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I don't want to be a stodgy, grognardian GM; which is why I'm opening this topic. I won't mince words, I cringe when a player tells me they want to play an exotic race. Heck, I have to keep my nose from scrunching up when I have a party that doesn't contain a plurality of humans (or the local population as appropriate.) Was the cast of Star Wars a Wookie, a Trandoshan, two ewoks, and a half-chiss? Did Gandalf's dwarves include a cat man and a winged tree person? I respect that there are times when an exotic race can add a lot to a character, if Chewie was just a burly guy with a speech impediment, he wouldn't have been as interesting of a character. The dwarves could have stood to be broken up by an odd character (although Bilbo fills this role of course.)
My first concern when a player announces their intent to roll up an exotic race is that the player is abusively optimizing. In many cases, this is a non-issue, and it's the least concern. My table has never called for absolute optimization, and I trust my players not to seek out ways to break the game. But, the concern is there nonetheless.
Second, is that the player is defining their character by what they are and not by who they are. This comes from a literary background, and I'm not expecting every member of the table create a Harry Dresden or any of the other wealth of great fantasy characters; but personally, I'd prefer even an archetypal grunting barbarian to a character that is only identifiable as "The half clockwork undead guy." (Aside: that would have some serious potential, but as evident, you need to marry that trait with other personality too.)
Last, that a player is seeking to be a "super special snowflake." Now, I don't make this charge lightly. It's contentious and I don't want to suggest I think badly of anyone I play with. I understand that one of the draws of Pathfinder is playing an empowering, unique hero. Even in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay the rat catcher and charcoal burner have the opportunity to make themselves great. But a player telling me they want to be bring a half-minotaur to the table throws up a red flag to me.
Please, talk me down. I want to engage my players and create the best game for all. I don't want to stuffily insist on boring characters.
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As a dyed in the wool grognard who was playing monster PC's in the 1970's, by all means jump. Your wings will save you.
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I can not agree with your Star Wars analogy since even in the movies there was a lot of variation in races, but I understand your concerns.
Some campaigns I allow exotic races, or Uncommon Races using Pazio terminology, but I try to account for the potential min/maxing in some other way.
To give an example, in my most recent game I started everyone out as NPC classes. Aristocrat, Expert, Warrior, Adept or Commoner. I allowed Uncommon Races, but if you did choose one you would have to start out as a Commoner(Which is the weakest NPC class). This helps account for some of the mechanical bonuses, but since they only have to be a commoner for one level it does not permanently gimp their character.
In another game I gave out a Hero Point to those that chose core races.
In many games though if I feel that Uncommon Races do not work I simply do not allow them, players that feel that strongly about it are free to start their own game.
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Try an experiment:
Remove all racial abilities in the game. Every race, no matter what, just gets a bonus feat and skill point, or whatever you decide. The point is to make every race mechanically identical. Then, allow any race whatsoever. Watch what happens.
I wager you're going to get three major groups of PCs:
1) People indulging fetishes and personal fantasies with their characters (furries or Mary Sue Tieflings, for example)
2) People totally into playing a particular racial stereotype (the boastful, drunk, Scottish/Viking combo Dwarf, for example)
3) Humans
The point is, the vast, vast majority of people are choosing weird races for their mechanics. I have literally never seen a Human in AD&D, for example, because they got absolutely nothing racially except a higher max level cap which everyone ignored anyway.
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For the most part, unusual races are less powerful than core options (or at least two, Human and Dwarf, Human being like the best race in the game), so "abusively optimizing" is generally hurt by this, so put that worry aside.
That said, it's probably because of a few things, really.
Think about it, the entire point of roleplaying is to be something you're not. You are a human, so it gets old playing that.
Dwarves, Elves, Gnomes, etc. are all EXTREMELY common fantasy characters, so the players feel almost as familiar with them as they do with being a human IRL.
However, things like Tengu, Goblins (especially Pathfinder Goblins), Ifrit, and so on are much less fully defined by fantasy tropes. You have a bit more wiggle room.
You also occasionally run into the issue of "Dwarves are vikings who live underground. All Dwarves have beards. You're doing it wrong if you don't do that." and "Elves are pretty boys who shoot bows. Why aren't you shooting a bow and why does your Elf have low Charisma?".
Uncommon races run into that less often.
Now yeah, picking races for mechanics is done too. Onispawn Tieflings make excellent Monks, for example, and people will try to work that in.
