D&D 5E What is the appeal of the weird fantasy races?

[doctorbadwolf]

America's most famous example is probably China Town in San Fran. Half of the reason it still exists is because of tourism. If it weren't for that, it would have probably become like any other part of San Fran.

Having spent time in China Town, and knowing a few people who grew up there, no, that isn't right.

In my own town, few people give the Mexican part of the East Side "Little" anything, but it is an area that has been largely Mexican for generations, and where a lot of people speak very little English.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I'm not getting into the conversation of whether or not traditionally monstrous races should be allowed as PCs, there's no reason to get yet another thread shut down.

I can only say that I don't have that many humanoid monsters running around in my campaign either, certainly no more than 1 or 2 per region and even then I rarely use them.

Fair enough, and maybe you don't.

But the idea that restricting PCs is so the DM has a more coherent world seems amusing to me when those same DMs often have three times as many "monstrous races" running around. And saying "you can't play them, they are monsters" is likely far more common than "they don't exist in this world".

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I do watch movies and TV though I don't find it as entertaining as I did when I was younger. I think it's the repetition of ideas that has worn me down and pushed me away from fiction in general.

There are only twelve stories!

For example, my mom has been binge watching Hallmark and Christmas movies lately and, wow, they may as well just all be the same movie! Sure one movie has a blonde woman who plans parties and the other one has a brunette man that has a dog shelter, but the storyline was identical!

I haven't read fiction in years, save a single novel a fella from work insisted I read. Just for shits and giggles in indulged him as he kept going on and on about how good it was. It was very predictable to say the least, though in the moment I enjoyed it as an exercise in nostalgia.

Okay to be fair, Hallmark is about the most cliched style of fiction ever conceived. I've only seen ADS for most of them, and I can tell you the plot.

And yeah, some stories are highly predictable, but sometimes they surprise me too. But I tend to "float" between areas of interest.

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I don't want to speak for Oofta here, but I'm not really sure that is what he means. I don't know of any GM out there that pushes for the: kill on sight, unless there is already a logical constitution in place. Such as: "The lizardfolk have been eating all the crews coming down the river. One escapee even said there is a huge pile of bones."
Of course, this could be misdirection.
Also, I don't think anyone is saying lizardfolk can't trade. But if the world logic is they might double-cross you and eat you, then it is risky to trade with them. But knowing that, it might be fun to set up a trade meeting because they have something the PC's need.

In the end, I guess the complication is, if a DM wants to imply their logic to a world (D&D logic), and they want to make these creatures cannibals and thieves, are they allowed? Or does every sentient race need to be able to enter the PC's society on some level?

Oh I wasn't speaking to Oofta specifically about the "kill on sight" but a lot of people posted early on about how "Well, you can play a tiefling, but the towns that don't run you out for being a demon will spit on you. And if you play a Drow you are shot the moment you are seen." and other such ideas.

And I find it interesting that you mention the lizardfolk double-crossing the humans and killing them... when it is equally likely the humans will double-cross and kill them. I mean, how often do we see that in Crime dramas and spy thillers? "We had a deal!" "I'm renegotiating the terms." BAM.


Also, I'm not really going to answer your question on whether a DM is allowed to make every single sentient race other than the Core Four "cannibals and thieves", because it feels like a red herring. I will talk a little bit about some common things I have seen though.

Like, for example, The races like Orcs, Hobgoblins, Lizardfolk, Hags, ect do trade and make agreements.... with each other. Or with the evil cult. Or with X Y or Z.

So they are capable of working with others, it is just always limited to antagonists. And DMs seem fine with this. They seem fine having multiple societies of sentient creatures working together towards common goals... as long as they are all the bad guys. Lizardfolk have existed since the first edition of the game, and no one really says they are a "weird race" to include until a player wants to be one, then they are a "weird race" that the DM isn't sure they want to include in their world.

