Why are so many people so angry about non traditional fantasy races?

Why are so many people so angry about non traditional fantasy races?

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dnd.rem.uz/3.5 D&D Books/Races of Renown /Races of Renown - Bastards and Bloodlines, A Guidebook to Halfbreeds.pdf
1d4chan.org/wiki/List_of_D&D_PC_Races
dandwiki.com/wiki/5e_Races
mtg.gamepedia.com/Moonfolk
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They are snowflake bait.

Yeah how dare anyone try to do something original? Everyone should ape tolkien elves and dorfs forever.

Backlash against memes that they never actually encountered in real life and if they did they didn't know how to handle.

Just because something is original doesn't mean it's good.

Cute pic.

The same applies for something not original. If quality is really the factor, as it always should, then there's no point in banning race choices. A bad player will be bad even when playing a human fighter.

That armor is fucking stupid.

Please don't change the subject. This isn't about bad roleplayers being bad. It's about poorly designed races, and indeed, other such character options. If you really, genuinely think that there isn't a reason to ban certain things, please read up on Kender and see if that doesn't change your mind.

The only thing I am angry about is that stupid knee pad.

I know what kenders are. I also know what bad players are and I know which of the two has a 100% chance of not being accepted at my table.

Because they aren't quite finished smoking Tolkien's pole.

I would call it more decoration than armor at that point

They are?
Shouldn't they be more angry about the solitary oversized kneepad just sorta hanging there?

It's obviously for kneeing you in the balls.

I don't think it's really about how traditional they are. Gnomes are fairly traditional, yet I don't really like them. Dragonborn aren't that far from traditional, but they're garbage. Have you considered that the race you wanted was just an unappealing concept?

I'm not going to argue with you if you keep misinterpreting what we're arguing about.

They are angry about the people playing them, not the races themselves.

Dragonborn are trash because they are ultimate mary sues.

There is literally no good reason beyond pure grognardia not to presume that exotic races cannot be made to fit a campaign. You want to run your human only campaign, or your Tolkien-inspired campaign, sure, go right ahead - that's your prerogative. But you are not the authority on what D&D races are "supposed" to be, or on what makes a race "properly" D&Dish.

D&D has had weird races available to it from the beginning. In Basic D&D alone, we had sphinxes, we had centaurs, we had pookas, we had pixies, we had brownies, we had mermaids, we had wizards cursed into expies of the Skeksis from The Dark Crystal, we had pegatuars, we had faux-French swashbuckling wolf-people, we had lizard people, we had flying monkeys, we had samurai catfolk who rode into battle on flying sabertoothed tigers, we had kopru, we have 18" tall dinosaur-hunting amazons, we had cowboy orcs, we had spellcasting spider-weres, we had treants! All of these came from official sourcebooks and were established as being part of the Known World.

If TSR hadn't ended up removing Mystara from prominence and focusing on the more "Tolkienian" Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms settings instead, maybe people would be more open-minded to this fact. But just because Greyhawk and its Neo-Medieval Europe feel was "the face" of D&D for an edition does not make it the only definition of D&D.

>GM's usually have a specific idea of their world , certain races simply do not fit in that framework and have to be shoehorned in and make no sense. For example I had a player wanting to play a Warforged in Dark Sun basically so he didn't have to worry about any food/water requirements.

>Monster races in particular are also jarring, you either have to pretty much ignore the fact that they are or constantly have villagers etc wary or outright hostile to the party

>Some non-core races have quite overpowered abilities that make running a game difficult. For example the ability to fly.

>Often the player doesn't actually roleplay the unique qualities of whatever race they have chosen and just act like a human with different stats

>Or the opposite and they want everyone to acknowledge what a special snowflake they are.

>Party composition starts to make very little sense with multiple weird races. I remember a game where we had a Tabaxi, a Goliath, a Tiefling, a Shifter and a rather bewildered human Paladin. This can break immersion.

Why would you think I want to argue? I just stated my stance.

If you didn't want to discuss anything, then you would've started a blog. Instead you're here in a thread specifically designed to start arguments. You aren't fooling anyone.

All I get from that is bad players and GM's.

If players picks a race that makes no sense warn him. If he still does it make him suffer for that.

After you've made a world adding a race basically means either you have to replace some of one or they're some mysterious hidden people. It's also misleading to call that list of weird races "from the beginning"

>If players picks a race that makes no sense warn him. If he still does it make him suffer for that.
Or you could just, y'know, cut out the middleman and ban certain races.

