Never quite undestood why people wont play human

[Cluedrew]

To 2D8HP: ... {Claps} Real life can be more interesting than we give it credit for, those are some impressive pluming stories.

[2D8HP]

To 2D8HP: ....

Thanks Cluedrew!

FWIW, I don't role-play as another personality much at all, as getting the gold won in the Dungeons to spend in the tavern is my RL goal as well!



Come to think of it battling with bandits (the copper thieves, AKA "The hardest working people around") was part of the job during the 10 months I was assigned to the Port (not fisticuffs, but it was an ongoing struggle!)..

This Forum actually does have members with adventurous lives, the travelers, hikers, veterans, etc.

The chief difference is that in RL you try to be safe enough to be bored!

[LordCdrMilitant]

Humans are awesome. I like having an extra feat.

There are a variety of reasons to pick a race, or not pick a race. Mechanical advantage, conforming to or averting fantasy convention, exploring viewpoints on the world, or wishlisting are all reasons that various character traits, race included may be chosen. It's a fantasy world, and you have the option not to be human, so I see no reason to confine oneself to human characters.

You could always play warhammer 41k Only War / DH. No elves, dwarves, or halfings at all. No sir. Tau, Ogryn and Ratlings are completely new and different. COMPLETELY I TELL YOU!

I was not under the impression they were supposed to be different. Just that the names were copyrightable. :)

[Talakeal]

First off, some people like crunch over fluff, and they will typically play whatever is most effective, if that is a human so be it, if not, then not. I don't think this is really the issue the OP is talking about.

There are also people who know what they like. They love elves, or vampires, or cat girls, or Klingons, and if that thing is available to them they will play it, if it isn't available they will tend to make the closest thing to it. Also probably not the people the OP are talking about.


In my experience choice of race comes down to what the player wants out of the game. For example, I had a player in my gaming group who got really into the game, but he never much RPed or came up with a character backstory, and one time I told him something along the lines of "if you put half the effort into working out your character's personality as you do you're spell list, you would be a really great RPer," and his response was "People are boring. Only powers are interesting."

Its a fundamental difference from what they want out of the game. Some people will look at the human race and see 7 billion individuals, each more unique and wonderful than any snowflake, and another person will see a ubiquitous mass of terrestrial bipeds with some ability tool use and language but lacking the vast array of wonderful abilities found in nature (to say nothing of the fantastic abilities found in a game world).

People are just looking at the game from a different direction and want different things out of it.

This also comes up a lot in the martial vs. caster debates, when the pro magic players boggle at how anyone could be entertained by playing a character who is limited to more or less real world aspects and totally lacking the limitless fantastic power of magic users.

Its not really a "role-player" vs. "roll-player" debate, although it is similar. Some people are fascinated by the internal workings of the human mind, others by the limitless possibilities of shaping external reality. Some people focus on the physical, others the mental, others the social. Some want to fantasize about doing different things, others fantasize about being different things. Some people just want to play themselves and explore a fantasy world or see how they would react in an unusual situation.

Its just a difference in motivation, and rhetoric like "Why would I want to be a human? I can already do that IRL" or "People who choose to play a non-human race do so because it allows them to play tropes without having to make a character," are kind of missing the point and IMO are kind of lashing out at people with different motivations as a defense mechanism.




On a related point, I will say that I think everyone has a limit to their tolerance. Most people would be bored by an RPG which centered around the lives of ordinary people in the ordinary world like a tabletop version of the sims, and this includes people who like human fighters. On the other hand I think that even the people who want to play Half-feral beholder mystic-theurges would be put off by the alien nature of a game where players took the role of sentient hyper-strings who simultaneously exist in seven different universes at 15 different points in time, each with vastly different fundamental laws of physics, and could only interact with the world by singing gluons into different color states.



