Recent content by Paul Farquhar

Does it actually say that? Because if it does it’s wrong. Goblins are far more numerous than most of the PHB species. And aasimar are incredibly rare. You don’t get many angels making babies with mortals. There are probably more nothics in the world.

Character anchors are not tied to species. You can use anything you want. You can be from the Sword Coast without being from a monoculture. The thing is, aside from the "go home" racist connotations, you need a minimum population size to have a monocultural community. There are a few dragonborn...

Your DM won't let you add a small family of dragonborn to a town?! What you need is a better DM, not a setting book that spells out population demographics in minute detail. I'm pretty sure the source material does not state that there are zero dragonborn. There will be a whole bunch of...

Backstory, not options. But I didn't say it was unique, I said it's not universal.

Pretty sure it isn’t.

The Critical Role method is for the player and the DM to work together on backstory, so that it actually includes things that are likely to be relevant to stuff that is likely to happen during the campaign.

Greenest has a thriving community of people, some of whom happen to be dragonborn.

I must have them, but I have no idea who they are or where they are. I can’t say, I’m a Farquhar, ergo I must come from from Farquharland. There is no such place. Likewise there is no need for there to be any “Dragonborn settlements” on the Sword Coast for a Dragonborn to be from the Sword...

They are not Scottish though. No reason why your Dragonborn characters should have friends, family and organisations that are also Dragonborn. I have no biological relatives closer than 200 miles. And aside from that one person, I have no known biological relatives at all.

Why not? The majority of the population of London are from parts unknown if you go back one or two generations. It has to be, for some, because they are not actually species as such. And you keep ignoring species that are not in the PHB. D&D is not, never has been only about things in the core...

I wasn’t, but many on my neighbours’ grandparents were.

Why? I live near London now, and have done for over 20 years, but I’m not from London and don’t consider myself a Londoner. People of all kinds from all over the world are drawn to settle in major cities.

For me the variety of sentient species in D&D (and I include the contents of the monster manual) cannot be taken seriously, so I don’t. It sounds like you are looking for a more grounded game than fits the standard 5e rules. It’s OTT high fantasy, so it attracts players who like OTT high fantasy.

And the little dog too!

I just play with similarly minded people (who like Pratchett, Star Trek and Monty Python). I’m afraid I would tend to avoid playing with a group whose tastes were very different. This I find strange, in that I prefer Science Fiction to Fantasy, and thus I prefer an array of diverse aliens to...