I'll humor you then. Follow the reply chain. I specifically replied to someone that implied that something not original was somehow better.

>18" tall dinosaur-hunting amazons

>Bad GMing is discussing things with the players and letting them know that certain options won't fit in the game you're running.
>Good GMing is keeping your mouth shut about everything, letting them pick whatever, and then passive aggressively punishing them for picking and option you don't like.

Is this bizarro Veeky Forums or are you legitimately that fucking stupid?

Banning stuff is not an answer. If your players are smart they can make stupid shit work. If they are idiots why are you even playing with them?

That is the worst offender. The rest could be written off as fashion.

A very loud and very small subset of people who are very angry about another very small subset of people that just barely outman the first subset.

Alternatively some people are scared of change.

It was never implied, it was assumed. That's on you.

It's less likely to be bad.

But whatever, you are baiting anyway.

I'm not making this shit up! They were called the Kubbits, and they were a PC race in the Hollow World Boxed Set for Mystara.

>2 sets of ears
wut?
Even if you allow humans only snowflakes gonna snowflake

I'm not baiting.

>Banning stuff is not an answer
Why? What's the net negative from banning something?
I feel like everything said applies too.

I used to think they are shit, but after seeing some work really well in specific settings I changed my mind.

Other than dragonborn. They will always be shit.

Somehow I doubt you've ever done a headcount

>we had pookas, we had pixies, we had brownies, we had mermaids, we had wizards cursed into expies of the Skeksis from The Dark Crystal, we had pegatuars, we had faux-French swashbuckling wolf-people, we had lizard people, we had flying monkeys, we had samurai catfolk who rode into battle on flying sabertoothed tigers, we had kopru, we have 18" tall dinosaur-hunting amazons, we had cowboy orcs, we had spellcasting spider-weres, we had treants! All of these came from official sourcebooks and were established as being part of the Known World.
That sounds like the worst setting I've heard in days.

Bravo good sir.

>It's about poorly designed races
Nooope, OP said about non traditional ones, nothing about poorly designed only. Or are you implying that anything non traditional is poorly designed?

Not him but why would you build a world that can't accomodate certain choices the players can make? You might as well play a different game then. Personally I'd roll characters first and then think of an adventure that will accomodate everyone.

The same can be said about classes: would you punish someone for not picking a rogue, because you wanted to put a lot of traps around?

>dragonborn
I dislike them too, I like lizardfolk as long as is roleplayed as a cold creature though

You say that like its a bad thing. Elves and Dwarves are real fantasy. Sparkledogs are anime.

>make him suffer for that.
Truely the GMing Veeky Forums deserves.

>Real
>Fantasy

That setting is the result of a crashed spaceship and has a whole Federation-like society in the stars above it.

It's horrifyingly great and kitchen sink as fuck.

The swashbuckling wolf people are pretty cool though.

Please don't reply to posts addressed at me.

Are you really assuming that banning races but having bad players with "classic" choices will result in a more enjoyable experience?

If you're gonna assume that anyone not agreeing with your ideas is baiting you must have problems user.

Western crap actually has many times more furryshit races than anime. Anime would at worst have cute animal girls races.

This post is Reddit.

>guy plays a goblin
>in the middle of Empire
>expecting NPCs to act normal

Why did you put him in the middle of the empire then?

And you would be right to doubt.
However, I have been around enough to know that the things Veeky Forums complains about can be safely assumed as minor issues.

To make him suffer of course

>Are you really assuming that banning races but having bad players with "classic" choices will result in a more enjoyable experience?
You're arguing a different point.
Why is it bad to ban races? Especially those that wouldn't fit in the setting.
Further more some would say that a player that picks wildly out of setting or against the rules races is a bad player from the get go. If your answer to noon-traditional or out of setting races is "don't play with bad players" then why is banning certain races so much of a hang up for you? I essentially deals with the "bad" players who insist on playing out of setting races.

>Alright guys, we're playing Forgotten Realms!
>REEEEEEEEE WHY CAN'T I PLAY MY ASTRONAUT KITSUNE WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS BAAAAD GEE EHM!

That's literally your argument. Some options just don't fit within the theme of the game that a GM wants to run. If they want a low magic type of game, they have every right to ban spellcasting classes up front. If they want to run something sci-fi, then there is nothing wrong with doing away with elves and dwarves.