Also, playing a non-human race is freaking hard. I run into this problem as a player, a DM, and an author. Because it is a really hard line to walk. Go too far to one side and you are just a human with pointy ears or green skin, and go too hard in the other direction and you will become you're typical Star Wars / Star Trek race where the entire society is obsessed with a single profession or personality type or with the classic fantasy cannon fodder race that is "always evil," and is less a person than a walking bag of combat mechanics that you don't feel bad killing for XP.

[huginn]

Why question their reasons in the specific cases in which they have already given you their reason? They want to play a specific way, and that's their choice. Ultimately, it's because they prefer playing that way, and they might not even know all of their underlying reasons.

I had a good friend who only wanted to play Fighters. I don't share that desire, and don't really understand it, but I have neither the authority nor the wisdom to question it. He made a great fighter ally for me in many games.

Its only when they say I refuse to play a human in any game because I am a human in RL or humans are boring do I question it. Part of the reason why I do is based on personal experience as these players tend to be the ones who never come up with a backstory and they role play every character the exact same way.

[Tinkerer]

I... don't really see this. For instance in 3.5 there are what, 100 or so playable races without LA? Would you say that less than 1% of players choose humans? If anything I would say that humans receive more of a share of players than they should given the selection, assuming that you are choosing race randomly. The question in my head is one of why do so many people play humans?

EDIT: Bit slow today, I just realized that OP could have meant why they won't play humans upon request. In which case that is weird but I've only run one campaign where I required the PCs to play a certain race, one race systems excepted.

[2D8HP]

...these players tend to be the ones who never come up with a backstory...

I do so now come up with long back-stories listing many loved ones who died too soon!

I just don't bother to play out that claptrap.

...and they role play every character the exact same way.

That's a fair cop.

why do so many people play humans?

Pretending to explore a fantastic world is what I want to do.

The inner life of a different alien personality?

Not so much.

[Tanarii]

Its only when they say I refuse to play a human in any game because I am a human in RL or humans are boring do I question it. Part of the reason why I do is based on personal experience as these players tend to be the ones who never come up with a backstory and they role play every character the exact same way.

Backstory is not essential to role-playing.

It's not even essential to alternate character "method acting" role-playing. Motivations are. Backstory may contain motivations, but often it's just history.

[Jay R]

Its only when they say I refuse to play a human in any game because I am a human in RL or humans are boring do I question it. Part of the reason why I do is based on personal experience as these players tend to be the ones who never come up with a backstory and they role play every character the exact same way.

I understand the emotional impulse. I felt that way for awhile. But I eventually realized that my trying to get them to play my way is no different from them trying to get me to play their way.

The answer to your question is that they enjoy playing every non-human character the same way, without a backstory. They enjoy pretending to be another race, but don't enjoy writing a backstory or playing more than the crunch.

And that's fine. It's how everybody plays some games. I don't play Monopoly differently when I'm the race car than when I'm the dog or the shoe or the thimble. I'm just trying to optimize my money and property. I don't play Clue differently as Colonel Mustard than as Miss Scarlett or Professor Plumm. I'm just trying to solve the mystery. There's no reason why people shouldn't play D&D that way.

My friend Glen always wanted to play a Fighter. So why on earth should I try to get him to play a wizard, when he's a great fighter protecting my flank?

If somebody wants to play a dwarf for the CON, the darkvision, and the Craft and Appraise advantages, rather than because she cares about beards or shortness or living underground, then that's what she enjoys. And her enjoyment is far closer to yours than the vast majority of people who won't play D&D at all.

We don't all have to enjoy the same aspects of the game to be allies, comrades, and mutual supporters of each other's fun.

I always have the longest, most developed backstory at the table. I enjoy it. But I simply don't care how long my ally's backstory is when she's attacking the ogre who wants to kill my character.

[Honest Tiefling]

Its only when they say I refuse to play a human in any game because I am a human in RL or humans are boring do I question it. Part of the reason why I do is based on personal experience as these players tend to be the ones who never come up with a backstory and they role play every character the exact same way.

