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Anyway, that aside, if I were to play something like a kobold, say, I'd want to do it in a setting like Open Design's 'Midgard', where they actually play a role in society in places like Zobeck and are well-written into the scenery.
Heck, I'd be more inclined to play a gnome or halfling, if they were at all integrated into the setting, and not just sort of half-heartedly sprinkled around human lands, with as much relevance to the events, history and social cultures of the setting as pigeons or rats.
Even the elves and dwarves, whose presence on Golarion can actually be seen on maps (well, the newest map, anyway, in the dwarves case), tucked away in their little ghetto nations, feel like an afterthought, at times.
It's odd that the orcs, through their presence in the Hold of Belkzen, and an entire human nation devoted fairly specifically to holding them back, have had more of an impact on the events, geography and culture of Avistan than the dwarves or elves. Even if kept exclusively as an adversarial race, they're still more relevant to the setting and important to its story than most of the 'core' races.
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I've got a few stories about non-core PC races. Here's one of them.
I'm a judge in an online Pathfinder organized play campaign (not PFS). We debated whether we should introduce Bestiary races as PC options. We eventually agreed to allow the aasimar, tiefling, tengu, and merfolk. The first three caused no problem, and they are fully integrated into the campaign.
The merfolk, however, caused an odd reaction. A lot of people started talking about how much they wanted to play merfolk... but with the unstated caveat that it would be only once that 5' move was dealt with. They started proposing we add "Fins to Feet" spells to the game. We said no. People started talking about including lots of underwater adventures. I explained that yes, that's really cool, but that's rather out of the scope of the present land-based campaign. If people were interested in starting an underwater campaign, that would be awesome, and we'd lend out our world to integrate the two campaigns and allow for some cross-pollination. But that's a lot of work and no one wanted to build a new campaign, so that died. So there was lots of clamoring about the excitement of playing merfolk, but no action.
So, in a bit of a fit of pique, I made a merfolk PC (we have multiple judges, so it's okay as long as we don't judge and play in the same adventure). The first concept was basically telling everyone, be quiet, merfolk are playable as is, accept it or play something else. She's a flame oracle, the scion of a Polynesian-inspired volcano goddess, and spends much of her time on land because there's not much you can learn about fire underwater. She has Cinder Dance and Fleet, so she has a 20' move on land, with the fluff that she rears up and moves around much like a snail, as a gift from her deity. She's a load of fun to play, experiencing land culture with completely new eyes (She comes from a culture without beverages. Think about just how weird those are for her. She tried to breathe her first beer.). She's struck up a close friendship with an elf barbarian, who is just as lost in the city as she is. It's really, really fun! And, I believe, she's still the only merfolk PC in the game.
In my experience, most (but not all) non-core race PC concepts come from two sources: either they want to play to the mechanics, or they want to play something that is "just different." There's nothing inherently wrong with either motivation. But with the first, it doesn't really add anything to the story, so you've got to be careful that the damage to the fluff of the campaign is less than the impact of the crunch (which can also be disruptive to the campaign). With the second, there's the potential that even though it's not necessarily changing the crunch, the fluff might suffer even more. I've got a campaign world that completely removed the core races (including human) and replaced them with a whole new set of races--still recognizable for character concepts, but very different. In that world, have fun, make a whole new set of wild and wahoo ideas, it will work in that campaign. But it's the sort of thing that you've got to be really careful with and design in from the start... and not just bug your DM about.
I have often thought about pitting a group of PCs who play races based on stats against equally goofy looking NPCs just to solicite a response.
"A drow, a centaur, a mite, and hill giant walk into a bar...."
Congratulations, you ARE the punchline.
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So, in a bit of a fit of pique, I made a merfolk PC
I used to love aquatic elven PCs in 2e (and even did an aquatic hobgoblin in an Al-Qadim game, where the hobs were an 'enlightened' race, and thus playable), but soon discovered that they suffered from the same problem as Deckers in Shadowrun.
To use your cool special 'thing,' you end up separating from the party.
From an in-game perspective, it blows, because encounters tend to be designed for your entire party to face, not just you, the poor solo schmuck who swam, flew, tunneled or astral projected into a place by yourself.
From an out-of-game perspective, it sucks because the rest of the party is wandering around, turning on the TV, firing up their laptops to play Warcraft, etc. etc. while you are off on your solo excusion into the Net, dreamscape, astral space, watery depths...
I started noticing it applying to other games as well, such as superhero games, where the speedster would arrive before everyone else *and get his butt kicked* before the rest of the party arrived at their more stately pace.
In my experience, if your cool power or racial ability eliminates the advantage of travelling in a group and / or requires the rest of the party to stand around holding their cheese while you 'solo,' it's probably best to play something with more group-game-friendly-powers.
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I honestly don't have much trouble running "monstrous" races in my games. I do make sure to play it the way the character would fit in to the setting mind you.
For example: In my current pathfinder game I have a handful of the races from the bestiaries present and accounted for, chief among which is an orc. The party had a mission in Lastwall. He spent most of his time in any town or city in the cart for fear of being found and killed, up until the party proved themselves. At which point the orc could tenuously show his face in that city at least.
I feel that allowing the occasional bestiary race adds some interesting roleplaying options to a game.
I would also like to argue a point here:
The elves and dwarves have settlements outside of The Five Kings Mountains and Kyonin. Quite a few actually if you look into the setting books. The two races have some serious history scattered throughout the campaign setting as well. Hell, the orcs would never have went to the surface of the world had the dwarves not been biting at their heels during the Quest for Sky.
As a matter of fact ALL of the timeline points in the Age of Darkness in the Inner Sea World Guide have to do with either the elves or dwarves in some fashion.
As for halflings, if you get in to the way they fit into the world setting it makes sense that only the halflings really know much about their history.
Then you have the gnomes, who control some of the coolest cities in the world setting.
I think discounting any of these races, or any of the ones in the bestiary for that matter would be folly.
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So, in a bit of a fit of pique, I made a merfolk PCI used to love aquatic elven PCs in 2e (and even did an aquatic hobgoblin in an Al-Qadim game, where the hobs were an 'enlightened' race, and thus playable), but soon discovered that they suffered from the same problem as Deckers in Shadowrun.
To use your cool special 'thing,' you end up separating from the party.
I totally get where you're coming from, but in this case, it's not the Decker-effect that's the issue. In the case of the merfolk, it wasn't the aquatics that attracted people to the race. It was the +6 to ability scores and +2 natural armor. Everyone knew that it was going to be a land-based adventure, and that the merfolk's not going to be in the water much. Everyone just wanted the ability bonuses and the armor, but they didn't want the 5' move and wanted it handwaved away.
My merfolk has only spent time in the water between adventures (the base city for the campaign is designed like Venice, so there are merfolk in the canals who can readily interact with the landbound), so interaction hasn't been an issue. I'm not hoping to spend a lot of time in the water, or indeed any time in the water, during the adventure. As for the aquatic adventure, that's when I recommended a new underwater-based campaign.
In my campaigns, you need a good reason to play a non-core race. "Core races are too boring" is NOT a good reason. I let someone play a changeling once because he insisted that core races were too boring, and the human druid in the party ended up being 10x as interesting of a character as the changeling.
Whether a race is boring or not is entirely up to the person playing it.
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Agreed! I have a Tiefling (Rakshasa type) that's a demon summoning bastard son of the Thrune family from Cheliax in my game. I lovingly hand crafted the character with interesting backstory and plot, but the player is such a lump most of the time. :( Great character poorly executed. He likes the game and likes the character, I just wish he'd interact more.