Top ten races players want to play

[Whipstitch]

Two, more to the point, you really want the interweb users of a given game to be working from the same 500 word essay for each race in the interest of cohesion. The less time players have to spend getting on the same page the better.

Plus there's also branding to consider. D&D as a franchise has benefited from having a few tentpole monsters, gods and races to help define their brand and catch the eye even if individual campaigns may not always feature drow clerics fighting mindflayers for control of the Underdark. D&D is a big ol' kitchen sink but it still stands out compared to universal systems because the latter virtually punted the idea of being unique at all.

[Mechalich]

There really is a need for a dual system here. Any given setting will have its core species group that represents important cultures, and people need to be able to grab those off the shelf and play them and everyone at the table needs to be able to understand what those mean - which means you have to have the 500 word essays and you have to have art for the species you intend to use, preferably multiple pieces of art scattered throughout your book.

You also want some sort of species-builder system to let people play their special snowflake characters. It will almost certainly never balance precisely - but that doesn't really matter because the GM is going to have to adjudicate each case anyway and most players who are actually committed enough to being a special snowflake thing won't care if it's slightly less powerful than one of the core species.

Having hundreds of individualized species isn't going to work - it becomes impossible to keep them all straight and robs them of impact. The d20 Star Wars production had a book called the Ultimate Alien Anthology. It provided playable stats for 180 species. That managed to be both utterly impenetrable to new players in terms of making a decent choice and utterly incapable of providing every choice species that a Star Wars fanatic might want to play. Pathfinder has roughly 50 playable 'races' at this point, and most of their players probably can only remember half of them even exist on a good day, and the core portion of the setting doesn't even come close to incorporating them all.

You have to have a core, and in fact you probably want to stick to your guns on that core and avoid expanding it as much as possible in most cases (the oWoD killed itself by adding endless subfactions). However, unless you're willing to tell those inclined towards snowflake-ism to pound sand - which given the nature of the TTRPG playerbase is probably not a financially viable approach - you need a way to work them in as well. From a design perspective having some sort of species builder system seems far better than spewing out hordes of rarely used niche species, though financially the later approach might actually make more sense if and only if you can profitably sell books about your niche species.

[hyzmarca]

You only really need six races

Humans, Elves, Dark Elves, Ugly Elves, Arrogant Douchebag Elves, and Keebler Elves.

[tussock]

Something that is not at all different to people.

Something bigger and more noble but has a sad thing.
Something smaller and capricious that can be sneaky or tricksy.
Also another small one, but more boring.

Something Emo that can do whatever magic is.
Also another one, because those people are fussy and want choice.
Something pointlessly angry all the time, possibly drunk, and fights good.

Something fast, which may mean good at piloting in some worlds.

Something cursed. Just a bit sad on so many levels.

Something stronk that is at least occasionally irrational. Like Robots, or Ogres.

[Jason]

In my own anecdotal experience no player actually cares about the second. I would also like to note I also am not writing something for mass consumption so... that.

I think this is the crux of the entire argument. One side argues for the "experienced" roleplayer (not as a qualitative statement, but as a quantitative one), the other side argues for the mass market/general appeal. Once you played your standard generic races over and over, you tend to fall into one of two camps: those who play nothing but humans anymore, fed up with special snowflakes and those that want to play something new, something that can still excite them and that they haven't played before, at least not in the way they envision it to be.
There would still be a large chunk of players left that are happy with the standard choices, but they also tend to not be as vocal about it.

Now, if you argue about "what races should be in a core rulebook", it boils down to which camp you are trying to please: The "newbies", the "happy with the status quo", the "humans-only" or the "more weird shit" camp. And that boils down to whether you aim for the commercial market or a niche market (and I consider the "more weird shit" camp a niche market).

If you aim for the commercial market you will likely choose the "status quo" with your bog standard base selection, enriched by some psychological choices:

-elves
-dwarves
-humans
-big strong race (e.g.: Goliaths)
-some dark and menacing race (e.g.: orcs)
-some freakish race, that is seen as outsiders and shunned by society (e.g.: Plant-People)
-some supernatural race with special powers (can share domains with the upper two) (e.g.: Tieflings)
-some dangerous and feared race that is essentially misunderstood (e. g.: Drizzt/Exile Drow)
-some Fetish race (can also fall into the "freakish" category) (e.g.: furry race)

Now, if you were to aim for a niche market, you'd have a much different setup. Even a niche market can have a narrow selection (like TMNT), but in the niche markets you can also aim for mass diversity and it is here where your race-generator concept starts to kick off, but at that point you're basically building a sandbox and not an RPG. You want players to design the cultures and races and their relationships and while that is all fine and dandy, it's also overbearing on newcomers. You basically relegate yourself into this corner of the market, unable to entice or retain new players in any significant number.

