Date: 2009-08-15 05:17 pm (UTC)
This may be off, but I figure the humanish races have their origin in Chainmail as a wargame. So you have the side of generic "Good" - with a generic "Lawful" - and that's humans with other varieties of humans - and you have the side of generic "Evil" with a generic "Chaotic" thrown in. Sort of Three Hearts and Three Lions meets Tolkien, especially the Battle of Five Armies, with races and alignment. Dragons, like player character types, are special characters in the army, not the rank and file.

Dumping that into roleplaying runs the whole thing right up against one of the most important laws that apply to the mess; once a player figures out that they can do something, they're going to try it. I've seen this play out in races before; with enough Werewolf players and no restrictions, someone's invariably going to want to play a non-Garou shape-shifter. It's weird in White Wolf; it's ridiculous in a fantasy setting when there's an even bigger potential zoo coming to town, in the form of your characters, and traditionally I feel D&D/AD&D's designers have tried to smash that one back into place in very crude ways hostile to roleplaying...

1. Say outright no you can't.
2. Say that suspicion, prejudice and pogroms are the natural response of quasi-medieval people used to a wide range of human ethnicities and religions, magic, gods of all sorts, and who have no problems with elves/dwarves/halflings/whatever.
3. Penalize monstrous characters beyond the point where anyone but the most eager fans would ever want to be a [whatever].
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