Originally Posted by fallenj
Originally Posted by 1varangian
Unpopular opinion perhaps but I find the more outlandish races like lizardmen, genasi or dragonborn distracting for focused storytelling unless they can be a proper part of it.

Gith are fine since they are explained and important in the context of the story. Tieflings too and so we already have two unusual races present and explained. But throw in a random dragonborn, warforged or yuan-ti character without any relevance to the story and it's just like "what is that, where did it come from and what does this mean". And while you're thinking about the answers to those questions which you're not going to get, you're not thinking about the story. Then there's the question of how NPCs should react to these special races, which easily leads to an insurmountable amount of work for the developer.

So I don't think adding more races outside the basic half-orcs is a good idea unless you can do them justice or the story requires it. I didn't mention gnomes, I know. smile

Races don't require story to put them into the game. They are part of the actual world of forgotten realms, you go into a town and you'll see dragonborn, it's not a shocker. Kind of cingy, reminds me of borderlands 3 where they have to have a introduction screen of the character with his name slapped on there.
Every part of a story, including races, needs a proper motivation to deserve existence. It's a very small minority that knows the current D&D lore so inside out that things don't need to be motivated.

That said, since Dragonborn and Half-Orc are PHB races, they will probably incorporate enough lore on those races into BG3. Dwarves, Elves and Halflings don't need much since they are so established and similar in generic fantasy everywhere. But even I don't know what the deal with the Dragonborn is even though I'm a D&D vet since AD&D because I haven't played 4e or 5e. Being a dragon humanoid does raise a lot of questions.