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And a clear majority has pointed out that the demihumans provide easy cookie-cutter stereotypes to play, whereas humans actually require some semblance of a backstory. But you don't acknoweldge that point, nor the consensus, instead dismissing it as "defensiveness" ... and that's generally considered to be the line between "discussion" and "trolling." If you want to be seen as engaging in the former, you'll have to try a bit harder to acknowledge the other point of view.
How exactly is playing a human with no meaningful backstory or character any better than an off race with at least some semblance of character base identity.
You can flavor tofu any way you want, but if you leave it plain and boring... then you have plain and boring tofu.
But if you instead start with Jello, or hummus then you will have SOMETHING there. You dig?
Yeah it is easy to make a beer loving, womanizing dwarf. But that is a might bit more difficult to maintain than a human who is a lame duck, standabout that has no character motivation whatsoever, someone who only goes to town to buy new weapons and pick up a new mission.
I don't understand how the OP can consider catering to the tritest stereotypes in fantasy as good role-playing. Where is the role-playing in performing exactly as expected by the narrow pidgeon-holed stereotype? Where is the imagination?
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Powergamers concerned with min/maxing so they can get the feat. That's who.
I disagree.
A Dwarf, an Elf, and a Human walk into a tavern. The Dwarf orders a drink and starts chatting up the locals. The Elf hits on the waitress and works his way over to the entertainment to relax. The Human searches for a bulletin board, and failing that grills the bartender for rumors of dangerous creatures with bounties on their heads.
If this is all you ever see happening at your table...
My opinion, feel free to chip in but... I don't see the appeal in playing a Human past a dungeon crawler. Humans make better Roll-players than Role-players.
You need a new group.
How exactly is playing a human with no meaningful backstory or character any better than an off race with at least some semblance of character base identity.
Because there are no standard cliches that are attached to humans the way that they are attached to other races. The aforementioned beer-loving, Scottish dwarf. The uptight, Tolkien-esque elf. The big dumb half-orc. How do these stereotypes constitute "meaningful backstory"?
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Because there are no standard cliches that are attached to humans the way that they are attached to other races. The aforementioned beer-loving, Scottish dwarf. The uptight, Tolkien-esque elf. The big dumb half-orc. How do these stereotypes constitute "meaningful backstory"?
While they may not be meaningful, they do give some ground to work with, and a place to start with.
A human has what? He worked in a corporate office for 3 years until his parents kicked him out of his house and decided he had to start going to college? No.
+1 character flavor > 0 character flavor
Edit: Yes! Exactly! Joe the Fighter is the problem, humans make fantastic Joe's.
I mean NOTHING about your intricate human sorcerer with a rich family life back home in Hermea. Has a cottage and worked as a butcher until his magical powers started to manifest and he began a journey to find himself and understand his lineage et.
Themetricsystem, I think you need to make a distinction between humans who have interesting and reasonable backstories and motivations and the guy who says, "Hi, I'm Joe the Fighter, I just materialized full-grown and fully-equipped out of nowhere, with no family or place of origin and am interested in any killing-and-looting opportunities in the neighborhood."
Because there are no standard cliches that are attached to humans the way that they are attached to other races. The aforementioned beer-loving, Scottish dwarf. The uptight, Tolkien-esque elf. The big dumb half-orc. How do these stereotypes constitute "meaningful backstory"?
While they may not be meaningful, they do give some ground to work with, and a place to start with.
A human has what? He worked in a corporate office for 3 years until his parents kicked him out of his house and decided he had to start going to college? No.
+1 character flavor > 0 character flavor
Elaborate please. How exactly do demihumans have more to work with as far as character background than humans?
To be honest it sounds to me as if you yourself do not have a very good grasp of what most players would consider to be good roleplaying.
If you were an art critic, you would be praising my child's latest coloring page as greater than the Mona Lisa, because she managed to stay within the clearly defined lines whereas Da Vinci just slapped a bunch of colors onto a perfectly blank canvas.
