Exotic species aren't so exotic, eh?

[Psyren]

Oh dear, I didn’t mean to kick the hornet’s nest. Sorry.

But yeah, Dr.Samurai and KorvinStarmast have the best read of my position. The sidebar implies a certain malleability that by default Krynn does not have. If the DM makes the call of their own volition to let a player play an orc in Dragonlance, that’s fine and good. But in my opinion there’s enough ambiguity that a player may (mistakenly) believe the sidebar to be a case of Specific Beats General overriding p. 6 of the PHB in this specific instance.

There is no rule more specific than "Ultimately, the Dungeon Master is the authority on the campaign and its setting, even if that setting is a published world." And a DM who is incapable of asserting themselves even with that text in hand, would be incapable of asserting themselves no matter what is written in any rulebook. At that point, the designers are not the problem.

(Moreover - they put that text at the front of the PHB, so the players can't even credibly claim that they weren't exposed to it, or at least that it's unreasonable for them to have been exposed to it.)

I am of the belief that while ultimately no amount of rules text can truly defeat a bad-faith/jerk DM or player, the rules can provide some guardrails to prevent misunderstandings or clear up confusing cases that would otherwise cause players and DMs to not be the best person they could be at the table.

I completely agree, and they've done that.

[RedMage125]

(IME players who go to the effort to make it fit are usually worth working with on any number of things, not just chargen).

I am of the belief that while ultimately no amount of rules text can truly defeat a bad-faith/jerk DM or player, the rules can provide some guardrails to prevent misunderstandings or clear up confusing cases that would otherwise cause players and DMs to not be the best person they could be at the table.

I second both of these statements.

[Chronos]

What's a player doing reading the module, anyway? The only way a player should even be encountering that sidebar in the first place is if the DM chooses to share it with them.

[Devils_Advocate]

People aren't going to confuse a tiefling for a fiend under normal circumstances. Those who have seen fiends know that they don't look the same, and those who have never seen fiends are unlikely to leap to the conclusion that this stranger is one of those monsters that you only hear about in stories. ("If they believe in angels, why should they be surprised to see one?") Dragonborn are even less likely to be mistaken for dragons; they're humanoid bipeds, for Bahamut's sake!

Someone's reaction to an unfamiliar species will probably be more about the unfamiliarity. Not "I assume that this dragon-lookin' guy is exactly like a dragon" so much as "I've never seen a dragon-lookin' guy like this one before". Someone who knows nothing about dragonborn and nothing about tabaxi probably isn't gonna just be like "Well, dragons are dangerous, but cats are harmless". Someone might tentatively guesstimate that a dragonborn is more dangerous than a tabaxi, but probably isn't gonna be a lot more wary of one than of the other.

Realistic societal attitudes towards specific peoples vary regionally based on history and current events. Humans of one country might well hate humans from a neighboring country more than they hate orcs. Like, if raiders from Flarkland routinely pillage Blarkland, Blarks probably wind up disliking the Flarks a lot. Whereas, if orcs regularly raid Flarkland and give Flarks a lot of trouble, most Blarks might like the orcs! Sure, there was an incident a while back where some orcs ate a Blarkish diplomat, and some folks in Blarkland are still fairly resentful about it, but ultimately an enemy of the Flarks is a friend of the Blarks.

These sorts of divisions get glossed over in generic fantasyland, where all of the governments are monarchies, everyone uses coins of the same weight made of the same 3 to 4 different metals, everyone speaks "Common", etc. If you don't strive to make your setting more diverse than that, the appeal of fantasy racism isn't that it serves setting verisimilitude; it's just a genre trope. Which, hey, fair enough, but let's call a spade a spade, in that case.

On the other hand, if you want something non-generic, it might be helpful to dump the usual elves, dwarves, and even humans. In that case, you might consider making a setting inhabited entirely by whatever weird non-standard races your players like. Plenty of space on the map for their homelands if you that's where you start from. And this will hopefully produce something original, if nothing else.