I don't see an issue with this really. It's done for Core races too (Humans are usually picked for the skill point and Bonus Feat, not because somebody's like 'Yeah my concept needs a Human!").
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The cast of Star Wars or LotR is meaningless. It's not about their stories. It's about making a fun story with your players.
I know lots of players, myself included, who are simply sick to freakin' death of 'Tolkien Fantasy' and people who think that all fantasy is Tolkien and Tolkien is the definition of fantasy.
A friend of mine once put it, "If I wanted to be a human, I'd go outside."
I have very rarely limited races in my games (and when I do, it's usually to throw out humans), and have had no problem running successful games.
For the most part, I don't think there's such a thing as a wrong reason to create a particular character. If you want to do it to optimize,that's cool. If you want to do it 'cause it has cool abilities, that's fine. If you do it just because you think the character is going to look cool to you, also fine.
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Think about it, the entire point of roleplaying is to be something you're not. You are a human, so it gets old playing that.
You know, I never imagined that was the point of rolepalying for anyone until I got married and, well, it turns out it is a pretty common one.
However, let me set the record straight that it is not the only point. I don't want to be something I'm not--I want to be me. I like me. I just want to be me in unusual circumstances that I could never possibly be in otherwise. I actually actively dislike being non-human races because, well, I like being human, though I will play a race that looks essentially human for mechanical reasons (say, an Elf witch, or Half-elf Oracle).
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Well, I'm a stuffy rules-lawyer lore obsessed person (or at least I used to be :P), but I finally realized as a GM, I needed to step back, take a deep breath, and just let the players have fun.
Currently I have a RotRL party consisting of 3 Vanaras, 1 Kitsune, 1 Elf, and a lonely Human (who originally wanted to be a Hobgoblin, I talked him out of that just because I didn't want to have to role play excessive hate towards a player. Not fun times). Only one of them so far has explained to me in any detail why the heck their character is there (which makes me still grind my teeth a bit >.>) but overall, it's actually been really fun.
The players have had the opportunity to approach all the challenges so far in completely different ways than I've anticipated (due to the climb. Always the climb!), and this has actually saved them from more than one party wipe.
I'd say give them all a chance to play something weird, even if just for a module. Maybe you'll find you have a change in heart after you experience it.
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You also occasionally run into the issue of "Dwarves are vikings who live underground. All Dwarves have beards. You're doing it wrong if you don't do that." and "Elves are pretty boys who shoot bows. Why aren't you shooting a bow and why does your Elf have low Charisma?".
Oh holy crap yes.
Whenever a GM or a fellow player tells me how to roleplay my character, I instantly want to slap them in such a way that Moe Howard would be in awe of it. No, my dwarf does NOT attack goblins on sight. No, my elf is NOT a snooty arrogant schmuck. No, my halfling does NOT overeat. And so on and so forth.| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
I don't want to be a stodgy, grognardian GM; which is why I'm opening this topic. I won't mince words, I cringe when a player tells me they want to play an exotic race. Heck, I have to keep my nose from scrunching up when I have a party that doesn't contain a plurality of humans (or the local population as appropriate.) Was the cast of Star Wars a Wookie, a Trandoshan, two ewoks, and a half-chiss? Did Gandalf's dwarves include a cat man and a winged tree person? I respect that there are times when an exotic race can add a lot to a character, if Chewie was just a burly guy with a speech impediment, he wouldn't have been as interesting of a character. The dwarves could have stood to be broken up by an odd character (although Bilbo fills this role of course.)
My first concern when a player announces their intent to roll up an exotic race is that the player is abusively optimizing. In many cases, this is a non-issue, and it's the least concern. My table has never called for absolute optimization, and I trust my players not to seek out ways to break the game. But, the concern is there nonetheless.
Second, is that the player is defining their character by what they are and not by who they are. This comes from a literary background, and I'm not expecting every member of the table create a Harry Dresden or any of the other wealth of great fantasy characters; but personally, I'd prefer even an archetypal grunting barbarian to a character that is only identifiable as "The half clockwork undead guy." (Aside: that would have some serious potential, but as evident, you need to marry that trait with other personality too.)
Last, that a player is seeking to be a "super special snowflake." Now, I don't make this charge lightly. It's contentious and I don't want to suggest I think badly of anyone I play with. I understand that one of the draws of Pathfinder is playing an empowering, unique hero. Even in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay the rat catcher and charcoal burner have the opportunity to make themselves great. But a...