And, maybe it is a detail thing. It is pretty easy to just gloss over "Oh yeah, you are in the swamp, you should fight some lizardfolk, they live there" when that is all the deeper the players will engage with them, bags of hitpoints at the end of the sword. But if there is a human town on the edge of the swamp, and an entire civilization of Lizardfolk in the swamp... those two groups have come into contact. And it makes sense that unless they are actively at war, they have an agreement. And even if we take two states at war, they rarely are 100% bloodshed all the time, and often the people on the edges found common ground.

This just seems like it is a part of the conversation getting glossed over. Like the only sentient races that matter for world-building are the PC races, and nothing else matters. Which seems like an odd attitude.

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I'm used to @Chaosmancer misrepresenting or twisting pretty much everything I say but I think it's best to avoid the whole "having evil monsters that happen to be humanoid is wrong somehow and how should it be handled" argument. It leads to threads being shut down.
For the record I don't "encourage" behavior much one way or another other, the players can have their PC's do what they want and I will do my best to decide what the logical consequences would be. I will only step in if I think they may not understand the scene to clarify what is going on. I also have very few intelligent races running around, as I said early on. I don't even allow all the races from the PHB and I still think it's too many.

Dude, I never said you said that. I was referring to earlier posts in the thread, and the common refrain of racism against the strange PC options.

I was not misrepresenting your point
I was not twisting your words
I wasn't even going to press you on the points at all.

I was using you as a jumping off point for the discussion. So maybe instead of punching back before I even have a chance to respond you could back off. I really don't want to have to start off a conversation by defending myself from things I haven't even done.

 

[Marandahir]

Fair enough. Mind I come from the dinosaur side of things so I think it needs to be more a sliding scale like we have for birds, what with there being 4 definitions for what even counts as 'bird'. Do you only count the common ancestor of modern birds and its ancestors as 'Birds', thereby leaving out say, Archaeopteryx?

Humans in the strictest sense compared to humans in a larger sense

Birds are a type of dinosaur, which are a type of archosaur, which are a type of Diapsid which are a type of Sauropsid which are a type of Amniote, which are a type of Tetrapod, which are a type of lobed-finned fish.

Bird is an arbitrary distinction from earlier dinosaurs created because the sheer diversity of avian forms in the current era. I don't think the exact line, whether including Archaeopteryx or not, is all that important to anyone but taxonomists who can make a career off publications moving the "class" to be larger or smaller or slightly to the left or right.

What does this mean for Humans and Hominids? Looking back at an era when we walked among entities alternately defined as separate species within Homo or separate subspecies within Homo sapiens, or a mix of both, I don't think the people who make the bulk of our genetic code would have really distinguished much between their ancestors and the ancestors of the people who make up a smaller portion of our genetic code -- at least no more distinguished than we do today between different nationalities, tribes, clans, cultures. We're all people.

This brings us to the question of why we have hard lines between Human, Half-Elf, and Elf, since the peoples readily interbreed true. I generally prefer a messy ancestry map like we see in The Elder Scrolls. You might have defined core archetypes of a set of peoples, but it's clear that most of these are not actually representative of a "pure" people but almost everyone is a a descendant of melting pots. We see hybrids all over the place, they just mechanically appear like one of their parents until the hybrids became hybrid enough to be their own people (like Bretons or Imperials) or until some magical or lifestyle thing happened that changed them entirely (like Orcs, Dunmer, Falmer, or on the human side of things, Kothringi). The only people that don't seem to interbreed with anyone else are the Argonians, and their morphology is really weird and they're not descendants of the Ehlnofey but creations of the Hist (supposedly), so... (Though even still, there's some argument to be made that there may be links between Argonians, Dragons, and Tsaesci, the last of which DID interbreed with the "Imperials" thousands of years ago).

