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I find it exasperating when people playing a game where they can be anyone they want to be just choose to be a boring human
I agree with your general premise but sentences like this always kinda dishearten me. The idea that somehow picking a certain ancestry is boring, shameful or shows a lack of creativity is a bit much.
RPGs are a great way to tell so many different kinds of stories and tut tuting someone because the story they're interested in isn't the one you think is good just feels like a waste.
Would you be as exasperated by them producing a full caster party, considering that spellcasters are far further removed from our reality than lizards?
If anything, I think I'd be really excited to see how a themed party like that would play out.
Also, I don't belive someone's chosen profession (even a fantastic one) would have nearly the same level of impact on a character's mindset as a fundamental biological and cultural differences.
I don't believe someone's chosen profession (even a fantastic one) would have nearly the same level of impact on a character's mindset as a fundamental biological and cultural differences.
That would be realistic, but I'm not sure how often it applies in RPG-land. A Barbarian, Bard and Wizard from the same species are likely to be a pretty diverse bunch; they have different gifts and different ways of interacting with the world. But if it was three Wizards from different species, they'd all be smart guys who study books to learn magic.
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I'm genuinely surprised someone who has their own character emporium for weird builds would have an issue with this. But if it bothers you, you can always say only core or common options are allowed.
I'm genuinely surprised someone who has their own character emporium for weird builds would have an issue with this. But if it bothers you, you can always say only core or common options are allowed.
Not sure I would categorize it as "bother" so much as "worry."
Its an interesting point though - i wonder if PF2 can be permissive by default in the design side and just slap a rarity tag on it and call it job done.
Perhaps we (being people who played PF1) need to embrace that new facet of the game a little deliberately in order to get maximum benefit out of it.
It might be a subtle but fundamental difference in the games thats easy to skip over unthinkingly.
I find it exasperating when people playing a game where they can be anyone they want to be just choose to be a boring human, often a slightly more heroic version of themself.
I mostly play humans. I tend to find a Human Celestial Sorcerer of Sarenrae to be not boring at all. Its biology is common, but his concerns and behavior is far away from my reality.
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I find it exasperating when people playing a game where they can be anyone they want to be just choose to be a boring human, often a slightly more heroic version of themself.I mostly play humans. I tend to find a Human Celestial Sorcerer of Sarenrae to be not boring at all. Its biology is common, but his concerns and behavior is far away from my reality.
I nearly always play humans. My human PCs are universally better than my weirdo race ones (they tend to be bags of abilities rather than believable characters).
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The issue I find with weird races is that most players will play archetypical ones. Not so many players take the time to read the background, the psychology, the history of weird races and come up with a proper version of it. Very often it's: I'm a Tengu. Like if being a Tengu was defining a character. And then the player does "Tengu things", like stealing shiny items or playing with swords and they call it a day.
When they play humans, players tend to be more creative. They think about their country, their position, their lineage, their divinity and such. Mostly because playing a human without a proper backstory is boring (I agree with that). So, if you have multiple humans around the table, they will feel very different from each other.
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Eh depends on the player I've seen players that play human just play their class instead of an in depth character. Big dumb barb or nerdy wizard etc.
Eh depends on the player I've seen players that play human just play their class instead of an in depth character. Big dumb barb or nerdy wizard etc.
Yes, clearly. But humans can be found in a variety of classes.
I've found a survey of class-race combinations. And humans are widespread amongst classes.On the other hands, dwarves are fighters and clerics, elves are wizards, rangers, rogues and maguses, and kitsunes are sorcerers. Fighter is the most common class, and there are 6 times more elf wizards than elf fighters, 10 times more gnome sorcerers than gnome fighters.
Many races are more boring than human when you take into account the extreme limitations of character builds you'll cross. At least, I can't just say "I'm a human" when defining my character. I have to speak about what I do for people to know it.
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It's likely an echo of the problem that people see their own race as a sprawling variety of a myriad of subcultures while at the same time they look at other races as a pretty much uniform group defined by some characteristics they all share. For a Caucasian, there's the amazing difference between a Slav from CEE and a WASP 'Murican from Rust Belt while the only difference between Vietnamese and Chinese is, well, there's no difference, they all eat rice, live in bamboo huts and speak funny language, no?