So, the question should be: what type of RPG are we arguing the race selection of? General statements can only be applied to a general audience, excluding niche markets, so we need to quantify our statements if we intend to argue about a different subgroup. Personally, I have been arguing about mass appeal, as that is how I understood the OP.

[PhoneLobster]

I think this is the crux of the entire argument. One side argues for the "experienced" roleplayer (not as a qualitative statement, but as a quantitative one), the other side argues for the mass market/general appeal.

This would make more sense if you qualified which side you think is saying what. It would make MUCH more sense if you then actually translated that into some sort of correspondence to the four categories of players you then later talk about, or at least more clearly cover what you think those four groups would want or need. It would be also nice if you were to give some rationalization over why you think "status quo" is a good group to target instead of just deciding to for no reason and then also explain how "10 or even less races" matches with the status quo when the status quo is basically... all the races of pathfinder and more besides.

As it is you are basically just churning out disconnected declarations.

-elves
-dwarves
-humans
-big strong race (e.g.: Goliaths)
-some dark and menacing race (e.g.: orcs)
-some freakish race, that is seen as outsiders and shunned by society (e.g.: Plant-People)
-some supernatural race with special powers (can share domains with the upper two) (e.g.: Tieflings)
-some dangerous and feared race that is essentially misunderstood (e. g.: Drizzt/Exile Drow)
-some Fetish race (can also fall into the "freakish" category) (e.g.: furry race)

And I've seen a lot of people doing this in this thread and it should probably get called out. So bad luck it falls on yours.

Your eight point list fails at being a list of only eight races. Because you used generic place holders for multiple possible options/permutations to describe 6 out of your 8 points (and frankly human and elf are potentially that too, just not explicitly labelled as such) and that means that you are giving us a list of maybe what? Easily 30+ items maybe more.

If you think you CAN do this in a list of ten you don't get to use generic place holders that represent multiple options. You don't get to say "like maybe goliaths?" you have to actually do this by just saying "Goliaths" period the end final destination no alternative choice.

Because the moment you say "something dangerous and misunderstood, like maybe these to two things" you just added at least two items explicitly to your list and MANY items implicitly.

By looking like one entry while actually being many your list looks like it covers many more bases than it (when finalized) actually does IF it in the end actually holds to the required "10 options" limit. But unless that vagueness literally translates out into many options per point instead of one option in your rules set then it's a bait and switch plain and simple.

[OgreBattle]

Do you guys imagine plant people to be old gnarly tree guys, sexy dryad girls, or cute smol mascot types like cactuar, FFXI mandragora

[Username17]

The idea that veterans are particularly demanding of special weird races is, I think, pretty weird. While it is true that people who play a lot of RPGs tend to play shit like Deep Halflings and Grey Elves, this is not because there is some roleplaying concern that drives them away from more standard races out of the PHB. It's because there's a clear benefit to trading Low Light vision for Dark Vision on your Halfling Rogue or trading Strength for Intelligence on your Elvish Wizard. People who have more system mastery want to play variants because they are more powerful in the specific character combinations they want to play - not because there's any particular role playing draw to Grey Elves or Whisper Gnomes or whatever the fuck. A player is not going to play a Hill Dwarf any different to how they would play a Mountain Dwarf, and the experienced player is going to make the decision based on game mechanical concerns.

You can see the same thing operating in Vampire. Generally speaking, players play the basic clans. Veteran players with a lot of history with the game still are more likely to play a Gangrel or a Ventrue than they are any weird ass bullshit minor clans or even Caitiffs. They just are. Now what you do see among veterans is requests to play bloodlines and clan variants and shit that min/max their disciplines. People are quite likely to ask to play a City Gangrel because playing a combat clan without Celerity is an exercise in futility, but they aren't likely to demand to play a Gaaki or something.