I have a similar prejudice. I generally always play humans.
Fwiw, I came to accept it as how the others in our group have fun. Currently two players and me - my brother always picks whichever race synergises well with his class, the other guy likes "oddball" choices. I ultimately came to realise that the point was for them to enjoy themselves, not for them to adopt my preferences. After that realisation, it hasn't bugged me so much.
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Speaking of Star Wars...
I have always disliked the oft-tauted "One Wookie Rule". Specifically for Star Wars, I've been wanting some non-human central protagonists since forever. Seriously, one of the biggest selling points of that setting are the many varied races that populated it and make it feel alive. To "One Wookie Rule" it is to reduce all taht to scenery that the players can look at but can't touch.
Honestly, if someone was selling me on a Star Wars game, being able to play something other than human would be a huge selling point.
Back to fantasy, a lot of that carries over. Fantasy means different things to different people, and those that love worlds filled with many varied fantastic races really do chafe at "Tolkien purism" or whatever one wants to call it. Some want to immerse themselves in those wild fantasy worlds, and being able to play something fantastic is a huge draw there.
Now yeah, there can be a problem with some folks defining characters exclusively by their race rather than as fully-fleshed out characters, but I've seen people do taht with the core races more often than the "exotic" races. Typically elves. Sometimes even humans. But in cases like this, encouragement and adding RP fuel to their creative fires will do far more than material bans, which do nothing about the core problem there.
But if anyone wants to play a pugwampi, get the water hose and chase them off your lawn. Because seriously.
If it is a setting with limited choices, I will limit the choices of the players. There's no sense in playing a Vanara in Forgotten Realms, a Genasi on the other hand is a perfectly acceptable choice.
Except Kara-Tur was, IIRC, originally an FR thing, and as the 'Asian' setting, playing a Vanara from there would be perfectly logical.
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You also occasionally run into the issue of "Dwarves are vikings who live underground. All Dwarves have beards. You're doing it wrong if you don't do that." and "Elves are pretty boys who shoot bows. Why aren't you shooting a bow and why does your Elf have low Charisma?".
Oh holy crap yes.
Whenever a GM or a fellow player tells me how to roleplay my character, I instantly want to slap them in such a way that Moe Howard would be in awe of it. No, my dwarf does NOT attack goblins on sight. No, my elf is NOT a snooty arrogant schmuck. No, my halfling does NOT overeat. And so on and so forth.
Ugh, srsly. This also applies to classes(no, barbarians are not required to be foaming-at-the-mouth morons during rage).
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Ugh, srsly. This also applies to classes(no, barbarians are not required to be foaming-at-the-mouth morons during rage).
I can understand this though because even in the Core it does say that Barbarians can not use any Charisma, Dexterity, or Intelligence-Based Skills, or any ability that requires patience or concentration while raging.
I kind of feel the same way about non-standard races most of the time, especially since I'm running my players through my own campaign setting and hadn't really ever given much thought to the demographics for non-standard races, so they all feel kind of...awkward, I guess.
My response, was to allow my players to play whatever they like, but the tiefling is met with distrust, fear, loathing, and horror by nearly everyone he meets (and it doesn't help that he has a 5 Cha), while the changeling makes people uncomfortable whenever his claws or teeth are visible.
Had another friend joining the game, debating what to play, and I suggested samsaran, because they fit the ideas he was throwing around perfectly.
The rest of the group is made up of 3 humans and a gnome. It works for me.
I guess you just have to decide how these unusual characters fit into the world, or if they do at all, but you should make those decisions upfront, so the players don't feel slighted by your deciding that option X is not allowed.
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Please, talk me down. I want to engage my players and create the best game for all. I don't want to stuffily insist on boring characters.
Make your players play nothing but humans. The rest of those core races are too exotic, and get played like funny humans anyway.
I allow what exists in my setting. That includes a fairly wide variety of races, including the standard races, some "exotic" races and a few choices that don't, for the most part, exist outside my game. Some of those choices come with some cultural baggage to go with the racial perks. Well, actually they pretty much all do. Even humans. On the other hand, I don't shoe horn in racial choices that don't exist in the campaign.
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our group gives an extra feat, or an extra +2 to an ability, players' choice, to improve humans.
I even chose a short list of feats no one ever takes and offered one free, so players could pick something interesting for themselves no matter what race.
