How would you feel about a game that contains races that are intelligent and civilized but cannot be used by the...

How would you feel about a game that contains races that are intelligent and civilized but cannot be used by the players because of lore, balance, or undisclosed reasons?

Would you feel the game is limiting you in some way?

If it makes sense in context and the GM is fair about it, it's fine.

If the GM is an arse and uses it as an excuse to trot out a parade of overpowered DMPC's, they can go fuck themselves.

It's all a matter of execution, not the idea itself.

I'm currently playing a sci-fi homebrew with a custom setting with a few friends, and all the players are humans. So far it's gone great, partly because the players being humans doesn't restrict the variety of characters they can play and partly because the setting is based around having humans as separate from most of the other intelligent alien species in the setting.

Nothing wrong with that. If orcs are the main antagonist, you aren't playing one. If ents are extremely rare in the setting and you don't have a good reason to play one, I don't care that it's in the rulebook.

When I start a game, I let players know what races are most common in the region, and if they want to play anything else they need justification. If I'm running a viking game, Tom, you can't play an aboriginee.

I think that's fair. It's like how a lot of videogames have races that you can't actually play as for various reasons.

I think a game needs some level of limitation to provide structure, and to keep things from getting too crazy by having five races in one party that would each react to something a different way.

This.
Look at mass effect; Vorcha, Hanar, Volus, and Batarians are all common sentient races that you cannot recruit onto your crew, the reason for this is purely contextual (they do not interact beneficially with the Alliance, nor are they tied to the Council)

I'd be perfectly happy with that.

If a GM tells me that a race that has been stated up in the systems rules is unavailable before I do character creation, the only time I'll object is if another player gets to play it.

If I've already made my character and then get told that the race I've chosen isn't allowed, the GM better have a good reason why they aren't allowed and a good reason why I wasn't told this before I made my character.

I always try to run my basic character concept past the GM before I start character creation. Especially if I'm using anything outside of the core rulebook.

Basically, as long as the communication about my being unable to do something doesn't take an antagonistic tone, it's pretty much all good.Of course, this is a rule that I too should observe. After all, if the DM isn't being an ass about restricting something, I shouldn't be an ass by insisting.

Any time there are Tolkien elves in a setting and you are forced to play a human, go ahead and prepare for them to be better than you could ever be along with mages of the highest caliber in contrast from him banning magic.

So like playing a Space Marine in Dark Heresy?

Actually, what might be fun is playing a group of Mi-go and creating a cult.

Personally it depends on the setting.

While that answer is normally useless it's actually true this time- I'll let you play any if the weird ayylmaos races in my urban fantasy sci-fi game because it's meant to feel very diverse and multiculttural. But if we're playing high fantasy then no you can't be a rape Orc, you'll just get lynched in the first town. And unlike a shit GM I will just tell you that upfront instead of being edgy and trying to get my lels fucking with you after the game starts.

For a game like Final Fantasy 12 I think they should have had a greater mixed cast as the majority of the party is human save for Fran. I wonder if they thought having a Seeq,Baanga or Moogle main character wouldn't turn out?

>wanting to play an abo

Don't be ridiculous. If Northern Territory abos were trading liquor with the Polynesian islanders there's no reason one of them couldn't hitch a ride, join a Chinese caravan, travel along the silk road, then sail up the Volga to Scandinavia.

A seeq main character, man, can you imagine that? A big brute that just happens to be oddly heroic for some reason? I sorta like the Idea, it would clash against the look of other FF protagonists super hard.

Still, it probably wouldnt work. Would be more interesting than fucking vaan at least.

That's extremely unlikely, though, so I can see user's reasoning behind banning it unless the player has a good reason.

I don't know what he would consider to be a good enough reason, but I'd take something as minor as "I want to play a stranger in a strange land type character and aboriginals caught my eye."

They're never going to do a main character that doesn't look at least 99% human, because that helps them sell games. We might luck out and get a nonhuman best friend, though.

They had a playable Moogle in FF6, and Red 13 in FF7.

>How would you feel about a game that contains races that are intelligent and civilized but cannot be used by the players because of lore, balance, or undisclosed reasons?

That sounds like most of my settings.

>Would you feel the game is limiting you in some way?

No, not really.

Abos
Intelligent and civilized.
Kek

But the general theme is the party is 99% human and then their is one non-human character which seems to follow the trend.

I suppose it's just the thing when it comes to MCs, you don't see anyone going on about Khemari or anything from FF10 (although he was pretty boring to begin with so that didn't help at all) and Fran works because you can make more main streamable porn of the Viera then say the Bangaa and Seeqs who make up the !Orcs when it comes to porn.

also mechanical. Some aliens are too weird to integrate into the game's combat system. Though multiplayer Volus did turn out to be incredibly fun.

As long as it is made clear upfront that we have a limited selection to choose from that's fine. I've played some really good games that started off with the players being told we had to make characters from a limited selection of races, or even a single race.

>Would you feel the game is limiting you in some way?
Limitations can spark creativity. It all depends on how you choose to look at it.

> Would you feel the game is limiting you in some way?

Of course it's limiting. But that limit can be a good thing.

The hardest times I've had coming up with a character were when the GM was willing to let us play anything and then adjust the setting to fit that species in. Looking back on them, the characters I came up with were some of the worst I've played.

Limit me and I'll make something that fits within those limits. Those limits will my character better than what I'll think up without them.