The same mechanism works with fantasy ancestries - we see humans as a tapestry of varieties and all elves are haughty, all dwarves are Scottish drunkards, all goblins are pyromaniacs.
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Hmm we even write the humans abilities that way. Bonus feat bonus skill versatile no negative attribute. etc.
I wonder if Dwarfs had wrote PF if most races would get a -2 or 4 con penalty and instead of dark vision they would give humans a weakness of poor sight in the dark.
The issue I find with weird races is that most players will play archetypical ones. Not so many players take the time to read the background, the psychology, the history of weird races and come up with a proper version of it. Very often it's: I'm a Tengu. Like if being a Tengu was defining a character. And then the player does "Tengu things", like stealing shiny items or playing with swords and they call it a day.
When they play humans, players tend to be more creative. They think about their country, their position, their lineage, their divinity and such. Mostly because playing a human without a proper backstory is boring (I agree with that). So, if you have multiple humans around the table, they will feel very different from each other.
Have seen stuff like this happen a lot lately and I think it has to do with certain youtube campaigns where it's just super gonzo D&D with random races. They can be pretty funny, but really you're just getting "tiny human + funny quirk from their race". I'd say only the core rulebook races are supposed to be so "humanized". I don't blame them, we are humans IRL and that's the point of view we have for the world. It falls to the GM to not be so lazy and actually have NPCs treat their characters differently. (I'm looking at you, Goblin PC).
I do sigh when my groups are weird like that, but it's usually newbie players so at least I can get away with "helping" them so their backstory is more than "am different because x race/class combination".
It falls to the GM to not be so lazy and actually have NPCs treat their characters differently. (I'm looking at you, Goblin PC).
Actually, it may sometimes hinder the adventure. Especially if you play PFS where you can't have long introductions. When a character comes with a Dhampir in an adventure where the Pathfinder Society helps priests of Pharasma or Sarenrae, it's hard for the DM to properly handle the situation. First because it may generate issues with the proper handling of the adventure, and also because, as a DM, you don't always know precisely the position of Pharasmite or Sarenrite on their behalf.
If I'm the church of Pharasma and call the PFS for help, if they send me a Dhampir, I tend to read a hidden message. And if his companions are a Tiefling, a Sylph, a Kobold and a Goblin, it's quite clear to me they're not taking my request seriously at all.
Not sure I like the implication of "Just treat everyone like human with a different color for convenience". Then again, that's just for PFS, because as you said, there's a lot of potential RP situations springing up from these race choices!
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If I'm the church of Pharasma and call the PFS for help, if they send me a Dhampir, I tend to read a hidden message. And if his companions are a Tiefling, a Sylph, a Kobold and a Goblin, it's quite clear to me they're not taking my request seriously at all.
I sense lack of respect there >:(
Anyway, lot of people CLAIM that majority of exotic ancestry players are "My character is [x], that explains everything about their character", but the way I see it, lot of people tend to assume that exotic characters NEED to be much more detailed than what they require from mr. human barbarian with big sword and small int :P
There is also that players LOVE to stereotype a character based on one trait of them. Like if you play character that is alcholist among other thing, players and gm only remember the alcoholism.
Like, I'm sure there are players who are like "I'm a cat" without really thinking what that means, (I'd still say its wrong to require them to play character as xenofiction character though whereareas core races always get pass no matter what inhuman features they have :P) but its kinda like how everyone just "knows" that majority of parties play violent or murderhobo characters where statistics seem lot of parties actually prefer talking things through.
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It's likely an echo of the problem that people see their own race as a sprawling variety of a myriad of subcultures while at the same time they look at other races as a pretty much uniform group defined by some characteristics they all share. For a Caucasian, there's the amazing difference between a Slav from CEE and a WASP 'Murican from Rust Belt while the only difference between Vietnamese and Chinese is, well, there's no difference, they all eat rice, live in bamboo huts and speak funny language, no?