The bottom line is: if players are having fun then so what?
For this next campaign I told the players straight out that non core races may face discrimination in small towns, just so everyone was clear. And everyone still chose an uncommon race: i have a Fletchling, a Hobgoblin, and a Sylph.
I've been playing with pretty much the same people for my whole life (since junior high, and we're all in our 40s now). none are writers. They may play cookie cutter or roll play more than role play. But in the end what do I care? they will have fun, and we will make it work. if I want to tell a great story, I would write it, i would not play an improvisation game with my friends or other improvisers. Our gatherings are for everyone, not just me.
Sure in junior high I wasn't mature enough to get that. Of course improv training helped, where you learn to make everyone look good, not to show off your wonderful ideas.
In worlds of books and non fiction: non humans, magic, etc, are all rare. But no player wants to play the background characters, or be the average. Everyone wants to be special, so instead of discouraging that, why not encourage it?
About the star wars thing: The humans were the uncommon race, every other character was either an exotic alien or wearing a mask, that in effect turned them in to an exotic alien. About the Tolkien, that was just the local races, he was big on consistency.
I used to be a control freak about character creation crunch, but now I just say: "What do you want to play?", I allow any 0 HD race, and you may even build your own, and ability scores are just assigned based on what your character needs. And now I am far more demanding of character description and background, I want players to be invested in a character before we start playing.
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The Fellowship of the Ring consisted of four hobbits, an elf, a dwarf, two humans, and a maiar (an immortal angelic being in human form). They later teamed up with an ent and a talking eagle. By Middle Earth standards, that's pretty exotic.
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Hearing this discussion, I want to turn this question around: Do you, as the GM, effectively play non-human NPC's as anything other than stereotypes?
Are the nonhuman enemies in your games simply frothing maniacs or conniving schemers thirsting for power? Do they have complex motivations besides killing players and random civilians? Can you give me realistic dialogue with a creature with blues scales and a duck bill?
One of the problems I see in these situations is that people do not realize that everything made by mankind carries his markings. Looking through the bestiary, I particularly see that Paizo seems to enjoy adding real life human drama into situations with nonhumans.
This is why I have wanted to play a lizardfolk for a long time. Now: Hold onto the image of this race you carry with you typically. Now look at this bestiary entry in this link. Note how Paize attempts to explain and dispel the stereotypes in their setting's lizardfolk. Also note that this actually reflects the conflicts between the Imperial powers in Europe and the indigenous people (from just about anywhere) in real life.
And that is why many people want to play exotic races. The set up behind them carries a different cultural perspective than "White Medieval Europeans" found in many works. It provides an excellent jumping point for entering into a new role. While you might see this as a crutch, players do the same thing with their class. Adding different races simply adds another facet they can play with. The bizarre appearance also can allow them to more fully strip themselves of the original viewpoint. And isn't the point of RPG's about how we all attempt to assume new roles and perspectives we can't find in our daily lives?
As a final note, I want to include this link to The Daily Bestiary, which is a blog dedicated towards examining and deconstructing the enemies in Paizo's bestiary (yeah, everyone, alphabetically). If you can begin to use nonhuman creatures in a complex way for reasons other than optimization, then you will encourage your players to do the same.
If it is a setting with limited choices, I will limit the choices of the players. There's no sense in playing a Vanara in Forgotten Realms, a Genasi on the other hand is a perfectly acceptable choice.
This is basically where I'm at as a gm. I control the setting and tone, establish the sandbox parameters. Players have free reign within it.
In other words, when I run Birthright I'm not allowing kitsune or gnomes or orcs. When I play Dark Sun I wont expect to be allowed those races either.
I'm partial to fantasy worlds with as few races as possible.
I understand completely.
I was starting a RoTL game and, since it was my first time playing or running Pathfinder (and because I couldn't afford all the books in one shot), I said "Core Races only, please." Two of the players were rolling up sister half-elfs. They spotted a picture of a drow online and fell in love. "We want to be half-drow!"
"There are no half drow." I replied. "And Drow are irredeemably evil in Golarion. No one on the surface has ever seen one. No one would even have a clue what they are."
"Please, please, please." They countered.
"You want to look that way, you don't care about abilities?" I said. "OK. You can be half-drow sisters. We will invent an improbable back story for why you aren't dead. You just use the standard half-elf race template - no Drow abilities. OK?"
