Opinion Piece: Why "Races" Ruin Roleplaying

Keeping with my theme of what I believe ruins roleplaying, and not actually in line with some anti-fantasy agenda (just because I don't like it doesn't make it bad, you could take a hint form this Republicans, Tea Partiers, and Democrats) I will be talking about why I believe the ability to select non-human races for a playable character is both unnecessary and in some cases can ruin a roleplaying experience. Among these reasons is the inability to seperate from human identity, inaccuracy of alienation, and the resistence to explore the human mind.

First, the inability to seperate human identity. Let's roleplay a little here: you're creating a character for a game, let's call it Dark Places & Big, Scary Things 2.75 Edition and you've decided to play an elf. No, you're not, you're playing a human playing an elf. You're not an expert of elfology, nor are even the people who wrote the "fluff" for the elven nations for this particular game. They can feed you all the back story they want, but we are creatures of nature as well as nature, and so any sentient being is likely to be as well, so without being raised as an elf, you can not accurately portray one. The same goes for even human characters from that day and age, but at least you're likely to come to the same logical conclusions as another human, for any other race... it's a crap shoot, one stacked against your favor, and you're unlikely to win except twice a day (like a broken watch).

Next, the innacuracy of alienation, humans might not be in charage of the world, but if history has taught us anything it's that humans don't deal well with other species, we don't even deal well with subspecies within our species. So where did we get this horribly unaccurate idea that different races would come together and unite over something like dungeon delving or space exploration for profit and not try to backstab the nonhumans for more than our fair share. We do it to our own race on our own planet, I fairly certain regardless of when or where it will continue to happen so long as we have a scape goat, it's "human nature" after all. The only time humanity will ever truly even have a chance at being united is when we find some alien species to unite against for profit.

Last is the resistence to explore the human mind. We're all different, we all were raised differently and even tiny variations in those childhoods creates a completely disseperate set of goals, asperations, dreams, and motivations. By adding other species into a roleplaying system we are creating a place where exploration of those very base things, the things that should be making up roleplaying, are ineefectual at best, nonexistent at worst. Sure sometimes you need an alien or a demon, it helps dehumanize the enemy and make them easier to face, it also functions as a little cheat so that Game Masters don't have to explain motivations which are otherwise undefinable to a human, but for player, it's simply unnecessary.

So in short, you don't need other races, at least not for players. If they want there character to be good at something, they should have to train in it, if they want an ability, make them get a piece of equipment, or a spell (if you're into that kind of thing), but they don't need to be nonhuman, they're not going to roleplay one accurately anyway, and roleplaying games should be roleplaying centric (see my previous commentary on combat and roleplaying for more). Humans are diverse and varied enough that we don't need nonhumans cluttering up our rulebooks just so the game companies can charge an extra 10 bucks or so.