[Amnestic]

On the other hand, if you want something non-generic, it might be helpful to dump the usual elves, dwarves, and even humans. In that case, you might consider making a setting inhabited entirely by whatever weird non-standard races your players like. Plenty of space on the map for their homelands if you that's where you start from. And this will hopefully produce something original, if nothing else.

One of my settings (mostly) did that. It had humans, mermen (male only), bird people, dragonborn, and genasi as playable races. No elves/dwarves/gnomes/etc.

It was also my first foray into scrapping Common as a language and having regional languages only. It had...eh...mixed results.

[Theodoxus]

It was also my first foray into scrapping Common as a language and having regional languages only. It had...eh...mixed results.

Heh, I've contemplated doing that. My homebrew world has 12 nations, and 12 unique dialects for them, but after a bit of mental gymnastics on how much work it would be to initiate international commerce - where you'd either need to know the language, or hire a translator... I ultimately decided that a "Common" trade tongue just works better all around. Especially since the players wouldn't be dealing with the headache of talking as NPCs.

I did keep the regional dialects though. It think it's a bit more fun for intrigue when the party all knows some esoteric language that no one else in the region does. (Plus it amps up the 'other' when you're talking 'foreign' and everyone is staring at you, thinking you're talking about them.)

[schm0]

I run campaigns exclusively in the Forgotten Realms, and while I do allow species outside the PHB, the number of species are limited. No monstrous species from Volo's is a big one, and of course most species from another setting (MtG, Ravenloft, Eberron, Spelljammer, etc.) is excluded as well. But from a lore perspective, anything outside the PHB is exceedingly rare, and that is often reflected in the NPCs they come into contact with.

I've considered restricting the ability to play a more exotic species to a dice roll (say, rolling a nat 20) at the beginning of the campaign, but I'm not sure that's the best approach. I've also
dabbled with the idea of borrowing some mechanics for creating characters in the Realms such as those found in this D&D Beyond article. The idea would be to offer traditional character creation, but also incentivize the players to use the Chronicle to roll for their characters (including rolling or choosing from a short list of species) with the promise of a starting magic item or boon for doing so, allowing so many re-rolls in case they don't like a certain result. This way I can incentivize creating a character that would be statistically probable to live in the Realms.

But in general, yes, almost always my players lean towards the more rarer species and the party ends up looking like Guardians of the Galaxy instead of the Fellowship of the Ring.

[Caffinicus]

[QUOTE=Psyren;26008310]Right - or even if it is "stain of evil"/"streak of darkness", it's just enough to make them edgy or cool, like Wolverine in a bar, not forced to hide in a church like Nightcrawler.

Yet the logic of Nightcrawler hiding in a church works perfectly, and surprises no one.

[Caffinicus]

There is actually a player in the game I'm in right now that is playing a Kenku and doing the speech thing by choice. It's been one of the highlights of the game, thus far.


For me it's not about a specific game or story. For me it's more about being a huge fan of setting integrity and a huge opponent of WotC's homogenization efforts throughout 5e.
I think people who play in any given setting should be, for the most part, respecting that setting for what it has to offer. If you want to make small changes to better suit your games, obviously go for it, but if you want to make broad sweeping changes, why are you there in the first place? Pick a setting that better reflects your gaming desires, or even create your own.
Every setting has it's baggage, and that baggage is what gives it character. A group full of "exotic" characters will get strange looks in the Realms, and different strange looks in Greyhawk, and yet different strange looks in Eberron, and no strange looks at all in Planescape.


