my issue with the steriotypesis when i play a character so drastically different from the steriotypes of their race, even if they are of a similar race class combination, people tell me i'm having BADWRONGFUN.
whether it's the Dwarven Druid that speaks to the earth, works as a Feng Shui Master, and has a pet Jaguar he rescued from slavers in a jungle ship
or the Elven Huntress whom uses every part she can of what she kills, including, consuming the flesh of her slain humanoid foes or feeling more like a bounty hunter and brigand than a proper tree hugger.
or heck, a Gnome whom doesn't have a 50 syllable name, doesn't tinker with gears, and lives a warden in service to a nymph matron whom abuses her if she doesn't remember to clean the pond on the new moon of every month.
My initial knee jerk response to this is that you need to play with less judgmental people. Given the other characters that you have mentioned in the past, I'm flabbergasted that they'd have a problem with a deviation on the core races.
In any case, perhaps it isn't the races. Maybe it is the people you play with.
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I actually have the opposite problem as you, OP. I play kitsune in part because everyone else I game with exclusively plays humans, elves, half-elves, gnomes, aasimar, tieflings, or the occasional drow.
That, and I think that change shape is one of the most fun racial traits in the game. Believe it or not, but a lot of people play those weird races because they're fun to play.
my issue with the steriotypesis when i play a character so drastically different from the steriotypes of their race, even if they are of a similar race class combination, people tell me i'm having BADWRONGFUN.
whether it's the Dwarven Druid that speaks to the earth, works as a Feng Shui Master, and has a pet Jaguar he rescued from slavers in a jungle ship
or the Elven Huntress whom uses every part she can of what she kills, including, consuming the flesh of her slain humanoid foes or feeling more like a bounty hunter and brigand than a proper tree hugger.
or heck, a Gnome whom doesn't have a 50 syllable name, doesn't tinker with gears, and lives a warden in service to a nymph matron whom abuses her if she doesn't remember to clean the pond on the new moon of every month.
My initial knee jerk response to this is that you need to play with less judgmental people. Given the other characters that you have mentioned in the past, I'm flabbergasted that they'd have a problem with a deviation on the core races.
In any case, perhaps it isn't the races. Maybe it is the people you play with.
my judgemental group was upset with my other characters too, even if they let me play them. they still complained.
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This is why I have a basic rule for myself: "You mind your character sheet, and I'll mind mine."
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This is why I have a basic rule for myself: "You mind your character sheet, and I'll mind mine."
To a point. if the game has a defined theme and someone is dead set on ruining that it gets old fast. A paladin in skull and shackles or a half fiend necromancer in carrion crown APs for instance
Well to be honest I don't find myself playing Pathfinder much these days because of its (I would say over-)emphasis on mechanics. But with that said, I hate every edition of D&D in its own special way.
1e was way too arbitrary and...
You might want to look into running/playing a PF Beginner Box game (because they got just Humans, Elves, and Dwarves) or maybe something like Castles and Crusades (think of it as 1/2e and 3e had a mutant baby).
PS I wonder if all the bad reaction to hobbit and elves is because of Elijah Wood/Orlando Bloom associations (think of it akin to hating on Justin Bieber...)
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In general, it's not so much a bad reaction to elves and halflings so much as a bad reaction to being told it's badwrong to enjoy things that fall outside the narrow scope of LotR clones.
It's why so many of us roll our eyes when people tell us we're wrong for liking Pathfinder gnomes because anime, or we're wrong for liking Blizzard-style orcs over Tolkien-style orcs, or that we only like "exotic" races because we must be powergaming or seeking attention, never mind the actual myriad number of reasons any of us have the preferences we do.
I think most of us just don't take kindly to others telling us why we like things and why we're wrong for liking them.
I once had a player who just would not stop talking sh1t about my fishbowl sorcerer.
1) People will just pick a race for the mechanical benefits, roleplaying be damned. Humans are so easy, almost any behavior can be human. When you have vishkanya player who has no actual idea what a vishkanya is (and don't look at me, because I certainly don't) that's a huge issue to me.