How exactly is playing a human with no meaningful backstory or character any better than an off race with at least some semblance of character base identity.
Because there do not exist any races in Pathfinder that do not have "at least some semblance of character base identity".
To be honest it sounds to me as if you yourself do not have a very good grasp of what most players would consider to be good roleplaying.
If you were an art critic, you would be praising my child's latest coloring page as greater than the Mona Lisa, because she managed to stay within the clearly defined lines whereas Da Vinci just slapped a bunch of colors onto a perfectly blank canvas.
+1 (except replace "my child" with "a child")
I'm getting the feeling that Themetricsystem is not providing a world with backgrounds for his players, but instead their party's adventures and characters exist in a vacuum, so the players can only fall back on these old and tired stereotypes for races that do have them. With no background provided, it seems, his players are too lazy to think of something themselves.
So, if I'm guessing correctly, part of the fault certainly falls on the players, but in my view, another part falls on the GM, as - in my eyes - it is one of the functions of a GM to provide a living environment besides what is just absolutely necessary for the current adventure. If no such environment exists, there is nothing to drive the players' imagination.
I'm not saying that Themetricsystem is "doing it wrong", though. If he and his players like to play that way, there is nothing wrong with that. On another thread he revealed that he in a way prefers the "old way" of adversarial gaming, with the GM out "to get the players". Maybe that mindset prevents him from working with the players to provide an environment in which everyone can build on their own ideas and have fun?
Themetricsystem, maybe you - and your players - should take a look at a published Campaign Setting. Golarion, for example, provides a dozen different human ethnicities, each of which can easily provide their own stereotypes, if you need those, and over 50 individual nations, each with their own flair. There should be more than enough ideas in there that you player can play a human character without you thinking there is no "character flavor".
More like playing a human encourages LAZY roleplaying is what I am getting at.
I would say that my players that role-play the least tend toward humans. I think you may have cause and effect backward.
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It's like you have two plots of land to build a home on with reasonable budget. One is a flat, plain field. More often than not you will end up with a house with 4 sides, 2 floors and a basement. One will usually end up looking like another with minor differences, and the occasional outlier.Now you have another plot of land with a cliff-face, a large hill in the middle of it, and a swampy lake. Building a home here you will end up being evoked with a whole variety of different layouts, taking advantage of the landscape or working around its unique features
More like if you have a flat plain field and you're building a house, you can litterally build anything you can imagine that is structurally sound.
built on a flat plain
built on a flat plain
built on a flat plain(scroll down a but for the Denver art museum)
With plot two you have to build in certain places, you are restricted in what you can do (I can't have an all window wall on the side of my house with the mountain because it will get no sun and falling rocks could smash it, I'd love to build on the southern end of my lot and use the hill for landscaping, but I can't build on the swamp. etc. etc.
You're correlating people with a lack of imagination with people who have great imaginations and need a blank slate to make what they imagine possible. They are two seperate things.
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How exactly is playing a human with no meaningful backstory or character any better than an off race with at least some semblance of character base identity.
You can flavor tofu any way you want, but if you leave it plain and boring... then you have plain and boring tofu.
But if you instead start with Jello, or hummus then you will have SOMETHING there. You dig?
Yeah it is easy to make a beer loving, womanizing dwarf. But that is a might bit more difficult to maintain than a human who is a lame duck, standabout that has no character motivation whatsoever, someone who only goes to town to buy new weapons and pick up a new mission.
Right and if you add the wrong thing to the jello or the hummus then you've ruined it, whereas with tofu you can add any 1 thing and it isn't ruined, it just has the flavor of the new thing. Once again, sometimes you need a blank slate, get mad at the cook who served you plain tofu, you don't blame the tofu.
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Because there are no standard cliches that are attached to humans the way that they are attached to other races. The aforementioned beer-loving, Scottish dwarf. The uptight, Tolkien-esque elf. The big dumb half-orc. How do these stereotypes constitute "meaningful backstory"?