Context and location and history and a host of things all matter for this question. Looking at the Forgotten Realms, as I'm most familiar with it:
If you're a Dragonborn in Waterdeep, you'll get side-eye a few times, but otherwise no one is going to care. It's a huge metropolitan city with all sorts of peoples coming and going at all times. Humans make up the vast majority of the population, but there are big enough populations of basically everything else that you really won't be an oddity.
If you're a Tiefling in the Dalelands, you're likely not going to have a good time. People will be mistrustful of you at best and outright hostile to you at worst. Because their neighbors to the north, Cormanthyr, have a very long and storied history of being attacked, sacked, and slaughtered by fiendish invasions, multiple times throughout their history. It's capital city of Myth Drannor is the place to go for an adventure of delving through demon-overrun elven ruins.
If you're a Tiefling in Narfel, a place famous for it's demon and devil binding, you're probably not going to surprise many folks. Treating with fiends is quite commonplace, people becoming cambion is a not-too-unregular occurrence even.
If you're a Drow in the North (let's say, in the regions between Silverymoon, Icewind Dale, and Neverwinter) then you're likely to be met initially with hostility and fear, because the Menzoberranzan Drow have a long history of surface raids where they slaughter surface elves on sight, steal people to be made slaves, etc. But there are also stories of the famous Drizzt and various groups of non-evil drow followers of Eilistraee who work towards improving the perception of Drow in those regions. So the likelihood of overcoming that initial fear and suspicion is pretty good.


I think I'd be more inclined towards this argument if those people were actually interested in roleplaying as said exotic races. But in several decades of ttrpg gaming, the kenku player I mention above is the very first time I've seen anyone even make the attempt.
Instead, it's just a long history of "human with horns," or "human with a tail," or "human with scales." Not at all different from your mention above of, "human but pointy ears," and "human but stocky," just the list of, "but with..." features has grown some.
(To be fair, I've never seen anyone try to play an Elf or a Dwarf as anything other than "human but..." either. That's also a big disappointment of mine. They're not human, they shouldn't be played as human.)

That feels like it's veering into "only I can decide what qualifies as 'human but XYZ'!" territory to me.

It's hard to play a fundamentally non-human character. I try to do it as a DM and I struggle terribly every time. It's even harder if you need to get along with a bunch of other party members -- you must necessarily be some degree of human-relatable, i.e. social and cooperative and moral. And you, yourself are a human, so your own worldview and baseline assumptions are always going to bleed through.

TL;DR - I don't think "inhuman" should ever be someone's benchmark for roleplaying non-human races. It's just not feasible and, unless everyone is onboard, it's likely to hurt the party dynamics. "Human but XYZ" is honestly a much more realistic expectation.

Or would be if the "XYZ" wasn't just a physical descriptor.

[Caffinicus]

Context and location and history are the fundamentals of this whole shebanc.

And the dirty little secret is that most people are not sufficiently attached to the fiction of any given D&D setting to have a serious plan for what it means for different fantasy races in different places, especially as there are ever more of them.

If you want to be playing a game where this sort of thing is relevant you need to be playing a game where the setting comes first, and that's not really D&D's bag, the settings are intentionally broad and vague and filled with a lot of blank spaces that are only marked "here be adventures".

Maybe they are now, but settings back in the TSR days, and even through 3e, were much more rich and detailed than the 5e versions are.

[Psyren]

Yet the logic of Nightcrawler hiding in a church works perfectly, and surprises no one.

My point is that you're not required to be an outcast to be a tiefling these days. If that was the case in prior editions, fine, go play one of them then.

[MoiMagnus]

IMO the role of the PCs in-universe also matters.

Sure exotic races are rare, but are they rare among mercenaries? After all, "an outcast with uncommon abilities" has nothing to lose and everything to win from mercenary lifestyle. Are they rare among legends? Having an exotic race might make it easier to be remembered by generation of bards.

If your world is somewhat medieval, the simple fact that the PCs are wandering from a town to another is already enough for them to be weird/untrustworthy/probably-an-outlaw. And while some table roleplay that part, IME the same tables that ignore this whole "exotic races" also ignore this whole "the PCs are kind of weird even if they're humans". It's not that they don't care specifically about exotic race, it's that they're not interested in RPing the consequences of living on the fringe of the societal order.

[Schwann145]

My point is that you're not required to be an outcast to be a tiefling these days. If that was the case in prior editions, fine, go play one of them then.

Required? Of course not.
But even this edition suggests that you should expect to be a spectacle. This isn't relegated to "ye olde editions," or anything of the sort; it still applies in 5e.

[Psyren]

Required? Of course not.
But even this edition suggests that you should expect to be a spectacle. This isn't relegated to "ye olde editions," or anything of the sort; it still applies in 5e.