That's easy: poisonous/venomous reptilian people with scales and hair. ;)
They're around. My current party is doing Way of the Wicked, and we have two human members, both rogues (one is a animal handler and the other a trap specialist, and possibly a human alchemist. The other three members are a tibbit ranger(Dragon Compendium: essentially halfing were housecats) with the skirmisher archetype, a tiefling priest of Asmodeus with a birthmark on his back that acts as a holy symbol with the harm good/heal evil turn archetype (the name escapes me), and an auran diviner going into cyphermage. The last group I ran for had almost exclusively human, half-elf, etc races. There is nothing wrong with not playing the classics to the norm. Exotic characters work in a lot of games, in others they don't. Much of it really depends on a good DM working in the back stories for PCs that fit.
I wonder if I can find a game where someone actually molested dragons...
Probably, but we don't talk about those sorts of... games. ;)
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Ah the Thread Eternal has risen again. The Immortal Discussion. The Endless Thread, the Thread-to-end-all-threads. The Thread Celestial (though not half-celestial, of course). The thread that pits not-special snowflakes against towns of mundane Lotrings while the special snowscape seeks to expunge them from existing in the first place, its bastion of traditionality imperilled by horn or hoof.
Behold! The discussion is over before it began! And thus continues eternally...
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I find in my group we end up with about half and half each party, about half the party ends up gnomes, halflings, dwarves, humans or elves, and the other half are the more out there races. I personally like the newer races because they leave me with a bit more room to explore roleplay wise. Everyone has expectations about the traditional races, but no one had expectations about the wayang when I brought them to the table. It allowed me to make stuff up, and be creative within a framerwork that works for me. A human is sort of a blank slate, and elves/dwarves/halflings/gnomes have been so heavily trodden that it feels blashpemous to shift them culturally (not individually, but culturally), so its kind of cool to be among the first in a given group conciousness to explore a new race. From here on out in my group for instance, its likely that the wayang will be played as these creepy monster under the bed types. Why? Because its the precedent I got to establish being the first to play one. Its sort of like a highly concentrated exercise in worldbuilding without trying to go into lots of details or actually creating a whole setting.
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my judgemental group was upset with my other characters too, even if they let me play them. they still complained.
my issue with the steriotypesis when i play a character so drastically different from the steriotypes of their race, even if they are of a similar race class combination, people tell me i'm having BADWRONGFUN.
whether it's the Dwarven Druid that speaks to the earth, works as a Feng Shui Master, and has a pet Jaguar he rescued from slavers in a jungle ship
or the Elven Huntress whom uses every part she can of what she kills, including, consuming the flesh of her slain humanoid foes or feeling more like a bounty hunter and brigand than a proper tree hugger.
or heck, a Gnome whom doesn't have a 50 syllable name, doesn't tinker with gears, and lives a warden in service to a nymph matron whom abuses her if she doesn't remember to clean the pond on the new moon of every month.
My initial knee jerk response to this is that you need to play with less judgmental people. Given the other characters that you have mentioned in the past, I'm flabbergasted that they'd have a problem with a deviation on the core races.
In any case, perhaps it isn't the races. Maybe it is the people you play with.
Having done a google search for Tera Elin, and given your past posting history describing said characters, your groups might be less judgemental and more creeped out...
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Welp, that seals it. I wouldn't want to be stuck in such a "classic" game and am grateful it's not the default assumption.It's a matter of realistic roleplay to me. If it were up to me entirely, I would only allow humans in my game because I find them the only race someone can relate to. However, I am giving up some ground, and I'm usually okay with one person to play a "weird race", if they actually roleplay what it MEANS to be such a being. I find that most players play the same way whether they are a human or an elf or a Half-Dragon Half-Demon Half Angel monstrosity.
What it means varies by each person and the setting. Being a different face does not mean they have to act differently. The other races are also humanoids, and while the books give background on the typical elf or dwarf as an example I sure the entire race is not cookie cutter, just like humans aren't.
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It's why so many of us roll our eyes when people tell us we're wrong for liking Pathfinder gnomes because anime, or we're wrong for liking Blizzard-style orcs over Tolkien-style orcs, or that we only like "exotic" races because we must be powergaming or seeking attention, never mind the actual myriad number of reasons any of us have the preferences we do.