I think Tasha's Cauldron provides a tool for describing these vague, blurry boundaries quite well. It's quite clear what the Orkiest of Orc is and what the Elviest of Elf is and what the Humaniest of Human is, and Half-elf and Half-orc provide good middle-grounds between Human and Elf and Human and Orc, but playing with the ancestry rules, we can explore the blurry margins, in addition to exploring what it mean to be an Elf raised in Dwarfville (hellow Kíli x Tauriel shippers), or a Halfling in Goblintown (Gollum?), or weirder things like a Warforged raised by Dragon Turtles (maybe borrow elements from Dragonborn and Tortle?). Plus, the feature lets you create a non-standard person of the tribe, like the weird scholar Dwarf who got sick from too much beer but was really smart instead.

 

[Oofta]

Fair enough, and maybe you don't.

But the idea that restricting PCs is so the DM has a more coherent world seems amusing to me when those same DMs often have three times as many "monstrous races" running around. And saying "you can't play them, they are monsters" is likely far more common than "they don't exist in this world".

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Okay to be fair, Hallmark is about the most cliched style of fiction ever conceived. I've only seen ADS for most of them, and I can tell you the plot.

And yeah, some stories are highly predictable, but sometimes they surprise me too. But I tend to "float" between areas of interest.

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Oh I wasn't speaking to Oofta specifically about the "kill on sight" but a lot of people posted early on about how "Well, you can play a tiefling, but the towns that don't run you out for being a demon will spit on you. And if you play a Drow you are shot the moment you are seen." and other such ideas.

And I find it interesting that you mention the lizardfolk double-crossing the humans and killing them... when it is equally likely the humans will double-cross and kill them. I mean, how often do we see that in Crime dramas and spy thillers? "We had a deal!" "I'm renegotiating the terms." BAM.


Also, I'm not really going to answer your question on whether a DM is allowed to make every single sentient race other than the Core Four "cannibals and thieves", because it feels like a red herring. I will talk a little bit about some common things I have seen though.

Like, for example, The races like Orcs, Hobgoblins, Lizardfolk, Hags, ect do trade and make agreements.... with each other. Or with the evil cult. Or with X Y or Z.

So they are capable of working with others, it is just always limited to antagonists. And DMs seem fine with this. They seem fine having multiple societies of sentient creatures working together towards common goals... as long as they are all the bad guys. Lizardfolk have existed since the first edition of the game, and no one really says they are a "weird race" to include until a player wants to be one, then they are a "weird race" that the DM isn't sure they want to include in their world.

And, maybe it is a detail thing. It is pretty easy to just gloss over "Oh yeah, you are in the swamp, you should fight some lizardfolk, they live there" when that is all the deeper the players will engage with them, bags of hitpoints at the end of the sword. But if there is a human town on the edge of the swamp, and an entire civilization of Lizardfolk in the swamp... those two groups have come into contact. And it makes sense that unless they are actively at war, they have an agreement. And even if we take two states at war, they rarely are 100% bloodshed all the time, and often the people on the edges found common ground.

This just seems like it is a part of the conversation getting glossed over. Like the only sentient races that matter for world-building are the PC races, and nothing else matters. Which seems like an odd attitude.

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Dude, I never said you said that. I was referring to earlier posts in the thread, and the common refrain of racism against the strange PC options.

I was not misrepresenting your point
I was not twisting your words
I wasn't even going to press you on the points at all.

I was using you as a jumping off point for the discussion. So maybe instead of punching back before I even have a chance to respond you could back off. I really don't want to have to start off a conversation by defending myself from things I haven't even done.

Sorry if I misunderstood.

However, I get tired of people telling others there is only one true way. For example I enjoyed the Shrek movies. But in my campaign world every interaction anyone has ever had throughout history with ogres has shown that ogres are dangerous bullies and predators that enjoy killing people.