They were fine with that. Players sometimes want to play what they want regardless of the stats. If there is a way to make that work, it's usually best to try to work it in. If there is crazy-character min-maxing going on, just talk to the player about why they want to play that character. If it's just unbalanced "uber-dome", place restrictions. You don't have to allow every book and every supplement - they are supposed to be a buffet; don't try to eat everything.
FYI: I did a lot of tap-dancing and hand waving to explain why the sisters aren't burned on site. The humans of Varisia don't know what a Drow is. They DO know what half-elves are. And they DO know that the people of the southern continent often have very dark skins. The assumption is obvious, and as long as the sisters avoid elven and dwarven lands, they get treated more as curiosities than as threats.
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I said it before: A new race doesn't become anything but odd-looking humans until you understand a bit of their culture. This is why Chewbacca suddenly became a lot more interesting once I played Knights of the Old Republic and saw Wookies on Kashyyyk. Thus, if a player wants to play a tauric half-dragon half-celestial oread vampire, I get a problem as a GM, unless I want to put in a town for these people to live in. And I don't.
The second problem I get is one of baseline. To contrast an alien culture, you need something to contrast it against. Without Aragorn, Boromir, and Frodo (because hobbit culture was described) there would have been no such baseline, and the exotic natures of the other members of the Fellowship of the Ring would have been humans with odd looks. So, if I have five exotic races, this becomes a serious problem. At least to me. And this is without even mentioning the practical problems of "So, all those who think the surly locals will prefer to talk to a phantom lightning elemental to talking to the half-fey shadow orc and the aboleth-kin drow, raise a tentacle now."
This is a problem that ties into another one that I see pretty frequently. Homogenous nonhuman cultures. Almost every campaign setting has a variety of human lands, exactly one elf land and exactly one dwarf land. Sometimes, they get one land per subrace. I find this seriously bad design. I was grateful for Scarred Lands when it did differently... but toward the end of the setting life, they had changed it back to baseline: One land for the elves.
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This is a bad habit I'm still in the process of unlearning. I have a player who really likes playing exotic races like kitsune and catfolk, and my knee-jerk reaction used to be "NO!" but later we worked out a compromise. Her kitsune came from Tian Xia as a kid and grew up in Cheliax's opera scene, playing up her exoticism to make a name for herself. That worked spectacularly, in my mind. She also threw me for a loop when she started singing loudly in the middle of a stealth scene to try and trick the guards into thinking she was just practicing for her next show (sewers have great acoustics, she claimed). And with the amazingly high Charisma she had...it actually worked.
I feel I'm less freaked out by exotic races than I used to be, but I'll still demand that the player have a darn good justification in their backstory as to why that race is where it is. If it's in a place like Kaer Maga or Absalom, however, they get a free pass, as those are the kinds of places where you can find ANYTHING if you look for a few minutes.
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In a game I ran we handed everybody one random beneficial card at character creation. 900 extra gold, a useful NPC mentor, and "play a nonhuman race" were all options. Players were allowed to trade cards as they wished. Worked well for me in keeping nonhuman races feeling special, but your mileage may vary.
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The Fellowship of the Ring consisted of four hobbits, an elf, a dwarf, two humans, and a maiar (an immortal angelic being in human form). They later teamed up with an ent and a talking eagle. By Middle Earth standards, that's pretty exotic.
Yet people insist on using it as the baseline and reason why "parties should be human only", which is just hilariously ironic.
Hearing this discussion, I want to turn this question around: Do you, as the GM, effectively play non-human NPC's as anything other than stereotypes?
Are the nonhuman enemies in your games simply frothing maniacs or conniving schemers thirsting for power? Do they have complex motivations besides killing players and random civilians? Can you give me realistic dialogue with a creature with blues scales and a duck bill?
One of the problems I see in these situations is that people do not realize that everything made by mankind carries his markings. Looking through the bestiary, I particularly see that Paizo seems to enjoy adding real life human drama into situations with nonhumans.
This is why I have wanted to play a lizardfolk for a long time. Now: Hold onto the image of this race you carry with you typically. Now look at this bestiary entry in this link. Note how Paizo attempts to explain and dispel the stereotypes in their setting's lizardfolk. Also note that this actually reflects the conflicts between the Imperial powers in Europe and the indigenous people (from just about anywhere) in real life.