Which goes down to the requirements of races, clans, classes, or whatever the fuck to be fit for purpose. As a neophyte to a system or to gaming in general you might ask to play a Halforc Bard or play a Gangrel axe fighter because it sounds cool and it sounds like a thing you could do based on reading the book. As an experienced player you know what works and what doesn't and you tend to reach for options and combos that will make shit work. If I get the hankering to play a sword wielding meat shield in D&D, I'm gonna min/max pretty hard with my race, feats, magic items and whatever else because pulling my weight is an uphill slog. But when I play a Wizard or a Druid, I generally just play a human because it doesn't fucking matter. When the "normal" options are not fit for purpose, players branch out into whatever space is necessary to get the job done (or try). AncientHistory can seriously name ten different necromancer bloodlines in Vampire, because the basic necromancy options are not fit for purpose. Necessity is the mother of non-standard character options.

So a good chunk of the drive for weird bullshit like Goliaths is simply that the big strong race from the PHB is a plate of ass. If the PHB had a playable Orc or Hobgoblin that you could make a pretty decent warrior type with, that would pretty much do it. There would still be people who wanted to play Goliaths or Minotaurs or some fucking thing, but the need for constant new big toothy playables would go away the very instant the PHB version was fit for purpose. In Shadowrun, where the Ork and Troll pretty much are able to fill their eco-niches, there simply hasn't been a demand for a third big and ugly race. The character type is provided for adequately in the basic book and that's that.

-Username17

[deaddmwalking]

Do you guys imagine plant people to be old gnarly tree guys, sexy dryad girls, or cute smol mascot types like cactuar, FFXI mandragora

Old gnarly tree dudes and sexy dryad girls, of course.

Regarding furry races, in our setting the specific furry combination doesn't matter - most people can identify you as a member of a race where some look like wolves and some look like badgers. Culturally, they share the same role and history so one 500 word essay covers dozens or hundreds of choices.

[Username17]

Regarding furry races, in our setting the specific furry combination doesn't matter - most people can identify you as a member of a race where some look like wolves and some look like badgers. Culturally, they share the same role and history so one 500 word essay covers dozens or hundreds of choices.

So you have hundreds of choices as long as none of those choices actually matter in the slightest? That sounds like exactly the offer that GURPS and HERO made in the eighties and that is only very occassionally acceptable.

Sometimes I want to play a Steve, and the ability to tweak my physical appearance to whatever weird one-off concept I have in my head is valuable. There's certainly room for such an option. But my experience with players who want to play Gnolls or Centaurs is that they want to play Gnolls or Centaurs. Telling them that they can play a generic character but wear a hyena mask or horse mask if they want is not going to cut the mustard all or even most of the time.

The generic Beastman - with animal features of your choice! - is not a terrible idea. It lets people who want to play a beastial character do that and it lets people who have superficial character traits that they are fixated on like rabbit ears or goat horns get those in. But people who want the cultural baggage of their animal race are pretty much told to fuck off, right? I mean, you can be "a beastman with hyena traits" but you don't actually come from a matriarchal society of aggressive wasteland nomads. Or if you do, then the guy who wants to play Snarlington the gentleman Elk assassin is pretty much up a creek.

It comes down to the same problem it always comes down to: you can't actually have things in your game without not having other things in your game. Telling people that there are no limits necessarily and equivalently means telling them there are no footholds. Every prompt limits the possible stories you can tell, but fleshes out the story you actually are telling at the moment.

-Username17

[deaddmwalking]

We actually have beastpeople (but that's not what they're called) and we have gnolls. If you want to be a gnoll or centaur, that's a valid choice. If you want to be a generic furry, the best choice is the beast person.

The reason it's the best choice is that we have dozens or hundreds of animals to choose from that all share a culture or history, so you can get your freak on without us having to find room for dozens or hundreds of mechanically similar races in the world. When a furry race is sufficiently desirable and/or mechanically distinct enough, there is no reason we couldn't have that, too. If we want monkey people or oxfolk, those could be distinct races that aren't part of our normal beast-person race.

Like gnolls. While they have bestial features, they have a separate culture and history from our beast people.

[erik]

Do you guys imagine plant people to be old gnarly tree guys, sexy dryad girls, or cute smol mascot types like cactuar, FFXI mandragora

Sexy dryads who age into gnarly trees.

[Jason]

Your eight point list fails at being a list of only eight races.

No shit, sherlock! Could that possibly be because they ARE placeholders for whatever race(s) you wish to put in that category?

Because you used generic place holders for multiple possible options/permutations to describe 6 out of your 8 points (and frankly human and elf are potentially that too, just not explicitly labelled as such) and that means that you are giving us a list of maybe what? Easily 30+ items maybe more.