The same mechanism works with fantasy ancestries - we see humans as a tapestry of varieties and all elves are haughty, all dwarves are Scottish drunkards, all goblins are pyromaniacs.
Most games don't do themselves many favors in that regard either.
Humans will get Not-Rome, Not-Egypt, Not-China, and a host of other nations to hail from while there's generally only one Elf-Land, Dwarf-Land, and the Shire for those other dudes, not helping the whole cultural monolith things.
In my opinion, it's a setting issue. On Golarion, humans are the majority, and you find them everywhere. As such, a party of non-humans will be seen with suspicion.
It's not the case in Starfinder, where most systems/planets have a unique race as main one and humans, despite being a common race in the universe, are in the majority only in a few worlds. A party of non-humans is not seen the same way in Starfinder, as even humans are actually a foreign race in most of the galaxy.
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While I can actually get the "wow, is it really wise to just go full ham with the weird stuff on your first go?" reaction, but if we are being totally honest, humans are the most complex ancestry to pick from a mechanical standpoint. For example, "pick a general feat" or "add a cantrip from another spell tradition onto your own" is a lot more complex than "get a natural weapon with these stats" or "you can cast this innate cantrip", even though seasoned players know the former is actually much better than the latter.
From a roleplaying standpoint, I tend to find a lot of rp hooks in "weirder" races that extend beyond just trying to be unique. My first pf character was a tiefling, and, at the time, the apg said their lifespan was way longer than a human, so a good chunk of her backstory was influenced by how parents might raise their children if they reached adult maturity right around their own retirement age. Would gnomish half elves experience a more "normal" upbringing than human ones, given that both parents have incredible life spans rather than outliving one parent, and dying before the other even shows signs of aging? Do "civilized" goblins just absorb their surrounding cultures, or do they reform their own to be more peaceful and hospitable to other races, and do we have crotchety old geezer goblins complaining about the new ways and constantly try to relive their old raiding days when they truly felt free? I know it's not the same for everyone, but these kinds of hooks are what really excite me about fantasy games featuring other sentient races
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In my experience, less common ancestries are not played incorrectly by players, but interpreted too simply by GMs. Players typically have a complex, nuanced idea of what makes a character the way they are, where it is not unusual for a GM to declare "that isn't how a [ancestry member] would act".
All that said, my personal GMing philosophy is that the GM should integrate the player's views of the setting into their own. If the players feel that it is reasonably normal for a hodgepodge of ancestries to be adventurers, the GM should moderate their view of the universe to accommodate that.
I very much object to the idea that everyone being special means that no one is. Everyone being special means that everyone is special. And why shouldn't they be? No one is interested in pretending to be demographically normalized subsistence farmers, to make the world believable.
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I think the "Dhampir sent to assist some Pharasman church" is a fascinating roleplaying opportunity, personally.
We have the baseline of "nobody asked for the circumstances of their birth" and "anybody who is holding that against them is being a jerk" to fall back on, after all.
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I think the "Dhampir sent to assist some Pharasman church" is a fascinating roleplaying opportunity, personally.
We have the baseline of "nobody asked for the circumstances of their birth" and "anybody who is holding that against them is being a jerk" to fall back on, after all.
Wait, what birth? Everyone knows that dhampirs are created from the corpses of evil cannibal murderers via unholy sacrificial rites and rituals that call upon fiends to possess and reanimate the blasphemous thing into a bloodsucking murderous half-alive horror.
Why, that's just common sense! And anyone who says otherwise is clearly either a fool or a degenerate in league with the fiends and necromancers!
;D
It's likely an echo of the problem that people see their own race as a sprawling variety of a myriad of subcultures while at the same time they look at other races as a pretty much uniform group defined by some characteristics they all share. For a Caucasian, there's the amazing difference between a Slav from CEE and a WASP 'Murican from Rust Belt while the only difference between Vietnamese and Chinese is, well, there's no difference, they all eat rice, live in bamboo huts and speak funny language, no?
The same mechanism works with fantasy ancestries - we see humans as a tapestry of varieties and all elves are haughty, all dwarves are Scottish drunkards, all goblins are pyromaniacs.