And that is why many people want to play exotic races. The set up behind them carries a different cultural perspective than "White Medieval Europeans" found in many works. It provides an excellent jumping point for entering into a new role. While you might see this as a crutch, players do the same thing with their class. Adding different races simply adds another facet they can play with. The bizarre appearance also can allow them to more fully strip themselves of the original viewpoint. And isn't the point of RPG's about how we all attempt to assume new roles and perspectives we can't find in our daily lives?
As a final note, I want to include this link to The Daily Bestiary, which is a blog dedicated towards examining and deconstructing the enemies in the enemies in Paizo's bestiary (yeah, everyone, alphabetically). If you can begin to use nonhuman creatures in a complex way for reasons other than optimization, then you will encourage your players to do the same.
You are full of win. I wish I could favorite your post more than once. I would also like to add that I find playing a human boring, both stat and RP wise.
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Come to think of it, Aragorn was 87, but still youthful due to his unusual racial background. So that makes Boromir the only 'normal' one, and look what happens to him.
Come to think of it, Aragorn was 87, but still youthful due to his unusual racial background. So that makes Boromir the only 'normal' one, and look what happens to him.
That's true, I forgot about that.
The Rangers were basically Aasimar (or some kind of Fey descended type of race "First Men" or something, it's been a while), were they not? Albeit ones whose bloodline thinned and grew weaker over time entirely instead of just showing up in fits and spurts.
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Come to think of it, Aragorn was 87, but still youthful due to his unusual racial background. So that makes Boromir the only 'normal' one, and look what happens to him.
That's something I've noticed among players up where I am. Too often they equate normal human with "Red Shirt."
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In a game I ran we handed everybody one random beneficial card at character creation. 900 extra gold, a useful NPC mentor, and "play a nonhuman race" were all options. Players were allowed to trade cards as they wished. Worked well for me in keeping nonhuman races feeling special, but your mileage may vary.
That's an interesting approach.
I, too, sometimes have a problem when faced with a Party of Freaks.
It all depends on the world in which you set the story and the players at your table.
As the GM, it's your world. Make sure the races in the party make sense within that world. It's okay give limitations to the campaign so that your world remains consistent.
If you play regularly with the same stable group, you might experiment a bit: play one campaign in which everyone is required to be human -- no exceptions. Eliminate orcs, elfs, globlins, and so on from the setting entirely.
Then play another campaign set in something like Moss Eisley, where everything goes -- no restriction on races, and try and talk people into branching out a bit.
Then start a "real" campaign and see what people gravitate to. If most players opt for humans, that tells you a lot about the group's preferences. If everyone sticks with exotic races, well, there you go. If you get a mix, think about why each person chose the race they did.
DISCLAIMER: I did this in the '90s. After the experiments, that group ended up with a lot of all-human campaigns, and we were the happier for it. With a different group, it might have turned out differently.
One of my favorite aspects of Pathfinder is that the core races got so powered up. It makes it a lot easier to justify things like Drow and Hobgoblins in a level 1 party.
@ OP: I advise you simply look closely at the specific race being chosen. Some are even more powerful than normal (e.g. Mystic Past Life Samsarans) and need to be evaluated very carefully. But some just look more powerful due to a 3.5 mindset, and that is where we can safely set our preconceptions aside.
In our groups someone playing as a human is generally optimizing, while the people playing exotic races are doing so because they think those races are neat.
Our group has
A ratfolk magus
A halfling synthesis summoner
A gnome druid
A slyph air wizard
An Elf rogue
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You are very brave to invite challenge to your opinions! I like that. :) As both a GM and a Player who loves exotic races, let's see if I can't help.
Heck, I have to keep my nose from scrunching up when I have a party that doesn't contain a plurality of humans (or the local population as appropriate.) Was the cast of Star Wars a Wookie, a Trandoshan, two ewoks, and a half-chiss? Did Gandalf's dwarves include a cat man and a winged tree person?
"No" to both of these references, of course, but its important to think about why there are not more fantastic races among these groups. The simple answer is, "us." The audience. It is much, much easier for an audience to connect with humans because we feel like we understand them better. This is why modern elves and dwarves don't look too different from humans either. We can understand and accept, "Pretty human with pointy ears," or "short human with a beard and a love of eating." Those are tropes that we find in humanity that we understand well enough to apply to the new race in question.