...You've never met a person RPing an elf who has written a multiple page backstory? I'm frankly amazed. I've BEEN that person before! (And no, the DM didn't read it).

[Psikerlord]

Humans don't have darkvision, and DMs can be jerks when magical aging and ghosts come up.

Yeah I think the lack of darkvision is massive drawback. Then in older editions at least, non-humans got all sorts of bonus abilities and humans got nothing. So few folks played human. In 5e humans are very strong with the bonus feat, so folk are playing them despite no darkvision.

[2D8HP]

....(And no, the DM didn't read it).

As unlikely as it is, in case there's anyone left who hasn't read my previous rants and raves on the subject, I too have written a "multiple page backstory" for an Elf, and have quickly found that, while the longer a back-story is the more likely a DM will say, "You can play", it's also disruptive to actually try to play the character implied, and if DM's read it they either forget or ignore the back-story.

With that knowledge I've actually just padded out "back-stories" with lyrics from the Carmina Burana successfully!

[Jay R]

As unlikely as it is, in case there's anyone left who hasn't read my previous rants and raves on the subject, I too have written a "multiple page backstory" for an Elf, and have quickly found that, while the longer a back-story is the more likely a DM will say, "You can play", it's also disruptive to actually try to play the character implied, and if DM's read it they either forget or ignore the back-story.

With that knowledge I've actually just padded out "back-stories" with lyrics from the Carmina Burana successfully!

The backstory isn't primarily for the DM or the party; it's for me. It's an integral part of developing the character.

Nobody around me needs to know any details about my years of fencing. It helps me parry better anyway.

When I'm solving an equation, nobody around me needs to know my educational background. It helps me solve the equation anyway.

When I'm out in the woods and build a fire out of oak, not pine, the cobbler doesn't have to know I was a Philmont Ranger for two summers.

Similarly, the DM can ignore or forget the reason my Ranger character Gustav has a masterwork axe, or the specific skills I chose, or why he will always attack the largest enemy. These actions and abilities came out of his background.

A backstory that didn't lead to the character crunch isn't a backstory; it's just homework.

[Tanarii]

The backstory isn't primarily for the DM or the party; it's for me. It's an integral part of developing the character.

IMO Backstory is only useful insofar as it helps you play the character moving forward. It's the motivations (if any) in a backstory that matter, not the details of the history. If you're faced with choice X, what will you choose an why?

Example of motivation, and not just history, from examples you gave:
"or why he will always attack the largest enemy"

The rest appears to be a bog-standard "check off how I got all my class features & skill" backstory. Personally, I do not find those particularly useful as a player, although they're useful to DMs sometimes as plot hooks. But that's because I care about developing my character by playing the game, and using their motivations to see how they establish who they are. Not what has already come before, who they were.

In fact, for my 5e campaign, I *require* a list of motivations from players: personality traits. I do not ask for any backstory at all.

[Honest Tiefling]

Am I the only getting a feeling that people often write backstories for themselves and just fail to show them off? I do wonder how many of these non-humans had backstories that just never got mentioned.

[PhoenixPhyre]

IMO Backstory is only useful insofar as it helps you play the character moving forward. It's the motivations (if any) in a backstory that matter, not the details of the history. If you're faced with choice X, what will you choose an why?

Example of motivation, and not just history, from examples you gave:
"or why he will always attack the largest enemy"

The rest appears to be a bog-standard "check off how I got all my class features & skill" backstory. Personally, I do not find those particularly useful as a player, although they're useful to DMs sometimes as plot hooks. But that's because I care about developing my character by playing the game, and using their motivations to see how they establish who they are. Not what has already come before, who they were.

In fact, for my 5e campaign, I *require* a list of motivations from players: personality traits. I do not ask for any backstory at all.

