Whatever happened to classic fantasy? Nobody wants to play humans, elves, dwarves, and halflings any more...

>My experiences are representative of all experiences.

In my experience the players who insist on only "classic" races are unimaginative sticks in the mud who's idea of good roleplaying is "I'm a dwarf. I hate elves and love beer. That's my character."
In my experience when you limit players to classic fantasy races they don't think about their characters at all and just rely on the same tired tropes that are always used.
In my experience restriction breeds boredom and redundancy.
In my experience when you open up all the races players actually make better classic race characters than when you restrict them to just the classic races because they actually thought about why they are playing a classic race rather than a more unique one and what that means for their character.

But then, that's just my experience.

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What more RPGs need to do is have stats totally divorced from the race you pick.

Choose if you want to be a human, dwarf, whatever.

THEN choose if you want an extra feat, +2CON and darkvision, whatever.
Call them the 'Versatile' birthright and the 'Tunnel-Dweller' birthright if you want to give it a name.

Once you stop assigning racial traits, you'll see more variety - and as a bonus, people can build more freely.

Then what's the point of race?

>...he would've rather had humans only

The world would've been a better place.

>Not fairies
>Grouping us with that other eastern shit

Been here since 1st edition, faggot. The books are called "fairy tales" for a reason. Even if fairies themselves haven't always been a first choice race, the gnomes have.

>People replying to stale pasta
Guys, stop. At least feed trolls who actually apply effort to trolling.

Waiter, I Ordered vintage pasta from the exotic fields of /b/ and /v/, yet you've given me this stale home concoction instead.

I demand to see the management

>angelic choir singer of light
There is nothing wrong with playing an Aasimar.

Confession; I absolutely loathe generic medieval European fantasy.
The whole point of fiction is that you can imagine anything you want, so why is the idea of fantasy for so many people just elves and dwarves and knights?

There are so many other cultures out there to draw inspiration from.
Why not an Aztec setting with Eagle warriors and blood magic priests?
A Pacific island setting with volcano spirits and demigods that can shapeshift?
A world based on Chinese mythology where dragons are sought out for their wisdom instead of being killed?

I am all about creating new races. Golems that gained freedom and formed their own society.
Anthropomorphic moths that use magic powered by the moon.
Lizard people with 2 penises.

Why limit yourself to Tolkien rip offs?

>then what's the point of race

Because maybe you want to be a dwarf or an elf? You know, as your character?

Two things happened to classic fantasy.
1) Identity politics
2) Familiarity breeds contempt

For the first, younger people have increasingly come around to the opinion that the status of your birth determines you more than what you do. When they look at a black doctor, they don't see a normal man who studied hard to become a doctor, they see a BLACK man who studied hard to become a doctor, and in their minds being black makes his accomplishment even more important. They feel that being different makes him special, makes him better, that it makes him more worthy of praise than his non-black colleagues. This attitude carries over to fantasy. The more unique and special a race is the more impressive their accomplishments are. "I'm not a normal Hero, I'm a trans-Elf Tiefling-queer Hero with Kitsune headmates!"
They have forgotten that things like race should inform a character but do not define them. An elf who saves the town from a dragon will be better remembered for saving the town than he will be for being an elf. These people think that being a [insert special snowflake race here] is what defines the character, not his actions.

For the second, a lot of people are just bored of the classic races. The more time they've spent with these races, the more they've come to pick apart all the little foibles and cliches of the races. Elves and dwarves and halflings are all done a little differently in each setting, and eventually a lot of people tire of these cliches. So, instead of re-inventing the existing races to be fresh and interesting, instead they pick something that is interesting by default. Unfortunately, it's not long before you have to stack so many 'interesting' features on a single character to make them unique that you'll end up needing an entire A4 page just to describe what they look like.

I know OP is pasta but I feel like the issue with those types of players is that they don't want to play western fantasy. They want to play eastern fantasy.

There needs to be an equally popular D&D clone with angels, demons, ninjas, samurai, and kitsune, so those players can go play that game and have fun in a setting where their characters make sense

GURPS. Fate. BESM actually sucks at anime.

is this pasta too
did we reach the point where you can have a conversation that makes sense using only pastas

No, I just wrote this.