From the MM description:

Ogres eat almost anything, but they especially enjoy the taste of dwarves, halflings, and elves. When they can, they combine dinner with pleasure, chasing scurrying victims around before eating them raw. If enough of its victim remains after the ogre has gorged itself, it might make a loincloth from its quarry’s skin and a necklace from its leftover bones. This macabre crafting is the height of ogre culture.​

If an ogre as described in the MM walks into town, the reaction is going to be the same as if a tiger walked into town: fight or flight. It's not "an odd attitude", it's having a world that makes sense and using monsters as they are and have been described in the core books since the inception of the game.

You may not like that. Ogres don't have to follow the default description, it's just a default and many campaigns ignore it. Maybe in your campaign all creatures with an intelligence of 5 or above sit around the campfire and sing kum-ba-ya while roasting marshmallows.

But that's not the default assumption and I have no problem with some of the monsters in the world being intelligent. Even if I don't use them often.

 

[Zsong]

I'm bored with the limited number of cultures and peoples created from the core 4+their sub-options.

I'd much rather emulate something more akin to Chalmun's Cantina in Mos Eisley Spaceport from Star Wars.

Right now, I've been tinkering with a modified Zodiac to represent the 12 core deities, their animal spirits, and the people that reflect that. So Leonin, Gnolls, Orcs, Dragonborn, Aarakocra, etc would all live alongside one another in reference to a celestial hierarchy. It makes for a diverse and different setting.

That’s cool. And there should be ways to play with that kitchen sink approach. There was the complete book of humanoids in 2E. It’s not my taste, unless I am doing planescape. I generally avoid kitchen sink games.

 

[Mallus]

Since people love answering questions with questions, I have a few at this juncture...

Didn't a player in Gygax's campaign play a vampire (Sir Fang?). Who leveled up through lower HD undead? Am I remembering that wrong?

Weren't the earliest D&D (or D&D-inspired) campaigns full of weird fantasy races? Like Blackmoor & Tekumel. Or Midkemia from Ray Feist's books, which had its roots in a long D&D game.

Don't fantasy authors like writing about weird races and fantasy readers like reading about them? What do you suppose they get out of that?

While the digressions into biology & Death of the Author (this place can be amazing, still...) were interesting, shouldn't the focus in this discussion be fiction & what we get out of reading, writing, and kinda living it out within the context of elf games?

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Since people love answering questions with questions, I have a few at this juncture...

Didn't a player in Gygax's campaign play a vampire (Sir Fang?). Who leveled up through lower HD undead? Am I remembering that wrong?

Weren't the earliest D&D (or D&D-inspired) campaigns full of weird fantasy races? Like Blackmoor & Tekumel. Or Midkemia from Ray Feist's books, which had its roots in a long D&D game.

Don't fantasy authors like writing about weird races and fantasy readers like reading about them? What do you suppose they get out of that?

While the digressions into biology & Death of the Author (this place can be amazing, still...) were interesting, shouldn't the focus in this discussion be fiction & what we get out of reading, writing, and kinda living it out within the context of elf games?

1. No. No. Yes. (Sir Fang was in Arneson's campaign).

2. Depends on how you define them. But Tekumel was a separate RPG (Empire of the Petal Throne), not D&D.

3. Some do, but few have them as the main protagonist. Some do. Don't know; everyone reads for different reasons.

4. The focus of any discussion should be what the participants want to discuss.

PS- leading questions rarely get you to the place you want, and come off poorly. It's best to say what you mean.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Well, what did the OP say that you feel the need to tell him he's doing it wrong? That he doesn't understand why people need to play D&D as if it were Zootopia? While they admit they're a bit old school and that they personally find it a bit off putting and then asked a question of why people want to play such PCs. There is no indication of one-true-way-ism to be found.

I chose to ignore the original "furry roleplay" comment because I assumed it was simply spoken in ignorance, but now I guess I should say something.

It doesn't really matter if you didn't mean judgment when you said "as if it were Zootopia," or if the OP meant derision when referring to my preferences as though they were a fetish community. Derision and judgment were communicated, regardless of the intent.