While they may not be meaningful, they do give some ground to work with, and a place to start with.
A human has what? He worked in a corporate office for 3 years until his parents kicked him out of his house and decided he had to start going to college? No.
+1 character flavor > 0 character flavor
Edit: Yes! Exactly! Joe the Fighter is the problem, humans make fantastic Joe's.
Right, but take away the human and the player who created Joe the Fighter, instead creates Joe the Dwarf, or Joe the Elf, and doesn't give that any more interesting history or background than the fighter. Now if you like "Dwarf" as a defining characteristic that's great, but what if every time you got Dwarf with no variation, pretty soon you're as sick of joe the dwarf as you are of joe the fighter.
Some people need blank canvases, you have to have a blank canvas in the game even if lazy people will then give you canvas as a character. You've got to fix the problem of people thinking it's okay to give you canvas, not throw out all canvases.
Because there are no standard cliches that are attached to humans the way that they are attached to other races. The aforementioned beer-loving, Scottish dwarf. The uptight, Tolkien-esque elf. The big dumb half-orc. How do these stereotypes constitute "meaningful backstory"?
While they may not be meaningful, they do give some ground to work with, and a place to start with.
A human has what? He worked in a corporate office for 3 years until his parents kicked him out of his house and decided he had to start going to college? No.
+1 character flavor > 0 character flavor
Edit: Yes! Exactly! Joe the Fighter is the problem, humans make fantastic Joe's.
Right, but take away the human and the player who created Joe the Fighter, instead creates Joe the Dwarf, or Joe the Elf, and doesn't give that any more interesting history or background than the fighter. Now if you like "Dwarf" as a defining characteristic that's great, but what if every time you got Dwarf with no variation, pretty soon you're as sick of joe the dwarf as you are of joe the fighter.
Some people need blank canvases, you have to have a blank canvas in the game even if lazy people will then give you canvas as a character. You've got to fix the problem of people thinking it's okay to give you canvas, not throw out all canvases.
+1 to all three entries. I'm probably going to go with a non-human for whatever my next character will be since my last few were humans just to shake things up, but I find it easier to create a living, breathing character without "bad Scottish accents" and "spending all my loot on ale and whores" breathing down my neck, which is why I prefer humans. I prefer the blank canvas, rather than the one with the goat painted in the corner.
"OCH! Aye'm a DWARF! I drink beeeeeeerrh and speak in a bad Scah-ish ax-ent!"
Really? This is great roleplaying? That's just...sad. Everytime someone rolls a dwarf, I roll my eyes, knowing that I'm in for some crappy acting.
I must be doing it wrong. All my Dwarves are Nordic.
I must be doing it wrong. All my Dwarves are Nordic.
Our Kingmaker party is a group of Viking dwarves (in both senses of the word "Viking"). I sang (well, more like "recited"; I am merciful and do not sing) Led Zeppelin's The Immigrant Song as we were starting the campaign:
We come from the land of the ice and snow
From the midnight sun where the hot springs flow
The hammer of the gods will drive our ships to new lands
To fight the horde and sing and cry, Valhalla, I am coming!
On we sweep with threshing oar
Our only goal will be the western shore
We come from the land of the ice and snow
From the midnight sun where the hot springs flow
How soft your fields, so green
Can whisper tales of gore, of how we calmed the tides of war,
We are your overlords
On we sweep with threshing oar
Our only goal will be the western shore
So now you better stop and rebuild all your ruins
For peace and trust can win the day despite of all your looting
Fits pretty well, actually.
I happen to know a couple of big time power gamers. I don't think I have ever seen either one play a human. One of them absolutely swears by halflings. Claiming they are the greatest race ever... well. Except for rat men. If there is a rat man race available he will play that equally as much as a halfling. But that's just because he loves rats. The other one frowns upon playing anything normal. He prefers things like a Ghaele or some weird ape race. If forced to play a normal race he usually chooses an elf or elf sub race.