DnD only has a suggested/implied setting. You can reskin things however you want - that's one of its advantages.

Nothing stops you from calling a halfling a catgirl, calling an elf a snakewoman, calling a ranger a samurai and a wizard a wujen.

It's amazing how many people I run into suck at reskinning when it's so easy.

>No, I just wrote this.

If really just wrote that crap, good job at making some new pants on head retarded pasta.

No, seriously, I just wrote this. I had nothing better to do.

Something like this?

The Japs stole Kitsune from Chinese mythology desu

Good to know. Point still stands.

>oriental adventures
Wow that's kinda racist

Sorry blood, faggots have hijacked Kitsune.

Bastet please go.

Oh hey I remember this pasta. Good to see you're still a faggot OP.

>Nothing stops you from calling a halfling a catgirl, calling an elf a snakewoman, calling a ranger a samurai and a wizard a wujen.

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How? It's just a fancy word for Eastern.

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Yea what some people call 'classic fantasy, is really pretty fucking new, and based of the work of one guy. I mean, just speaking in relatively modern times, works like Conan the barbarian and John Carter are older than the works of Tolkien, and yet they aren't considered the 'classic' image of fantasy.

Are you me? You described like half the elements of my homebrew setting. Those and creatures of slavic and Afro-Caribbean folklore, wyvern-riding bison hunters on the plains, and an undead capybara necromancer god.

>Aztec setting with Eagle warriors and blood magic priests?
Yes, in part
>A Pacific island setting with volcano spirits
My world has that, yes. Also one of the main religions is basically a cargo cult
>based on Chinese mythology where dragons are sought out for their wisdom instead of being killed?
That's how dragons are in my setting. There are only a dozen and they reincarnate on death.
> Golems that gained freedom and formed their own society.
Intelligent independent constructs is a developing plot point in the setting
>Anthropomorphic moths that use magic powered by the moon.
Have the moth people, though they are powered by the sun instead.
>Lizard people with 2 penises.
Well I do have lizard people as a major race, though I don't really think about their genitals.

>Why do players want variation? There should only be six classes and four races, with two of those classes being "elf" and "dwarf"
>Why do people want to play a game like it's an anime? I want serious fantasy where wizards can manipulate space and time and fighters can swing a pointy stick while constrained by the laws of physics
>Back in my day we didn't have no schoolbus or moped or uber, we walked to school uphill both ways in the blizzard and we LIKED it!

THIS is the cream of the crop of Fellowship's art.

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Last three games I tried to run were jam-packed with fucking Tieflings and Dragonborn. I ended up just making most townsfolk racist and fearful of lizard-people and edgy demon fuckers as punishment.

At this stage the most radical thing to do would be to make a setting that was actually closely modelled on medieval Europe or Greek myth instead of the distorted copy of a copy of a copy of Tolkien.

I would kill for a game that picked a specific period/culture of inspiration and stuck with it instead of being an amorphous mashup of 1000 years of history and 20 seperate mythologies blended together with all the interesting bits taken out and replaced wth elves.

Robots, synths and droids !
In universum like fallout.

I agree, classic fantasy races have enough variety on their own, there should be no need for all that exoticism.

>Wakfu in the same list as Dragonball Z, Star Wars and One Punch Man
It's actually this popular? Not just the new alternative for people who out-hipstered both the American mainstream and it's Japanese alternative?

Oh boy. I'm all for more diverse characters, but this art style is literally Tumblr. Whoever draws this doesn't have a very good grasp of anatomy. What book is it for anyway?

Fellowship RPG.

Fellowship is a pretty good game but I'm not a huge fan of the art.

I dunno what the guy posting art from it was getting at. Yes, Fellowship does allow you to interpret fantasy races in multiple ways, and that's a good thing.

>Whatever happened to classic fantasy?
It evolved.

From left to right:

Fancy hats, condomis, hella shellas, haystacks, sharpies, lil' fellas, ???, tubers (large size), duckdicks.

2 ez.