Most games don't do themselves many favors in that regard either.
Humans will get Not-Rome, Not-Egypt, Not-China, and a host of other nations to hail from while there's generally only one Elf-Land, Dwarf-Land, and the Shire for those other dudes, not helping the whole cultural monolith things.
In my opinion, it's a setting issue. On Golarion, humans are the majority, and you find them everywhere. As such, a party of non-humans will be seen with suspicion.
It's not the case in Starfinder, where most systems/planets have a unique race as main one and humans, despite being a common race in the universe, are in the majority only in a few worlds. A party of non-humans is not seen the same way in Starfinder, as even humans are actually a foreign race in most of the galaxy.
I think that's a good point. Even I don't play humans much in Starfinder (and I nearly always play humans in nearly every game).
It was deliberately crafted as the "Cantina" edition and it kind of carries through into how the game plays, in my opinion.
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I think that's a good point. Even I don't play humans much in Starfinder (and I nearly always play humans in nearly every game).
Same for me. 2/3rd of humans in Pathfinder, none in Starfinder.
It really shows that my choice of playing humans is not based on personal preferences, but really because I create my characters with a link to the setting. So, when I want my character to be from Osirion as I want the "Egypt" spirit for him, I make a human as anything else would be seen as weird.If I have a request for Paizo, it would be to be more inclusive of other races in human nations. If, for example, Shoanti boneslayers were mostly half-orcs, if there was a massively accepted Anubis cult in Osirion composed only of LN gnolls, if the Kitharodian academy was slowly overthrown by gnomes... there would be more reasons to play such races. But if, when I see a dwarf in a human city, he's either blacksmith, merchant, drunkard or isolated... I have limited envy to play a non human, as I just have stereotypes to work with.
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I think that's a good point. Even I don't play humans much in Starfinder (and I nearly always play humans in nearly every game).Same for me. 2/3rd of humans in Pathfinder, none in Starfinder.
It really shows that my choice of playing humans is not based on personal preferences, but really because I create my characters with a link to the setting. So, when I want my character to be from Osirion as I want the "Egypt" spirit for him, I make a human as anything else would be seen as weird.
An Oread, his skin like sandstone, strikingly resembling the great graven images found in Osirion.
A tengu with a particularly hawklike appearance, resembling Horus.A catfolk, with short hair and long ears, resembling an egyptian cat.
A shabti.... well just any shabti really.
Any genasi - descended from nearby lands which are infested with assorted genies.
A beautiful minotaur, blessed by Hathor with pale skin and golden horns.
A Samsaran with slightly green skin, an oracle who speaks for Osiris.
A Dwarf, a foreign explorer who has spent decades delving into ancient tombs, and has picked up the local language.
I understand occasionally playing a human - I have been known to do that myself, but that the majority of people play humans the majority of the time (statistically, this is true) is what I feel is a great deal of missed opportunities.
and this extends past ancestry choices - there's the opportunity to stretch yourself in other ways. You can play characters of different genders, walks of life, personalities, ideologies, etc. I have known a lot of people who just play as themselves but in a fantasy setting (human, the same gender, the same personality and opinions, the same voice and appearance and interests, etc) - and there is no shame in doing so, but they are missing out on the opportunity to experience being someone or something different, and they are missing out on a lot of variety.
The second (and last) time I played a human character, it was a lot of fun, but most of what made the character fulfilling was how different she was to me. She was small, innocent, temperate, religious, and endlessly positive, while I am tall, experienced, worldly, cynical and generally pretty depressive. It was a fun escape from being myself all of the time.
Since then, I have played a gnome, a minotaur, three elves (the elves where all in one shots where you had to be a drow), a goblin and a dwarf, and that variety was really fun and gave me a lot of variety that I wouldn't have gotten playing 4 humans and 3 elves.
An Oread, his skin like sandstone, strikingly resembling the great graven images found in Osirion.
A tengu with a particularly hawklike appearance, resembling Horus.
A catfolk, with short hair and long ears, resembling an egyptian cat.