I'm very much in agreement here. I don't care how you got there unless it affects the story going forward. I generally ask for the following:

* Background/Ideal/Bond/Flaw (5e D&D elements)
* A 2-3 sentence summary of why your character became an adventurer and left his old life behind.
* A general sense of geographical background and any possible factions (although at level 1 those should be small).

Everything else can be decided in-play. I work with players to decide exactly how their character fits into the world--one character had the summary "Ran away from home after the arsonous death of her wealthy parents looking for her brother. She believes that the authorities believe she set the fatal fire." We decided that her family had been the leading family in a particular area and that the real culprits were a cult of demon worshipers. This all happened months after we began the campaign.

[pwykersotz]

First off, some people like crunch over fluff, and they will typically play whatever is most effective, if that is a human so be it, if not, then not. I don't think this is really the issue the OP is talking about.

There are also people who know what they like. They love elves, or vampires, or cat girls, or Klingons, and if that thing is available to them they will play it, if it isn't available they will tend to make the closest thing to it. Also probably not the people the OP are talking about.


In my experience choice of race comes down to what the player wants out of the game. For example, I had a player in my gaming group who got really into the game, but he never much RPed or came up with a character backstory, and one time I told him something along the lines of "if you put half the effort into working out your character's personality as you do you're spell list, you would be a really great RPer," and his response was "People are boring. Only powers are interesting."

Its a fundamental difference from what they want out of the game. Some people will look at the human race and see 7 billion individuals, each more unique and wonderful than any snowflake, and another person will see a ubiquitous mass of terrestrial bipeds with some ability tool use and language but lacking the vast array of wonderful abilities found in nature (to say nothing of the fantastic abilities found in a game world).

People are just looking at the game from a different direction and want different things out of it.

This also comes up a lot in the martial vs. caster debates, when the pro magic players boggle at how anyone could be entertained by playing a character who is limited to more or less real world aspects and totally lacking the limitless fantastic power of magic users.

Its not really a "role-player" vs. "roll-player" debate, although it is similar. Some people are fascinated by the internal workings of the human mind, others by the limitless possibilities of shaping external reality. Some people focus on the physical, others the mental, others the social. Some want to fantasize about doing different things, others fantasize about being different things. Some people just want to play themselves and explore a fantasy world or see how they would react in an unusual situation.

Its just a difference in motivation, and rhetoric like "Why would I want to be a human? I can already do that IRL" or "People who choose to play a non-human race do so because it allows them to play tropes without having to make a character," are kind of missing the point and IMO are kind of lashing out at people with different motivations as a defense mechanism.




On a related point, I will say that I think everyone has a limit to their tolerance. Most people would be bored by an RPG which centered around the lives of ordinary people in the ordinary world like a tabletop version of the sims, and this includes people who like human fighters. On the other hand I think that even the people who want to play Half-feral beholder mystic-theurges would be put off by the alien nature of a game where players took the role of sentient hyper-strings who simultaneously exist in seven different universes at 15 different points in time, each with vastly different fundamental laws of physics, and could only interact with the world by singing gluons into different color states.



Also, playing a non-human race is freaking hard. I run into this problem as a player, a DM, and an author. Because it is a really hard line to walk. Go too far to one side and you are just a human with pointy ears or green skin, and go too hard in the other direction and you will become you're typical Star Wars / Star Trek race where the entire society is obsessed with a single profession or personality type or with the classic fantasy cannon fodder race that is "always evil," and is less a person than a walking bag of combat mechanics that you don't feel bad killing for XP.

This is all very well said. In my previous agreement with huginn though, I think something may have been lost that I reflect upon when I read your post. I have nothing against bad RP'ers. Seriously, nothing. I do believe that people who believe humans are inherently boring do a poor job in the RP department, based solely on personal experience in the game. Exceptions abound, I'm sure. But it doesn't matter. The game is more than RP. It's more than agency, escapism, number crunching, or talky-time. It's more than dice rolling, and it's more than story. So if someone does or doesn't want to play human, that may be due to lack of imagination in at least one category, but it really doesn't matter, because the game is so much more.