I don't like dragonborn because of some kind of art I like or don't like. I don't like dragonborn because of any film published by any company. I like them because I think dragons are awesome, and therefore that playable dragon-people are awesome available for me to play. I like them for the same reason I like Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern books, or the Temeraire books, or Dunkelzahn and drakes from Shadowrun: dragons are awesome, and stuff that makes dragon-y things ready to hand is cool. I literally have no further, deeper, or prior motive than that.

Yet for that simple preference--one which, I should note, is a BIG reason why the second D is Dragons, so I'm hardly alone for thinking dragons are awesome and therefore gaming which includes them is awesome--I am frequently labelled as a "special snowflake," a furry, someone who "throws a fit" if I don't get my way, someone with "weird" (meaning, abnormal) preferences, someone who can't be "happy" with "traditional" options (and must, apparently, thus be difficult to please?), someone that secretly wants to undermine DM authority or pervert DM vision or whatever else. People feel free to insult me--whether or not they intend to--purely because of a thing that brings me joy and does nothing whatever to them. People feel free to act like my preferences are not worth catering to. I have, in fact, even been told that I should be grateful that I even got the explicitly ghettoized, weaksauce options provided in the 5e PHB. (It is worth noting, the person who said that--on these very forums--meant it in a bitter "they could have done you worse" kind of way, not a smug "we deigned to allow you this incredible compromise" sense.)

So...yeah. There's an awful lot of implicit or explicit judgment thrown around in this thread...and from the very first post, it was stacked up against the people who like less-human-looking races and races that came about only 15 years ago rather than 30 years ago or whatever.

 

[Oofta]

I chose to ignore the original "furry roleplay" comment because I assumed it was simply spoken in ignorance, but now I guess I should say something.

It doesn't really matter if you didn't mean judgment when you said "as if it were Zootopia," or if the OP meant derision when referring to my preferences as though they were a fetish community. Derision and judgment were communicated, regardless of the intent.

I don't like dragonborn because of some kind of art I like or don't like. I don't like dragonborn because of any film published by any company. I like them because I think dragons are awesome, and therefore that playable dragon-people are awesome available for me to play. I like them for the same reason I like Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern books, or the Temeraire books, or Dunkelzahn and drakes from Shadowrun: dragons are awesome, and stuff that makes dragon-y things ready to hand is cool. I literally have no further, deeper, or prior motive than that.

Yet for that simple preference--one which, I should note, is a BIG reason why the second D is Dragons, so I'm hardly alone for thinking dragons are awesome and therefore gaming which includes them is awesome--I am frequently labelled as a "special snowflake," a furry, someone who "throws a fit" if I don't get my way, someone with "weird" (meaning, abnormal) preferences, someone who can't be "happy" with "traditional" options (and must, apparently, thus be difficult to please?), someone that secretly wants to undermine DM authority or pervert DM vision or whatever else. People feel free to insult me--whether or not they intend to--purely because of a thing that brings me joy and does nothing whatever to them. People feel free to act like my preferences are not worth catering to. I have, in fact, even been told that I should be grateful that I even got the explicitly ghettoized, weaksauce options provided in the 5e PHB. (It is worth noting, the person who said that--on these very forums--meant it in a bitter "they could have done you worse" kind of way, not a smug "we deigned to allow you this incredible compromise" sense.)

So...yeah. There's an awful lot of implicit or explicit judgment thrown around in this thread...and from the very first post, it was stacked up against the people who like less-human-looking races and races that came about only 15 years ago rather than 30 years ago or whatever.

Which is why the OP was trying to get a better understanding so that they can better understand and empathize with people that want to play "nontraditional" races.

As far as how people react, I can only tell you that in my home game I limit races because of my vision of my world and what makes sense; it's not because I think the people who want to play the races are wrong, weird or strange.

All I'm asking is that people react to what is asked, not extra baggage that has nothing to do with the post.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Sorry if I misunderstood.

