I agree with the sentiment that demi-human races are typically failures, at odds with roleplaying. This is what happens when races are defined behaviorally, because behavior is exactly the purview of roleplaying. Not to mention that the idea that one's race defines one's attitude is just ... obnoxious.

Races whose differences are physical on the other hand, I find can be very interesting.

I largely agree that humans are the way to go for PCs in an RPG. I too have a negative reaction to a Viking "Beards, Booze & Battle" cliche, except I'm a Klingon or a Dwarf. I have seen race play into a game I was in pretty well once, though.

The campaign was set in "The Rainy City", a city at the end of the world, where refugees from the deluge wash up. The campaign was about the founding of a Rainy City Parliament, the first attempt at a central government in the city (rather than relying on ad hoc agreements between guilds, orders and associations, etc.) There were only two known elves in the whole city: the flamboyant "Jaelin the Charmer" (ex-PC of mine from a former campaign) and "The Gray Elf", a silent, mysterious elf who delved the ruins of the old wizard's school beneath the waves. The game had somewhere between 8-12 Players, each playing batches of PCs (but generally a main one each). The inaugural parliamentary session was run by "The Sandestin", a kinda mythic character that different people have taken the mantle of over the years (played by a PC), a short character covered in robes with goggles like some kind of post-apocalyptic survivor. My character, Alvin Allevious, was a blind "anime bish" type who was all about peace, had a staff and bandages that covered his eyes. In that first session, the PCs nominated and elected my character to be president of the parliament. The Sandestin was left in the role of Speaker (because the parliament sessions ran under Robert's Rules of Order, and no other players wanted the hassle of being responsible for it...). So, queue months of scheming, plots, assassinations between gangs, drama between the Alchemists Guild and the Masons, some trying to undermine the institution of the parliament, etc. etc. Of course, my character is an elf this whole time and is the president of a parliament humans have set up to run their affairs. About 3 months into the campaign I work out that the Sandestin is an elf as well. The whole enterprise is under the control of secret elves. The other 8-10 PCs do not catch on for another 9 months or so until we finally reveal that we've discovered a way to the realm of air, and elves sail a boat into a giant gate we've created, leaving all of the poor saps behind in their eternally raining city (as the dead rise and the ground opens up due to independent awfulness other short-sighted PCs have set in motion as part of their petty power plays). That was some nice pay-off.

I'll admit that I used to be a huge Elf and Drow fan as a teen, and my first character I ever played was a Drow sorcerer who even dressed like a Western cowboy and was essentially an evil version of Roland Deschain (hey, I was thirteen at the time!) but as I entered my twenties, I started to appreciate human PC's more and more.

Now I'm firmly with Pundit in that Humans are the most interesting of the D&D player races. Nowadays I'll almost exclusively play as a Human. Sometimes, I may play as a Half-Elf, but only on occasion.

Quote from: Azraele;1053913I then challenge you with this point: if they're so relateable, why make them inhuman?

Why not just play a gruff, hidebound viking: why a dwarf? Why not a haughty, spoiled noble wizard: why an elf? Why not a tribal, honor-bound barbarian: why a half-orc?

Unless there's a reason to make them not human: why not human?

My point is that I can answer right back, why not non human?  You point is coming from an aesthetic preference.  So is mine, only it is a different aesthetic preference.  That's all any of this is--an aesthetic preference, which doesn't need to be justified, only understood as such.  Once understood, it might affect who plays with whom.  It's a weight on the scale that might cause us to prefer to not play in the same game, for example.  But there is no reason expressed in this topic for why non-humans should be avoided in my game, only in games for people that have different preferences.

Note that I'm not claiming any high ground (even aesthetic high ground, if there is such a thing).  I've already said I'll happily ban races that don't appeal to me.

Quote from: Azraele;1053913I then challenge you with this point: if they're so relateable, why make them inhuman?

Why not just play a gruff, hidebound viking: why a dwarf? Why not a haughty, spoiled noble wizard: why an elf? Why not a tribal, honor-bound barbarian: why a half-orc?


Unless there's a reason to make them not human: why not human?

Do gruff, hidebound vikings live partly below ground. Do they have a faction that oppose dealing with non-vikings and one that promotes dealings with non-Vikings? Are they four feet tall and vulnerable to people teasing them about it?
 
Does the spoiled noble wizard live ten or more lifetimes and find a relationship with a human like adopting a big, short-lived dog? Does she have a close relationship with nature?  Is she from a people that are never numerous anywhere and have a tragic, poetic past?

Never had a half-Orc character, even when I was ostensibly running D&D but a Goblin character who was on the short list to be eaten and fled his own society had a great career as a player-character some years ago.

Pundit isn't completely wrong but non-human player-characters can be very interesting and, more important, fun.

Where he's not wrong is that humans and their relationships and conflicts are more accessible for roleplaying. And, also, he's right that having something resembling Faerie, the area where the non-humans are and where adventures go on, is a great setup for an RPG. My own current setting is one where this Faerie intrudes on human lands.