[Psikerlord]

I'm very much in agreement here. I don't care how you got there unless it affects the story going forward. I generally ask for the following:

* Background/Ideal/Bond/Flaw (5e D&D elements)
* A 2-3 sentence summary of why your character became an adventurer and left his old life behind.
* A general sense of geographical background and any possible factions (although at level 1 those should be small).

Everything else can be decided in-play. I work with players to decide exactly how their character fits into the world--one character had the summary "Ran away from home after the arsonous death of her wealthy parents looking for her brother. She believes that the authorities believe she set the fatal fire." We decided that her family had been the leading family in a particular area and that the real culprits were a cult of demon worshipers. This all happened months after we began the campaign.

Yeah I greatly prefer one liner or very short backgrounds, and let it develop in play - where everyone at the table can hear it/riff off it. PLus a roll on the party bonds table to see how the PCs know each other.

[Satinavian]

On the other hand I think that even the people who want to play Half-feral beholder mystic-theurges would be put off by the alien nature of a game where players took the role of sentient hyper-strings who simultaneously exist in seven different universes at 15 different points in time, each with vastly different fundamental laws of physics, and could only interact with the world by singing gluons into different color states.

I generally agree with the paragraph but i am now somehow intrigued by the idea of playing those hyper-strings. You probably would have a very limited player pool and there are still many questions left to ask about how those work, what they can do, what motivations might be and what the game is actually about, but...

Also, playing a non-human race is freaking hard. I run into this problem as a player, a DM, and an author. Because it is a really hard line to walk. Go too far to one side and you are just a human with pointy ears or green skin, and go too hard in the other direction and you will become you're typical Star Wars / Star Trek race where the entire society is obsessed with a single profession or personality type or with the classic fantasy cannon fodder race that is "always evil," and is less a person than a walking bag of combat mechanics that you don't feel bad killing for XP.

The easiest way to avoid the species of hats phenomenon is to have more than one charcter of the species. Sure, both will somehow resemble the archetype. But not only will both have different personality and different abilities on top of that, they also will represent different takes on said archetype and automatically broaden the picture what it means to be species X.

This is all very well said. In my previous agreement with huginn though, I think something may have been lost that I reflect upon when I read your post. I have nothing against bad RP'ers. Seriously, nothing. I do believe that people who believe humans are inherently boring do a poor job in the RP department, based solely on personal experience in the game. Exceptions abound, I'm sure. But it doesn't matter. The game is more than RP. It's more than agency, escapism, number crunching, or talky-time. It's more than dice rolling, and it's more than story. So if someone does or doesn't want to play human, that may be due to lack of imagination in at least one category, but it really doesn't matter, because the game is so much more.

It is less that humans are automatically boring it is that they are sometimes just far more boring than race X.

If you want to argue against that, you don't have to show that humans are not boring because they allow for lots of concepts. You have to show that race X is boring instead and somehow allows for less concepts or less interesting concepts.
And it is basically impossible to do that. All races have basically the same variety as humans. And which particular concept is more interesting is a matter of taste alone.





Personally, i find people who don't want to play humans not any more strange than people who don't want to play dwarfs. And the idea that this somehow proves "lack of imagination" is just idiotic.




For backstories : Well my backstories are usually between half a page and a page long. They include motivations and loyalities. And they are a guideline about what the character is familiar with and what is new to him/her. They might also explain some mechanical choices during character creation that might come up in conversation.

And i write them mostly for myself to be able to play the character somewhat consistent from the start instead of as some kind of blank sheet. GMs tend to be interested in the motivations for potential plot hooks, but not the rest.

[Tanarii]

The game is more than RP. It's more than agency, escapism, number crunching, or talky-time. It's more than dice rolling, and it's more than story. So if someone does or doesn't want to play human, that may be due to lack of imagination in at least one category, but it really doesn't matter, because the game is so much more.

