Forum > Rolemaster
Races
Marc R:
Do you play with loads of races, just one race, just the "core fantasy" races?
If you play with lots of races, do you make them all available to PCs, or are many of them NPC only (or essentially treated as monsters/encounters)?
Are you comfortable with players taking extreme races, like centaurs, giants or tiny fairies?
What about races with a lot of innate powers or abilities?
Do all these races casually mix, or do you usually play up tensions between them?
Finally, do you vary this from game to game, or do you keep one race set up in all your games?
Explain in as much or as little detail as you want, and keep in mind each GM is talking about their game(s), so they can't really be wrong, so no need to tell them so.
Shottglazz:
Current (new) campaign has humans (different types depending on nationality) - a mix of common men, bear tribes, etc; elves (wood & high); halflings (generic); Dwarf; Half-Dwarf; Half-Orc; Half-Elf (generic).
I've altered the stats on most of the races to reflect the cultural differences for each nation, especially the humans. Example: one race is modelled after North American Natives - big bonus to many outdoor skills, riding, stat bonus altered to reflect, etc. Another nation is based around an old chivalric order and so favours heavy armours and disdains bows - so they get big bonuses to don/doff armours, maneuver in armours, etc and penalties to bows, ships, etc.
In most RM campaigns, we run with common man, high man, bear tribe, dark tribes (renamed Southerners), half-elves (4 types), halflings (3 types), dwarves, half-orcs and elves (3 types).
We don't normally use races like centaurs, pixies, giants, etc for PC's. Haven't had any complaints or requests for non-standard races...
Ecthelion:
I think this depends on the game world. We usually use Middle Earth as a setting, where I think it's best to stay restricted to "core" fantasy races of human, elf, dwarf, halfing and perhaps (half-)orcs.
GrumpyOldFart:
I have 3 races that are planet-wide. Beyond that, sentient species are limited by ecological niches. For example, centaurs make sense in an environment like the central plains of N. America or the steppes of Ukraine. On the flanks of the Himalayas, or in the Amazon basin? Not so much.
The other good thing for a GM to remember about what races he allows are movement limitations. For example if you have one person in your party who can fly and the rest are limited to ground movement (except through expending magical power), you can take it as given that the guy who can fly is going to have more encounters, probably get more XP, and will certainly have more fun, than everyone else in the party combined.
Multiple movement modes in a party is generally a bad idea unless you can find a way to challenge all of them equally.
yammahoper:
I've used them all over the years, even played a War Troll once myself (a runemage).
In the end, I've come to favor humans, or at least human sized humaniods.
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