People obsessed with playing nonstandard characters

If you are playing DnD for less special snowflake, you are doing it wrong.

The audience is growing. When trying something new they try to have things be familiar. They go with what they have experienced on the outside looking in.

I think that people in 5e want to play nonstandard characters because the system is so shallow. Setting up roleplaying opportunities with race or using race to enable non-standard builds is about the only sort of variety you can expect after playing for 6 months.

I dont care about what kind of obscure creature the character is as long as they're well fleshed out. Player characters are usually rarities in whatever worlds they play in anyways, so it doesn't make sense to get angry calculating the probability of all of the different demographics getting together. Just make sure that the characters are characters.
Basically
>"My character is a floating conglomerate of poisonous gas!"
>"Yes, but how does he feel about his family life?"

>alright newbs whatta ya wanna be?
>I wanna play a dragon man with wings!
>No
>I wanna play a skeleton!
fuck off, these are people brand new to it

Well, that wasn't my experience with new players user. Have you tried having less retarded friends? Though, you'd probably have to be less retarded yourself. . .

Hmm, nevermind.

New people don't play them because they feel like they'll just be copying someone who already exists instead of putting their own foot out into the world.

You can always say "no", it is your game.

I agree. I used to heavily suggest humanocentric games and discourage snowflake races.

You're not going to do any justice to a lizardkin or a flybird apart from occasionally remembering to put on an accent so fuck you.

Then I stopped running D&D and solved the problem.

>see advertisement for 5e group on roll20
>homebrew setting, DM includes basic campaign background and lore in the advertisement
>create a character with a background that fits the setting
>check the other applications
>several dozen posts of special snowflake characters with backstories that don't fit or tie in with the setting at all
>not surprised at all when the DM contacts me almost immediately asking if I'm still available to play
On the one hand it's a nice ego boost knowing that compared to some of the other retards that share this hobby, I'm actually a decent player, but on the other hand, that's a really low bar and I'm sad it's been set so low. This could be asked in so many other threads but how are people so lacking in self awareness?

I remember back pre-3e when there was a lot of discussion about how even elves and dwarves are so bizarrely non-human that it would be hard to get into their headspace to be able to RP them in a satisfying way.

There has definitely been a shift towards this idea that these enormous physiological and sometimes supernatural distinctions between alien races are merely cosmetic. It's some expansion of mild cluster B personality disorders where people have basically no theory of mind and so everyone and everything is just themselves but different looking.

>I can't roleplay unless I can talk about what a special snowflake I am.

I remember these talks even into 3.5... before Pathfinder took it over and then Pathfinder itself got taken over by furfags and weeaboos.

Yes, because this is certainly a problem that only shows up in D&D. Ever. Yes, of course. there are no other games where nonhumans are better than humans.

Because you're a trucking idiot when the first thing in any D&D thread asking about what race to be the first five answers include 'humans because most powerful'.

>an edition of DnD is about roleplaying and not number crunching

Nope, nope, nope. DnD, likely for the rest of time, will always be primarily about combat +1s and secondarily about roleplaying. Criticizing players for prioritizing combat +1s in a mechanically interesting way with race selection when YOU CHOSE TO PLAY DND is the height of hypocrisy.

If you want roleplaying, play a roleplaying system. Not DnD.

>NO OTHER GAME CAN POSSIBLY HAVE OPTIMIZATION IN IT
>STOP LIKING WHAT I DON'T LIKE
>REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

I want roleplaying so I'm going to play a game other people actually play. Sorry, your niche system of choice that nobody has ever heard of doesn't have that. But you're just shitposting anyway.

If people feel the same way as you, surely they would be willing to switch to a better system.

Because some people only play the game for attention and/or power fantasy. Neither of these are wrong, but both are individualist and counterproductive to cooperative play.

Thats why people do it. Thats why its irritating.

>I don't actually know of any better systems, I just came here to shitpost about how I hate DnD.

Cypher
Burning Wheel
13th Age
Mouseguard
Genesys

Depending on what you want, I promise there's a better system out there for you than D&D, even if all you want is more D&D

I never said other games can't have optimization in it user. Just that DnD is built from the ground up to instill and attract this culture of CharOP, and discourage roleplay.

If you want players to appreciate the otherness of fantasy races I can highly recommend doing a game where everyone plays the same non human race , preferably from the same location. I played 2 campaigns like this and they were brilliant. One as a party of elves protecting their forest village from the intrusion of industrialised humans. The other was a party of commando dwarves who did hit and run attacks against their enemies in the underdark. It lets you immerse the players in a completely different culture, and if you do it in opposition to a human culture the differences become even more clear.

So basically

>I never played
>WoD
>RIFTS
>Rolemaster
Uh huh

From my personal experience, the biggest special snowflakes are usually those that gravitate towards the standard races
Human, Elf, and Tiefling are the biggest offenders.
Had less Gary-Stu characters made from Lizardmen and Tabaxi than from humans.

>X system with faults exists, therefore Y system with faults instead of better systems with less faults is excused

You could as easily justify playing fatal with your ~logic

>play classic race
>my players are so boring wtf

>play non-classic race
>my players are special snowflake wtf

A hero is SUPPOSED to be a special snowflake

DtD?

I will add that most standart races are fucking terrible when it comes to there players - like I seen so many players playing same character over and over and over again...I seen them use different races and combos and still have some character, but in turn I also seen same player use same combo of race and class and still all there characters, were different enough to be interesting.

Didn't play much 3.X at your LGS (Pre 4th), did you OP?
If they didn't pick human for the stats, they picked some WEIRD races for the bonuses in the exact fashion in your post.
Pathfinder has also been full of it (pun), since the options became available.

This as been around for quite some time now. Long before Mr. Mercer

>Also Veeky Forums is full of furries.

It's almost as though different people have different opinions.

Dungeons the Dragoning.

in other words, it is more of a thing of the player, than the race or class option.

>Also Veeky Forums is full of furies
Wrong, it's full of scalies, not furries - look at how much they adore there kobolds and dragons.

Xenophiles. The word is xenophiles. People on Veeky Forums don't think they really are the creatures they play, unlike furries.

I'd rather have furries in my setting than African Elves

Could it be that people are tired of dwarves, humans, orcs, and elves?

Are we finally going to get rid of those tired memes?

Indeed, this is why I got into GMing practice of teaching my players to make character with deepth - good example is kobold who is weakest member of the part stat wise, but happened to be the face, the voice, the brain and the one dude who manages to kill most things - while one my group in the past has this generic orc who was horribly evil but stated he was lawful good, after burning his own daughter alive....

what you just described are otherkin
a totally different can of worm

I am not sure, but I do not mind getting rid of them and I seen new settings being made on Veeky Forums with races that I never seen before (And it's fucking glorious)

What I'm loving is that the general populace is getting tired of the memes. Assuming OP isn't an over-reacting baby then the new people entering the hobby are bringing fresh ideas. They want to push things that haven't been seen before.

I see you've never dealt with furries.

>he was lawful good, after burning his own daughter alive....

Stannis did nothing wrong!

>it often means substituting race or class for actual creativity or roleplaying
I see this way fucking more with genric Lawful Good Dwarf Cleric #29170623. You could probably just make a sound board or responses and have all the RP potential squeezed out.
PF races aren't weird for the most part. It's just your standard slew of core bullshit, kinda core bullshit(orcs, hobgobs, tieflings, etc), and a handful of unique to PF races I haven't seen anyone play or suggest outside of pure charop.

That I can agree on, one of the games I ran had this rule - no standart races can be used, including orcs and goblins too (because there players are no different from half-orc players who can be good and bad).
I had some of the best players and new guys I seen - new people like odd characters and races that are unlike any they seen.

On different note, I had a player who confirmed he was a furry, so I asked him to play a kobold (as those are scaly thing and furries and scales don't get along) and it was surprisingly well done and we had a lot of fun with him in the party.

>What I'm loving is that the general populace is getting tired of the memes
I don't think it's people getting tired of Orcs, Elves, dwarves, etc. It's the fact that 5e is so fucking shallow that every fucking party that sticks to "muh classics" will turn out to be the exact fucking same if podcasts are any indication. There are only so many varients of Human Fighter/Ranger/Wizard/Bard, Half-Orc Barbarian, Tiefling Warlock, Dwarf Fighter/Cleric you can play a see before you get fucking sick of it.

No that one was a catholic paladin worshiping god of invasion, concvest and slavery.

I don't think so. People don't play enough roleplaying games for "shallowness" to make an impact on how people play or perceive play.

Just how much deepness can you even get in few hours of roleplay? with other characters also doing their thing and combat shoved in there?

>I HATE FUN
ok

Ran a campaign with a Tabiaxi, Lizardfolk, Merfolk, and an Ixalan Goblin (who are basically monkeys)
They were OK

Enough for everyone to have a good time.

>mfw we have half hardcore western fantasy "Muh half-swording and gambeson is the best protectioN"-people and half weebs that play dragonborn and cannot resist playing edgy neutral character and it balances it all out

then stop playing western fantasy

I'm happy with my group. Reread the post.

Here we have one group with fine diversity - different tastes make for best combos it seems.

>different tastes make for best combos it seems.
I think the caveat is that the people have to be open minded and curb their preferences a bit so they all meet in the middle. If it's a game where the gambeson folks have a monologue in a cockney acccent talking about how the local lord had a bastard son that now taxes the farmers way too much and then the dragonborn go straight up to the lord and say "You don't hurt my friends, my friends are my strength!" and proceeds to cast fly on themselves then yI can imagine you have a problem on your hands.

Our party had a Changeling Assassin who basically played a Game of Thrones character, and a Drow Arcane Trickster (with a hand crossbow) who was channeling Flash Gorldon
The two characters ended-up becoming best friends, and were generally and awesome Rogue duo

So I like that picture and I go for one in the middle - Reptile person guy using chainmail armor and carrying a crossbow.

hand-crossbows are good for rogue characters tho
easy to hide on one's person

Who the fuck asked you

Just noting there is not always just two choice - you can always go into the in between.

was there a rule I missed in the players handbook that stated new players MUST play a boring character archetype done to death?

are you really upset that they a race outside of the big 4? jesus h christ

I wish I had players that wanted to play a skeleton. My Sms keep vetoing undead character

>I will never get my sax-playing skeleton Jazz bard named Skinny

>Sms
>DMs*
Bless me, father, for I have phoneposted

Weird, my groups are usually 3-4 humans and 1 other race.

We live in an era where the best way to fit in is to be a rebel. It’s been like this since the late 90s

It is called in art Post-Modernism and it is current state of mind in all people.

>What the fuck?
People like playing interesting ideas if someone lets them.
Just tell them no if you're DM and the idea is stupid. Or ask them questions to deepen the character like any good DM should.

I agree with . The problem isn't the race, it's that most DnD players are absolute shit-tier at making fun, interesting characters, since DnD encourages 'go into room and kill 4 goblins, loot, continue to next room.wash and repeat as necessary.'. Most players I've found try to make a build first, not a character.

>No that one was a catholic paladin worshiping god of invasion, concvest and slavery.

You mean a Muslim?

Well Muslims did learn than from bible....so yeah same god.

Smoglor, the Intoxicating didn't want to talk about his family life. His non-gendered gaseous parental unit would always belittle him because his toxins weren't potent enough. "Why can't you be more like your brother, he killed an entire village last week?!" they would always say.

I have never encountered this with 5E, only Pathfinder. Your experiences are perfectly valid, but anecdotal.

Its because DnD is a dungeon delving game first, and a role playing game as an afterthought. Nothing in the system aids or encourages building or playing interesting characters or really anything other than the mechanically optimal one, and older editions actively discourage what most people call role playing, I.e. acting as your character and doing what they would do. Ask any OSRfag. oDnD doesn't really want you to consider the mindset of a peasant dwarf of the northern holds. Hell, it doesn't really want you to consider where you're from or who your character is because nothing that happened before level one matters. Your backstory doesn't matter, your history doesn't matter, your goals beyond get the gold don't matter. You go into the dungeon and you play your role in the party to help get the gold, and that's basically it. Anything else is just icing, fluff. Later editions have sort of moved away from that on some level but that is still the core it's built around.

>release campaign setting
>sword and sorcery but the monsters are cracked up to 11
>skellys and undead everywhere
>same time a religious movement like the reformation is happening
>reformation is mostly because people are wondering why there is so many monsters around
>highly religious townspeople
I WANNA BE A TIEFLING
>he wants to be a walking devil in a very religious setting with everyone on edge over who or what is making life literal hell
>doesn't see the problem
I halfway blame myself but who wants to write about how all 20 races fit into a homebrew.

you could just say no.

Have you tried not playing with 18 year olds?

Man I wish I had these players so my world didn't have to accommodate all the other autistic races

>muh classic fantasy
>why can't you just not use your imagination in this game of imagination and fantasy? Why not just be a nameless formless male human fighter like Gary intended?

??? You mean adults?

There's a very easy way to tell whether this behavior stems from a desire to be "special," or whether they just really like those concepts.

Prepare a setting in which those things are both normal and expected, but things like "human paladin" are unusual. If the players are still attracted to the concepts, it's that they like the concepts themselves. If you suddenly have a bunch of human paladins, they're just contrarians.

>Game gives you literally dozens of species to choose from
>"You're only allowed to choose from these 6! Why? Because I say so"
>"No, you're not allowed to choose an unusual interpretation of a classic race/class, that's just as bad"
>"If it's not a rip off of one of the fellowship I don't want to fucking see it at my table!"

Because there's a pervasive idea creeping into the hobby that "different" and "interesting" are synonyms. New players are convincing themselves that the bigger, fuzzier, and funnier the hat you put on your cardboard cutout self insert character, the better written they are. "Gatekeeping" (better known as teaching people how to play and participate) is taboo now, because everyone's fun is super special and perfect and you can never tell people not to do something because then you're just being a no fun allowed faggot. Even Veeky Forums is falling prey to this concept. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if someone unironically advocated letting players each write their own rules whenever they wanted and created an ad hoc "system" that would be the GM's responsibiliy to sift through, and if you don't agree you're a bad GM. Even now I can hear people who are violently player centric in their mindsets muttering to themselves how there's nothing wrong with that, because they are physically incapable of conceiving a situation where restriction could ever breed ingenuity, creativity, or fun.
Bring back grognards, they were the ones that kept the hobby alive by keeping it true to its definition instead of the freeform garbage mindset you see today.

You sound like a joyless cunt

>Because there's a pervasive idea creeping into the hobby that "different" and "interesting" are synonyms. New players are convincing themselves that the bigger, fuzzier, and funnier the hat you put on your cardboard cutout self insert character, the better written they are.
Wow, it's almost like people new to the hobby are less experienced at making and roleplaying characters and use archetypes from their race, class, and alignment to make it easier... Nah, they're just brainwashed by the badwrongfun
>"Gatekeeping" (better known as teaching people how to play and participate) is taboo now, because everyone's fun is super special and perfect and you can never tell people not to do something because then you're just being a no fun allowed faggot. Even Veeky Forums is falling prey to this concept.
But you ARE a no fun allowed faggot, and pretentious to boot. If people act like you're being unpleasant and elitist when you "teach them how to play and participate," it's probably because you're doing it in an unpleasant and elitist way. Stop making your social ineptitude and poor empathy everyone else's problem.
>Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if someone unironically advocated letting players each write their own rules whenever they wanted and created an ad hoc "system" that would be the GM's responsibiliy to sift through, and if you don't agree you're a bad GM. Even now I can hear people who are violently player centric in their mindsets muttering to themselves how there's nothing wrong with that, because they are physically incapable of conceiving a situation where restriction could ever breed ingenuity, creativity, or fun.
"I'm describe a scenario even I admit is made up. Somehow this proves I'm right."

This, a million times this. The point of a hero is to BE a snowflake to the setting, otherwise you’re just playing a bunch of NPCs essentially. One of the most celebrated works of fiction ever is about a race of gregarious midgets that EVERYONE just seems to adore, and then they decide to become heroes despite never venturing out from their home. That’s fucking Mary Sue levels of snowflake, but oh someone wanting to play a birdman is too much.

This.

What's funny is I bet there's still some dumb-fuck oldfag pissy when players pick elf or dwarf characters, complaining that they like being a dwarf because it's way easier to just be a drunken murderhobo than a normal human murderhobo.

>What's funny is I bet there's still some dumb-fuck oldfag pissy when players pick elf or dwarf characters, complaining that they like being a dwarf because it's way easier to just be a drunken murderhobo than a normal human murderhobo.
There's definitely still people who are butthurt they got rid of race-as-class, and think dwarves doing magic is hopelessly snowflakey.