Neither one does well playing a role.
I understand everything Shuriken says...Can you translate, then?"Gothic Tian-Min Loli"
In short, an extremly young looking asian girl with a flair for dark toned victorian garb.
Tian-Min are the Tians from Minkai, which is japan.
i was technically going to combine the traditional japanese kimono with suitable victorian elements. that part just got skimmed by many.
you otherwise got it. it's just parts were hidden between the wall of text by sheer accident.
Ah, right. Hopefully that bond is played out in a poingant scene when the characters face hordes of evil monsters intent on their destruction. Totally not lazy roleplaying there.
Maybe that should be the punishment: Fight a horde of evil monsters.
No shortcuts. No mass-combat rules. 1000 orcs. 1000 HP pools. Nobody may remain standing.
But why does that have to be humans? It could be any race.
Not dwarves.
Maybe that should be the punishment: Fight a horde of evil monsters.
No shortcuts. No mass-combat rules. 1000 orcs. 1000 HP pools. Nobody may remain standing.
Control winds to create an 800+ foot diameter tornado. Wall of fire. 1,000 crispy fried orcs in 2 standard actions!
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I'm gonna share a story, hopefully to put some perspective on the issue.
One of my favorite characters was a Kenku Wizard, I played him for a few weeks in one campaign. I loved this character, he had a monkey familiar he named "Human" who he'd constantly chastise. Between his insatiable appetite for roadkill and his pyromania I thought he had quite a few minor roleplay things that'd make him really fun to play. (Recognize any character quirks I kept?)
The GM wasn't interested in RP, I couldn't RP as a result no matter how much I wanted to. All he wanted was the hack n' slash. It wouldn't have mattered were I a human, Kenku, or a half-fiend minotaur bard in love with a cow named Bossy. He wasn't going to let it happen.
He led us by the nose down into a dungeon. We fought wave after wave of duergar for no reason (it was a basement really, not a dungeon) and then a vampire. How that fit together was beyond me, it didn't matter to the GM. He was just interested in the fighting and not on having it make sense.
We tried to rescue the prince the vampire had taken (the railroad into the dungeon included 1. the prince is captured, save him or we'll kill you. 2. the prince is captured, you'll get a lot of treasure). So rather than let us choose our own reason, we were pigeon holed into going.
So, since the campaign included no roleplaying what so ever, my choice of Kenku didn't matter at all really. I lost an opportunity to play my character simply because the GM's expectations were very different than mine.
THEN, I got a chance to play SCAP for three years of fairly deep roleplaying as a human cleric of heironeous. He came from a long line of knightly defenders of the Flanaess (Greyhawk), the second son of a fairly notable family. He was a broken soldier, returning from dealing with the war with Iuz in the north. An event where he saw the angels guide a common-woman to defend her husband and he was unable to help broke him. Through the course of the campaign we RP'd him to regain his purpose and his self-determination.
It all has to do with the GM and the players. If your expectations are different than your GM's then you've got an issue, and you may have to change games as a result. If you're the GM and you can't get players to change their ways, then perhaps you should consider finding replacements for them.
This is the only advice I can offer the OP.
You're right, my group currently has 3 players who are underperforming in terms or ROLE instead of ROLL, and guess what. They are all humans.
I guess they also all drink water.
Ergo: Water makes people bad roleplayers. :P
None of the others choose to be human.
This has nothing to say, really. I've seen power gamers with dwarves. I've seen them with elves. I've seen them with humans. I've seen them with half-dragon succubus fiend-liches.
I've also seen good roleplaying with all those classes (maybe not the dead, scaly succubus).
I refuse to back down from my stance however that humans are for lazy role-players
As long as you realise that it's just plain wrong, you can keep your stance :)
because you are taking a block of clay to mold into an interesting character instead of solid granite or a pile of timbers. The challenge in building interesting characters should encompass their weaknesses, and as far as humans go, the only one they have is a short lifespan.
