Dungeons and Dragons

By "illegal," do you mean the player is not allowed to choose the race for their character? Or do you mean the race is outlawed within the setting, i.e. Orcs would have no legal protections and are persecuted by the law?

On the flip side I was able to convince my DM to let me play as a goblin since his back story was that he didn’t like goblin society and wanted to be a bard. However, due to the perception of goblins in the bard scene, he would be disguising himself as a halfling.

So we kept it a secret from the other players for a long time while I dropped clues and was eventually called out. It was like a year of sessions before someone was like, “ok what’s with the weird rage fits you keep having?”

@Shkshkshk @dnd I'm currently running a campaign that I've restricted to just the PHB, or do you mean a setting where a race is in the world, but simply existing is punishable by some means?

In some regions in my world there's a distinct amount of racism so some places have outlawed different people to different degrees.

For example one city outlawed Goblinoids within their city limits. Another nearby city had a curfew for Goblinoids vs outright banning their presence within their city limits.

There's quite a a bit that can be said about quite a bit by what restrictions exist in your world and the hardships people can face.

Depends on the context of the setting and the story. I mostly tend to allow all official PC races without any objection. I see an adventurer as an outlier of society and not the norm.

In the games I tend to run I either swing between everything is allowed or just one is allowed.

If I want to do an mini adventure about a goblin clan fighting a kobold incursion, then everyone is playing goblins.

I would talk to the player(s). Playing the outlaw, making disguises, sounds fun.

But also it could introduce racial discrimination into the mix. Y'all would need to be OK with handling that theme.

I am tinkering with something similar right now, with the elf-equivalents being virtually illegal outside the borders of their own empire.

So, here's what I would suggest you consider:

• First, discuss it with your players and make sure you're not going to piss any of them off by doing this. If any of them were planning on playing said race, make sure they're okay with the impact on their play style.

• Consider the storytelling conflicts you want to explore with this. What encounters do you want to put your players through, and why? What themes are you looking to explore?

• Consider the larger impact on other parts of your world. Try to make this more than a point that exists in isolation and a vacuum.

No but I would consider requiring a reflavor if it was incompatible with the setting. Not sure that’s ever come up but it could.

Or are you asking about in-world legality?

You should probably clarify that what you're talking about here is races being "illegal" within the setting (that's what MCDM does with dragonborn). Players are still allowed to pick the race, but they are signing up for extra hardship, kinda like the Nosferatu in V:TM.

As for my answer: I don't make any races outright illegal in the setting, but I do ban certain ones from being chosen by the players if that race doesn't exist in my setting. I do have NPCs treat PCs differently based on their race, but typically only using obvious fantasy tropes, so that people know what they're signing up for.

My DMs have always banned flying characters.

Is that common?

Yes. Well, no. Well, sorta.

Rather than making races illegal, I defined what races were available in my last campaign because it was supposed to take place in a part of the world that had very specific limitations.

Primarily, there are no reptilian races in the area. This is because I want them to form their own empire elsewhere in the world, and I want that to be the second area of the campaign we play in with everyone playing a reptilian character.

There are some campaigns where I will make it where a race would not exist because of lore or history reasons, such as Yuan-ti all being sealed and banished away for example.

@Shkshkshk @dnd I play a Salubri in VTM, which covers a lot of the same narrative ground! It immediately makes a fairly rote part of the character creation process into a really interesting narrative hook

No, but I'm also an extremely permissive DM.

When I first started DM'ing I didn't allow monster races, homebrew things, or things from books I didn't own. It just made it easier to learn by sticking only to the basic stuff.

I had one 5e campaign set in L5R where all PCs were technically human, but I let the PCs pick whatever race statblock they liked and reskinned their racial abilities as supernatural techniques passed down within their individual clan or family line.

I did not have the L5R splatbook at the time so I was just manually reskinning the PHB and the monster manual to the L5R setting. Worked great.

In my scifi campaign based on Star Control II, all genetic engineering was illegal (one of the primary antagonist groups is a race of blade runner style artificial humans). So of course two of my players teamed up to be an outlaw geneticist and his awakened capuchin monkey. They played it 100% unironically and it resulted in some of the best role-playing it has been my privilege to DM for.

No. I don't make them illegal. I make them canonically extinct. F U halflings. Dead. Every single one. lol.

Elves, I hate elves, fucking leaf lovers

In terms of lore, have it be something like the king is forced to do it because of perceived attacks or threats and the populous demanded some sort of action. Then you can either play it where the party finds the real source of the attacks or it’s some weird splinter group or cult of the outlawed race and any orcs in the party have to fight against them or with them.

Totally depends on the vibe of the party but I’d lean towards the first option. Maybe a rival to the king is stirring up trouble as an excuse to stage a coup. For comedic points, have it be an area where they aren’t familiar with orcs and they’ve been getting fooled by night raids of hired thugs dressed up in bad orc costumes.

The second option might be especially good if a party member or an NPC they meet is a half-orc who has to deal with conflicting loyalties.