Fantastic Races and Where to Find Them

[Twohand]

The team wants to release another award rotation before the end of the year, but before we can sit down to discuss it, we want to know how the community feels about the more alien races of the Forgotten Realms. Do you prefer a vibrant world with exotic, RGB characters everywhere, or one more grounded in reality and as mundane as D&D can be? Where is the sweet spot for you? Answer in our poll!

You'll see that the poll in this thread mentions a few new races. They are included just to illustrate the poll, not to hint at anything we're working on. With that said, if you have suggestions, please post them in the appropriate forum here.

And one last thing: I have Irongron's blessing to say that we are considering bringing back the Half-Giant race that was removed in the last award rotation, although likely with a few modifications and tweaks to fit better into the lore of the Forgotten Realms. Stay tuned.

[Dreams]

Could we focus on non-race awards?

There have been so many fantastic suggestions for things that could be made for Normal/Greater/Major awards that are not based on mechanical power buffs and are instead extra tools for cool roleplay. Maybe this rotation could add a few more of those instead of another race that will be poorly implemented and then immediately taken up by players who don't necessarily care to represent them in game as they are in setting.

(I voted the Keep it in the UD option btw, races are cool. Would just like to see more non-race based awards.)

[stoneheart-]

Non-race awards would be ideal, but as far as fantastical races go, I feel that they are not respected at all by the playerbase at large. Any existing lore about them, and how they live, is largely disregarded, and I'm left asking what exactly about this character is unique at all. ETA: to clarify I voted for "I want less", not that I want them to disappear entirely. I still like them, I just think things should be scaled back a bit.

[Myrmidos]

I think both Gith types are low hanging fruit, but I echo the sentiment above. Not enough of the playerbase cleaves to the lore of the races presented, imo.

[Kushion]

let me create earth genasi wood elf and my life is yours

[Hragli]

I would like to see more varieties of races and a return of more fantastical races like dragons and cambions - perhaps gated behind applications just to ensure basic understanding and a concept suited to the race. Not to yuck anyones yum, but these concepts, probably even something like fey and gloaming, really need some barriers to entry. At the risk of sounding elitist, I don’t think many of the standard reward races belong as townies - you need to have a vision that works and respects the race. Not to say they all end up in the underdark, but the giff guardsman really would be too much. More caseload for DM’s, but… I think it’s the balance if we wanted more fantasy races.

Somewhat related, I would really like to see the redesign of rewards that was mentioned a while back. Non-race rewards were mentioned too, like the personal mobile temporary shop. I’m not sure if that’s still on the table, but I think reevaluating the way rewards are received could serve to improve the quality on high fantasy PCs.

[Xerah]

Way too much. But they're there, so I'll use them. Can't walk it back now.

I say announce the racial rotations ahead of time (make it actually every few months, say 4 instead of unknown/maybe/tbd) so people don't get surprised that the character they were waiting to make can't be made anymore. Yes, it means people will flood them on day one when saving up, but that's not the worst thing either.

Month 0:
In: X, Y, Z (+robot gnomes)
Out: A, B, C

Month 4:
In: L, M, N (+flying gnomes)
Out: D, E, F

Month 8:
In: A, B, C (or new race) (+dragon gnomes)
Out: W, X, O

Keep some out for 8-12 months, and rotate them back in. It's really the worst of all situations when no one is told what's changing and it just pushed without notice.

Or, just stop rotating it all together and stop worrying about it.

Also, plz no PC Beholders

[Kuma]

let me create earth genasi wood elf and my life is yours

Combining 'lower tier' awards, like tiefling & gnoll, or genasi & wood elf, could add more flavour without being over the top, like dragons or half giants.