You're not seeing the big picture: You can make great sculptures with clay. It might be more challenging to work with wood or stone (though I say not necessarily. You can take your time with stone or wood), but a lot of people don't play a sculpture of an elf made of wood - they just play a piece of wood. And basically everybody who plays a dwarf plays a block of stone (this analogy fits just too well).
Those piece-of-wood players are the laziest of all!
This week I am going to sit down with my homo sapiens and work on getting them more involved in being active, 3-dimensional characters.
As long as you don't try to tell them that humans automatically disqualify and non-humans already succeed...
In my Kingmaker campaign, I insisted they be human. I wanted them to have a direct connection to Brevoy
I must have missed the great demi-human holocaust of Brevoy.
I refuse to back down from my stance however that humans are for lazy role-players,...
If you have already made up your mind what is the point of the debate? You have already been shown why your opinion is faulty. Your players dont represent every group out there. If your group roleplays humans lazily, and other groups RP other races lazily it makes sense to say it's just your players and not the race that is the issue.
This seems like just another variant of the stormwind fallacy.
I refuse to back down from my stance however that humans are for lazy role-players, because you are taking a block of clay to mold into an interesting character instead of solid granite or a pile of timbers. The challenge in building interesting characters should encompass their weaknesses, and as far as humans go, the only one they have is a short lifespan.
Ok, NOW you're definitely trolling, and using insane troll logic to boot. Are your players lazy and /or incompetent roleplayers/actors? Probably? Does that make every player who plays a human a lazy power-gamer? Absolutely not. Correlation does not equal causation, and your players are not representative of the entire RP demographic.
EDIT: "The challenge in building interesting characters should encompass their weaknesses, and as far as humans go, the only one they have is a short lifespan."
Sounds dangerously close to the Stormwind Fallacy.....
I was ninja'd by 4 hours. That is like a new record.
EDIT: "The challenge in building interesting characters should encompass their weaknesses, and as far as humans go, the only one they have is a short lifespan."
Sounds dangerously close to the Stormwind Fallacy.....
Plus, it's pretty powergamery, because it assumes that just because they have no mechanical penalties doesn't mean they don't have any roleplaying penalties.
And they do. They come without half your work already cut out for you. With an elf, you already get a lot of elf baggage to work with (and dwarves are inherently ready-made, because they're all the same). The human you have to create from scratch.
Ok, NOW you're definitely trolling, and using insane troll logic to boot. Are your players lazy and /or incompetent roleplayers/actors? Probably? Does that make every player who plays a human a lazy power-gamer? Absolutely not. Correlation does not equal causation, and your players are not representative of the entire RP demographic.As far as I see it, humans are the easy choice and are and quickest choice for players who don't want to think about the character, esp considering the mechanical benefits from choosing them.
The class with no premade stereotypes for you to write around is the easy one? Explain that to me. With a human you have to do all the storybuilding yourself. It seems to be the one that calls for the most work to me.
I refuse to back down from my stance however that humans are for lazy role-playersAs long as you realise that it's just plain wrong, you can keep your stance :)
+1
As far as I see it, humans are the easy choice and are and quickest choice for players who don't want to think about the character.And a clear majority has pointed out that the demihumans provide easy cookie-cutter stereotypes to play, whereas humans actually require some semblance of a backstory. But you have pretty consistently ignored that point, and the consensus, instead dismissing it as "defensiveness" ... and that's generally considered to be the line between "discussion" and "trolling." If you want to be seen as engaging in the former, you'll have to try a bit harder to acknowledge the other point of view.
Ninja'd again. I guess I should read the rest of the thread before posting again. In any event +1 to both ninjas.
I understand everything Shuriken says, but it somehow makes me sad inside....maybe guilt?