I'm not against non traditional ones, but I am against blatant anime shit like OP pic, or things that are just shit like tiefling or dragonborn. You want to an original race that fits with a normal fantasy theme? Half trolls. Anything over a few beastmen races with a couple subraces (like lizardmen with a crocodile, gecko, desert lizard, etc. subraces) tends to get you yelled at for being a furry. Halfbreeds tend to be used only for traditional shit, when you can get a ton of variety using them and a bit of actual imagination instead of animu shit.
dnd.rem.uz/3.5 D&D Books/Races of Renown /Races of Renown - Bastards and Bloodlines, A Guidebook to Halfbreeds.pdf
just cut out the pure autism like the unicorn whatever the shit and anything that you think wouldnt fit your setting.

Meh. I usually don't like kitchen sink settings, like shadow run or the like.

You should talk to the player ahead of time. If the concept doesn't fit, disallow it.

The player might want to be constantly dealing with the problems you outline, and if that's true it's not really suffering.

The point I'm trying to make is that if a race is available as a player choice it doesn't need to "fit" in the setting, it already is part of it.

>we're playing Forgotten Realms!
So he actually can play his Astronaut Kitsune, dunno why he complains

Why would the GM let him pick a goblin in the first place?

I could make a stupid-huge post listing all of the various beast-based races in D&D, but I'll just post this and make it simple:

1d4chan.org/wiki/List_of_D&D_PC_Races

That's fundamentally wrong though.

its not that its a bad idea, its just things like these come from it. Most of them are anime or trash from something that doesn't fit, but there's the occasional decent one.

dandwiki.com/wiki/5e_Races

You make the mistake of assuming every race and option in the rule book exists in every world running those rules.

Why are you taking in players that want to roll fantasy races in a sci fi game? Didn't you tell them before? Do they just show up at your table or what?

In a nutshell, OP, because people seem to have the question confused:

There's nothing inherently wrong with making a setting that has "non traditional" races built into it. That's just part of the setting buy-in. Anyone who complains about that is probably just a grognard who's decided to be a prick.

Coming to a game and asking to be a race that isn't supposed to be in that setting, well, there's actually a lot of etiqutte about that - for example, if it's "game 0" where the setting is being put together and the group is agreeing to the buy in, it's fair enough to discuss adding new races in, but just showing up at somebody's low-fantasy humans-only setting and wanting to be a plane-traveling faerie warlord is being a jerk.

You're not even fucking reading the posts anymore.

I was under the impression that we were talking about settings that the GM in question was building for the game.

That'S still no excuse to have a kneepad that will mess up your other leg. A small pad with a spike or metal cap would work just as well and would be easier to swing upwards.

>Don't care about whatever it is you masturbate to, didn't come to entertain your fetish.

>No point if your race can easily be replicated by a few spells/magic items. Take your pic for example, why bother when I could take a normal human,and grab a hat of disguise or something?

But the same can be said about dwarves, elves, half-orcs and all the other more or less standard shit.

Because half of them are anime bullshit and the other half are furry. I'm sure most reasonable people on this board would welcome truly original races.

Well, all humans games are always the best, so I'd say that can hold true.

I always do this weird thing, I sit with the players and we talk about what they want, the theme of the campaign, setting, and stuff. Then, misteriously we don't have problems when reaching a consensus. Super weird I know.

Suu best girl, Cerea a shit.

You are entitled to your own opinion

You are both entitled to your own wrong opinion

What's the strangest thing you have seen being played in your table?
Me? Centaur Monk, weird, but was actually funny, nobody had a problem with it once the game started.

>glorified side character
kobold gnome slavers

Probably one dude who was an 8ft magitech robot/golem. He roleplayed really well.

>non-traditional fantasy races
A-Ok.
>anime bullshit fantasy races
A-Ok.
>race that clashes with setting
Not ok.

Don't judge her man. Maybe she really likes crushing balls.

Because 90% of the time they are shit tacked onto the setting half assedly
Most worldbuilders are retards who can't do anything right if they stray from the well trod path

I really wish people would quit shitting all over kender. They're not actually a bad race, as presented in the Dragonlance novels. The problem is that the 3.0 source book for Dragonlance, rather than portraying them as obnoxious but good natured kleptomaniac Hobbits (that nobody in-universe except the God of Good can stand, he thinks they're charming), they portrayed them all (as a race) to be exactly like the most prominent kender from the fiction.
>truth
Kender habitually and instinctively "borrow" interesting things. They'll always return it if you tell them it's yours.
>false
They take things that are valuable, powerful, or expensive. They also don't tell you they have it until it's relevant because "muh stealing"