There you go, ranting like a lunatic again. Just because you CAN put that many races into these categories doesn't mean you have to, nor even should. But there's your black and white perspective again.

If you think you CAN do this in a list of ten you don't get to use generic place holders that represent multiple options. You don't get to say "like maybe goliaths?" you have to actually do this by just saying "Goliaths" period the end final destination no alternative choice.

No you idiot, because that would defeat the purpose! The whole argument is that the list shouldn't BE about specific races other than those that actually have to BE specific (like elves and dwarves). If you want to please a braod range of players and still remain in the mass market, there are a certain amount of tropes that player flock to. It's those that I listed and for that reason. Regarding the OP it matters jack shit, whether "big strong race" is Goliath, Ogre, Giant or Space Marine. All you need is a race with those attributes to chose. The moment you say "Goliath" another one will say "Yeah? Why not Trolls then?" and you are in the middle of a pointless pissing contest about who likes what race better. Entirely pointless. Then again, you love pointless arguments. In fact, you have no others.

[PhoneLobster]

No you idiot, because that would defeat the purpose! The whole argument is that the list shouldn't BE about specific races other than those that actually have to BE specific (like elves and dwarves).

If you are presenting an argument for a selection of choices far in excess of 10 then you aren't doing it right. Learn to English more better.

The moment you say "Goliath" another one will say "Yeah? Why not Trolls then?" and you are in the middle of a pointless pissing contest about who likes what race better. Entirely pointless. Then again, you love pointless arguments. In fact, you have no others.

Do you think even in venomous overly defensive reply you could possibly bring yourself to clearly state whether your plan to never be pinned down on specific entries to your list extends all the way to game play or not?

Because if you DO plan to avoid being pinned down as a game play thing and not just to avoid disagreements with your post on a forum then it is as such a concession of my point that you are presenting a list far in excess of ten or less single choices for players/settings to select from.

But even with your reply it's not clear which way you think you are jumping on that. You have a tendency to be angrily and defensively in agreement and your ability to communicate anything other than rambling non-statements is pretty poor so some clear elucidation is really in order.

[Aspirinsmurf]

Can someone explain to me the rationale behind this presumed psychological motivation for someone demanding to play, say, an orc as opposed to a big, burly human? Or a halfling instead of a short and agile human? If the answer is cultural expectation from mere exposure, I think we need to rethink the premise for this discussion.

I get Frank's rather weak argument that there is some tenuous communicative value in having shorthand monikers for combinations of certain traits, but is that really the primary motivation for a player to ardently demand actual speciation as opposed to mere characterization? I mean, in the abstract, isn't Big Bruiser just as culturally and physically evocative and precise as Orc Barbarian, if not even more? For anyone with no previous knowledge of fantasy orcs, the former should actually be an easier description to parse. For anyone only familiar with Tolkien's orcs, the two descriptions are actually rather different (Tolkien's orcs weren't really physically imposing).

[erik]

Can someone explain to me the rationale behind this presumed psychological motivation for someone demanding to play, say, an orc as opposed to a big, burly human? Or a halfling instead of a short and agile human? If the answer is cultural expectation from mere exposure, I think we need to rethink the premise for this discussion.

I get Frank's rather weak argument that there is some tenuous communicative value in having shorthand monikers for combinations of certain traits, but is that really the primary motivation for a player to ardently demand actual speciation as opposed to mere characterization?

Well yeah, you could cast every race as a society of humans. But then you have to explain each society out. Whereas a lot of fantasy races immediately conjure expectations. I hear elves and I think lithe refined naturist elitists. I hear orcs I think strong tribal savage hordes. I hear dwarves I think stout mountain dwelling master crafters. Halflings, tiny rural peaceful underdogs. I could show four images of dwellings/villages of those races and most people would be easily able to identify which belongs to which race.

Another part is that people don't tend to come in 2' tall adult sizes. If you have a society of 2' tall humans, then you kind of already have speciation. Now, if halflings were a society of merely conclaves of very, very small humans, that's not terrible and in fact most people wouldn't object, given that's kind of what they wound up being in their original source material.

I mean, in the abstract, isn't Big Bruiser just as culturally and physically evocative and precise as Orc Barbarian, if not even more? For anyone with no previous knowledge of fantasy orcs, the former should actually be an easier description to parse. For anyone only familiar with Tolkien's orcs, the two descriptions are actually rather different (Tolkien's orcs weren't really physically imposing).