That's some poetry right there man.

[Jay R]

IMO Backstory is only useful insofar as it helps you play the character moving forward. It's the motivations (if any) in a backstory that matter, not the details of the history. If you're faced with choice X, what will you choose an why?

This assumes that the backstory didn't help me create the character, or is only for the benefit of the GM. This is simply not the case. My Ranger has a masterwork axe (a wood-cutting axe, not a weapon) because I've known three people who lived in the woods, and each one was proud of the quality of his axe. He has a lyre and a single point in Perform (stringed instruments) because he has lived alone in the woods, and was lonely.

There's no reason a GM needs to know that, but I needed to know it, to learn who he was, and allocate his points.

Example of motivation, and not just history, from examples you gave:
"or why he will always attack the largest enemy"

The rest appears to be a bog-standard "check off how I got all my class features & skill" backstory. Personally, I do not find those particularly useful as a player, although they're useful to DMs sometimes as plot hooks.

It's not a "check off how [my character] got [his] class features and skills" backstory. It would be more accurate to call it a "how I decided what my character's class features and skill would be" backstory. I didn't decide he needed a masterwork axe and then decide he'd be proud of the quality of his axe. I observed that the sort of people I was basing him on always were proud of their axes, and so I paid for one.

I agree that much of the backstory is no longer needed once the character design is complete, but it's a crucial part of designing him as a person, and not merely a set of abilities.

But that's because I care about developing my character by playing the game, and using their motivations to see how they establish who they are. Not what has already come before, who they were.

I think developing his character by playing the game alone is as limiting as developing it only on what went before, and for the same reasons. There is no single point in my life when my important development started, and there shouldn't be in my character's life either. The fact that that life started having a player at 1st level is a meta-fact, not relevant to the character.

To put it another way, what developed before he was 1st level should affect him when he's third level just as much as what happened before he was 11th level should affect him when he's 13th.

In fact, for my 5e campaign, I *require* a list of motivations from players: personality traits. I do not ask for any backstory at all.

I really don't care what the GM "requires". For the same reason he doesn't need to know why I chose to play a Ranger, he doesn't need to know why the Ranger chooses to play a lyre.

If that's not important for you, fine. most people don't. Design your characters your way, and have fun with it. But it's nonsense to say that my backstory doesn't matter because you don't design characters that way.

[Tanarii]

Yah, my personal opinion that a post-character-build backstory filling out historical details isn't critical to the character moving forward, outside of the motivations / hooks within it, has no bearing on other peoples feelings about its importance. I definitely prefer to cut to the chase and explicitly list those motivations /hooks without making it a story, so it's clear and obvious what they are. But that's just my approach.

It certainly has bearing if you're writing the backstory first then creating a character (to the best of your ability) that matches it mechanically. That's (mostly) the opposite way around from the way I do it. But that's also personal preference.

[Max_Killjoy]

I consider the backstory a tool for developing a character with motivation, depth, etc... someone who is a believable "fictional person".

But it's not the only tool, and I care more about the ends than the means in this case.

[pwykersotz]

It is less that humans are automatically boring it is that they are sometimes just far more boring than race X.

If you want to argue against that, you don't have to show that humans are not boring because they allow for lots of concepts. You have to show that race X is boring instead and somehow allows for less concepts or less interesting concepts.
And it is basically impossible to do that. All races have basically the same variety as humans. And which particular concept is more interesting is a matter of taste alone.

Personally, i find people who don't want to play humans not any more strange than people who don't want to play dwarfs. And the idea that this somehow proves "lack of imagination" is just idiotic.

Yeah, you can't really argue either case. They are so inherently subjective, as has been articulately posted by others. You may have missed my initial point, which is that, from personal experience, those who find humans boring to play are the same ones that do the poorest job roleplaying. I find it an interesting correlation, but not one which I would use to judge people or tables I haven't met. In the same breath, I clarify that this is only in my experience and it is not proof of anything. So basically, I agree with you, except where you believe we are in disagreement. If that makes sense.