The latter is That Guy behavior. Kender in the fiction are more likely to steal marbles, or a shiny fork, or a ship in a bottle, or an interesting map, before they take a magic weapon (boring), an important key (I've got a pouch full of them), or a wizard's scroll (I can't read it anyway).
Also, canonically nobody likes them. They're not allowed in several cities in their own setting. Some are jailed on sight just because they're kender. They make fast and loyal friends, but they're still a nuisance to have around because they're gonna get in trouble.
I've played with two players who played kender. Both did a good job, but the one might as well not have been a kender because the DM didn't describe rooms well, so the kender player had no frame of reference for his borrowing. The second one was great. In situations where we'd be in a place for a while he'd roll sleight of hand, and the DM would pass him a note card with an item or items he'd acquired. If he rolled low enough, someone might notice and say something. The DM used this occasionally to pass us items that would be useful much later, or to give us a reason to meet an important NPC (like the kender nicked something off them in a market or the like).

She has advantage on perception checks related to hearing.

Two sets of ears means she gets to try twice to hear it.

>would you punish someone for not picking a rogue, because you wanted to put a lot of traps around?
Absolutely I would. Especially because I told the party I wanted to run a Tomb of Horrors-style dungeon crawl, and nobody wanted to have trap sense. They made their bed, they get to die in it.

Also, some people make campaign settings with various levels of definition and acuity. Some times you can just slot it in, as a magical accident or other one-off event. But if the major theme of the campaign is the unresolved tension between elves and humans, anyone who wants to play a half-elf is gonna have a bad time. If the major theme of the campaign is resource management and not starving/dying of thirst/being exhausted all the time, warforged SHOULD be banned, especially for Dark Sun.

But if it's my special hotplate setting, your special snowflake race choice might not be suitable.

I call bullshit. There's no fucking way you manage to get ALL the players to sit down at the same time.

Aside from those blatant lies, this seems like the best approach. It seems to mysteriously make problems disappear when everyone is on the same page and has their expectations met.

So what kind of lore would work well for anime rabbit people and be acceptable by Veeky Forums standards?

Some kind of steppe elves?

Grimdark cannibalistic horrors.

Just like every race Veeky Forums tries to "improve".

I only hear about awesome shit on the internet. I only ever met one guy that was having fun with playing characters that weren't cliche as fuck.
A Half-Orc Monk the pirate. On a quest to avenge his captain and the crew. Superstitious as fuck. His brilliant plans always obscured by amazing tales of his pirate crew using crafty tactics to get out of situation. Except those tales were told by a fucking orc brain so we had to guess whatever the fuck were "boom boxes" or "hooky machinations".

Truly a marvel PC among the drunk dwarf paladins and angsty rogue half-elves

My past shitty DM had us use dand wiki for making a character by mashing two races together. Me being the sensible fellow I am, decided to mesh shark people and dragon people. and then play a bard using that. Pretty fuckin great, especially since I even managed to outsine his DMPC as party face.

Make them short and then have them stand ins for halflings.

Depends. Do you mean things I listed as player races that someone went with , or things the player themselves made/brought up?

If the former, probably a tossup between sentient militant vine colony, a living personification of a dramatic role, or a giant shamanic elk-gorilla-bear-elf.


If the latter, a four foot tall four armed kneeless Cyclops with hand mouths from "a plain of pure angony". Alternatively, a semi sentient, non anthropomorphic pangolin

Hey, that's not fair.

We also have "literally every animal stereotype" and "these guys are totally MANLY and AWESOME".

Or you could just have a setting where non traditional fantasy races are a thing.
Then they would fit the setting since it was made with them in mind, villagers don't attack them because they are not that unusual, party composition is no more an issue than having a human-elf-dwarf party...
You're are not responding to OP, but to an hypothetical user that would want to insert his special race character in a regular setting.
Not that OP question is that interesting but still.

>My past shitty DM had us use dand wiki for making a character by mashing two races together
Like he actually forced you guys to use it for character creation? That could actually be kind of funny. Everyone is a half-animeborn shadowkin or something equally horrifying

Or you could just have a setting where non traditional fantasy races are a thing.

But... these races... don't... fit into... hero's journey...

Immigrants from the moon. Agile and skilled in illusion and charms, but lack fighting spirit are likely to bolt at first sign of danger

My not-nerubian British colonial Indiana Jones has to bow down to a reverse not one ring that possess evil creatures to do good.
A shame it didn't last, I would have love to see where mind control for the greater good would have lead us.

mtg.gamepedia.com/Moonfolk
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