I think most of us just don't take kindly to others telling us why we like things and why we're wrong for liking them.
For all the people who claim to have this happen to them? I've actually yet to see that actually come out in all the years I've been playing and running Pathfinder tables. The only time I actually see irritation when it becomes very clear that a player is making their choices for the purpose of becoming an attention hogging special snowflake, and shows frustration when that tactic doesn't work.
What will irritate me far more than any racial choice? People who insist on playing deaf mute characters. They're simply barred from my games... period.
You know, not everyone who plays a kitsune or ratfolk or tiefling chooses those races "for the purpose of becoming an attention hogging special snowflake", as Mikaze pointed out. Choosing a non-core race does not mean the player is attempting to be a "special snowflake".
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I'm not bashing the way anyone wants to play their homebrew settings, but when you're in what one could call the "typical D&D setting" these races should be incredibly rare and specific to a location. How all these weirdos come together in one group all the time is just ridiculous at best and absolutely immersion breaking at its worst.
You know that not all "D&D" settings are human-centric nor do they require all of the "other" races to sit in their own little corner of the world right?
My solution: Racism. NPCs are not enlightened socialists like people want them to be. If a player plays an atypical race for the area they can expect to face persecution wherever they go. Children pointing while parents usher them away, price markups in shops, higher Bluff and Diplomacy DCs (though lower intimidate DCs) and even if the rest of the party makes fast friends, the 'alien' is at best tolerated until they personally save someone's life.
As mentioned in my Kaidan setting of Japanese horror, the vanilla fantasy races don't exist, but the special snowflake races: kappa, kitsune, korobokuru, hengeyokai and tengu are considered 'cursed' by the humans and the government. They live in hiding in the wilderness areas and may be killed on sight by samurai or other minions of the evil rulers. So you can certainly play non-human races, but if you do, its a risk - many inhabitants of the land consider non-humans as some kind of monster.
Sure. But as someone who grew up with their main fantasy outlets being old AD&D modules, Baldurs Gate, Icewind Dale, etc. I am very much in love with the mythos the D&D game has built up over time. There is no denying that there is a setting that is distinctly D&D. I just don't believe that the odd races of that system should be player characters unless there is a compelling reason for it.But my point is that its introduction into D&D/Pathfinder is pretty recent. The classics meaning they've been around since inception or reaaaaaaaaal close.I don't find that definition of classic compelling. RPGs are meant to emulate any story we want, not just the conventions of a specific game.
"Compelling" is subjective.
It's why so many of us roll our eyes when people tell us we're wrong for liking Pathfinder gnomes because anime
Wait what? Really?
Anime is the absolute last thing I think of when I think of Pathfinder gnomes. In fact, they seemed so different to me that I couldn't match them up with anything (which is probably half the reason I like them so much!).
That just strikes me as overly judgmental, and this is from someone who admits to having had to learn to lighten up on race choices a few years back.
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It's why so many of us roll our eyes when people tell us we're wrong for liking Pathfinder gnomes because animeWait what? Really?
Anime is the absolute last thing I think of when I think of Pathfinder gnomes. In fact, they seemed so different to me that I couldn't match them up with anything (which is probably half the reason I like them so much!).
That just strikes me as overly judgmental, and this is from someone who admits to having had to learn to lighten up on race choices a few years back.
Basically, as soon as something isn't gritty Tolkien, there's a bunch of people who scream "ANIME!!!!!" and another bunch that screams "VIDEO GAMEY!!!!!!".
You need to learn just to phase out when they start.
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Interesting fact about these threads: if you take a drink every time someone brings in Tolkien, you'll die by page 2.
The core races exist outside of the old man's work, guys. Liking them doesn't make you hidebound to his works, anymore than liking anthropomorphic critters makes you anything either.
