I have a new game starting soon based around waterdeep in forgotten realms. I have said no to Warforged as they are based on a different plane of existence. No monstrous races as they will be facing enough of them . What does everyone else think?
I have a new game starting soon based around waterdeep in forgotten realms. I have said no to Warforged as they are based on a different plane of existence. No monstrous races as they will be facing enough of them . What does everyone else think?
Warforged: 100% ok. If the species doesn't exist in your world, it doesn't.
Monstrous races: I prefer to let in-game actions have in-game consequences, personally - you are 100% ok with this ruling, but for my table, I tell my players "play what you want, but if you pick a species with an open bounty on its head, you're unlikely to survive day 1".
You are the DM, you are perfectly at liberty to do this.
That said, I do feel it is generally better to discuss these things with your players than to dictate to them. They will likely agree with you, but will feel much better about it than if you just told them. Also, if someone has their heart set on playing a race which you wanted to ban, you may be able to find a way to keep everybody happy (just as an example, if they really wanted to play a warforged, maybe one and only one was transported to your world, or maybe one was invented by a super genius who then died before making any more).
In general, agreeing limits, house rules and homebrew with your table is more effective than enforcing them unilaterally.
If it makes sense for your setting, just do it. I've banned warforged in my game because it's a survival setting and having playable races that just go into "sleep mode" without needing to eat or drink is pretty much cheating. There's no complaints so far.
Whether you should depends on whatever reasons you have; it's not hard to find a justification for the existence of a Warforged in the Realms or for monstrous characters to become heroes in your campaign, but it's just as easy to have reasons why having such characters might potentially detract too much from the story or derail the adventure. Whether you could is pretty clear: yes, you definitely can.
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You can say "no" to whatever you want. You can say "no" to classes, subclasses, species or races or lineages or whatever they want to call them now, to certain ways to generate a stat array, to spells, to magic items. What you allow, and disallow, is up to you.
As a general rule, especially if you are using Waterdeep, I would not say "no" to what is typically expected to be found in a given setting. If the Waterdeep books have lots of monstrous races wandering around the city (as a detester of the Forgotten Realms, I would have no way of knowing whether those books do, or don't), then I would not, as a DM, restrict those races, as it runs contrary to the established lore of the city. If the books don't have those, or are mute about them, then it's completely your call. And I want to be clear -- it's your call anyway. You could say, "I know this is Waterdeep but for this campaign I want everyone to play a human," if you want. But I wouldn't do that in a setting like Waterdeep, without a reason.
But you definitely, as a DM, have every right to make whatever restrictions you want. Matt Coleville has a good recent video about this, in which he discusses the various roles of DM vs player agency. A lot of people think that "player agency" is "I get to play whatever character I envisioned and a good DM will allow it." Coleville gives the negative to that, and I agree with him. In his phrasing, which I like, the DM agency is to determine the situation, and the player's agency is to determine the response to that situation. So if, as a DM, you determine that the situation is "You can only play non-evil halflings in this game," then that's it. Player agency doesn't allow the players to say "No, I'm playing a goliath and you have to let me."
However -- you have to realize if you restrict the players by your choice of situation to something they don't like or have fun doing, another aspect of player agency is walking away from the game. Therefore, as a GM, you want to give your players as many choices as you can reasonably give them, while still maintaining your vision for what the situation/setting will be.
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WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
I’m not assertive enough to do so but I really want to. A big part of my struggle with it is because I don’t have a good reason to ban certain species but I just find it immersion breaking when each party is entirely composed of creatures that yes exist but are supposed to be very rare in my world. Going forward I’m thinking about instituting an “only one non-PHB character per party” rule but I’m not sure yet.
I outright ban evil characters in all my games though; players have six alignments to choose from as far as I’m concerned.
I’m not assertive enough to do so but I really want to. A big part of my struggle with it is because I don’t have a good reason to ban certain species but I just find it immersion breaking when each party is entirely composed of creatures that yes exist but are supposed to be very rare in my world. Going forward I’m thinking about instituting an “only one non-PHB character per party” rule but I’m not sure yet.
I outright ban evil characters in all my games though; players have six alignments to choose from as far as I’m concerned.
As a DM, you have every right to be happy with your own setting. As I have pointed out elsewhere (not on this forum), a campaign that has an unhappy DM, or a DM who is not comfortable with his or her own setting, will be a short-lived campaign. The PHB has plenty of races and classes/subclasses to choose from, and as a DM, you have every right to say "We are using PHB-Period." All other books are 100% optional (well, every rule is technically 100% optional, but the other books are, if there could be such a thing, more optional than the standard stuff found in the 3 main books).