However, I get tired of people telling others there is only one true way. For example I enjoyed the Shrek movies. But in my campaign world every interaction anyone has ever had throughout history with ogres has shown that ogres are dangerous bullies and predators that enjoy killing people.

From the MM description:

Ogres eat almost anything, but they especially enjoy the taste of dwarves, halflings, and elves. When they can, they combine dinner with pleasure, chasing scurrying victims around before eating them raw. If enough of its victim remains after the ogre has gorged itself, it might make a loincloth from its quarry’s skin and a necklace from its leftover bones. This macabre crafting is the height of ogre culture.​

If an ogre as described in the MM walks into town, the reaction is going to be the same as if a tiger walked into town: fight or flight. It's not "an odd attitude", it's having a world that makes sense and using monsters as they are and have been described in the core books since the inception of the game.

You may not like that. Ogres don't have to follow the default description, it's just a default and many campaigns ignore it. Maybe in your campaign all creatures with an intelligence of 5 or above sit around the campfire and sing kum-ba-ya while roasting marshmallows.

But that's not the default assumption and I have no problem with some of the monsters in the world being intelligent. Even if I don't use them often.

You are misinterpreting my point, and while I'd like to have a conversation, you seem not only defensive, but hostilely defensive. So let me get this out of the way.

There is no "One True Way" to game
Nothing I say is a reflection of the gaming reality at Oofta's table
Nothing I say is a judgement on how Oofta or other people enjoy their games
I do not desire to tell other people that their way of having fun is wrong.
I do not dispute that Monsters in the Monster manual are described as evil
I do not wish to have a discussion on the nature of evil in the Monster Manual.
I do not wish to have a discussion on the morality of portraying monsters from the Monster Manual as Evil.
I, once more, am making no judgements upon anyones table, nor assuming that what I say is reflective of the specific reality at the specific table for the specific game world.

We good?

Okay


Now, ignoring the dig about kum-ba-ya and the assumptions about my gaming table being full of hippies, you presented a part of the Ogre lore, but there are some interesting bits that a Dungeon Master can pull from that helps illustrate my point. From the next page of the MM, under the sub-heading "Ogre Gangs"

"Whenever possible, Ogres gang up with other monsters to bully or prey on creatures weaker than themselves. They associate freely with goblinoids, orcs, and trolls, and practically worship Giants."

We also have the very next entry in the Monster Manual which is the half ogre, who results from Ogres breeding with humans, hobgoblins, bugbears, or orcs. It also specifically says they don't breed with dwarves, halflings or elves.

We also see in Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes that Ogres can be trained to fulfill certain roles, and the Howdah tells us that while they normally transport Goblins they also can easily transport Kobolds, Deep Gnomes, or other small humanoids.


So, while you describe an Ogre walking into a town as similar to a Tiger... that is only true if the town is an elf, dwarf, or halfling town. Maybe a human town, they can get odd.

But an Ogre walking into the center of a Goblin town might be an everyday occurrence. A Hobgoblin City might have a stable Ogre population. Taking the PHB and MM together, a tribe of "orcs" might contain Orcs, Humans, Half-Orcs, Ogres, Ogrillions, Orogs and Trolls. I doubt "in harmony" would apply, but there is some stability there at least. Maybe they are all ruled over by a Giant, or a small Giant Clan.

Which ties back around to the point I was pointing out. Your post really helped me crystalize the thought that had been murmuring in the back of my head, with your assertion that many DMs are limiting Player options for the sake of "Coherent Worldbuilding." And, again, you aren't the only one and you aren't the person who presented some of the ideas I'm going to be referencing, and I don't want to make any assumptions about your table in particular.

But how many of those DMs looking to build coherent worlds are ONLY focusing on the Player Characters? They make the human kingdoms, a few elf towns, a dwarf city with a few trading posts, maybe a quaint halfling village, and limit all the other races that are player options. Then, when they need a threat to the village the players are at, they open up Xanathar's and roll up a fight with Ogres, Orcs and a troll, without really thinking about the implications of those three different groups working together.