I don't know why but something keeps capitalizing the v in viking. That's like capitalizing the s in Sailor but I'm not going back and reversing it again.

Quote from: Omega;1053900Your favourite race sucks! (Unless it is not a human!)

Pretty much.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1053840Yes, today I present a fairly radical perspective on non-human PCs in D&D:

[video=youtube_share;RwvqXDdIeeM]https://youtu.be/RwvqXDdIeeM[/youtube]

That's not "radical". It's common sense;).

And of course, my favourite "race" is human.

Quote from: oggsmash;1053891Wait...Paladins don't have to serve a god now?? Even if you are anti religion,  one is is a game of pretend and two....play another class?  That is a strange change IMO.

Well, if Clerics don't have to serve a god, why would Paladins:D?

Quote from: Daztur;1053862Pundy's DCC dark elves description of (to paraphrase) "guys in black spikey skull-covered armor with squeaky voices" is just about perfect. Easy to wrap your head around in a minute and remember.

Thanks!

Bunch of posts on this thread about how most non-human races are lazy stereotypes. Exactly. That's why they're useful. A cliche is worth a thousand words, they allow for efficient infodumping.

Of course you want to give more than that but throwing some cliches at the players gets them on the right page and you can move on from there. I think that the asshole troll elf I ran in a previous campaign that trolled the PCs by sending them written messages on arrows he shot at the PCs before riding away on his deer (before they knocked the jerk off a cliff) worked better than if he'd been a human doing the same thing since it gave them something to go on.

Quote from: WillInNewHaven;1054019Pundit isn't completely wrong but non-human player-characters can be very interesting and, more important, fun.

Where he's not wrong is that humans and their relationships and conflicts are more accessible for roleplaying. And, also, he's right that having something resembling Faerie, the area where the non-humans are and where adventures go on, is a great setup for an RPG. My own current setting is one where this Faerie intrudes on human lands.

I don't find this to be true in practice. I do have a fondness for historical / real-world settings, and I find that they are more accessible as well as easier to immerse in. It's good to have the detailed context like what it means to be Catholic, or what it means to be French.

However, within D&D and similar fantasy worlds, I don't think there is a significant difference between immersing in a human character and immersing in another race. For example, I don't think that Lord of the Rings would have been better and more accessible if the main characters were human Gondoreans rather than non-human hobbits. The hobbit characters were just as accessible and real - moreso, really - than the human characters. It's the same in D&D. If a player picks a human ranger rather than a half-orc ranger, that's not a sign that the character will be more interesting, in my experience.

And even though historical and semi-historical worlds are easier to immerse in, I don't think that makes them objectively better. The non-immersive alien-ness of fantasy can be something that people enjoy.

Well, Hobbits are an interesting sort of case, because they're mostly just "country peasant folks" with a few twists. They're in many ways the most human non-human race around (in the Tolkien version, that is).

Quote from: RPGPundit;1054646Well, Hobbits are an interesting sort of case, because they're mostly just "country peasant folks" with a few twists. They're in many ways the most human non-human race around (in the Tolkien version, that is).

The monotheistic Church in my campaign, that didn't like non-humans, finally decided that Hobbits were just weird little people, probably because people, including Priests, were so fond of them.

Over the years, I've become more and more biased towards humans as PCs. These days, I'd far prefer to play a human over anything else, and when I'm DMing I prefer that players run human PCs. I like to keep the demi-human races more in the realm of "monsters."

Quote from: RPGPundit;1054646Well, Hobbits are an interesting sort of case, because they're mostly just "country peasant folks" with a few twists. They're in many ways the most human non-human race around (in the Tolkien version, that is).

I don't disagree - but nearly all fantasy races are just humans with a few twists. There are lots of popular fantasy series that are centered on non-human characters, and they generally make their characters grounded and believable by making them like humans with a few twists.

There are a lot of great non-human characters in fantasy and speculative fiction as well as in RPGs, in my experience. I feel like it's silly to say that either humans are better or non-humans are. They both have plenty of potential of different sorts.

Quote from: Philotomy Jurament;1054682Over the years, I've become more and more biased towards humans as PCs. These days, I'd far prefer to play a human over anything else, and when I'm DMing I prefer that players run human PCs. I like to keep the demi-human races more in the realm of "monsters."

That's interesting, because I'm going to be trying the opposite for a bit -- making humans more into the realm of monsters, while focusing on humanoid central characters. It's another change-of-pace adventure style I'm trying out.

Nothing wrong with mostly-human or all-human games, but I'm also interested in the opposite.

Quote from: WillInNewHaven;1054680The monotheistic Church in my campaign, that didn't like non-humans, finally decided that Hobbits were just weird little people, probably because people, including Priests, were so fond of them.

Um...?  Not sure I like the connotations of this...

:eek: