Are there any games where races are purely aesthetic, or only count with narrative/non-mechanical traits to define them...

>nature allowing you or forbidding you from even attempting certain tasks?

That sure sounds like a mechanical difference to me. Just how do you define "mechanical difference"?

>Trolls, Humans and Halflings
But what if they're danish trolls?

I was operating on local Swedish standard, but you got what I meant, right?

I guess I should've clarified in the OP, but I meant non-numerical rather than non-mechanical.

Things such as "Trolls are strong" having a weight of its own without bothering with modifiers.

Card games, board games, video games, Everyone is John.
Any game without fantastic elements which doesn't have stats for white/black/yellow/red/orange/brown

In that case, sure. Races could just be a list of keywords, as would pretty much every other character building option be.

Strike! lets you freeform your "race". Technically, you don't even pick a race, you pick an "origin" which can be anything you want. Could be a race, could be being born into nobility.

>Card games, board games, video games

Those actually very often have stat modifiers. If anything, the only reason you'd use race in such cases is for modifiers, unless you are just namedropping stuff for flavor I guess.

Sure, a race can be just picks from a pool of aspects ,or tags, you slap on a character.
Like "Has sharp horns", "Strong like a bull", etc.

I've ran a couple of homebrews without race rules, just tell the players to play whatever they want. That way they can make any kind of character they want but I don't have to worry about the game balance.

When creating a more "serious" game, I'd want to create actual stats, even if they were just social or a couple of bonus/negative stats to make races important.

Well there is Heroquest as a narrative system.
If people want to play other races they just write it up like anything else in the game, also they could just as well write "human" as an ability.
This might bring some Philosophical discussion into the game, what does it mean to be human, but that can be fun too.

Final Fantasy Returners 4th edition has races with no mechanical component, but they allow you to gain and spend Destiny Points for certain narrative abilities.

>Are there any games where races are purely aesthetic
No but you can work it.
>or only count with narrative/non-mechanical traits to define them?
Rules light settings can do this.

>Would such a game work?
I don't see why not.

Eye of Yrrhedes comes to mind. The game has extremely simplified rules (mostly rulings, really) and it doesn't really matter what you are playing as, as long as you're having fun with it. One of the baseline adventures for it even calls out for as diverse cast of characters as players can think off, solely because it involves a LOT of interactions with different races, trades, archetypes and so on.

emlia.org/pmwiki/pub/web/Tripocalypse.Tripocalypse.html Right here. The fact that races are mostly aesthetic is actually an important part of the setting.

If philosophical questions aren't brought up every session, you're playing ttrpgs wrong

>Eye of Yrrhedes
Google gives me nothing

>Goblins are about a meter tall, and have a keen sense of hearing and smell. Their eyes allow them to see in the dark, albeit with some difficulty. They have a set of sharp and thick teeth that can bite through almost anything short of iron and steel, and their purple tongue can produce a sticky transparent fluid that can be used as a makeshift glue.

Does this sound like something that could be used mechanically through common sense?

It's a Polish RPG from the 90s. Thing Fighting Fantasy, only without paragraphs and instead being semi-generated in nature. But the rules are so simple the original version was 29 pages long and contained absolutely everything it needed.
Race plays no mechanical role, but might be included in the ruling. Say, keeping with the troll example - you are a Swedish one and then meet the generic fantasy underbridge troll in your adventure. Taken into account you are similar in some way, or maybe whatever else, depending on what GM decides. But other than that the fact you are playing as a Swedish troll is pretty much aesthetical choice.

*Think

In a lot of point buy systems, like BESM, you can just put whatever in your race line without buying any abilities or defects to represent that race. As long as the GM is okay with that. You won't get any mechanical benefit.

you have to be brain-damaged to think a game HAS TO HAVE mechanical racial effects.
>hurr. minotaur have to be strong, elfs pretty -4 strength
There is literally nothing preventing you from running 3d6 in order no modifiers and just calling whatever you make an elf or dwarf or half-dragon-half-unicorn-demigod-vampire. Having there be racial modifiers was a design choice, not a natural state of being.

Look at vidya, for the Original Street Fighter. There's no inherent design choice saying anyone can play anything other than Ryu and Ken. It might not be what you would choose, or actually be fun, but perfectly balanced play is always a viable game design choice.

So better than most fantasy games wil still being meh to PBTA?

But it's not totally true, the race/class combo has a mechanical meaning. The real problem is that "narrative traits" doesn't mean shit: the fact that the Dwarf Fighter uses Con instead of Cha when he Parleys with someone sharing a drink is narrative or mechanical?

Racial stat bonuses are retarded because it's applying generalizations to individuals who are already supposed to be exceptional. Racial variation of stat caps can be acceptable, for example, you could make it so a halfling can have no greater strength than 14.

Cryptomancer does this.

How does it do it?

Yes, they're called video games.

>ask in Veeky Forums in the context of Veeky Forums
>hurr vidya
Gee user

It doesn't HAVE TO HAVE them, but certain differences still have a bearing on what a character can do, can't do, or can do better than others, which is why it's basically the norm to give mechanical racial effects on games that have them

This.
The game is a perfect balance between rule heavy and rule light, while you can play as literally anything you want, while it only exists as a notion of what your character is. I think the 2nd edition even openly said you can play as a literal cream pie, as long as you can pull that off and your GM agrees.
Also, Veeky Forums made an English translation of the original, shorthand version of the game somewhere around 2013? Early 2014?

It literally just says "choose whatever race, it doesn't affect your stats".

Yeah, the real world

Yes plenty of them
>FATE for one

>Those cow tails
Huh, so is the Huldra distinct from the troll, or just another type of troll?

You should try Risus

As long as you don't play with autists it should work fine.

This is a true opinion that not enough people have.

>what do you MEAN i dont get anything from this
>what kind of BULLSHIT GAME are we playing? might as well not even roll dice!
>i fucking hate these contrarian special snowflake games doing things differently from D&D's perfect formula just to spite it

I can see ir