Having the black dude in the pinth helmet either implies he's a swaggering colonialist or the fuckboi gun holder of a swaggering imperialist, and that's hilarious considering the racial atmosphere this is trying to give.

Or maybe he/she's just supposed to be a daring explorer.

You can call the region and the food oriental, just not the people. For some reason.

That's the actual reason he's dressed like that.

C'mon man, let me have my imagined irony.

So are we all just going to let this image fly, or...?

I was considering asking.
But better not to.

Nothing except halflings are not catgirls, elves are not snakewomen, and so on. It is like calling a desk a chair, only because you can sit on it. Why wouldn't you just call them catgirls and snakewomen and be content with it?
Also, what the hell is wrong with those arts? I can believe that in some parts of the wolrd there is folklore about a race of mushroom people that you could maybe compare to orcs (though I highly doubt), but how is a mermaid an elf?

>except halflings are not catgirls, elves are not snakewomen
Says who?

>dullahan gunslinger and spirit speaker
I really like this idea though, a dullahan who goes around hunting the spirits of the dead with their infernal six shooters, putting them back to rest. And sometimes they throw their head up onto high rocks and tree branches to get a good sight angle for shots.

You're taking the rulebook too literally. The rules are not the game itself, and they are not even the setting of your game. The rules give you templates and systems on which you can base your game on. Same applies to the races, if the GM wants to re-describe and rename the races while keeping their mechanics the same, so be it; he is creating his game, his setting, his universe, and only his imagination is the limit.

Add spiritual flames and it is practically Ghost Rider.
Shit. Now I need to make a character like this.
I am perfectly fine with changing some details of a race. You can, say, have dwarves that don't live underground and they will still be dwarves. Now this is a bit of an extreme example, but if you take a dwarf, take away the mining, the stout and beardy, the gruff and grumbling stereotype, the beer, and everythng else that people identify with a dwarf, then give it tentacles and two heads, it is no more a dwarf, it is... whatever you want to call it. Which is cool, just don't call it a dwarf.

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Flawless.

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This opinion seems fine.

Here's the point:
Theoretically, every race is balanced (or else the designer's did a shit job).

Therefore, as long as I pick a race from the PHB, I can describe it as whatever I want, and call it whatever I want (describing a halfling as a catperson, even), but as long as I'm following the 'rules', it's all fine.

Doing this is most common in superhero RPGs (where, e.g. a ranged attack is just a 'Blast' and it's up to you to decide if it's eyebeams or magic bullets or whatever) but it applies well to the majority of RPGs.

However, it does *not* apply to fiction-first games like Apocalypse World. Important to pick the right mechanics for your game.

Yes but no. You could, feasibly, use the stats of an elf for a catgirl. I am actually using the elf stats for another race since as part of a plot thing there are no more elves around in this setting, but their stats felt perfect for another race with a minor tweak and players have them in the phb instead of having to refer to some handmade supplement. Howver, those ar enot elves. Mechanically speaking they are the same as elves, but I would never call them elves. To be honest mechanics were never questioned in my previous posts, I was more concerned with art depicting a mermaid and some sort of pixie with "elf" written below.

>but as long as I'm following the 'rules', it's all fine.

Not when there exist mechanics, like magic more effective against elves. Tricking enemies into thinking you're not an elf is scummy.

>The classic races aren't defined by cheap gimmicks or WHAT they are
But that's basically all Dwarves are. You can count the number of Dwarves who aren't 'URIST MCAXEBOOZE THE SCOTTISH CAVEDWELLER' on one hand.

>Have the moth people, though they are powered by the sun instead.
I know this is fantasy, but why on earth would moth-people be powered by the sun? Moths are generally nocturnal and use the moon for navigation.

yeet

Volcarona would like a word with you.

40 years is /more/ than enough to get bored of the classic races.

>tfw OD&D tells you you can play a dragon or balrog or, indeed, anything you like, as long as it starts weak and ends strong.

Oh yeah, in the case of that particular game, 'elf' is... how best to put it - a placeholder term?
The game is about people of different races coming together to fight the evil overlord. 'Elf' is word used for one 'racial archetype', because 'long-lived secretive people who prefer to fight at range' isn't as snappy.