A shabti.... well just any shabti really.
Any genasi - descended from nearby lands which are infested with assorted genies.
A beautiful minotaur, blessed by Hathor with pale skin and golden horns.
A Samsaran with slightly green skin, an oracle who speaks for Osiris.
A Dwarf, a foreign explorer who has spent decades delving into ancient tombs, and has picked up the local language.
It's funny because half of your propositions are things I'll never ever play as they are not even the slightest appealing to me. Samsarans, genasis, monotaurs and shabtis are races I'd never even allow as PCs if I DM. Tengus are from Tian Xia, so I don't see what it would be doing in Osirion.
The dwarf's funny, and I kind of like catfolks, but both would be strangers and as such won't keep the egypt style out of Osirion.So, none of your proposition is valid for my character.
Anyway, not that it's important to find something that would suit both you and me, but just to show that what suits you has great chances to not suit me at all. Different players, different characters ;)
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An Oread, his skin like sandstone, strikingly resembling the great graven images found in Osirion.
A tengu with a particularly hawklike appearance, resembling Horus.
A catfolk, with short hair and long ears, resembling an egyptian cat.
A shabti.... well just any shabti really.
Any genasi - descended from nearby lands which are infested with assorted genies.
A beautiful minotaur, blessed by Hathor with pale skin and golden horns.
A Samsaran with slightly green skin, an oracle who speaks for Osiris.
A Dwarf, a foreign explorer who has spent decades delving into ancient tombs, and has picked up the local language.It's funny because half of your propositions are things I'll never ever play as they are not even the slightest appealing to me. Samsarans, genasis, monotaurs and shabtis are races I'd never even allow as PCs if I DM. Tengus are from Tian Xia, so I don't see what it would be doing in Osirion.
The dwarf's funny, and I kind of like catfolks, but both would be strangers and as such won't keep the egypt style out of Osirion.
So, none of your proposition is valid for my character.Anyway, not that it's important to find something that would suit both you and me, but just to show that what suits you has great chances to not suit me at all. Different players, different characters ;)
Umm as local tengu enthusiast I feel need to point out that Tengus are common in shackles and can be found in pretty much every port city (and major inland city) in inner sea region, even Land of Linnorm Kings. Tengus for some reason seem to be into sailing a lot and there are lot of random tengu cameos in random aps(including varisia and cheliax) in random cities.
Osirion on otherhand is only place in Inner Sea Region with major catfolk presence and they forgot completely about Pahmet Dwarves.
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According to PathfinderWiki, the capital of Osirion has 87,453 humans, 6,055 dwarves, 4,918 halflings, 3,361 elves, 2,266 gnomes, 1,924 half-elves, 1,563 genie-kin, 1,109 half-orcs, 3,340 other.
I would suggest that Sorcerers are far more rare than non-humans in Osirion. In general, I think Golarion lore is open enough that it would not be crazy for characters of most any ancestry to be played in most any setting.
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An Oread, his skin like sandstone, strikingly resembling the great graven images found in Osirion.
A tengu with a particularly hawklike appearance, resembling Horus.
A catfolk, with short hair and long ears, resembling an egyptian cat.
A shabti.... well just any shabti really.
Any genasi - descended from nearby lands which are infested with assorted genies.
A beautiful minotaur, blessed by Hathor with pale skin and golden horns.
A Samsaran with slightly green skin, an oracle who speaks for Osiris.
A Dwarf, a foreign explorer who has spent decades delving into ancient tombs, and has picked up the local language.It's funny because half of your propositions are things I'll never ever play as they are not even the slightest appealing to me. Samsarans, genasis, monotaurs and shabtis are races I'd never even allow as PCs if I DM. Tengus are from Tian Xia, so I don't see what it would be doing in Osirion.
The dwarf's funny, and I kind of like catfolks, but both would be strangers and as such won't keep the egypt style out of Osirion.