One way to approach it is not to disallow races, but to allow them. That is, instead of saying "I don't allow Aarakocra," say, "Here is a list of races that exist in my world," and then provide that list, and Aarakocra may not happen to be on it. Oh well. There are all these other races you can be instead. In my Roman Empire campaign, I didn't put half-orcs, dragonborn, or tieflings on the list. Nobody asked, or complained that they were not there. There were tons of others, including some more optional ones like centaurs and Aarakocra and goliaths. I also re-named all of the more typical subraces, so I have Ore Dwarves rather than Mountain Dwarves... and Light Elves rather than High Elves... and so forth. Did this even for humans (River Folk, Hill Folk, and Desert Folk). With all the custom naming and the list of everything the players *could* do, nobody complained about the ones I had cut out or not allowed.
Now... it's technically the same thing. Allowing these 10, which doesn't include those 3, is the same as disallowing those 3. But if you present the players with "here are the things you are allowed to do," it will be more pleasant to them than "here are all the things I don't allow."
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WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
I’m not assertive enough to do so but I really want to. A big part of my struggle with it is because I don’t have a good reason to ban certain species but I just find it immersion breaking when each party is entirely composed of creatures that yes exist but are supposed to be very rare in my world. Going forward I’m thinking about instituting an “only one non-PHB character per party” rule but I’m not sure yet.
I outright ban evil characters in all my games though; players have six alignments to choose from as far as I’m concerned.
A party rule like that is a bad idea - you don't want any players feeling salty they didn't get to use the party's only "exotic" slot. While I normally condemn any use of randomness when making characters, if this sort of thing is your goal, I would let every player roll 1d100, and on an X or less (X determined by me, based on how rare I want non-PHB races to be) they can be exotic. That way everyone has the opportunity to be exotic, and if they get mad, they'll generally get mad at their dice, which is healthier than getting mad at a fellow player.
I would say "no exotic races at all" rather than, if you want no more than one, giving a % chance and hoping to the dice to not screw you over. The dice can, and WILL, screw you over in a case like this and you'll end up with 5 centaurs in your party of 6. If that's not what the DM wanted, now you have a miserable DM. And if you thought it was bad to have players being salty over not getting what they wanted, you definitely don't want the DM being salty. That's, again, an ingredient of a doomed campaign.
As a DM, if I didn't want certain races, I would just disallow them. Or, further to my point above, they would not be present on my list of "here are all the races you could play in my game."
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WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
Yes, you should say "no" to whatever doesn't feel right to you in your campaign.
That being said, if a player is passionate about a specific race, talk to them. Discuss why you don't want it in the campaign, let them explain how they think it could work.
I have a homebrew, low magic campaign so I had ruled out warforged but I talked to a player who really wanted to play one. We ended up coming up with the idea that her character would be awakened from a previous era and have no memory of her prior existence - part of the campaign would be her discovering her origins. I explained that she'd face fear and prejudice from people who had never seen such a creature before and she was ok with that.
I also tend not to allow monstrous races like goblins, bugbears, kobolds, etc. It just doesn't fit into my mindset of D&D and FOR ME eliminates some of the fantasy element of having evil "races." Great for other tables that want that and I do appreciate, for example, how Sam Regal played Nott in Matt's campaign - it just doesn't fit in my world the same way gunpowder and technology does not.
DMing already has a lot of challenges - having things in your game that negatively impacts your enjoyment just isn't worth it IMO.
I would say "no exotic races at all" rather than, if you want no more than one, giving a % chance and hoping to the dice to not screw you over. The dice can, and WILL, screw you over in a case like this and you'll end up with 5 centaurs in your party of 6. If that's not what the DM wanted, now you have a miserable DM. And if you thought it was bad to have players being salty over not getting what they wanted, you definitely don't want the DM being salty. That's, again, an ingredient of a doomed campaign.
As a DM, if I didn't want certain races, I would just disallow them. Or, further to my point above, they would not be present on my list of "here are all the races you could play in my game."
The design goal is approximately K centaurs per P party members, which your solution doesn't achieve. I would never do this myself - I prefer deterministic solutions, so, like you, I blacklist/whitelist specific races - but if the DM genuinely wants to allow a race but to limit it relative to the party, that's tough to do. It's a lot easier to resolve 1 salty DM than 4 salty players, particularly when the 1 salty DM made the rule to begin with.
I would say you can. Although I don't necessarily advise it. Dungeons and dragons is about creativity and telling the story you want to tell, so restricting it can make it a lot less fun.
