What do you consider when choosing your species?

[Dromdarr_Alark]

[DougRed4]

[Dromdarr_Alark]

[Kytross]

Amonids do get the six tech skill dice but have 4 less attribute dice than humans.

I tend to never play humans. I don't think I've ever been the same species twice. Unless you count npcs. Oh, and droids. But I've never been the same model droid.

[Volar the Healer]

I guess I see species as almost secondary. The character's role is primary for me.

But, I do like to experiement with races I've never played before. So, my primary consideration of race is can I role play as an alien, not just a "man in a mask". What would be the difference in world view, choices, actions, and can I make a cool voice or alien sounds while role playing? Can I use the race to add something the group has never seen before?
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[Kytross]

One of my gms wanted to surprise me and frame my character for murder so he started my character waking up in a posh hotel, naked, in bed with a naked dead man, blood everywhere.

The rest of the group's jaws dropped. It didn't embarrass me at all. I was playing a Barabel at the time. I figured an anthropomorphic reptile wouldn't be attracted to mammals, regardless of gender.

The worst part about that game was the gm gave us 2000 credits to outfit ourselves, with approval, and I never saw that gear. Losing gear happens, but if you're gonna take it from me the moment the game starts, don't make me spend a couple hours going through gear books to outfit myself.

[Whill]

[garhkal]

I hate it when dms do that too. Now if i may get it back later in the game, i am ok with it.
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[Whill]

Having long accepted my lot in life of having players that largely want to play aliens, I have had no choice but to have a fairly large list of playable species. It is better to have a lot of player species for players to choose from then continually telling players no they can't play that first choice species they want to play.

So basically, I first encourage all players to play a human. If they consider that and still want to play an alien, then they have a core list of aliens that I encourage them to pick from. If they still want to play another species, then I have a secondary list of aliens to choose from. The first two lists are long. (Sometimes there is a smaller third alien species list depending on the campaign, they may have primary or secondary status.) If the player still wants to play another species (including an original species), then I will consider their choice/creation and give them a chance to sell me on their character concept. If we come to agreement on the concept, then we stat out the alien species in my system and add the species to the secondary alien list.

There is no limit to how many human or near-human characters can be in any campaign, but I do have a standard of preferring not to have two or more members of the same fully-alien species in any campaign PC group, for the sake of character variety. However, that is not a hard rule, and if two players sell me on having character concepts of the same alien species (family members or whatever), then I have allowed it. I'm not a fan of Wookiee PCs unless they can clearly differentiate themselves from Chewbacca (I don't want a PC-level clone of Chewie), so out of handful of Wookiee PCs I've ever run, two of them were in the same campaign (brothers) until one of them died.

[Panzerjedi]

often i prefer humans or near human, my near humans often have the base same stats as humans, just looking bit diferent some times.
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[DougRed4]

As you can see from this page of our website, most of our PCs are Humans. For whatever reason my players have gravitated towards Humans, though they have not really taken advantage of the fact they look like most Imperials.
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Currently Running: Villains & Vigilantes (a 32-year-old campaign with multiple groups) and D6 Star Wars; mostly on hiatus are Adventures in Middle-earth and Delta Green

[garhkal]

[Kytross]

I always assumed most skill bonuses for species were cultural. Not attributes, but skills. So I created a system where humans got a few skill bonuses depending on where they grew up. Usually 2D for 1D at character creation.

Corellians got the same skill bonuses as the duros. Alderaanians got bonuses in certain perception skills. Stuff like that. Like the Chiss bonuses.

It let my players be humans, which most of them wanted to be, and kept them happy without impacting the game any more than having a Duros in the group did.

For alot of people, being a human helps you relate to the character, something I figured out while running a transformers game. I let them be the heads for headmaster transformers and it really helped them get into character.

Getting into the mindset of a Bothan or a Trandoshan isn't always easy, especially for new players. I found the skill bonus was a good compromise. YMMV

[Panzerjedi]

that makes sense krytoss
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The Empire: We'z Ownz ALL yer'z Star Destoyerz!!!

[Whill]