So, none of your proposition is valid for my character.Anyway, not that it's important to find something that would suit both you and me, but just to show that what suits you has great chances to not suit me at all. Different players, different characters ;)
Umm as local tengu enthusiast I feel need to point out that Tengus are common in shackles and can be found in pretty much every port city (and major inland city) in inner sea region, even Land of Linnorm Kings. Tengus for some reason seem to be into sailing a lot and there are lot of random tengu cameos in random aps(including varisia and cheliax) in random cities.
Osirion on otherhand is only place in Inner Sea Region with major catfolk presence and they forgot completely about Pahmet Dwarves.
Pahmets get no love :(
Tengus get all over since they're sailors (*cough* pirates *cough*) and the oceans connect all the places.
...the oceans connect all the places.
Except the far inland places, and the outerspace places, and the planar places, and the...
As a GM, is it wrong to sigh in exasperation when the players you're introducing to Pathfinder 2nd Edition FOR THE FIRST TIME show up with a lizardfolk, a leshay, and a gnelf?Personally, I have always hated the Mos Eisley Cantina feel of the Pathfinder world. I won't go into my reasoning why, because it's rather long and involved, and relates to philosophies surrounding world building and maintaining in-universe logic, and how that is at loggerheads with a business model that revolves around constant addition of new material.
But, no, I do not think you're "wrong" in any way, but you and your players might not be looking for the same kind of experience from the game.
Star Wars' Mos Eisley Cantina was designed as a smugglers' bar next to a spaceport, so a large number of non-humans fit the needs of the scene. George Lucas might have gone overboard with 95% of the clientele being non-humans, but that scene lent itself to many aliens in the background to emphasize that the Empire was an interstellar civilization of many species.
This is a point that we GMs have to consider in designing our town and tavern scenes. A city like Magnimar in Varisia can have many non-human species and many varieties of human because Varisia has many trade routes, both land and sea, to distant lands. In addition, species-based enclaves such as Sanos Forest for gnomes, the Sky Citadel of Janderhoff for dwarves, and the Mierani Forest for elves justify plenty of those peoples as locals, too.
In contrast, my current Ironfang Invasion campaign is in Nirmathas. The gazetteer of the local area says, "In its thousands of years of history as a land settled by humanoids, the Nesmian Plains has played host to outposts of both elves and orcs, and later Kellids and the depredations of the Whispering Tyrant, before finally entering its modern era of colonization by Taldor and that empire’s various inheritors." That justifies humans, half-elves, and half-orcs. Throw in the dwarves attracted by the nearby mineral-rich mountains, and that explains the population of the village of Phaendar (Population 398: 305 humans, 32 half-orcs, 21 dwarves, 17 half-elves, 28 other). The six named NPCs in Phaendar are five humans and one dwarf. Phaendar is not a place for exotic species.
The halfling, two gnomes, and lizardfolk, in my party are exotic, the elf is slightly out of place, and the goblin is an unwanted visitor. This played a part in the beginning of my campaign. Despite the elf and halfling being residents in town, and the lizardfolk and one gnome having homes in adjacent areas, they were viewed as outsiders who were better suited to scouting around and helping evacuate people rather than defending the town with their lives.
As a GM, is it wrong to sigh in exasperation when the players you're introducing to Pathfinder 2nd Edition FOR THE FIRST TIME show up with a lizardfolk, a leshay, and a gnelf?Personally, I have always hated the Mos Eisley Cantina feel of the Pathfinder world. I won't go into my reasoning why, because it's rather long and involved, and relates to philosophies surrounding world building and maintaining in-universe logic, and how that is at loggerheads with a business model that revolves around constant addition of new material.
But, no, I do not think you're "wrong" in any way, but you and your players might not be looking for the same kind of experience from the game.
It's interesting that despite there being so many ancestries that people play, human is narratively by far the majority. For example, in Egorian, humans make up 87% of the population. Absalom has a high proportion of other ancestries, and even then it's 64% human.