Looking at the two movies you mentioned, which one of those is almost 50 years old now? The answer is the movie with a predominately human cast. On the other hand, Tolkien's iconic "Lord of the Rings" party for most of Acts II and III are two humans, an elf, a dwarf, and a halfling. That's a spread of diversity beyond what you see in most adventuring groups! The reason for the spread is simple: it is much easier for us to "imagine" those fantastic elements than it is to draw or model or otherwise visually create them. If Star Wars came out in 2007 instead of 1977, would the main cast still have been as predominately human as it was? I'd like to think so, but that's not an answer I can be assured of because our ability to fool our own brains via movie magic is much better now.
I respect that there are times when an exotic race can add a lot to a character, if Chewie was just a burly guy with a speech impediment, he wouldn't have been as interesting of a character. The dwarves could have stood to be broken up by an odd character (although Bilbo fills this role of course.)
To play devil's advocate, a well-written character could be a member of any race. For example, if Yoda was just a short human instead of being an alien, would any of his scenes have been lessened? Details like, "I'm almost 1,000 years old," would need to be changed, but character always transcends race. An even better character could be a member of any race, but the fact that he is a member of a specific race adds to his or her depth so much more than it would have otherwise. An excellent example of this goes to Frodo. Frodo's character of the reluctant hero fulfilling the classic Hero's Journey could be done by just about any race, but the fact that he's a Hobbit makes the journey all the more powerful when you see where he comes from and where he ends up going.
My first concern when a player announces their intent to roll up an exotic race is that the player is abusively optimizing. In many cases, this is a non-issue, and it's the least concern. My table has never called for absolute optimization, and I trust my players not to seek out ways to break the game. But, the concern is there nonetheless.
In my experience, the only two "crazy optimization races" are the vanara (Bestiary 3 for Monks) and the vishkayna (Bestiary 3 for Ninjas). Pathfinder is much better at avoiding the mini-max racial effect than 3.5 ever was, and believe it or not but the Core races tend to be much stronger choices than other races because they simply have more options available to them and typically have stronger, less niche Favored Class Bonuses. There are exceptions, however. (Kitsune Sorcerers)
Second, is that the player is defining their character by what they are and not by who they are. This comes from a literary background, and I'm not expecting every member of the table create a Harry Dresden or any of the other wealth of great fantasy characters; but personally, I'd prefer even an archetypal grunting barbarian to a character that is only identifiable as "The half clockwork undead guy." (Aside: that would have some serious potential, but as evident, you need to marry that trait with other personality too.)
As someone with a literary background, surely you can come up with several awesome examples of beloved characters who, ultimately, are definable only by race. Legolas and Gimli come to mind almost immediately, especially in the movies. If your player is an experienced roleplayer, providing a cultural foil to other party members can make for an excellent character. For example, if your human buddies all grew up in a sleazy city together and their past experiences have lead them to believe that there's nothing wrong with leaving a local innkeeper who might have sold them out for dead, the kitsune ranger who comes from a foil culture of loyalty for whom he is friendly with would provide interesting contrast to the rest of the party and could ultimately have an effect on the other characters' world views.
Last, that a player is seeking to be a "super special snowflake." Now, I don't make this charge lightly. It's contentious and I don't want to suggest I think badly of anyone I play with. I understand that one of the draws of Pathfinder is playing an empowering, unique hero. Even in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay the rat catcher and charcoal burner have the opportunity to make themselves great. But a player telling me they want to be bring a half-minotaur to the table throws up a red flag to me.
I'm not going to defend the half minotaur thing, because that's silly. (What are you, a quarter-bull?) But my view on this topic has always been that I do not expect a party of adventurers to homogeneously conform to local population standards for one simple reason: adventurers by their very nature are out-liers. Adventurers are the people who don't "go with the flow" of society. Think about it, how much gold does the average adventurer bring home every couple of months? Being an adventurer is more like being a professional athlete in today's world. You make bank quick, and even though anyone could do it in theory, in practice few are able to. Because you're taking a very small percentage of the total population of a given race, it becomes much more likely that you'd see members of other races among adventuring parties. Kitsune are no more likely to become adventurers than elves, dwarves, catfolk, or aasimars, and given some races you would expect many of them to trend towards fringe roles in society such as adventuring (see: most bastard races).
