Which choice MOST influences the character race you pick?
Which choice MOST influences the character race you pick?
What do you look for MOST when choosing a race to play?
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"My name is Orleron...a dungeonmaster...two years ago I got shot through a game client...I'm in a distant part of the internet aboard these servers of escaped mental patients...my players. I've made enemies, stupid, and annoying...now all I want to do is make CoPaP a reality, to warn Earth...Look inward(to your monitor) and share the newbies I've seen..."
"My name is Orleron...a dungeonmaster...two years ago I got shot through a game client...I'm in a distant part of the internet aboard these servers of escaped mental patients...my players. I've made enemies, stupid, and annoying...now all I want to do is make CoPaP a reality, to warn Earth...Look inward(to your monitor) and share the newbies I've seen..."
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Vichan Lyonsen
- Planewalker
- Posts: 32
- Joined: Mon Nov 24, 2003 10:36 pm
For me its a mixture of many of those and perhaps one or two options not present. I usually start with a Class I want to run, not everyone does this..it just is the way I go about it....for me there are certain stereotypes that I also employ...again, they are stereotypes, just my own personal approach..
I for example dont think Elves would make good Paladins...not to say they couldnt..or even shouldnt...but to me elves tend to be flighty..humans and Dwarves to me are what Paladins are made of.
Rangers...any race really, but I like elves and half elves for it mostly...
i temper my stupid prejudices with the background I am working on in my head, this background gets built around the race and class together, this requires in depth information about the lands from which the PC comes from....I like PC's from distant lands with personal internal conflicts, just about all of my PC's have some sort of internal or secret history they'd rather not have.... I do not favor the classic "my family was slaughtered by Balors when I was 9 but I killed one and ran away" background...
I generally stay away from extremely unique custom races, though I'm not sure I can say why, custom races are often limiting in what they can do, on the other hand they offer vast interesting RP possibilities....
I never play gnomes or halflings....I've just never had any luck with them.
I for example dont think Elves would make good Paladins...not to say they couldnt..or even shouldnt...but to me elves tend to be flighty..humans and Dwarves to me are what Paladins are made of.
Rangers...any race really, but I like elves and half elves for it mostly...
i temper my stupid prejudices with the background I am working on in my head, this background gets built around the race and class together, this requires in depth information about the lands from which the PC comes from....I like PC's from distant lands with personal internal conflicts, just about all of my PC's have some sort of internal or secret history they'd rather not have.... I do not favor the classic "my family was slaughtered by Balors when I was 9 but I killed one and ran away" background...
I generally stay away from extremely unique custom races, though I'm not sure I can say why, custom races are often limiting in what they can do, on the other hand they offer vast interesting RP possibilities....
I never play gnomes or halflings....I've just never had any luck with them.
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Malathyre
- Planar Sage
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Gotta be the RP concept, though admittedly, with some of the new custom races floating around, the damn, this is cool effect can take over. Such characters of mine would never last very long, though, due to poor concept. 
<Daerthe> There is only room for so much realism before things start to get silly.
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Red Golem
- World Leader: Abyss404
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This just means that worlds need to make sure their new custom races have good fun-to-play RP concepts. The onus is not just on the builder, but also the players, in letting the builders know what they would find to be interesting RP concepts for races.
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Nighthawk4
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It varies, including several of the above.
Usually, I get an idea for a character - an RP concept. Usually, this will include at least race, class, origins and background.
Alternatively, I may just get the idea that I haven't played one of a particular race for a while - and think up an RP profile from their.
Physically, most of my characters are a bunch of low-level wimps anyway - so the uber-skills idea doesn't apply. They have sand kicked in their faces by seven-stone weaklings
Usually, I get an idea for a character - an RP concept. Usually, this will include at least race, class, origins and background.
Alternatively, I may just get the idea that I haven't played one of a particular race for a while - and think up an RP profile from their.
Physically, most of my characters are a bunch of low-level wimps anyway - so the uber-skills idea doesn't apply. They have sand kicked in their faces by seven-stone weaklings
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You mean Avlis isn't Real Life?
You mean Avlis isn't Real Life?
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Malathyre
- Planar Sage
- Posts: 68
- Joined: Tue Nov 25, 2003 9:52 am
- Location: Avlis player, Tairis'nadur DM
Absolutely! My problem is I see a wemic on Avlis, and I think, "Oooh, those look nifty, I should try playing one", without having a good concept in mind or even necessarily a character idea that I will have fun playing. There's a big onus on the players here, no doubt.Red Golem wrote:This just means that worlds need to make sure their new custom races have good fun-to-play RP concepts. The onus is not just on the builder, but also the players, in letting the builders know what they would find to be interesting RP concepts for races.
<Daerthe> There is only room for so much realism before things start to get silly.
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Titanium Dragon
- Clueless Prime
- Posts: 18
- Joined: Tue Nov 25, 2003 2:39 am
I pick my race based on RP concept. Examples:
Sh'lieulias is an elven necromancer. I wanted him to be very weak, but very smart. I also wanted him to be a bit unusual. Humans just aren't weak enough to me; elves on the other hand are very guant, but rather fluid and very intelligent. Thus, he was an elf.
Vence was human as he was a rough from the Mikona slums. It was a natural choice, though IC he's about the size of a half-orc.
Keint I made sort-of as an experiment; unfortunately, I didn't do a very good job of RPing his gruffness. I'm thinking about taking up with him again and making him a harder, gruffer, more veteranish character.
Samantha Cobble is human because I wanted her to be fairly normal and average. She has no score below 10 and originally had no score above 16. I also made her human because I have a hard enough time RPing a female, let alone a non-human one.