Creative Director
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It's interesting that despite there being so many ancestries that people play, human is narratively by far the majority. For example, in Egorian, humans make up 87% of the population. Absalom has a high proportion of other ancestries, and even then it's 64% human.As a GM, is it wrong to sigh in exasperation when the players you're introducing to Pathfinder 2nd Edition FOR THE FIRST TIME show up with a lizardfolk, a leshay, and a gnelf?Personally, I have always hated the Mos Eisley Cantina feel of the Pathfinder world. I won't go into my reasoning why, because it's rather long and involved, and relates to philosophies surrounding world building and maintaining in-universe logic, and how that is at loggerheads with a business model that revolves around constant addition of new material.
But, no, I do not think you're "wrong" in any way, but you and your players might not be looking for the same kind of experience from the game.
It's worth keeping in mind that while humans are the most widespread ancestry in Golarion, the actual rules for ancestries are aimed at the most rare of all creatures in the setting—the Player Characters. There are countless different PCs getting created all the time for various games, but in any one table, only around 4 at a time, and any one table's favored ancestries are a choice of that table, not an indication of the setting.
We aim to provide a wide range of options for players to choose from, because we want folks to have a lot of choices, but that doesn't mean that there's an equal spread of humans to elves to tengus to leshys to ghorans to anadis to (insert still-uninvented ancestry here). We're not trying to imply that every location on Golarion is on par with a certain cantina in a certain movie about space fights.
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Both iterations of that line in The Incredibles are quoting Ayn Rand, which is I'm sure what Artificial 20 was directly referencing as well.I mean in fairness basically that same quote comes out earlier in the movie between elastigirl and dash, driving home from school in the car.
That is all, carry on with discussion
... That quote is older than Ayn Rand. (At the very least, It's used in The Gondoliers, by Gilbert and Sullivan - before she was born.)
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It's interesting that despite there being so many ancestries that people play, human is narratively by far the majority. For example, in Egorian, humans make up 87% of the population. Absalom has a high proportion of other ancestries, and even then it's 64% human.As a GM, is it wrong to sigh in exasperation when the players you're introducing to Pathfinder 2nd Edition FOR THE FIRST TIME show up with a lizardfolk, a leshay, and a gnelf?Personally, I have always hated the Mos Eisley Cantina feel of the Pathfinder world. I won't go into my reasoning why, because it's rather long and involved, and relates to philosophies surrounding world building and maintaining in-universe logic, and how that is at loggerheads with a business model that revolves around constant addition of new material.
But, no, I do not think you're "wrong" in any way, but you and your players might not be looking for the same kind of experience from the game.
Yeah, if you check population statistics for core ancestries, everyone but human are super rare in pretty much every human dominated city(as in there could be multiple thousands of humans but only one or couple thousand core ancestries) :p And you don't hear GMs complaining about elf or dwarf parties.
I honestly feel like reaction of some GMs is really unfair :p
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... That quote is older than Ayn Rand. (At the very least, It's used in The Gondoliers, by Gilbert and Sullivan - before she was born.)Both iterations of that line in The Incredibles are quoting Ayn Rand, which is I'm sure what Artificial 20 was directly referencing as well.I mean in fairness basically that same quote comes out earlier in the movie between elastigirl and dash, driving home from school in the car.
That is all, carry on with discussion
♪♫ In short, whoever you may be,
To this conclusion you'll agree,When every one is somebodee,
Then no one's anybody! ♪♫
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Which is why these races are Uncommon. Meaning the players are supposed to discuss them as options and get your OK before selecting them.
If you don't want those races being played say so. The rules state it's up to the GM.
I recommend always agreeing the PC ancestry and class up front before the session, and before the player has built the character in full. So your PCs aren't showing up with surprises, and your players aren't investing emotionally in a concept that you as the GM aren't comfortable with.
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Mos Eisley makes a bit of sense because it's a space port where people from hundreds or thousands of different planets travel. It's not unreasonable that there are hundreds or thousands of different intelligent species going through because they come from so many different worlds that have developed intelligent life.
Golarion however, has dozens of intelligent species on just this one planet, not even addressing the ones that ultimately came from somewhere else. No explanation for how they've all managed to survive to modern times, especially considering the inherent violence of the world. Little explanation is ever given to the relationships between the species. They're all just provided as material to fill new publications, but little thought is given to how it impacts the internal logic of the world. This is the same argument I've made to why I hate the 200+ divinities that existed in PF1 at the end. It's great for providing interesting combinations for people to play, but each addition makes the world as a whole make less sense, unless the players and GM just ignore all the questions raised by the additions.