I would like to see more varieties of races and a return of more fantastical races like dragons and cambions - perhaps gated behind applications just to ensure basic understanding and a concept suited to the race. Not to yuck anyones yum, but these concepts, probably even something like fey and gloaming, really need some barriers to entry. At the risk of sounding elitist, I don’t think many of the standard reward races belong as townies - you need to have a vision that works and respects the race. Not to say they all end up in the underdark, but the giff guardsman really would be too much. More caseload for DM’s, but… I think it’s the balance if we wanted more fantasy races.

'More please but gatekeep them' was basically how it was in ye old days and it didn't work then tbh.

Apps are extremely easy to game and require near-constant DM oversight to make sure they're actually playing what they applied for, and at the end of the day that just doesn't happen. Especially as the server's pop has gotten even larger since then.

[Rubricae]

what if we let people play what they want
crazy

[30 RANGER FROM THE MOON]

genie is already out of the bottle. limiting what people have only contributes to FOMO and people playing the so-called "forever-chars" instead of rolling them, esp. when you consider that some people have never, in all their years, gotten a greater or even a major. the award CD has only inflamed that feeling, too.

hearing the phrase "rotation" makes me think i should spend my current awards NOW rather than think a character through. this exact same thing happened when the giants got removed.

the real issue with the fantastical races is that they are, for lack of a more appropriate phrase, not "moderated" properly - inversely on the major-award side of things, some of them are so coveted that players who use those awards feel incentive to play "carefully" so as to keep their character in a playable state. fey'ri/vampires are a good example of this. (once you're outed you might as well call it quits.)

the team shouldn't worry about changing the scope of available award races until they decide how exactly they want these things to be integrated in the server in a way that doesn't (inevitably) get boiled down to race+ syndrome. (genasi, tieflings, etc.) they need to feel like their own "thing" before the racial bonuses figure into things. instilling culture in a race/area of any RP server is incredibly difficult, but if it can't be done, there's no point in having awards.

award races must be discrete beyond the stats they give.

time and time again, if you saw an earth genasi human, that's a weaponmaster. if you saw an air genasi elf? that's an arcane archer, probably shevarashi. earth genasi h-orc? that's a ranger weaponmaster. the stats pigeonhole the builds/characters, and the awards are frustrating to get, so people want to get the most "juice for their squeeze" instead of focusing on the character itself. that isn't a "bad" roleplayer problem, either.

and yeah, i realize it's incredibly difficult to moderate all the unique creatures running around when you've got a playerbase of 200ish people and maybe 20 staff on a good day, but changing what's available won't fix that. it doesn't matter if avariel and fey'ri are replaced with githzerai and githyanki if, say, the gith don't come in swinging hard as "WE ARE GITH. WE ARE DISTINCT FROM OTHER THINGS. FORGET MY +2 WILL, IM ALIEN."

[Paint]

It'd be nice if I could play a character on Arelith without feeling like I'm shooting myself in the foot by moving on from them because it's a stroke of considerable luck to be able to play another character like them ever again.

[Kalthariam]

I feel like there's a large gap between a Beholder / Mimic PC and a Dragon PC.

I would definitely enjoy more Fantasy in a Fantasy setting, but I am not really certain lumping "Dragon" Pc's in with Beholders, Mimics and Genie's is really appropriate.

Dragon's mingle in societies already way more than the others listed there.

[Ork]

We're a zoo already. Never go full Amia.

[DnDeez]

im personally pretty whatever about the "absurd races". if folks wanna play them sure, maybe lock them behind an application or something, though.

totally down for more fantastic race options as opposed to seeing less of them.

[Darkstorn42]

My two cents:
Get rid of award rotations.

Remove current award system and move to point based system. This allows for finer grained award system (more than 4 tiers). This also means that any player can save up their points to finally get that fancy award they always wanted. Remove luck for the terminally unlucky.

Then, award zero points to rolled characters made with award points to play a special race. When a character made with award points in this fashion reaches level 30 the get a MoD. (Maybe a special MoD with more lives)

This makes it so that everyone can always get to play what they want. It means there are no special forever characters. It also means award points get spent, instead of hoarded. And the special characters do not dominate the world because they are always being MoD'd away.

