Whats a good number of playable races to have in your setting /tg/? Do you feel more races creates a more diverse world and allows for more choices in character creation or do you feel that more races just clutters things up and starts catering to special snowflakes. I'd like to hear some people's opinions.
>>44467839
Bumping with race art.
>>44467864
>>44467886
>>44467919
>>44467950
>>44467839
Personally, if its a normal fantasy setting I prefer to keep the "standard" well known races as a default and flesh out some locations and lore for them in my setting. Once those are finished I go back and look at some of the more specific ones I find interesting and make lore and settings for them too. All of the super specific or rare races I keep in my back pocket until the campaign calls for their usage. I know its boring to most people, but having "core" races as a constant in my settings makes things flow easier - especially when DMing for newer players. Having many dozens of races and species works well in Star Wars but it's hard to explain and work with on a single world.
I'd say no more then 10 inluding any kinds of subraces, like drow. Anything else can be considered monsters
>>44467839
One race with numerous sub-races and ethnic groups. If there are wildly different intelligent races, they're explicitly from another world or plane of existence and some or all of them may not be selectable by the players, depending on whether the DM wants to keep an air of mystery or "otherness" about them.
>>44468309
I agree with that. For the setting I've come up with I didn't want to include a huge bunch of races since it always feels a bit weird to have a ridiculous amount of different variety of humanoid running around, so I mostly stuck to the "basic" fantasy races, ie. the ones that are playable in just about any fantasy game and are commonly used as PCs (humans, elves and dwarves, plus half-elves and half-orcs; couldn't really find a good niche for halflings, though). There's also orcs, goblins, dark elves and ghouls (Lovecraft-style, where they're an underground-dwelling race that eat corpses, rather than undead creatures), plus some more exotic races that live in far off places (like merfolk living in the ocean and serpent-men who live in the jungles of a largely unexplored continent), but those aren't really intented as PC-races.
>>44467839
So wait are you telling me that this setting's Halflings are tiny skeletons?
>>44468717
Fuck that, what about mini thri-kreen?
>>44468738
What about both of them? Because I'm super excited about both of them.
>>44467839
Ive always liked lots of races. I have something like 20 playable races that players can choose from. Integrating them all so that they make sense to the world was a fun exercise.
Take my ratfolk for instance. They are descendants of the crew of a scientific exploration vessel from another world that crashed upon the world. The survivors and their descendants eventually integrated with a human culture located in what is the equivalent of the eastern mediterranean. The ratfolks knowledge and love of tech and the humans ingenuity and perseverance allowed this integrated culture to survive against the much larger dragonborn empire (vaguely sumerian crossed with persian and islamic aspects) that eventually took over the nearby notMiddle East.
Making sure each race has a history that ties them to the world and that they are integrated strongly to the other races is important.
There really shouldn't be a limit on races.
There should be a limit on redundant races.
Each race should fill a unique role in a setting, or cover an intriguing archetype.
If you're running Halflings and Gnomes at the same time, they had be pretty different from each other.
>>44467839
As many as you feel is needed. A good rule of thumb is to ask yourself "is my setting diverse enough in terms of sentient races?"
>>44469695
I think that's a terrible question as it implies that diversity in sapient races is desired (or even necessary).
Earth only has one sapient race, and there are plenty of interesting RPGs that take place on it.
>>44467886
>tfw no qt chubby gnome gf
>>44469839
The question doesn't preclude "just humans" being diverse enough in terms of sentient races, though. I think it's fine as far as such generalized things go.
>>44469695
>>44469839
Addendum, in order to be less of a dick and actually contribute to the conversation instead of just shooting someone down:
I would argue that a more useful question would be something along the lines of, "is there something I want to do with my setting that requires another sapient race's inclusion?"
Sapient races should have a reason for existing, be it mechanical or fluff-related. You really want trans-oceanic trade to be going on in your fantasy setting but the tech level is too low to reliably cross your maelstrom-riddled seas? Boom, aquatic race. That's fine.
You want players to have the option to make big muscly guys, but want a built-in mechanical reason for them to be limited in other ways? Make a big slow race, or a big dumb race, or whatever. Easy.
I think those are both great reasons to include a race. By contrast, "I want an aquatic race" or "I want a big muscly race" are bad ones that give you more work. If your race starts with a reason for existing, it's easy to fit them into the world. If your race starts as "I need more races", you have to bend over backwards to make it happen, or--maybe worse--not give them one to begin with, and you end up with a bunch of samey nobodies.
A skillful world-builder can avoid that, I imagine, but it's not easy.
>>44467839
>Whats a good number of playable races to have in your setting /tg/?
Twice as many as half as much.
There is no right number, it can be as low or as high as you want, just as long as it's done well.
I personally like to have lots and lots of different races. With an expansive sci-fi setting it's easy to justify, but with my current fantasy setting there's other ways to get around this since there's only one planet. Humans are the main stock, with elves, dwarves, orcs, etc. representing sub-species of Humanoids.
>>44470611
Essentially this.
As long as you can keep up quality sky is the limit.