At which point they realized "hey, maybe our #3 and #4 most popular species by volume shouldn't be fringe options anymore." So they're changing that expectation, and rightfully so. Mearls deciding on something 10 years ago isn't a manacle.

[Blatant Beast]

But in general, yes, almost always my players lean towards the more rarer species and the party ends up looking like Guardians of the Galaxy instead of the Fellowship of the Ring.

This has been my experience throughout my D&D play experience, which goes back to 1981.
Humans, have almost always been supposed to be the predominate race in most published campaign worlds, but it is not uncommon to find Adventuring Group rosters with no humans in it.

In a way, this phenomena makes a certain sense. If we look at jobs that are considered dangerous or have the patina of being socially undesirable, the individuals that take those jobs often lack social mobility, and belong to groups with less established political capital.

A member of a patrician family is likely not working in a Tyson Meatpacking plant as a line worker, for example.

If being a grubby adventurer in a human kingdom means living a life that is brutish and short, whom is constantly overcharged by Company store style shopkeeps, (2 sp for a loaf of hard bread, some hard boiled eggs, and greasy, preserved sausage for a days worth of rations), and in general the nobles and powerful will just ignore you, unless you might serve some purpose, or by some miracle you become powerful enough that the powerful can't ignore you.........then it stands to reason that most adventurers would probably come from groups that are not socially powerful...sometimes know as the downtrodden.

[KorvinStarmast]

In a way, this phenomena makes a certain sense. If we look at jobs that are considered dangerous or have the patina of being socially undesirable, the individuals that take those jobs often lack social mobility, and belong to groups with less established political capital.

A member of a patrician family is likely not working in a Tyson Meatpacking plant as a line worker, for example.

The Noble background doesn't fit your point here. Nor does Acolyte, and nor does sage.

If being a grubby adventurer in a human kingdom means living a life that is brutish and short, whom is constantly overcharged by Company store style shopkeeps, (2 sp for a loaf of hard bread, some hard boiled eggs, and greasy, preserved sausage for a days worth of rations), and in general the nobles and powerful will just ignore you, unless you might serve some purpose, or by some miracle you become powerful enough that the powerful can't ignore you.........then it stands to reason that most adventurers would probably come from groups that are not socially powerful...sometimes know as the downtrodden.

OK, you have covered Urchin, and probably Cirminal and maybe Charlatan backgrounds.
Soldier? Maybe, depends on whom the soldier served.
Sailor? No.
Knight? No.
Faction Agent? Probably not.
Enterntainer? Could go either way.
Outlander? Simply out doorsy doesn't make one downtrodden.
Folk Hero? OK, I can buy that as down trodden or at least from a lower run in society (as written)
Smuggler? (Salt Marsh) Maybe. You can argue that Smuggler and Thief overlap enough for a yes. But some smugglers are merchants who move illicit/tax avoiding goods on the side ...
Archeologist (ToA)? No.
Clan Crafter? Cloistered Scholar? Nope.
Scholar? nope.
Guild Artisan? Nope.
Far Traveler? Nope.

While I get what you are aiming for, the wide variety of backgrounds allows for a lot of social strata to be represented in the adventuring life choice.

[Blatant Beast]

The Noble background doesn't fit your point here. Nor does Acolyte, and nor does sage.

Sure it does, Backgrounds are in the past. The last Emperor of China, eventually became a gardener if I remember correctly. His fortunes went from being a living Divine Representative, to being a prisoner, and then finally an assistant gardener in Beijing.

Ferdinand Marcos went into exile from the Philippines and moved to Hawaii, and did not have a large influence on his now host country.

I have family members that were academics in the Soviet Union, but they had to work what would be commonly termed "menial" jobs in the USA, until they received certifications that were recognized by the United States.

Being the child of the former Duke of Defense for the now defunct country of Tabaxistan, might still afford a PC some connections in Noble circles, but it amounts to maybe a dinner invitation or two, and is entirely consistent with the Background ability granted....you can use your past to set up meetings with people in a certain social circle.