[Peacelily]

I want to play in the Forgotten Realms.

The Forgotten Realms, for reference, is a place where beholders run thieves guilds and dragons lurk in forests watching illusory soap operas conjured by the nearby cities to stop them spying.

It's a place where pretty much all areas have a literal devil assigned to it and even angels can fall if they do the wrong thing for the right reasons.

If you don't have these, you're playing Game of Thrones with occasional pointy ears, not the Forgotten Realms, which has more wonder, terror, magic and mystery than you'd find in eight seasons. Or Season 8, anyway ...

[Xersaoth]

I have voted for more races, but I would also vote for keeping them in the Underdark.

Regarding Giants, they make Skaljard look ridiculous when there are many of them running around. I would not vote for bringing them back, if they were explicitly mentioned, at all, or they should be much, much rarer.

Generally, the server definitely needs more people who play normal humans regardless of the options for playable races, just to make the surface look... normal.

P.S. It would be cool to see the race of flying skulls restricted to the fighter/wizard class (playing a demilich, locked behind a strong application, has been a personal dream of mine for some time). Just saying.

P.S. Playing Dragons or Genies is a nice dream too, but they would probably be too setting-breaking for most.

[Kushion]

I have voted for more races, but I would also vote for keeping them in the Underdark.

Regarding Giants, they make Skaljard look ridiculous when there are many of them running around. I would not vote for bringing them back, if they were explicitly mentioned, at all, or they should be much, much rarer.

Generally, the server definitely needs more people who play normal humans regardless of the options for playable races, just to make the surface look... normal.

P.S. It would be cool to see the race of flying skulls restricted to the fighter/wizard class (playing a demilich, locked behind a strong application, has been a personal dream of mine for some time). Just saying.

P.S. Playing Dragons or Genies is a nice dream too, but they would probably be too setting-breaking for most.

humans are already the Majority on surface, not sure where this is coming from. Even the Underdark has massive amounts of human pcs.

[DnDeez]

I have voted for more races, but I would also vote for keeping them in the Underdark.

Regarding Giants, they make Skaljard look ridiculous when there are many of them running around. I would not vote for bringing them back, if they were explicitly mentioned, at all, or they should be much, much rarer.

Generally, the server definitely needs more people who play normal humans regardless of the options for playable races, just to make the surface look... normal.

P.S. It would be cool to see the race of flying skulls restricted to the fighter/wizard class (playing a demilich, locked behind a strong application, has been a personal dream of mine for some time). Just saying.

P.S. Playing Dragons or Genies is a nice dream too, but they would probably be too setting-breaking for most.

humans are already the Majority on surface, not sure where this is coming from. Even the Underdark has massive amounts of human pcs.

this ^^^
plenty of humans everywhere

[ThalantyrS]

First I agree with Darkstorn the awards system is just too random, it doesn't reward roleplay, RPR rating is not involved, it is just a dice roll at lvl 26 to 30 and depends on if you are a hoarder and have gold. So first of all yeah, the current system is not enjoyable but if I always get points and I just save up, I know I'll eventual have my options without the uncertainty of a dice roll. And then if those points depend not on luck or gold, but how I played that character, my RPR rating, and just make it vary a little bit. Like up to lvl 20: 1 point, up to 26: 2 points, 26+: 3 points and in every tier you get chance equal to your RPR rating (RPR 20 is 20%) for an extra point. You could also increase that chance by X% for each time that character got a -recommend. May be there's a bit of room for abuse there if you have many friends? otherwise, if you get pestered by someone in a tell for a recommend, you just do the opposite.