@Tanarii: Thanks! You may have noticed my delineation between RP and talky time. That was your corrupting influence.

[Fiery Diamond]

One thing I don't understand is this insistence that other races need to be alien. What's wrong with "all characters are psychologically human (except where living a long or short life affects things) with cosmetic differences and special powers"? As long as you're not just making them races of hats and instead actually delving into their minds and personalities, why should I feel obligated to make elves be different from humans? Both when I'm playing/running games and when I write stories, I make all "person" species psychologically human, not due to lack of imagination, but because I have no interest in the truly alien whatsoever while I do have interest in people. In fact, this is the DEFAULT in the majority of fantasy stories (except where "always evil races" come up, of course).

[Talakeal]

Personally, i find people who don't want to play humans not any more strange than people who don't want to play dwarfs. And the idea that this somehow proves "lack of imagination" is just idiotic.

It isn't that people don't like a certain race, it is that they say they can't possibly make a human character who isn't boring. For people who are really into character driven RP this is a giant red flag, and often implies that the player is unwilling or incapable of playing anything other than a collection of cool powers or a racial stereotype.

Our fiction is written by humans for humans, and as a result most of it is about humans. For many genres, and many fantasy campaigns, humans are the default. If we were running a game about dwarves (for example the current actual play on Fear the Boot) I would look at someone who refused to play a dwarf or who said they couldn't make a non-boring dwarf in exactly the same way (although I do admit that RPing a good non-human character is harder than a human due to look of familiarity and RL inspirations.)

[Tanarii]

@Tanarii: Thanks! You may have noticed my delineation between RP and talky time. That was your corrupting influence.

Hopefully no one gets the idea that I don't like talky-time or funny voices. Even in a dungeon crawl adventure, negotiations to create an alliance, conducted between a distinctly Russian-sounding Traladaran PC and a squeaky annoying little Kobold NPC (to pick a not at all random example) is fun! As well as both an important aspect of Roleplaying in terms of making decisions in the in-game universe that affect the PCs, and adding a little something to the atmosphere.

I just think it's a all too common mistake to label those aspects alone RP, when it's only one facet of Roleplaying.

[Honest Tiefling]

One thing I don't understand is this insistence that other races need to be alien. What's wrong with "all characters are psychologically human (except where living a long or short life affects things) with cosmetic differences and special powers"?

Well, they do. That's usually how tieflings are handled. If Pathfinder, 4e, and 5e are any indication, tieflings aren't exactly unpopular. I'd be curious if any other DnD clone has ever had a tiefling equivalent.

[Jay R]

It isn't that people don't like a certain race, it is that they say they can't possibly make a human character who isn't boring. For people who are really into character driven RP this is a giant red flag, and often implies that the player is unwilling or incapable of playing anything other than a collection of cool powers or a racial stereotype.

Which is fine. His cool powers and racial stereotype guard my character's flank just as well as character-driven play does, and sometimes better.

It's not necessary that we have the same role-playing goals. It's only necessary that our characters work together to achieve their goals.

[Talakeal]

Which is fine. His cool powers and racial stereotype guard my character's flank just as well as character-driven play does, and sometimes better.

It's not necessary that we have the same role-playing goals. It's only necessary that our characters work together to achieve their goals.

Maybe.

I absolutely agree that people need to be more accepting of other people's gaming styles and recognize that different people are in the hobby for different reasons.

But, on the other hand, you get a lot of player conflict if people aren't on the same page about their expectations. If you expect my fighter to guard your flank, but I have established that I am playing a guy with a phobia of undead who turns tail and runs when we are flanked by a horde of zombies you will probably be pretty cheesed with me. Likewise if the hypothetical you picks fights during every social scene because they want to skip the boring talky stuff and get to some hacking, I am going to be pretty cheesed at you.

Compromise and understanding are key.