How to do D&D races right (and wrong)

 Yesterday, I read this post at DM David, talking about the evolution of the non-human player character races in D&D. (He focuses much more on 5E and modern sensibilities than on anything I'd call old school, but generally has interesting things to say, even if not always directly useful to an old schooler such as myself.) Of course, I have some observations and opinions of my own on this topic.

On the one hand, we have D&D's most prominent founder, Gary Gygax, whose preference for a human-centric game prompted him to impose strict limits on the demihuman races. On the other, we have modern games, in which almost anything distinguishing dwarf, elf, halfling, or other fantastic folk from humankind is to be spurned as too restrictive to player freedom, if not somehow a manifestation of real-world racism. 

I reject both those views.

I can certainly respect Gygax's affection for human-centric fantasy, emulating some of his favorite literary sources (which, as I understand it, did not include Tolkien.) It's a perfectly valid preference; in fact, it's probably more prevalent in fantasy literature than the diverse cast of LotR and its spiritual brethren. What I dislike is his apparent fence-sitting on the issue of nonhuman PCs. "Well, fine, you can play as a dwarf, but you're eventually going to be way outclassed by every human PC. Deal with it or play as a human." Rather than presenting nonhuman characters as an option (and come on, the guy practically made a career of filling books with optional rules, systems, and content, much of which he didn't use himself), he makes them a core feature of the game but imposes limitations that are largely ineffectual in early play, absolutely stifling past the level-limit cutoffs, and bizarrely arbitrary all around. It's as if he was determined to crap on fans of Tolkienesque fantasy by enshrining draconian limitations in the official rules, rather than openly acknowledging the additional races as something you could take or leave in your own game. For all his bluster about how it's "your game" and you can modify it to suit you, making those rules official canon definitely has had a strong influence, and I can't believe he wasn't fully cognizant of that.

I have more difficulty understanding the idea of throwing the gates so wide-open as to make demihuman characters literally just the rightly maligned trope of "humans with pointy ears and special powers." I also reject the notion that making nonhuman beings in a fantasy game different and distinct from, and less diverse in abilities and culture than humans is the same as real-world racism against real human beings. First of all, these are fantasy beings, who don't even exist in reality, and who were conceived in myth, legend, and folklore largely as embodiments of particular human values, virtues, and vices. Secondly, these beings represent completely different species in the game, not merely different lineages of the same species. Is it "racist" to note that dwarves are more resistant to magic and less apt at magic use relative to humans? No more so than it is to note that cats are better climbers and less socially cooperative than dogs. Besides, can you honestly imagine any real-world racist is going to take much satisfaction in stifling the purely fictional potential of a purely fictional people in a purely fictional game, and somehow interpret it as a hearty "Take that!" to whatever real-world people he hates? I sure can't. 

Just about every attempt I've seen to bridge the gap between these two extremes ends up incentivizing players to choose a nonhuman character over a human by rendering humans generally inferior. Nonhumans will almost always have certain special abilities or perks relative to the human "baseline" to distinguish them from humans, but applying any compensating relative disadvantages would be "racist" or at the very least, somehow unfair to players. Thus the nonhumans end up being not equal, but superior. Associating these perks with only one specific favored class is no effective countermeasure. If halflings receive a +2 bonus to their Dexterity scores, or direct bonuses to thief skills, then choosing to play a human thief is a choice to play a suboptimal character. The fact that the halfling is less suitable as a fighter, magic-user, or cleric is moot. (And there's always some other nonhuman race more capable than humans at each of those classes.) The alleged compensating difference that humans can choose to be any class is rendered irrelevant by the fact that a player can simply choose to play as the race most mechanically suited to the desired class, and that's never human.

So, neither Gygaxian level limitations, new-school carte-blanche, nor "anti-discriminatory" favoring of demihuman and nonhuman characters over humans is a particularly satisfying solution. What should we aim at instead?

Firstly, we should keep an eye toward preserving the distinctiveness of each nonhuman kindred. It's perfectly OK to say dwarves can't be wizards in your world, or halflings can't be barbarians, or elves can't be clerics, due to either physiological or psychological differences between human and demihuman. It's perfectly OK to say that dwarves are predisposed to value stone, metal, hard work, and order, while elves are predisposed toward magic, forests, and frivolity, and to give them talents and weaknesses reflecting those traits. This doesn't mean demihumans have to be monolithic culturally, just that they should remain mostly true to the archetypes they represent. You could, for instance, easily have the dwarves of the Grey Mountains hold practical smithcraft in the highest regard, be devout worshipers of their God of the Forge, and strictly enforce hereditary trades, while the dwarves of the Glittering Caverns love art such as jewelry and sculpture, devise beautiful songs to accompany their work, and encourage their youth to try several different apprenticeships before deciding on a trade. 

Secondly, we should aim not to make any class, race, or race/class combination obviously superior to any other. Each should provide a different play experience; it can and should be meaningfully different to be a dwarven warrior vs. a human fighter without one being objectively superior to the other.

In keeping with the above two points, if you're going to grant perks or special abilities to a nonhuman PC race (and I'm in no way suggesting you should not), it's important that they represent the archetype of the race you're going for, and equally important to give them a compensating disadvantage, preferably one that's flavorful and interesting to play. Making elves have a penalty to hit points (or a penalty to Constitution, which amounts to the same thing) or requiring large amounts of XP to compensate for an innate talent for combining fighting with spellcasting is neither interesting nor fun. Make them unable to use arms and equipment made with iron, though, and you've got not only a meaningful and distinctive restriction, but a real insight into what it means to be an elf in your game world. Giving dwarves strong magic resistance, including getting only half normal effect from beneficial spells, is not only a satisfyingly self-balancing double-edged blade, but informs a particular vision and flavor of what it is to be a dwarf. Balancing a halfling's uncanny luck with the inability to wield large weapons or ride a full-sized horse is less dramatic, but still appropriate, meaningful, and logically consistent. Whenever possible, avoid bland mechanical adjustments like +x to this or -y to that. It's uninteresting and it's a temptation to noxious min-maxing. 

While it's common and perfectly acceptable to make nonhuman races more narrowly focused than humans (after all, it's easy to make them embody a slice of our own familiar human experience, but very difficult to step completely outside of that to something truly alien), it's also perfectly OK to give demihuman characters options that aren't open to humans. The important things are that they be consistent with the race's archetype and aimed at providing a different and interesting play experience that's neither superior nor inferior to other class choices. There's no reason at all you shouldn't create a uniquely dwarven Geomancer class, with mystical abilities to affect earth and stone, if that suits the flavor of dwarves in your game, so long as it doesn't do another class's schtick better than that class does, or overshadow other classes in terms of usefulness and power.   

In summation, if you're going to include nonhuman races as options for player characters, the choice to play one should be neither punishingly restrictive, nor a meaningless label applied cosmetically to a reskinned human, nor an exercise in mathematical optimization of a character class.