How much time have you spent learning origami, flower arranging, or learning Japanese to watch anime in the original language? ;-P
You need a new group.
Or maybe the group a new GM, if they are berated for not playing stereotypical elves because that's "good roleplaying".
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Who plays Human Characters? Well humans do, sometimes for powergamer reasons but more often for characterization reasons, at least based off this thread.
I tend to favor half elves and half orcs for many of the reasons people here seem to like humans-- a chance to self define or rather, the role playing challenge manifest in that.
All the Best,
Nani?
I sang (well, more like "recited"; I am merciful and do not sing) Led Zeppelin's The Immigrant Song
You could just have played it. Or, better yet, the Demons and Wizards cover.
Because there are no standard cliches that are attached to humans the way that they are attached to other races. The aforementioned beer-loving, Scottish dwarf. The uptight, Tolkien-esque elf. The big dumb half-orc. How do these stereotypes constitute "meaningful backstory"?
While they may not be meaningful, they do give some ground to work with, and a place to start with.
A human has what? He worked in a corporate office for 3 years until his parents kicked him out of his house and decided he had to start going to college? No.
+1 character flavor > 0 character flavor
Edit: Yes! Exactly! Joe the Fighter is the problem, humans make fantastic Joe's.
I mean NOTHING about your intricate human sorcerer with a rich family life back home in Hermea. Has a cottage and worked as a butcher until his magical powers started to manifest and he began a journey to find himself and understand his lineage et.
The creativity and roleplaying potential is in originality, not stereotypes. Anyone can RP a sterotype. It takes creativity to ignore preconceived concepts and make a character into your own creation. The ability/non-ability to do that is not a race issue, it's a player issue. An example was Drizzt(when he was first made). If you play a drunken dwarf you are no better than the guy who plays the vanilla human because neither one of you came up with a background story.
In short, an extremly young looking asian girl with a flair for dark toned victorian garb.
Somebody help me out. Why the big excitement for so many people over playing prepubescent girls? It gets really, really creepy after a while, when seemingly 2/3 of the campaign world is 75 years old going on 12. And it's always the Japanophiles doing it. Is that some sort of Anime thing that I'm missing?
The creativity and roleplaying potential is in originality, not stereotypes. Anyone can RP a sterotype. It takes creativity to ignore preconceived concepts and make a character into your own creation. The ability/non-ability to do that is not a race issue, it's was a player issue. An example was Drizzt(when he was first made). If you play a drunken dwarf you are no better than the guy who plays the vanilla human because neither one of you came up with a back ground story.
Because there are no standard cliches that are attached to humans the way that they are attached to other races. The aforementioned beer-loving, Scottish dwarf. The uptight, Tolkien-esque elf. The big dumb half-orc. How do these stereotypes constitute "meaningful backstory"?
While they may not be meaningful, they do give some ground to work with, and a place to start with.
A human has what? He worked in a corporate office for 3 years until his parents kicked him out of his house and decided he had to start going to college? No.
+1 character flavor > 0 character flavor
Edit: Yes! Exactly! Joe the Fighter is the problem, humans make fantastic Joe's.
I mean NOTHING about your intricate human sorcerer with a rich family life back home in Hermea. Has a cottage and worked as a butcher until his magical powers started to manifest and he began a journey to find himself and understand his lineage et.
+5
In short, an extremly young looking asian girl with a flair for dark toned victorian garb.Somebody help me out. Why the big excitement for so many people over playing sexless, prepubescent girls? It gets really, really creepy after a while, when seemingly 2/3 of the campaign world is 75 years old going on 12. And it's always the Japanophiles doing it. Is that some sort of Anime thing that I'm missing?
It's best not to ask. Cover your eyes and walk away, you really do not want to gaze upon the contents of the can of worms you just opened.
I sang (well, more like "recited"; I am merciful and do not sing) Led Zeppelin's The Immigrant SongYou could just have played it. Or, better yet, the Demons and Wizards cover.
