Racial Traits

How would you design a race that genuinely plays differently from a human? Something that actually has other strengths and limitations, rather than just a small difference in stats.

Different movement ability. Flight or something.
Different diet. Requires only meat or specific plants.
Different views of mortality. Things might just grow back or be easy to re-assemble.
Different capacities. They may not have hands, or could only talk to one person at a time.
Different sizes and weights. That lamia guy weighs like half a ton and can be variably tall or short.

Without details on what setting and mechanics the game is based around it's hard to give examples to make them "play" differently than humans

This guy is certainly on the right track conceptually though.

Give them other sorts of advantages and disadvantages. E.g., mechanical creatures ignore diseases and poisons, but can't recover from injuries unless they're manually repaired. A blind cave creature which relies on echolocation might be immune to any sort of effects that affect its eyes, but might be extremely disoriented and unable to function around loud noises.

How would you make sure players remember this, though? How many sessions until the blind character starts reading, or until the lamia crosses over a rope bridge without you noticing? When is the different diet going to come into play outside of a survival scenario?

...

Point me to a system that does it well, then.

Ideally, the players constantly remember because they have to pay a bit extra for more hamhocks, and are cautious about their weight. This shit tends to be real fun to play.

Otherwise, it is the same procedure as making sure players dont forget drawbacks or qualities. It is on everyone to make sure people dont forget shit.

Burning Wheel has an interesting way with the emotional stat for each non-human race

Elves, Grief: The world is getting worse (damn humans) and you're sad about it, the more suffering you see the worse it gets, can be mitigated by singing sad songs, when it gets too bad you can either sail off to the immortal lands or turn into a dark elf and start burning shit

Dwarves, Greed: You really, really want stuff. This can cause problems by distracting you when there's a valuable you desire, it can also provide bonuses if you give into it though

Orcs, Hate: Your life sucks, you're angry about it. The more you suffer you more hateful you get, the better you get at stuff like torture, environmental destruction, and aggressive military campaigns. Eventually gets too high and you go on a blood-crazed rampage until you die.

Playing a spiderbro right now so, let see how I do according to > Different movement ability.
Absolutely, walking on walls and ceilings is really neat, even feel kind of abusive when you poke enemies with your lance from above.
> Different diet
Didn't really factor yet to be honest, but yes.
> Different views of mortality
Not really.
> Different capacities
Producing silk is useful in many ways from regular net to immobilise enemies to alarm threads. Also venom, but I haven't use it creatively yet.
> Different sizes and weights
Mostly size as an inconvenient. I'm not sure I actually weight that much.

A good alternate race should really almost be a class in and of itself. Spider is a goid example.

You just remember it with your brain, I found it is an issue of habit and training your brain to check in on a certain direction. It also becomes easier the better your immersion is. And already you are presumably, depending on the system, making sure players remember their chosen flaws, or don't conjure items they don't have with them.
And if you have decent players, they are on your side and will help you remember. A good player will want to roleplay what makes his robot or bird person different. Warforged and robot are even a thing in many games and people already have proven to be able to do this.
And you have sheets and files to make notes.

When does any element come into play? As with regular perks, flaws, backgrounds, spells, abilities or standard race choices, it comes into play any time you want and care for it, your imagination is the limit.
Non survival food scenario: You are guest at a feast of a different race and find you can't actually digest any of the served food. Do you risk offending the host by refusing or doing the same by possibly barfing on the table. Can even happen to regular old humans, didn't think every food in the dwarf hold would be plump helmet mushroom based.

So I don't really think this has lasting pull as a counter point.

That's pretty much what happened.
Though you could easily make several classes if you wanted. But I guess they would be spider-class doing whatever a spider can.
Spider species are very diverse after all.

Yeah, you picked a good example. I lije spiders myself.
Too bad the gm for the game i play a spider in has dissapeared mysteriously for a month.

> bad the gm for the game i play a spider in has dissapeared mysteriously for a month
Blame the wasps. It's always the wasps.

I blame sudden employment. Bane of all games.

>I lije spiders myself.
Funnily enough, I'm kinda arachnophobic.
Researching for my character helped me a bit.

Well, closeness does help with these things.

But yeah, it isn't so hard to have players with disparate nonhuman abilities. It is a bit harder to plan around as a gm though.
Be prepared for spiders laughing off pit traps and oilslicked walls. Don't panic and invent more traps, just include a door toonarrow for them to eadily get through and a time pressure.

Let them have their strengths, get payback on their weaknesses.

>How would you design a race that genuinely plays differently from a human?

This is kind of the wrong way of looking at it. It's very hard to design certain races, themes or even whole rpgs to be played a specific way, it all comes down to the player.

There are players I'd let play basically anything as long as it fits in the setting, because I know their motivation for wanting to play something weird is that they'll enjoy it and it would be a cool experience, not because it's gonna be hella op or enable their retarded excesses.

I think most DM's will tell you that they know players they'd let play the strangest creature/character ever, but also players that can barely be trusted with playing a human of a different age than their real life self without it turning to shit.

No matter what tools you put in the rulebook, role-players will use them differently than you imagined, and different from each other.

You make up the planet first, and after that the creature's culture and behavior will come to you naturally.

>You make up the planet first, and after that the creature's culture and behavior will come to you naturally.
All of this already happened, but they're not different enough.

Then randomly pick a mesoamerican culture and use whatever customs it happened to have.

They're not different enough physically.

Don't you have, like, imagination?

Honestly, just take playable myth shit and consider what the lifestyle reprecussions of being half horse. Or made of bark. Or required to count things.

Dont die on me, i love this topic

It's not really getting anywhere, though.

The question may have accidentally been answered too well.

Mass effect has especially good races with examples.
Elcor have trouble with communicating feeling, therefore must do it literally.
Asari feeling surges of emotion may become pregnant if in physical contact with another being, and hold their own lives in extremely high regard.
Salari think, talk, move and live fast. Their scientists also carry the weight of destroying a whole races reproductive ability.
Volus are weaker and less agile than other races with every breathe they take in a weezy rasp.

iirc humans had faith as their emotion

Fuck I wanted to try Burning Wheel, shame I could never get my group to play it.

>iirc humans had faith as their emotion
yes but only humans with divine magic