Monster Species

[cashew]

So, random thought.

I see a lot of hate for playing monster species/races in RPGs. Both Tabletop and of the computer/console variety. And I genuinely don't get it.

I mean, I feel that playing non-human often results in the visuals getting super messed up, because assets were designed with a human model first, then afterwards they try to stretch the model over non-standard human frames and it gets all meh looking. But even with that visual bug, people still enjoy playing non-human species/race options because...

...humans boring. Like am I the only one who thinks humans are boring and playing a non-human is far more fun?

(I understand that not everyone wants to play as ooze, although the sheer amount of ooze-based porn suggests this may not even be as rare of a fantasy as I thought. Like, surely this is not a hard idea to grok? ...Do people say grok anymore? Whatever, I'm old.)

Comments

[tanithryudo]

I assume we are talking totally non-humanoid monsters? Because the kind of Trek-alien style humanoid "non-humans", I immediately think elves/drow or such, which don't feel like they're unpopular.

For extreme non-human bioforms, it might be that something too non-human is hard to emphasize with, and the player is less likely to get good feels for the effort spent roleplaying them, maybe?

[cashew]

are talking totally non-humanoid monsters?

Nope. We're talking about anthropomorphic races, like Tabaxi (visually think Charr from GW2) and Lizardfolk (...what it says on the tin), and even Dragonborn (which are basically humanoids with dragon heads). Because elves/dwarves/hobbitshalflings are "originally playable" species. But orcs/drow/faerie/tabaxi/owlin/dragonborn/etc. are all too "monster-like" apparently.

Even though they are all canonically sapient creatures.

Also, yes, elves are apparently "normal" but faeries are not for some reason. I don't understand these people.