How I do things like this is I so the following things:
First, I say you need a sufficient backstory to excuse playing a monstrous or exotic race, or one from another plane. I'm usaslly don't require backstories, but you gotta have a reason why your goblin is living with the rest of humanoid culture, and is not evil. And you gotta say how your warforged plane traveled to this plane.
Secondly, I make NPC reaction appropriate and clearing tell my players this. Your playing an orc? Many NPCs will not trust you are dislike you, at least until your prove your trustworthy-ness. ect...
Additionally, if you do want to restrict it, make sure your clear about it before the same starts and you talk about it to your players. You probably also should help your players come up with an alternative if they really had there heart set on a banned race. Lastly, make sure you clearly state your reasoning to your players. It can seem mean if you just tell them "no monsters reaches because I say so".
The design goal is approximately K centaurs per P party members, which your solution doesn't achieve. I would never do this myself - I prefer deterministic solutions, so, like you, I blacklist/whitelist specific races - but if the DM genuinely wants to allow a race but to limit it relative to the party, that's tough to do. It's a lot easier to resolve 1 salty DM than 4 salty players, particularly when the 1 salty DM made the rule to begin with.
It maybe seem numerically easier to solve 1 salty person (the DM) vs. 4 salty players. But I don't think a die roll would resolve the salty players if the one who really wanted the exotic didn't roll the natural 20, and a salty DM is going to make the whole campaign an issue.
The DM is the weak link. Unhappy DM = campaign over. Maybe not today, but soon.
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WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
The way I do it is during Session Zero I tell the players which books they can use to create their characters. I pick the books to work together based on my campaign would.
If I’m using Eberron I won’t allow anything from Ravnica, Theros, or the Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide for example. The worlds just don’t mix and match seamlessly so I pick which books fit into the world I’m playing the best.
A big part of my struggle with it is because I don’t have a good reason to ban certain species but I just find it immersion breaking when each party is entirely composed of creatures that yes exist but are supposed to be very rare in my world.
That's it. That's your good reason right there. It doesn't need to be anything more concrete than that.
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Fine (as long as never said it was sandbox then it's a disapointment) and that one player who probally had a epic goblin backstory.
I mean, I've played a goblin for a few years(in 3.5 edition)has a childrens book he made a human slave teach him how to read.. And after that he's been obsessed with becoming a "hero". He still has some issues with.. sharing. And manners. And personal hygiene. And everyone is pretty sure he half-confessed to eating a child once. But he's starting to become quite heroic almost.
It's great fun. It got a bit difficult the time when goblins attacked the city and he kinda accidently joined in the fun.. I mean terror. And he did help stop them in the end, he went deep undercover and courageously ended the goblin menace.
It can be done awesome but it's not recommended for any campaign that's for sure.
I’m not assertive enough to do so but I really want to. A big part of my struggle with it is because I don’t have a good reason to ban certain species but I just find it immersion breaking when each party is entirely composed of creatures that yes exist but are supposed to be very rare in my world. Going forward I’m thinking about instituting an “only one non-PHB character per party” rule but I’m not sure yet.
I outright ban evil characters in all my games though; players have six alignments to choose from as far as I’m concerned.
I mean I often run all-human campaigns so... I even often put harsh limits on magicians because I feel it's only normal people would fear them, just like you would be kinda worried around a guy who walked around with grenades. That said my first such campaign had a half-elf sorcerer (who actually hated both elves and mages) undercover for a lot of the time.
The DM gives the setting and if the setting is supposed to be "other species are rare" it only makes sense to not have a bunch of them at the same time. OR go the other way around and make them ALL be other races, because they can be themselves around the others. And have the cities and people everywhere treat them accordingly.
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I have a new game starting soon based around waterdeep in forgotten realms. I have said no to Warforged as they are based on a different plane of existence. No monstrous races as they will be facing enough of them . What does everyone else think?
Fine (as long as never said it was sandbox then it's a disapointment) and that one player who probally had a epic goblin backstory.
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Warforged: 100% ok. If the species doesn't exist in your world, it doesn't.
Monstrous races: I prefer to let in-game actions have in-game consequences, personally - you are 100% ok with this ruling, but for my table, I tell my players "play what you want, but if you pick a species with an open bounty on its head, you're unlikely to survive day 1".
You are the DM, you are perfectly at liberty to do this.