Two common traps I see are people playing too much to their race. People sometimes feel too constrained by their racial boundries. I also have noticed that lots of people have human, elven, and dwarven characters; humans and elves (and the crossbreeds) I think are very common because people feel the least restrained by them, whereas dwarves tend to be a bit more stereotypical in general but are fun to play. If you look though, at least as far as I see, the vast majority of characters are humans and elves, with humans having a bit of an edge over elves. Gnomes are the rarest character; perhaps it is because they are a weird race that people aren't sure how to play, or perhaps it is their weird racial adjustments (+2 con, -2 str); all I know is that I have seen about a dozen gnomes, and only a handful of them more than once. I have been considering creating a gnome character just to counteract this, but I must admit that I run into the same roadblock with them as everyone else in terms of creating viable, long-standing concepts.
In custom races, I have noticed that the most prevalent custom race on Avlis seems to be kobold. There aren't THAT many of them, but there are a fair number. Perhaps it was Mr. Kutah who inspired so many others to play them. There have been a fair number of ogres (or are they half-ogres?) as well. There are quite a few ghost elves (possibly more than kobolds), but no one can tell them apart. Moreover, Sh'lieulias is at times mistaken for a ghost elf, to the point that I'm leaning towards him having some ghost elf blood even if he is not one himself. I have seen one wemic (myself, though I have heard of others), only heard of centaurs, met one lizardman (Sidac), have yet to meet an orc, have seen one gnoll... CCs aren't very common, perhaps because it is so hard to come up with an independent RP concept for them.
On Abyss 404, there are lots of custom race characters, but a lot of them play once and quit. There are two bantmar who are around a lot, and two or three tieflings. I think that Abyss 404 lends itself more to those, though, especially given that they are native/more related to the outer planes than normal humans/demihumans. I'm sure there will be a higher proportion of CCs there than anywhere else, possibly because there is very little RP background known for some of the races so people seem less constrained in becoming them, and also because it has had CCs since its rebirth so they are permanently embedded in the psyche of the world.
It is harder to RP non-humans in my opinion, and I think that is part of why there are so many humans. I think it is a good thing though - humans are the most versatile race, and we get all sorts of great characters from their ranks. Also, they breed like rabbits, so its no wonder there are so many of them.
Sh'lieulias is an elven necromancer. I wanted him to be very weak, but very smart. I also wanted him to be a bit unusual. Humans just aren't weak enough to me; elves on the other hand are very guant, but rather fluid and very intelligent. Thus, he was an elf.
Vence was human as he was a rough from the Mikona slums. It was a natural choice, though IC he's about the size of a half-orc.
Keint I made sort-of as an experiment; unfortunately, I didn't do a very good job of RPing his gruffness. I'm thinking about taking up with him again and making him a harder, gruffer, more veteranish character.
Samantha Cobble is human because I wanted her to be fairly normal and average. She has no score below 10 and originally had no score above 16. I also made her human because I have a hard enough time RPing a female, let alone a non-human one.
Two common traps I see are people playing too much to their race. People sometimes feel too constrained by their racial boundries. I also have noticed that lots of people have human, elven, and dwarven characters; humans and elves (and the crossbreeds) I think are very common because people feel the least restrained by them, whereas dwarves tend to be a bit more stereotypical in general but are fun to play. If you look though, at least as far as I see, the vast majority of characters are humans and elves, with humans having a bit of an edge over elves. Gnomes are the rarest character; perhaps it is because they are a weird race that people aren't sure how to play, or perhaps it is their weird racial adjustments (+2 con, -2 str); all I know is that I have seen about a dozen gnomes, and only a handful of them more than once. I have been considering creating a gnome character just to counteract this, but I must admit that I run into the same roadblock with them as everyone else in terms of creating viable, long-standing concepts.
In custom races, I have noticed that the most prevalent custom race on Avlis seems to be kobold. There aren't THAT many of them, but there are a fair number. Perhaps it was Mr. Kutah who inspired so many others to play them. There have been a fair number of ogres (or are they half-ogres?) as well. There are quite a few ghost elves (possibly more than kobolds), but no one can tell them apart. Moreover, Sh'lieulias is at times mistaken for a ghost elf, to the point that I'm leaning towards him having some ghost elf blood even if he is not one himself. I have seen one wemic (myself, though I have heard of others), only heard of centaurs, met one lizardman (Sidac), have yet to meet an orc, have seen one gnoll... CCs aren't very common, perhaps because it is so hard to come up with an independent RP concept for them.
On Abyss 404, there are lots of custom race characters, but a lot of them play once and quit. There are two bantmar who are around a lot, and two or three tieflings. I think that Abyss 404 lends itself more to those, though, especially given that they are native/more related to the outer planes than normal humans/demihumans. I'm sure there will be a higher proportion of CCs there than anywhere else, possibly because there is very little RP background known for some of the races so people seem less constrained in becoming them, and also because it has had CCs since its rebirth so they are permanently embedded in the psyche of the world.
It is harder to RP non-humans in my opinion, and I think that is part of why there are so many humans. I think it is a good thing though - humans are the most versatile race, and we get all sorts of great characters from their ranks. Also, they breed like rabbits, so its no wonder there are so many of them.
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Lycanthropy
- Noobie
- Posts: 7
- Joined: Tue Nov 25, 2003 1:08 pm
I like Elves, i don't know why...but usually i do it out of fun, RP or such. Some things i do are very hard to do with Elves 
but fun none the less.
~Frawick
but fun none the less.~Frawick
If i was smart I would say something intellegant. If i was stupid I would say something inferior. If i was me, i would probably do the second one.
A character concept is important at first. Still, sometimes seeing a "different" race can just bring up a character concept. Looking forward to playing a tiefling on Abyss next, maybe. I believe in what some call "organic character development". I start on a narrow base, and the character history fills out as I discuss and act with other characters, based on what feels interesting and right at that moment.