The problem isn't the ancestry, it is the geography. Golarion has all those peoples--I like to claim that interstellar gods liked copying their favorite species to Golarion--but most live in isolated places and are seldom seen in regular society. An uncommon-species party in Pathfinder is as if a roleplaying game about 17th-century colonization of the Americas had a party consisting of a Tibetan monk, a Russian horseman, an Arabic sailor, an aboriginal Australian boomerang hunter, and a French musketeer. All those people existed on Earth in the 17th century, but not together in colonial Virginia.
Yet we can assume that Pathfinder adventurers are well traveled, so some characters could have come from far away. As James Jacobs said above (comment #92) player characters are exceptional.
Thus, I make exceptions. All of my campaigns have had at least one character who needed geographic justification, because his or her presence in the location of the adventure did not fit the setting. We made up backstories.
My Rise of the Runelords party in Sandpoint, Varisia, was 2 gnomes, 1 human, 1 elf, 1 half-elf, and 1 lyrakien. The lyrakien was a special character for my wife, who was going to miss several game sessions for medical reasons. We set up her character as an active messenger for the goddess Desna, so that she could be called away at a moment's notice. Desna already let two NPC lyrakien live in Varisia. The gnomes were easily justified because of the gnome settlement in nearby Sanos Forest, and the other forests of Varisia had a scattering of elves and half-elves. Varisia, Birthplace of Legends, was deliberately designed to have all the core ancestries.
My Jade Regent party in Sandpoint, Varisia, was 3 humans, 1 goblin, 1 gnome, 1 halfling, 1 half-drow, and 1 kitsune. Varisia had a hidden drow colony, so the half-drow was plausible. The kitsune had traveled over from Tian Xia and was pretending to be human. One human was also from Tian Xia, since Jade Regent followed a Tian Xian theme. The party encountered the goblin in Brinestump Marsh rather than in town, since a goblin tribe lived in Brinestump Marsh.
My Iron God party in Torch, Numeria, was 2 humans, 1 half-elf, 1 dwarf, and 1 strix. The strix was odd, since strix are found in only one remote location in Cheliax. I set up another strix tribe in the Shudderwood in northern Ustalav, a neighboring country, to justify her presence. The population of Torch is 3,167 humans, 498 dwarves, 392 half-orcs, 168 gnomes, 32 half-elves, 28 halflings, 25 elves, and 10 androids, so humans and dwarves are common, and half-elves are rare but not unexpected. Later in the adventure, we added some Leadership cohorts: a robot, a lyrakien, and a samsaran. Life gets weird at 9th level. The samsaran wore a Cap of Disguise to appear as a gnome. The cap was designed for Small creatures to disguise themselves as common Small creatures, so seeing it on a Medium creature bothered me, but according to the fine print, that was allowed. The samsaran remembered a past life in Numeria, and had traveled across the world to pay off an old obligation.
My Ironfang Invasion party in Phaendar, Nirmathas, is 2 gnomes, 1 elf, 1 halfling, 1 goblin, and 1 lizardfolk, as I mentioned in comment #9. The lizardfolk is the only uncommon ancestry, but none of the those 4 core ancestries fit Phaendar, either. I made a point that the Phaendar villagers thought of the PCs as outsiders who should not sacrifice their lives to defend the village and instead asked them to escort the helpless to safety. That is the main plot of Trail of the Hunted.
Exceptions can be made to work for the campaign.
As for ignoring all the questions raised by the additions, that is standard for Golarion. The world is designed as a patchwork quilt of settings. Varisia is sword-and-sorcery adventure land, Tian Xia is mythological Asia, Numeria is science-fiction-sampler land, Ustalav is gothic-horror land, and Nirmathas is Sherwood Forest crossed with Avalon on a national scale. Each zone is a theme park for one kind of campaign, so that we players can choose our kind of campaign. Plausibility takes second fiddle to campaign options.