D&D makes a split between goblins and orcs. The orcs are built more like the Uruk-hai, which are described as physically imposing.

Part of what makes orcs interesting, at least to me, is their opposition to elves, antagonistically, and also qualitatively (hordes vs. few elites, tribal vs. monarchy, savage vs. refined). With no elves, orcs become less interesting to me. Yeah, you can write a human barbarian society that fits, and dance around saying "You know, like orcs", but sometimes it's easier to use what is already living in people's heads.

[Aspirinsmurf]

Yeah, you can write a human barbarian society that fits, and dance around saying "You know, like orcs", but sometimes it's easier to use what is already living in people's heads.

I find this assessment to be potentially problematic outside of a narrow, D&D-influenced context. In popular culture, orcs currently occupy a conceptual niche as anything from a race of noble savages (World of Warcraft) to malevolent, genetically engineered industrial slaves (Lord of the Rings). In Warhammer 40.000 they grow from fungi, in Warhammer Fantasy they are somehow related to goblins. Hell, certain comparative analyses of Beowulf’s Anglo-Saxon would even cast them as some sort of mythological sea-monsters, for whatever that’s worth to our hypothetical target audience.

[erik]

I'll grant that there's sub-classes for all the fantasy races, and that it does indeed muddy the waters and make the fantasy races in general less specific. But it is still easy to say "WoW Orc" or Uruk-hai, so some valuable utility remains.

[OgreBattle]

It's more polite to exterminate orcs than a foreign group of humans deemed savages

[Aspirinsmurf]

It's more polite to exterminate orcs than a foreign group of humans deemed savages

I’m not sure that’s a good argument in favor of having orcs as a playable race in a fantasy RPG. Unless, of course, having such a visceral sense of ‘otherness’ was the very purpose for providing the option in the first, at which point we really do need to examine the why’s and wherefore’s of that particular game’s list of rubber-forehead alien species available to player characters.

[Chamomile]

D&D's vision of the orc has mostly converged with the WoW vision of the orc. If someone says they want to be an orc in D&D and you ask them what kind, you are either very new to the hobby or being intentionally obtuse.

[Mechalich]

Well yeah, you could cast every race as a society of humans. But then you have to explain each society out. Whereas a lot of fantasy races immediately conjure expectations. I hear elves and I think lithe refined naturist elitists. I hear orcs I think strong tribal savage hordes. I hear dwarves I think stout mountain dwelling master crafters. Halflings, tiny rural peaceful underdogs. I could show four images of dwellings/villages of those races and most people would be easily able to identify which belongs to which race.

This set of shorthand assumptions is actually a bad thing, generally. Reducing a full species of beings like orcs or elves to a single culture group, or representing each culture with a 'subrace' like FR does is lousy and actually kinda racist. Defining species solely according to their stereotypes is easy, but it's not really a good practice and leads to pigeonholing. This is also part of the argument against having too many playable species - it inevitably reduces everything about them down to one-sentence stereotypes. A setting needs enough space to not only have the orcs be different from the humans, but to have the eastern orcs differ from the northern orcs.

Another part is that people don't tend to come in 2' tall adult sizes. If you have a society of 2' tall humans, then you kind of already have speciation.

This is a much better reason to have different species. A 2' tall adult is different from a 6' tall adult and opens up storytelling possibilities. The innate physiological and psychological differences between a human and an orc are subtler, but still there. A story that has humans and orcs can go difference places than a story that just have human agriculturalists and human pastoralists, even if most of the time orcs are filling the human pastoralist role.

[tussock]

Can someone explain to me the rationale behind this presumed psychological motivation for someone demanding to play, say, an orc as opposed to a big, burly human? Or a halfling instead of a short and agile human?

The what now? You want a rationale for the motivation to demand the right to play an Orc.

How about, "they want to play an Orc", the setting has Orcs, it's easy to make them playable as a PC, so not doing that is ... pointlessly limiting?

What is the rationale for you demanding other people not want to not play an Orc, man? Did someone playing an Orc touch you in your special place?

[Aspirinsmurf]

The what now? You want a rationale for the motivation to demand the right to play an Orc.

I'll rephrase in a less cryptic manner. Why do you think people want to play orcs and not just big, ugly and uncivilized people?

[vagrant]

Maybe for the same reason they want to play a wizard in a fantasy world instead of a guy who is somewhat smart and reads books a lot? Who cares, it's their fantasy.