PC Race Options: Quantity or "Quality"?

[Peet]

A lot hinges on your campaign world. More than people necessarily realize.

Most fantasy settings are based on either a "Middle Earth" philosophy or a "Historical Earth" philosophy, or sometimes a jumble of the two.

With either system, not only do humans have to be the primary race but also there are a very small number of "friendly to humans" races. All others are monsters. The problem here is that the vision of what the world looks like doesn't include races outside the canon; you walk through a town and know all the races that are in it already. So if races do get added they have to be very rare, or from far away, or otherwise shoehorned in somehow. Which creates a problem if people want to play them because of how statistically weird it would be for six characters each from a different very rare race to be working together.

But on the other hand you could take a philosophy much like the Star Wars universe. Humans are still dominant, and some races show up more frequently than others, but your picture of a town includes a host of races you don't even have names for. Pan across the cantina at Mos Eisley and you see dozens of different species. You don't have to know anything about them other than the fact that they are welcome in the city and like going to cantinas. Once one of them steps up and introduces himself then maybe you can find out a bit about his race.

The cosmopolitan background that is understood here is easy to duplicate in a fantasy game, but it has to be built into the world. I would recommend the Saga of Dray Prescot, a fantasy universe with a whole host of humanoid races (none of which resemble dwarves or elves, at least until book 25 or so) as a great example of a fantasy world like this.

[HFTyrone]

Prince Yyrkoon wrote:

I personally find the Core Races to overly rooted in a single man's interpretation of fantasy. Tolkien's works were decent, but he is not the be all end all of fantasy. There are so many fascinating myths, legends and other works of fantasy modern and ancient that restricting things to his vision of Northern European Mythology just feels so anemic.

Doubly so, considering that prior to Tolkien's writing, non-human protagonists essentially did not exist, making the Fellowship of the Ring pretty much a party of freaks by default (Elf Prince, Dwarf Lord, 80% of the adventuring Hobbit population in several centuries, freaking Angel, and a man whose ancestry includes Elves, gods, superhumans and who is secretly the True King. The only semi-normal person in the whole blasted affair is Borimir, and he just so happens to be the only member to permanently die).

I liked LoTR, I just don't want to replay it yet again. If I have to traverse another variation of Not!England in the company of a group of Officially Sanctioned Standard Fantasy Races I may just join the BBEG to put the whole thing out of my misery.

A lot of the non-core races get some nasty labels due to their deviation from "standard" fantasy races. It seems to be entirely arbitrary too, as the same types don't seem to take umbrage to people firing lightning from their fingertips, teleporting, farting glitter, and suplexing chromatic dragons through the power of karate magic. Toss in red humans with a tail and some cute horns though, and that's when it just becomes a little too weird for said individuals.

It's true that the more races you have, the harder it is to fully flesh all of them out. However, just like how playing a non-standard race could be seen as a crutch for roleplaying, one could just as easily say that needing a pile of world building to carry you along is just as much of one.