That said, I do feel it is generally better to discuss these things with your players than to dictate to them. They will likely agree with you, but will feel much better about it than if you just told them. Also, if someone has their heart set on playing a race which you wanted to ban, you may be able to find a way to keep everybody happy (just as an example, if they really wanted to play a warforged, maybe one and only one was transported to your world, or maybe one was invented by a super genius who then died before making any more).
In general, agreeing limits, house rules and homebrew with your table is more effective than enforcing them unilaterally.
If it makes sense for your setting, just do it. I've banned warforged in my game because it's a survival setting and having playable races that just go into "sleep mode" without needing to eat or drink is pretty much cheating. There's no complaints so far.
Whether you should depends on whatever reasons you have; it's not hard to find a justification for the existence of a Warforged in the Realms or for monstrous characters to become heroes in your campaign, but it's just as easy to have reasons why having such characters might potentially detract too much from the story or derail the adventure. Whether you could is pretty clear: yes, you definitely can.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
Yes, you can.
You can say "no" to whatever you want. You can say "no" to classes, subclasses, species or races or lineages or whatever they want to call them now, to certain ways to generate a stat array, to spells, to magic items. What you allow, and disallow, is up to you.
As a general rule, especially if you are using Waterdeep, I would not say "no" to what is typically expected to be found in a given setting. If the Waterdeep books have lots of monstrous races wandering around the city (as a detester of the Forgotten Realms, I would have no way of knowing whether those books do, or don't), then I would not, as a DM, restrict those races, as it runs contrary to the established lore of the city. If the books don't have those, or are mute about them, then it's completely your call. And I want to be clear -- it's your call anyway. You could say, "I know this is Waterdeep but for this campaign I want everyone to play a human," if you want. But I wouldn't do that in a setting like Waterdeep, without a reason.
But you definitely, as a DM, have every right to make whatever restrictions you want. Matt Coleville has a good recent video about this, in which he discusses the various roles of DM vs player agency. A lot of people think that "player agency" is "I get to play whatever character I envisioned and a good DM will allow it." Coleville gives the negative to that, and I agree with him. In his phrasing, which I like, the DM agency is to determine the situation, and the player's agency is to determine the response to that situation. So if, as a DM, you determine that the situation is "You can only play non-evil halflings in this game," then that's it. Player agency doesn't allow the players to say "No, I'm playing a goliath and you have to let me."
However -- you have to realize if you restrict the players by your choice of situation to something they don't like or have fun doing, another aspect of player agency is walking away from the game. Therefore, as a GM, you want to give your players as many choices as you can reasonably give them, while still maintaining your vision for what the situation/setting will be.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
I’m not assertive enough to do so but I really want to. A big part of my struggle with it is because I don’t have a good reason to ban certain species but I just find it immersion breaking when each party is entirely composed of creatures that yes exist but are supposed to be very rare in my world. Going forward I’m thinking about instituting an “only one non-PHB character per party” rule but I’m not sure yet.
I outright ban evil characters in all my games though; players have six alignments to choose from as far as I’m concerned.
As a DM, you have every right to be happy with your own setting. As I have pointed out elsewhere (not on this forum), a campaign that has an unhappy DM, or a DM who is not comfortable with his or her own setting, will be a short-lived campaign. The PHB has plenty of races and classes/subclasses to choose from, and as a DM, you have every right to say "We are using PHB-Period." All other books are 100% optional (well, every rule is technically 100% optional, but the other books are, if there could be such a thing, more optional than the standard stuff found in the 3 main books).
One way to approach it is not to disallow races, but to allow them. That is, instead of saying "I don't allow Aarakocra," say, "Here is a list of races that exist in my world," and then provide that list, and Aarakocra may not happen to be on it. Oh well. There are all these other races you can be instead. In my Roman Empire campaign, I didn't put half-orcs, dragonborn, or tieflings on the list. Nobody asked, or complained that they were not there. There were tons of others, including some more optional ones like centaurs and Aarakocra and goliaths. I also re-named all of the more typical subraces, so I have Ore Dwarves rather than Mountain Dwarves... and Light Elves rather than High Elves... and so forth. Did this even for humans (River Folk, Hill Folk, and Desert Folk). With all the custom naming and the list of everything the players *could* do, nobody complained about the ones I had cut out or not allowed.
Now... it's technically the same thing. Allowing these 10, which doesn't include those 3, is the same as disallowing those 3. But if you present the players with "here are the things you are allowed to do," it will be more pleasant to them than "here are all the things I don't allow."
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
You can totally restrict what options players can play as long as it's before the game is played. You're the DM. It's your world and your game.