>Not when there exist mechanics, like magic more effective against elves

This happens literally so little that I'm surprised it was even thought of.
Like, I agree that saying "well I use elf rules but I'm really a froggit so anti-elf magic doesn't work on me" is wrong, but anti-elf magic comes up, like, once a campaign, if that. Easily worked around.

Not really. Adventures inspired by the orient sound neat as fuck. Look up the definition of racism snd familiarise yourself with the actual meaning.

totally unrelated to oriental adventures in terms of theme, let's take a look at 'jianghu', a Chinese term referring to...

"a storied, semi-mythic realm of taverns and inns where our heroes drink and form fast bonds of friendship, temples where wise or wicked monks bestow scrolls of great wisdom or great evil on the wuxia, caverns where potent swords or talismans lie secreted across the centuries, mountain bandit lairs where the righteous gather to justly uphold honor against a corrupt dynasty, palaces where virtuous but ass-kicking maidens fan themselves coyly behind silk screens, and market squares where epic martial arts battles unfold. "

sounds familiar, hmm?

I swear I've read this before.

A quick gogle search indicates that it is probably not what it really means, but you made it sound awesome enough that I chose to believe you instead of Wikipedia.

I remember when this was first posted. Good times.

>elves are not snakewomen
Oh really?

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Funny coincidence, I was just deciding if I should get rid of Elves, Halflings and Dwarves for my Swords & Wizardry Complete (hack) game, and if not I was going to replace the art for them with that exact Larry Elmore art, along with two others, from Basic and the Rules Cyclopedia.

technically it's the definition of 'wuxia', but it applies well enough to either.

Literally 'jianghu' means 'rivers and lakes' and refers to the sort of 'landscape' that these things happen in. Mad old kung fu monks, honorable bandits, secret martial arts societies - these all exist in the 'rivers and lakes', rather than in everyday farming villages and life.

Or as we'd call it in the context of RPGs, the 'adventuring world'.

Basically what I'm getting at is that jianghu/wuxia is probably closer to the kind of stories you tell in DnD than 'classical western fantasy' is.

I know it's basically a DnD thread, but man classic or "standard" or whatever you call it fantasy bores the living shit out of me. I'd admit that i've never been a huge fan of it, but I actually used to like "Forgotten Realms with serial number filed off" most GMs run and most cRPGs had. But the whole thing is so fucking overdone and when you hear fantasy that's what people mean. It's called "fantasy" people. Come the on. Is medieval Europe with elf and wizards the only thing human imagination can work with?

Most people are uncreative.

medEurope/'tolkien' does have the advantage that it's a 'known quantity'. You don't need to explain the setting to people, you can just jump in.

Meanwhile I'm trying to figure out how the fuck to explain Mage the Awakening's setting and cosmology without selling any mainstream character short, yet still remaining concise, yet being able to build a reasonably plugged-in character.

Did you get them to read the rulebook?

What's an interesting take on regular Elves, Dwarves and Halflings, Veeky Forums?
I mean their societies, geopolitcal goals and interests in the setting.

Dark Sun.

Spelljammer has elves as the interplanetary armada, fighting the Scro.

> Nobody wants to play humans, elves, dwarves, and halflings any more

I'll take threads based on bullshit for 500, Alex.

>Kitsune are Deviant Art shit. Poor ingredients.
Depends. A lot of the shitty roleplayers will just see and play kitsunes as generic animu critter-girls rather than the dickish tricksters they are in mythology.

>Dark Sun
I more or less meant the Classical Elves, Dwarves and Halflings.
Dark Sun feels very "My personal NotElves/NotDwarves/NotHalflings" rather than an interesting take on the regular ones. (at which point you can just introduce new races for those imo)

>We all like classic fantasy races because they've got a strong legacy behind them
In other words, they're boring and unoriginal concepts that started out interesting and new, then were stolen whole cloth from the person who made them, had anything that made them special worn away, and now basically serve as blanks that you can dump anything into.

Just wait, user. One day Kitsune and dullahans will meet the same fate.