There's a pattern in forgotten realms worldbuilding, "all x are like this" but in exceptionally rare cases forget everything we've told you about how everything works. They philosophically don't believe in saying you, the player, can't do something, that's cool, but there's a problem when all these exceptions to the rule are always in games set there even without it being the players choice.
Games, as well as stories in general, tend to take place during exceptional times. Exceptional times tends to attract exceptional people.
To my knowledge there's never been a Forgotten Realms game where you're playing a halfling farmer working on a ranch in which nothing interesting happens. Statistically speaking there's probably tens of thousands of random farmers for every adventurer, but somehow every game is about adventurers.
don't misunderstand me, I agree that the player should be allowed to break the mold, it's when breaking the mold is done in a story completely irrespective of the narrative, and the player, that it starts to no longer be an exception.
I also don't think the same exceptions that occur in the world, even rarely, can even apply to some of the races so remote to the 'human' experience, Drow are all descended from top side elves, so when one of them has a crisis of faith it's still more understandable than the completely foreign and unintelligible motives of the Illithid
EDIT: and halfling farmer sim sounds rad....