As a final aside, let it be known that I GM for a party of mostly humans and half-elves and I play in a game where I am a kitsune, a fairly exotic race. My GM flat-out told me that he had no place for the kitsune in his campaign world, so how did I get to play my character? I learned all I could about his world and I built a place for my character in it. I made him an orphan, raised by one of his favorite in-house cultures, wrote a quick backstory and developed an interesting character and worked from there. Now, months later, my GM has added more kitsune into our Kingdom Building game that my character is the king of, and this was a race that was claimed to have no place in his campaign world. So my advice is this, stay strict if you want, but allow players the opportunity to impress you with an interesting character and see what happens from there.
Hope this helps!
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The closest thing to a human my group has ever done was 1 human dragonborn back in 3.5, and they are far from powergamers. Exotic can be fun, and I am flexible enough in my settings that a players race can be swapped in for a previously existing race in the setting. In fact I haven't had humans exist in my homebrewed settings for well over a year now. One the best campaigns I ever ran happened when all my players decided they wanted to play geniekin. This led to an all genie inspired campaign where the geniekin races were simply lesser genies enslaved by the full powered ones. Open yourself up and you would be shocked at the kind of stories that can unfold.
Let's see, in our current AP's were running:
Human Cleric
Human Paladin
Human Rogue
Aasimar Fighter
Changeling Witch
Half-orc Ftr/Mnk/Ranger
The aasimar and changeling pass for human pretty easily. The half-orc's race was chosen with the intent of enhancing his intended role as the party tough guy. (Didn't work out that way: the female human paladin is stronger and everyone's CHA is higher than his, so Hulk neither smashes nor intimidates. But he does have impressive DPR with a bow.)
Human Cleric
Aasimar Cleric
Ratfolk Rogue
Ratfolk Ranger
Elf Wizard
Half-orc Fighter (...or is that guy a Barbarian?)
Aasimar was chosen for the Cleric of Ragathiel as part of a plan to power up Intimidation ability; the two Ratfolk were chosen so we could play with swarming (flanking without needing to flank.)
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I was asked about someone playing an Android Alchemist. This fits in my setting, as I want players to be weird. Even better when his programming starts getting corrupted (Read: runprogram.MasterChymist.exe). If everyone wants to play Samsarans and Tieflings and Aasimar and Tengu, that's fine by me. I just don't like uniformity.
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I have literally never seen a Human in AD&D, for example, because they got absolutely nothing racially except a higher max level cap which everyone ignored anyway.
Your experience is different than mine. Most (about 60%) characters in my AD&D campaign are human. OTOH, I do enforce the level caps.
To speak to the original post, I have no objection to characters of an exotic race; I think that it adds spice. What does bother me is the "adventuring party as traveling freak show" trope. If everything is exotic, nothing is.
I have no prejudices whatsoever against my players picking out and playing any race that is available through the official Paizo books. These races are all pretty well balanced. Also, I don't worry about super optimization because my players don't like to super optimize, they rather use the optional drawbacks to give more flavor to their PCs, which is something that I really like to do myself when I play.
Personally, I'm the opposite as I like to play new races and have new races in my games. It keeps things interesting and new for me and my table.
If your group isn't into optimization as you stated OP, then you should let your players have free reign to do what they want with their PCs, they may surprise you with some really cool, fun, and memorable characters in your campaigns.
As GM I set what races are acceptable. Sometimes it's human only but mainly core races. It really depends the story I'm running. I also haves game where the more exotic the better. Once I had the player randomly roll a race with the highest chance being human in Glorian as I had each culture as different race. Even added Azlanti on 00 on d100. I also take players suggestions, like they want to play a Drow game for example.
I, too, sometimes have a problem when faced with a Party of Freaks.
It all depends on the world in which you set the story and the players at your table.
As the GM, it's your world. Make sure the races in the party make sense within that world. It's okay give limitations to the campaign so that your world remains consistent.
if you eliminate the freak races
the "Special Snowflake" players restricted to humans will still find ways to play freaks through accessories, clothing, surgery, body art and the like.
you would be better off allowing the freak races than allowing that human to dye her skin blue, dye her hair purple, wear lolita fashion alongside her cute and small frame, wear fake horns, carry a creepy doll, wear outlandish clothing, wear a bunch of glowing tattoos over her fair skin, or bleach her hair white and wear red contacts.
and humans can already do that
i'd rather have the players straight up admitting their desire to play a freak race, rather than have them hide their desires behind a series of cosmetic changes by means of clothing or whatever.
in fact, banning exotic races does nothing to prevent the star wars Cantina scene i have loved when i was still in elementary school. hell. my favorite part of Star Wars was the millions of different species.