Hard agree, I find it extremely dull whenever fantasy races (or non-human player characters in general, as it often happens) are just normal people with some weird physical feature that beyond its mechanical effects almost never comes up in game past the surface level.
Ultimately even in the case where they are just humans plus some feature that feature should heavily change how they relate to the world in some way, and not just in the regular dwarf/elf/hobbit stereotypes way. An elf should have an extremely different relationship to the passage of time and the seasons. That, in turn, should give them different feelings on life and death, relationships, morals, teaching, art, etc... But so often they're reduced to a caricature that might pay lip service to one or two of these changes but is otherwise just a normal arrogant person.
I can understand the appeal in having normal people with fantasy features of course. They're easier to roleplay and relate to. This makes them good for lighthearted campaigns which often need both to be fun. But I feel like in serious stories you'd be better off just dropping the fantasy races entirely if you aren't doing much with them. Human-centric fantasy can be really fun in its own right.
I admittedly also don't like having outright evil races, but I think there's better solutions that don't require making them normal people. Culture is an obvious one, and seemingly the one that D&D has mostly adopted now for Drow and the like. Giving them weird moral systems based on things that they would view as the highest good but we wouldn't is another good option.
One of the very few really good, complex, and interesting examples of an all-evil all the time species are the Orcs in Mordor: Shadow of War. They're so colorful, so weird, so unique. Among them there are different cultures and subcultures, attitudes, religious beliefs, ethnicities. Each orc has their own goals, their own style of dress, their own way of talking, their own fears and foibles. Some are scary, some are smart, some are poetic, some are friendly, some are joyous, some are cowards, and some are just weird. And they are all, every one of them, to the last Uruk, evil.
It's so well done and I honestly can't think of another story quite like it.
Hard agree, I find it extremely dull whenever fantasy races (or non-human player characters in general, as it often happens) are just normal people with some weird physical feature that beyond its mechanical effects almost never comes up in game past the surface level.
Ultimately even in the case where they are just humans plus some feature that feature should heavily change how they relate to the world in some way, and not just in the regular dwarf/elf/hobbit stereotypes way. An elf should have an extremely different relationship to the passage of time and the seasons. That, in turn, should give them different feelings on life and death, relationships, morals, teaching, art, etc... But so often they're reduced to a caricature that might pay lip service to one or two of these changes but is otherwise just a normal arrogant person.
I can understand the appeal in having normal people with fantasy features of course. They're easier to roleplay and relate to. This makes them good for lighthearted campaigns which often need both to be fun. But I feel like in serious stories you'd be better off just dropping the fantasy races entirely if you aren't doing much with them. Human-centric fantasy can be really fun in its own right.
I admittedly also don't like having outright evil races, but I think there's better solutions that don't require making them normal people. Culture is an obvious one, and seemingly the one that D&D has mostly adopted now for Drow and the like. Giving them weird moral systems based on things that they would view as the highest good but we wouldn't is another good option.
One of the very few really good, complex, and interesting examples of an all-evil all the time species are the Orcs in Mordor: Shadow of War. They're so colorful, so weird, so unique. Among them there are different cultures and subcultures, attitudes, religious beliefs, ethnicities. Each orc has their own goals, their own style of dress, their own way of talking, their own fears and foibles. Some are scary, some are smart, some are poetic, some are friendly, some are joyous, some are cowards, and some are just weird. And they are all, every one of them, to the last Uruk, evil.
It's so well done and I honestly can't think of another story quite like it.