Then the high fantasy of Faerun that Peacelily mentions. I agree that there could be way more dragons and beholders and whatever lurking in a more meaningful way, BUT should they be players? The problem with them being players is that they have to level up with the rest around. They have to hang out in Skal and, as Xersaoth mentions, you end up with a lot of Giants and other too obvious awards races in the middle of that little town and it looks off. So to that point, in my opinion, unless the race polymorphs into a normal race form, its a no go. UNLESS we create a whole new starter area for high fantasy races where they can level up until they feel alright to go to Skal or the mainland to run their main roleplay, knowing well they might have too many eyes on them if they are hanging around the city. This last thing is probably complicated, so in the worse case escenario yeah, less fantastic races in the middle of a small town leveling up like they are nothing. May be the most rare award races should also start at higher level and gear, that's another option I guess. The way I see it what throws people off with these award races is that they play as if they are just another common race and while you could have people RP them better, they also have no other choice than to lvl up, gear up and craft in the same places as the common races do.

Finally also mentioned above was the idea of more non-race awards. 100% on this, those would be really nice. Even if they are only RP related, if the RP weight is high it will be better than turning your elf into a Genasi.

TL;DR: Award system is too random, make it a points system
TL;DR: More high fantasy races is fine, but may be they should be NPC, DM controlled and if they are players, they cannot just start lvl 3 in Skal or Cordor and have to build up as if they are nothing.

[Agog_fr]

Hello.

The prospect of playing fantasy races can be fun, but I think it would be a bad idea because :

• It's already unlikely that races as monstrous and violent as minotaurs and ogres would live together in Andunor. As far as I know, minotaurs live in small clans of 8 minotaurs maximum, or else they are solitary. They live in a state of permanent high agressivity, and most of them worship Baphomet. If, on top of that, you add even more extreme races like illthids or beholders, it's going to dilute the essence of these races, their dangerousness and their significance in the setting.

• I don't think these races are meant to be played as Player Characters, for the simple reason that their minds are too different from ours, and you can't interpret them seriously. Even the drows are supposed to be very hard to play. They're close to what a tanaari is, a mixture of sadism, unthinkable cruelty and high intelligence, which none of us have.

It's even worse for an illithid, who has almost nothing human left in him.

So it doesn't seem to me that opening up these races is going to create any RP, it's going to be technically fun, yes, but not much more.

[L I C E]

this server confuses me at times. drow who go onto the surface server to rp are under incredible scrutiny, yet fey, fey'ri, vampires, minotaurs, avariel, genasi, tieflings and god knows what else get free reign to just plod about as they please unchecked despite being incredibly difficult to rp correctly and rarer than drow in setting. either start cracking down on people not rping their award races correctly equally across the board, or be rid of it all and let us go back to the days of goblins in cordor. can't have both. give us beholders i say and go full goon mode or we go back to the days of every award pc being super rare and uncommon.

remove wild elf, aquatic elf, derro etc from awards btw. it's silly.

[Xkallubar]

Hell yes. I want to play a beholder, or a redcap, or a gremlin, or a boggle! (And I don't want to have to work my Snuggybear off playing characters I don't enjoy in order to play as a fun monster!)

Playable Beholders would be awesome.

I don't think most races should be locked behind rewards.

[The Moon]

On one hand, none of the current rewards are really speaking to me and so I have no incentive to roll characters for rewards.

On the other, I counted no less than five different RDDs and two Avariel in the span of a few hours while tending to a temporary stall in Cordor. It's getting to the point where certain uncommon or supposedly rare races are beginning to feel like the norm, and the lack of people side-eyeing the oddities or otherwise being cautious/curious about them speaks volumes.

There does need to be a thorough mix-up of the rewards; maybe limiting numbers on some races (and compromising by adding a variety of things to choose), and adding rewards that aren't race-based.

[FurnishMyFlatForCheap]

Personally I feel it would be helpful to have the award stat templates available to regular human as a minor award, as a lot of the issues people find with people disregarding lore for a race are likely due to the mechanics being more interesting than the race.

As for people not rp’ing awards, we can pick on the people not playing the award properly all we want but if we don’t respond to the exotic beyond huh that’s neat then it’s on us.