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I find in my group we end up with about half and half each party, about half the party ends up gnomes, halflings, dwarves, humans or elves, and the other half are the more out there races. I personally like the newer races because they leave me with a bit more room to explore roleplay wise. Everyone has expectations about the traditional races, but no one had expectations about the wayang when I brought them to the table. It allowed me to make stuff up, and be creative within a framerwork that works for me. A human is sort of a blank slate, and elves/dwarves/halflings/gnomes have been so heavily trodden that it feels blashpemous to shift them culturally (not individually, but culturally), so its kind of cool to be among the first in a given group conciousness to explore a new race. From here on out in my group for instance, its likely that the wayang will be played as these creepy monster under the bed types. Why? Because its the precedent I got to establish being the first to play one. Its sort of like a highly concentrated exercise in worldbuilding without trying to go into lots of details or actually creating a whole setting.That's part of why I don't like it as a GM. If I'm going to run a game with characters of the newer races, I need to do that work up front to fit them into the campaign world. Because I want the characters to have a place and some grounding, not just be wandering strangers. I like to work the character's races into the world, not just "They come from over in this continent that no one knows much about and won't come up again in the campaign.
Well the wandering stranger is a well established trope in fantasy of all kinds. I can understand your reluctance, but generally I would work out some basic details with my gm and then go from there at the table. I know its counter to what alot of people like to do, but I enjoy collective world building within the station. Ideas that come up at the table end up in the world. Need to tell someone a story in character? Tell them about your uncle bill the alchemist and his mishaps with gunpouder. A few sessions later, Uncle bills alchemy shop is in the adventure.
There is a fair bit of back and forth in terms of world building in my game, especially when it comes to the one of our 3 active games that is a homebrew setting.
And I'm not good enough at improvising to do that for several new races during a character gen session or even between then and the game start.
Sure, the player can do some of that or help, but only in isolation. He doesn't know the rest of the world and its secrets.
Does he have to know the worlds secrets? Not every group, race or even nation has to be pivital in world politics and have interacted in the background. Think if our actual world. Could you write up a small nation in eastern europe and fit in into the 20th and 21st century history without having to create loads of detials and keeping it from having a meaningful impact on things like the world wars, the cold war, and the soviet union? Why cant this be done with a fantasy race? IN particular when a big chunk of the exotic races are either partially or completely extraplanar
In general, trying to fit too many races into the world's history is tricky. Unless they're just isolated without much interaction, which lacks interest.
Why does this lack interest? Do they need to be players on the world stage? Is it impossible to have an interesting character with a meaningful reasion to venture out into the greater world unless his homeland/race is deeply involved in global politics?
Conceptually, I wouldn't mind having the six or seven races that are most common include whatever weird things the players want to play, but that's world building time I can't do until the character races are chosen.
I think its a style thing. I and for the most part my group dont mind spliting up world building duties among dm and players. I also like to come up with details on the fly at the table to develop locations/races/characters. Its that improvisation that spawns my more interesting characters. I freely admit I use race a sort of creative crutch, that helps me come up with interesting roleplay, that I struggle with when using the more established races. But it does have a positive impact on my characters, and I hope, the games I play in.
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If it were just me running a game with people playing characters that I devised it would be all human and one demihuman but that is not fun for the group I DM. I've had to quiet my conservative ideas of what a party should look like for he sake of everyone's fun and once I did that I started to have a lot more fun myself
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For all the people who claim to have this happen to them? I've actually yet to see that actually come out in all the years I've been playing and running Pathfinder tables. The only time I actually see irritation when it becomes very clear that a player is making their choices for the purpose of becoming an attention hogging special snowflake, and shows frustration when that tactic doesn't work.
It's why so many of us roll our eyes when people tell us we're wrong for liking Pathfinder gnomes because anime, or we're wrong for liking Blizzard-style orcs over Tolkien-style orcs, or that we only like "exotic" races because we must be powergaming or seeking attention, never mind the actual myriad number of reasons any of us have the preferences we do.
I think most of us just don't take kindly to others telling us why we like things and why we're wrong for liking them.
Yes, because if you haven't personally witnessed something, then obviously anyone who's had a different experience is just lying scumbag powergamer who is pushing an evil, manipulative agenda to let them play a special snowflake character. That's far more likely than the absolutely crazy idea that different people have different gaming experiences.