Unfortunately, I do not own a portable music device, or I would have.
It's best not to ask. Cover your eyes and walk away, you really do not want to gaze upon the contents of the can of worms you just opened.In short, an extremly young looking asian girl with a flair for dark toned victorian garb.Somebody help me out. Why the big excitement for so many people over playing sexless, prepubescent girls? It gets really, really creepy after a while, when seemingly 2/3 of the campaign world is 75 years old going on 12. And it's always the Japanophiles doing it. Is that some sort of Anime thing that I'm missing?
go ahead, read your first manga. it won't affect your sanity, nor will the necrominicon, bible of thoon, the entire vecnan library nor even the book of vile darkness.
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Ok, well since this has changed from a discussion, and the sharing of opinions and viewpoints to a lynching I suppose I will go ahead and disregard the thread from this point on.
Also *Well thought out argument* coupled with *Snarky retort*
Let me say in no unclear terms though that this has helped me figure out how I am going to handle things with a couple of my less inspired players.
Thank you to those who've contributed,you know who you are.
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for what it's worth, I think you have one or two posters who are being way to agressive in defending humans, and a large concensus that disagrees with you, the problem is that one or two actually being aggressive lend a tone to the thread that makes it seem like you're being attacked moreso than you are.
Sorry to see you go, I understand where you're coming from, just disagree with your conclusions.
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Somebody help me out. Why the big excitement for so many people over playing prepubescent girls? It gets really, really creepy after a while, when seemingly 2/3 of the campaign world is 75 years old going on 12. And it's always the Japanophiles doing it. Is that some sort of Anime thing that I'm missing?
I... feel something for you.
I- I think it's love.
...
Seriously, though. It does get really old quite quickly. Different mindsets I guess.
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In short, an extremly young looking asian girl with a flair for dark toned victorian garb.Somebody help me out. Why the big excitement for so many people over playing prepubescent girls? It gets really, really creepy after a while, when seemingly 2/3 of the campaign world is 75 years old going on 12. And it's always the Japanophiles doing it. Is that some sort of Anime thing that I'm missing?
Yes.This is what the Anime girls will do to you if you object though. Therefore I don't object.
All the Best,
Nani?
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And a clear majority has pointed out that the demihumans provide easy cookie-cutter stereotypes to play, whereas humans actually require some semblance of a backstory. But you don't acknoweldge that point, nor the consensus, instead dismissing it as "defensiveness" ... and that's generally considered to be the line between "discussion" and "trolling." If you want to be seen as engaging in the former, you'll have to try a bit harder to acknowledge the other point of view.How exactly is playing a human with no meaningful backstory or character any better than an off race with at least some semblance of character base identity.
Most people are not saying this. They are in fact saying there is NO difference at all between the two.
Elf stereotype + base identity == Human + base identity
Dwarf stereotype + base identity == Human + base identity
Half Orc stereotype + base identity == Human + base identity
Tiefling stereotype + base identity == Human + base identity
Blink Dog stereotype + base identity == Human + base identity
That's it. The stereotype adds nothing to the game it has no value. If a player is role playing that role shines through regardless. If they are not then all you have is bland whatever.
You can flavor tofu any way you want, but if you leave it plain and boring... then you have plain and boring tofu.
But if you instead start with Jello, or hummus then you will have SOMETHING there. You dig?
What I dig is stereotypes aren't jello.
Yeah it is easy to make a beer loving, womanizing dwarf. But that is a might bit more difficult to maintain than a human who is a lame duck, standabout that has no character motivation whatsoever, someone who only goes to town to buy new weapons and pick up a new mission.
I would suggest that you try swapping it out for a few weeks. Give your players some pregens with a light background and give them all humans. Then give the players some dwarf pregens to play for a few weeks... My money is that the players you find to be good role players will still be good role players regardless, the wallflowers will be wallflower dwarves instead of wallflower humans.