A party rule like that is a bad idea - you don't want any players feeling salty they didn't get to use the party's only "exotic" slot. While I normally condemn any use of randomness when making characters, if this sort of thing is your goal, I would let every player roll 1d100, and on an X or less (X determined by me, based on how rare I want non-PHB races to be) they can be exotic. That way everyone has the opportunity to be exotic, and if they get mad, they'll generally get mad at their dice, which is healthier than getting mad at a fellow player.
I would say "no exotic races at all" rather than, if you want no more than one, giving a % chance and hoping to the dice to not screw you over. The dice can, and WILL, screw you over in a case like this and you'll end up with 5 centaurs in your party of 6. If that's not what the DM wanted, now you have a miserable DM. And if you thought it was bad to have players being salty over not getting what they wanted, you definitely don't want the DM being salty. That's, again, an ingredient of a doomed campaign.
As a DM, if I didn't want certain races, I would just disallow them. Or, further to my point above, they would not be present on my list of "here are all the races you could play in my game."
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
Yes, you should say "no" to whatever doesn't feel right to you in your campaign.
That being said, if a player is passionate about a specific race, talk to them. Discuss why you don't want it in the campaign, let them explain how they think it could work.
I have a homebrew, low magic campaign so I had ruled out warforged but I talked to a player who really wanted to play one. We ended up coming up with the idea that her character would be awakened from a previous era and have no memory of her prior existence - part of the campaign would be her discovering her origins. I explained that she'd face fear and prejudice from people who had never seen such a creature before and she was ok with that.
I also tend not to allow monstrous races like goblins, bugbears, kobolds, etc. It just doesn't fit into my mindset of D&D and FOR ME eliminates some of the fantasy element of having evil "races." Great for other tables that want that and I do appreciate, for example, how Sam Regal played Nott in Matt's campaign - it just doesn't fit in my world the same way gunpowder and technology does not.
DMing already has a lot of challenges - having things in your game that negatively impacts your enjoyment just isn't worth it IMO.
The design goal is approximately K centaurs per P party members, which your solution doesn't achieve. I would never do this myself - I prefer deterministic solutions, so, like you, I blacklist/whitelist specific races - but if the DM genuinely wants to allow a race but to limit it relative to the party, that's tough to do. It's a lot easier to resolve 1 salty DM than 4 salty players, particularly when the 1 salty DM made the rule to begin with.
I would say you can. Although I don't necessarily advise it. Dungeons and dragons is about creativity and telling the story you want to tell, so restricting it can make it a lot less fun.
How I do things like this is I so the following things:
Additionally, if you do want to restrict it, make sure your clear about it before the same starts and you talk about it to your players. You probably also should help your players come up with an alternative if they really had there heart set on a banned race. Lastly, make sure you clearly state your reasoning to your players. It can seem mean if you just tell them "no monsters reaches because I say so".
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It maybe seem numerically easier to solve 1 salty person (the DM) vs. 4 salty players. But I don't think a die roll would resolve the salty players if the one who really wanted the exotic didn't roll the natural 20, and a salty DM is going to make the whole campaign an issue.
The DM is the weak link. Unhappy DM = campaign over. Maybe not today, but soon.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
The way I do it is during Session Zero I tell the players which books they can use to create their characters. I pick the books to work together based on my campaign would.
If I’m using Eberron I won’t allow anything from Ravnica, Theros, or the Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide for example. The worlds just don’t mix and match seamlessly so I pick which books fit into the world I’m playing the best.
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That's it. That's your good reason right there. It doesn't need to be anything more concrete than that.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
I mean, I've played a goblin for a few years(in 3.5 edition)has a childrens book he made a human slave teach him how to read.. And after that he's been obsessed with becoming a "hero". He still has some issues with.. sharing. And manners. And personal hygiene. And everyone is pretty sure he half-confessed to eating a child once. But he's starting to become quite heroic almost.
It's great fun. It got a bit difficult the time when goblins attacked the city and he kinda accidently joined in the fun.. I mean terror. And he did help stop them in the end, he went deep undercover and courageously ended the goblin menace.
It can be done awesome but it's not recommended for any campaign that's for sure.
I mean I often run all-human campaigns so... I even often put harsh limits on magicians because I feel it's only normal people would fear them, just like you would be kinda worried around a guy who walked around with grenades.
That said my first such campaign had a half-elf sorcerer (who actually hated both elves and mages) undercover for a lot of the time.
The DM gives the setting and if the setting is supposed to be "other species are rare" it only makes sense to not have a bunch of them at the same time. OR go the other way around and make them ALL be other races, because they can be themselves around the others. And have the cities and people everywhere treat them accordingly.