I’m working on a comedy skit making fun of modern day hero groups where you have people playing as all these exotic races, where you don’t see a single human, dwarf, elf or gnome, where every hero group you hear of is also this bizarre mix of oddities, some of which the average person has never heard of (like the collection of Pathfinder 2e ‘ancestries’ (races)).

I don’t want to offend, but I do also admit that I’m personally frustrated with how rare it is to see a party where most people take traditional races and instead opt for strange beings that go beyond even goblins and orcs.

I am the person who has brought human fighters to the party filled with exotic oddities and I find this pretty silly. Is this something that actually affects your enjoyment of the games you are actively playing in or are you merely frustrated at how other people play pretend? Either way there are more constructive ways to address your issues rather than making a skit because you are mad at people have fun incorrectly.

If you are a DM you can simply curate the races you allow in your campaign. I do this and so far I haven’t had any issues or people pestering me that they will leave if they can’t play a centaur. If you are a player you can look for a group that is more suitable to your preferences or be the change you want to see in the world and become a DM yourself and apply the previous suggestion.

You can also play something that isn’t DnPathfinder. OSR games tend to be much more conservative with the races they make available for play. Someone I know does art for that scene and it’s all very traditional humans, dwarves, and elves. Seems like a better match for your tastes.

If this isn’t about one of your games, then just like chill out. Divert your creativity to things that bring you joy instead of cracking jokes at how others engage with the hobby. Let strangers you will never interact with play their silly half tiefling half aarakocra in peace. I know people who were reluctant to get into the hobby out of fear of being ridiculed for the characters they want to play and stuff like this isn’t helping.

Bad bit idea: most of the party is playing all kinds of fantasy races. The only one who is regularly met with racism is the PoC human character.

edit: I guess that’s actually a solid part of the fan reactions when there is a PoC character in fantasy setting media.

Honestly I’m not even sure why I’m asking as I already feel that it would come off as mean spirited and probably shouldn’t make this; I guess I’m hoping I’m just overestimating how this skit would come across.

I don’t think you should concern yourself about this at all.

Especially if you are making a point from a leftist perspective. Keep thinking on this idea.

In my opinion, “fantasy races” as a concept is silly and I’d even say is bigoted at the base level. Almost every “fantasy race” has the “humanoid alien Star Trek” problem. They are depictions of exaggerated human traits and, more often than not, negative human stereotypes.

How many stories can we tell about “overcoming our nature” disguised as a “fish out of water” story without jumping into the arms of biological essentialism? This character backstory is just as common as the orphan backstory.

FUCK GARY GYGAX

I’m not sure there’s a winning angle here. Most people don’t know shit about D&D except that it was in Stranger Things sometimes. Going on about tieflings and centaurs would miss the mark with a broader audience. And then people tend to pick alternate species because of the whole thing about being otherized in real life and wanting to play through it. The one straight dude I played d&d with regularly was always a human whatever, across like six characters, while the other players never once landed on a human character.

It really depends on what your perspective is based on. One thing that is true about DnD, is that the game that is discribed in the books, and the box sets, is NOT the game being played at the table. This is true now and true historically. So when you’re taking the position on modern day hero groups, what is that perspective based on? Is it based on things like Dimension 20, Critical Role, or any of the thousands of less popular lets-play series? Is it based on your personal experience running games in your friends group, town, or region? Is it based on what you see in form posts?

Ancestries are also highly contingent on the DMs preference. I haven’t DMd in a number of years but when building my world/setting I usually pick a selection of available ancestry choices from the source books I have as the “available” or “common” choices. So what is the broad sentiment among DMs? Are they truely so open that they allow all these diverse options, and thus end up with very diverse parties?

One thing that can also be true is that often the traditional Ancestries (dwarf, human, elf, halfling, orc, tiefling, etc) can suffer from simplicity in their mechanical design as they are often the first Ancestries designed and can be geared for “beginners”. This can cause “power creap” in Ancestries created for later source material. This is driven by a need to differentiate these new Ancestries from the previous ones, to both entice players to pick them but also buy the source books.

DnD 5.5 tried to address this and it’s unclear to me of they succeeded in that goal. I don’t have the 5.5e source books and I haven’t played with those rules.

I can see the premise working though, as long as its juxaposed in a humorous way. If the setup is that the party needs to be discreet as they operate within a town / city full of humans, and the party consists of Magic Robot, a Bugbear, a literal Angle, a Fire Elemental, and a Psyonic Subspace Pirate from the manifolds of the Multiverse, you could imagine a whole host of humorous situations they might be involved in.

i like the premise, it’s just all about the execution

reminds me of the old WoW days of horde players being huge dweebs about the alliance’s “boring” races like

This kinda falls apart once you get to the fact that Swords Coast lore is awkwardly written and super bloated. Also most people just write their own settings anyways it kinda seems.

But maybe there’s something in that? Like I’m imagining a party coming on a “tribe of minotaurs” or something and it devolves into a philosophical conversation until there’s one covered in rings holding an axe saying something along the lines of “This system is 40 years old and it’s a continuous canon! What am I anymore?! Am I a sloppy analogy for the need to consolidate your basil animalistic needs with higher minded humanistic ideals or am I just some kind of racist characture? Am I both?! My lore sheet says my balls get pierced for every time I kill someone in battle! WHAT AM I?!”

And then it just hard cuts to the DM face down at the table.

Yeah sandwich, go for it. Throw some class analysis in there and “it’s like the Elven and Dwarven kings want us to hate each other so we don’t question why we have kings?”