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I usually play in a generic setting that uses Greyhawk gods, and some Greyhawk sites. I'm not a huge canon geek for it, it just happened to be the default mentioned when I started playing. Since I don't pay much attention beyond what is actually in the campaign I'm running, I can allow any races without an issue. If I ever get around to actually using a published setting besides Golarion (which has room for all the races too) I might be a little more stringent about what is available.
Our current party is a human, a gnome, an elf, and a chaotic good goblin raised by dwarves.
And you know which one is the most fun (besides the gnome who pickpockets everyone)? The goblin. Why? Probably the contrast.
EDIT: (I play the human.)
This is probably a bad time to bring up the Awakened Wolf Natural Weapon Ranger I had in one of my campaigns isn't it.
Naw it can hang out with my npc/pc awakened Nessian heavy warhorse, that became a wizard (rolled very good on int), and eventually taught at a mage academy.
But Greyhawk was for many, many years my goto setting, grew up with that place and played almost all of my favorite campaigns there.
Never liked forgotten realms, had a feeling of a world that revolved around the pcs.
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This is why I have a basic rule for myself: "You mind your character sheet, and I'll mind mine."To a point. if the game has a defined theme and someone is dead set on ruining that it gets old fast. A paladin in skull and shackles or a half fiend necromancer in carrion crown APs for instance
That's the GM's job, not mine. If he okayed it, then it's none of my business.
Design Manager
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I think the main disconnect here is that when I play Pathfinder/D&D, I typically play in a Greyhawk/Forgotten Realms-esque setting. ****
Ummm... Forgotten Realms is the birthplace of weird or unusual player races. Literally half of the 3.5 Forgotten Realms line was pages upon pages of weird new races to play. Every expansion they dropped had pages of new race descriptions with pictures, stat blocks, backgrounds, etc.
Forgotten Realms was the 3.5 home of: genasii, assimar, tiefling, drow PCs, gnoll PCs, hagspawn PCs, underdark fairy PCs (gloaming), no fewer than 5 reptilian PC races, loxodon, thri-kreen, so many variants of the core races it isn't even funny, blind morlock PCs, four-armed spider-men PCs, and the list goes on. I'm 90% certain that Ed Greenwood created a couple new races just so that Elminster could have a few extra particularly disturbing bedmates.Saying "I normally play in a Forgotten Realms-esque setting" and "I don't like abnormal races" is like saying "I hate super powers and comics so I only play Mutants and Masterminds".
My solution: Racism. NPCs are not enlightened socialists like people want them to be.
That is 100% setting and theme based, not a rule.
This is the type of thread where we should celebrate the differences in the types of games people enjoy, and open ourselves to considering the new ideas raised (even if we consider them and then say "ew, no, I'd still rather not play like that, personally".)
That goes for both "sides" here. It's so easy to see the difference between those happily discussing ideas and preferences, and those who are expressing thinly (or not so thinly) veiled distaste that others actually enjoy playing a certain way.
I'm playing the race card RIGHT NOW.
Your discussion is over.
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I think the key to keeping game balance and some semblance of continuity in your game is to rigidly enforce the downside of selecting an odd, rare, or notorious race.
Don't roll up a strix because the powergamer in you wants a flying character, then act all indignant because the human townsfolk hate and fear you. The same goes for drow, goblins, ratfolk, dhampir, catfolk, etc.
Let's face it, a big reason you chose one of those races was because they have supercharged bonuses stacked up to make them optimal for certain classes.
If you're a DM that even allows these races, don't let your players get away with it! Don't let them walk around town like everything's cool, like they're just another human. Sure, your adventurers might be poorly meta-gamed as enlightened 21st century progressives, but all that local barkeep knows is that strix despise humans, who think of them as "winged black devils." Guess what? That's what the town guards think, too. And the mayor. And the high priest over at Saint Free Healing's temple.
And don't bend when your players get all butthurt about it! When the gate guards stop the group's orc barbarian, tiefling summoner, and fetchling demon-blooded sorcerer at the drawbridge, they're going to act all surprised. "But we didn't even do anything!" Maybe not, but to these guards, your characters are walking manifestations of their worst nightmares, villains from childhood stories and the subject of horrifying news of war, murder, and destruction from far-off lands.