I tend to dislike really generic dwarf/elf/hobbit/orc style fantasy races, but at the same time I really like elves. I think a fantasy setting with totally weird and unique races, as well as humans, as well as elves, is totally fine.
Is that weird? Am I weird?
>liking elves
leave
It's completely irrational bullshit.
That is to say, it's as valid as any opinions.
I grew up playing games like shining force, so I usually included a few other races into my D&D games (centaurs, beast people, fucking robots) then the furrys came and killed all the fun by turning it all into a fetish.
That sounds fine.
>Sir, are you aware that you are a deer?
I find it's best to ignore the entire furries fetish nonsense, because if I gave a shit about if something was a fetish or not I could run literally no things.
People will fuck anything.
>Am I weird?
No honey, you're a deer.
I would say the same as OP, but nix the elves. Replace with Dwarves.
Nobody asked and that's a shit opinion
>I prefer a setting with only races I like
wow OP that's sure is a unique approach you got there thanks for making this thread
A thread died for this.
Not even Veeky Forums can make this a good thread.
> I'm a useless contrarian
> I dislike popular things because they're popular
> Except for my fetish.
> But I'm still a hipster contrarian guize!
>Is that weird? Am I weird?
You're a fucking contrarian. Go back to r/hipster.
Just use a race of not!elves if that's your issue. There's tons of them.
Yes you idiot. It's completely bullshit.
It's fine to say "I love elves as a race" but you're being a cunt.
No, you're just a basic Zelda fanboy
>nothing wrong with that
Get used to it. It's what you wanted.
Are you me?
Dwarves are shit. Dwarf Fortress in particular turned them into a meme: fat, hairy, angry, drunk, axe-wielding, basement-dwelling, pansy-elf-hating, always-the-fucking-same fucks. They're boring and stupid and I hate them.
Hobbits outside Tolkien are shit. The whole point of them was that they didn't like to be adventurers, but D&D missed the point and turned halflings into the exact opposite, plus they've gone from fuck-ugly shrunken humans to even more hideous deformed mutants.
Orcs are shit. Just your generic angry horde, occasionally noble-savage dindu-nuffin, always pointless and dumb. Why not just have them replaced with mongols or something else? Their very presence cheapens fantasy and turns what should be fantastic into something mundane.
Elves at least can be all right so long as they're confined to staying in their deep forests and other forbidden places, and only very recently and under the threat of a great shadow come to contact with other races. They're not -too- far removed from the fairy-tale mystique of old, so they could yet be made work.
With other races it's far more difficult. The meme-dwarves are so ingrained to present day that you can't take any of it away without making yourself look subversive and lolrandom. The orcs need to go back to serving under one dark wizard or lord, otherwise rarely seen and keeping in the dark - maybe some other dark lord could get kobolds, and some other sorcerer could grab gnolls, and so forth. Hobbits just need to be flat-out gotten rid of.
So you may have put your thing up a little poorly, but I don't think you're completely wrong.
Oh, and fuck gnomes.
What kind of races do you play with instead?
It's an interesting insight into human psychology, to be honest.
Elves pretty much embody all the things ordinary people find attractive in human body.
In general, the general consensus of most human beings is "if it looks vaguely humanoid, we will be attracted to it", which is honestly pretty fascinating, since it's a good example of how people are hardcoded to use simple physical features to influence their judgment.
Honestly, one wonders how the world would look if people were attracted to each other not on obvious first-glance physical features (such as primary and secondary sex characteristics, for example), but more subtle things.
What if humans were attracted to each other based on the results of a subconscious mental scan of another individiual, basically testing their mental compatibility (of course, that would require biological mental interfacing, but indulge me here for a moment)?
Or if sentients were attracted to each other, by merit of "sensing" consciousness in each other, while philosophical zombies would be viewed upon as entirely unattractive and even hideous?
Of course, for the purposes of this discussion, one would need to forego the fact that attraction instinct is based firstly and foremostly on the built-in need for procreation, and thus, selection of a mate.
Hell, what if attraction between individuals was based on the question of "how much happiness I will get in the future via bonding with this person"?
It's an interesting topic.
In two of the best fantasy series' I've read in the last decade (The First Law, The Powder Mage Trilogy) both authors agreed that their work dramatically improved when they removed the 'fantasy races' in exchange for actual unique cultural development. Fantasy races, while imaginative, are an 'easy-bake' diversity for any setting.
You have a slew of tropes to fall back on and twist for each race respectively, giving the storyteller almost no agency in needing to fabricate that side of the setting. Then, if you 'twist' it to a unique angle it's suddenly lauded as original.
Let people have their fun, though every game I've DMd had my own non-tolkien racial template, with players having access to races after they've encountered them (high mortality rate d10 systems make this inevitable)
I want that big d3 on a stick.
Mostly animal people races, weird fat ogre things, monster races made playable mostly.
>I tend to dislike really generic dwarf/elf/hobbit/orc style fantasy races
Faggot detected.
The standard fantasy races work perfectly well. Now that's not to say a bird race or a cat race or a boar race or a whatever race can't be fun from time to time, but people who whine autistically about elves, before proceeding to put in their own list of retarded races that lack either memorability or distinction from the races they claim to replace, are even worse. Not only is it bad to make not!Elves, but it's even worse to make donut-steel OC races with long-ass names that turn out to be complete garbage. Also, pretending that a few different races are a substitute for decent worldbuilding, is even more retarded. A well-made generic fantasy setting is 100 times better than some super original idea that is full of autistic made-up words and constant lore-dumps. No one cares about them and they lack interest. That said, most settings are garbage anyway. I used to browse the roll20 campaigns out of curiosity (I am a forever DM and I like to see what other people have set up, I don't use Roll20 though as it is cancerous) and I constantly see custom settings with 4+ homebrew races with names like D'quorians and Thamoraks and other dumb shit. No, I just want to play a fuckin elf. Or a fuckin dwarf. Or just plain a fuckin human. Human-only settings are fine. Settings that turn the world into a fucking Star Wars mosh pot of freak races, are complete garbage, and I discard them from my mind as soon as I see them.
>not wanting a star wars cantina effect
You might just have poor taste.