Or, like I said, how many DMs are not saying "There are no Lizardfolk, Goblins, Hobgoblins, Bugbears or Kobolds in my game world" and are actually telling players that those races are evil and not for players to use. Again, not saying that you say that, not judging your table, and not trying to get into a discussion about the nature of evil and monsters. My point is that while people are saying that including the "weird races" in DnD like Tabaxi, Tieflfings and Dragonborn make it a "Mos Eisley Cantina" and that is too much for their belief, the wilds of DnD contain dozens of intelligent races and cultures.

The Drow Empire
The Duergar Empire
The Yuan-Ti Empire
The Mindflayer Empire
Orc Tribes
Gnoll Tribes
Goblin Tribes
Lizardfolk Tribes
Hobgoblin Empire
Kobold Tribes
Giant Clans
Sauhaguin
Locath
Grung tribes
Kuo-Toa tribes

When we are talking about "building a coherent world" are we only talking about the civilized world? Why? Even when we had only the Core Four, that wasn't the extent of all sentient life. Yet a lot of this discussion is focused solely on worldbuilding in terms of what the players can play and not... the world.

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I chose to ignore the original "furry roleplay" comment because I assumed it was simply spoken in ignorance, but now I guess I should say something.

It doesn't really matter if you didn't mean judgment when you said "as if it were Zootopia," or if the OP meant derision when referring to my preferences as though they were a fetish community. Derision and judgment were communicated, regardless of the intent.

I don't like dragonborn because of some kind of art I like or don't like. I don't like dragonborn because of any film published by any company. I like them because I think dragons are awesome, and therefore that playable dragon-people are awesome available for me to play. I like them for the same reason I like Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern books, or the Temeraire books, or Dunkelzahn and drakes from Shadowrun: dragons are awesome, and stuff that makes dragon-y things ready to hand is cool. I literally have no further, deeper, or prior motive than that.

Yet for that simple preference--one which, I should note, is a BIG reason why the second D is Dragons, so I'm hardly alone for thinking dragons are awesome and therefore gaming which includes them is awesome--I am frequently labelled as a "special snowflake," a furry, someone who "throws a fit" if I don't get my way, someone with "weird" (meaning, abnormal) preferences, someone who can't be "happy" with "traditional" options (and must, apparently, thus be difficult to please?), someone that secretly wants to undermine DM authority or pervert DM vision or whatever else. People feel free to insult me--whether or not they intend to--purely because of a thing that brings me joy and does nothing whatever to them. People feel free to act like my preferences are not worth catering to. I have, in fact, even been told that I should be grateful that I even got the explicitly ghettoized, weaksauce options provided in the 5e PHB. (It is worth noting, the person who said that--on these very forums--meant it in a bitter "they could have done you worse" kind of way, not a smug "we deigned to allow you this incredible compromise" sense.)

So...yeah. There's an awful lot of implicit or explicit judgment thrown around in this thread...and from the very first post, it was stacked up against the people who like less-human-looking races and races that came about only 15 years ago rather than 30 years ago or whatever.

Very well said.

For myself, one of the types of races that always fascinate me are the "furry races". Shifters in particular, since they are far wider than just "cat people". I find the mixing of human mind with animal instincts a fascinating place for fiction to go. How different does the world appear to those people? How do they build society slightly different from us?

And, while people may say it is "weird", I'll point to... Egyptian Mythology, Greek Mythology, pretty much literally any cartoon designed between 1930 and 1990. The idea of "human animal mix" is probably one of the oldest ideas in humanity. Mickey Mouse is literally just a mouse-human, he makes billions of dollars, but I'm supposed to be the wierdo for saying "Hey, what if Mickey Mouse but... actually more mouse-like."?