, made of rock, lack mouths, etc. The only reason you would ever want to draw boobs on those hideous xenos scum is if you entertain sexual fantasies about drinking nice, warm dragon/rock/demon/zombie/whatever milk fresh from the tap. That is furry magical realm bullshit and I want no part of it outside of deliberate fetish porn.

Ah great. Now I have "Whizzard" stuck in my head.

I really dislike Tolkien style elves.  So much so that I have never included them as NPCs in any game I have run over the decades.

Drow also suck. Any race where the Player Characters almost always play AGAINST the race's archetype sucks.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1048400Drow also suck.

Of course they do. But at least they've got practice:D!

Quote from: RPGPundit;1048400Drow also suck. Any race where the Player Characters almost always play AGAINST the race's archetype sucks.

That is why I like to introduce dark elves from other settings where they are considered adventurer material, like EverQuest, Lineage, Warcraft or pretty much any MMO where dark elves are PCs.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1048400Drow also suck. Any race where the Player Characters almost always play AGAINST the race's archetype sucks.

Dark Elves in my game are a caste distinction. The high elves rule and commune with the gods, the common elves are the merchants, craftsman and soldiers, the low elves are the peasants and the dark elves are those who have rejected their ordained place in the Divine Order and so become outcasts. Dark elves not only have no rights in elven society they are actually hunted because their are a finite number of elven souls (they reincarnate) and every elf who denies their place in the Divine Order causes an imperfection in that Order that must be corrected.

This naturally includes most PCs, but is not exclusive to them. Roughly 10% of the elven population have done something to that got them declared part of the dark caste (maybe they wanted to be a blacksmith and not a farmer) and so live in exile among the other races (for protection as much as anything). It is estimated by the elven ruling families that if the number of dark elves hits 15% they will be completely unable to sustain their civilization (particularly when the bulk of them are low elves seeking better lives) so they grow ever more fanatical about their pogram (to the point that they've attacked smaller communities that dark elves resided in just to 'recycle' the elven souls 'trapped' there), particularly when elven children are born to dark elves instead of into the castes, thus further depleting their numbers.

Quote from: Chris24601;1047930Yup, it also let me lump all the "half" races under the human entry.

Frankly, in terms of world-building I'm kind of the opposite of the "hate dragonborn and tiefling" sentiments. The classic D&D races (elves, dwarves, halflings) minus their extended lifespans and minor cosmetic features (akin to Star Trek's bumpy foreheads) may as well just be stereotypes of various human groups. You could replace the elves of most settings with an aloof society of nature magic wielding humans who live in the woods (and extend their lives with magic if necessary), the dwarves with gruff hard drinking human mining folk in the hills and the halflings with idealised pastoral common folk humans and nothing would change about the setting.

Why even bother including fantasy races like that? Why even pretend they're anything other than humans with a Hat (in the tv tropes sense) so you can use the Hat instead of developing a real human personality for a character? To the credit of the 5e "Adventures in Middle Earth" did just that; the Dwarves of the Lonely Mountain, the Elves of Mirkwood and Hobbits of the Shire are listed right in the middle of the Bardings, the Dunedain, the Men of Bree, the Men of the Lake, the Men of Minas Tirath and the Riders of Rohan as "Races of Men."

As such, unless they've got something really specific to set them apart I wouldn't waste page count on them and would focus on something meaningfully distinct... like dragonmen or a 4e-style tiefling species where they all got warped into semi-infernal forms that breed true and have innate infernal abilities.

This doesn't mean don't include elves, dwarves or halflings, but for God's sake make them something more than a human with pointed ears. Make them something a human couldn't be just by being born into another human culture.

For example in my setting the demons were sloppy when they warped men into dwarves. The demons considered them expendable and didn't expect them to live long in their hellish mines. It wasn't even noticed until they'd won their freedom, but because the process of creating them was so sloppy their body parts (organs and limbs) actually wear out at different rates starting in their twenties (life expectancy in the mines was about 20-25).

To combat this, the dwarves started replacing the parts as they wore out with arcane artifice... and not content to simply replace when they could improve, this artifice allowed them to exceed the baseline abilities of their frames; see in total darkness, lift great weights, hold their breath for an hour, etc. They became in essence arcane cyborgs.

Culturally they also differ from humans because, due to the progressive risks of organ failure taking out their reproductive organs, they start families VERY early... 15-16 years of age and most are grandparents (i.e. early to mid-thirties) by the time they even look to start an adventuring career with all familial duties long behind them (as a contrast with the late teen/twenty-something human adventurers leaving home to seek their fortune so they can eventually settle down).

That's a dwarf species worthy of being its own entry instead of a sidebar under the human entry which dwarves in most fantasy settings probably should be.

So yeah, even if I almost entirely play humans, give me settings with playable giants, minotaurs, magitech cyborgs, sapient golems and even dragons. That's something that actually sounds interesting to play in to me.

Well the value of the traditional races is that a cliche is worth a thousand words. "Elf" is a much more efficient way of saying "an aloof society of nature magic wielding humans who live in the woods (and extend their lives with magic if necessary)." Players aren't going to read much background information so efficiency in setting information is important. The same thing applies to stealing historical human culutres. Saying "Viking" lets you skip a ton of exposition that the players aren't going to listen to.

Then you throw in some twists onto the basic cliche to make it more fun, but starting with the cliche gives players a starting point.

That said, upping the weirdness of elves and dwarves helps a lot but you can't take it too far without losing players. The simplest way is to strip all of the Warhammer Fantasy gunk off of dwarves and just go back to Tolkien dwarves and even exaggerate that a bit. With elves just make them standard fairytale jackass fey guys instead of environmentalist parables and that works fine.

With halflings having them be cornball doofuses who somehow manage to pull through anyway amuses me.