I’m a Tolkien geek, but I’m just sick of the bastardized cliche his races have become in the D&D universe. Going into 4th edition, I had been playing around with a 3.5 world without any of the Tolkien-inspired races and none of the standard D&D ones, but never settled on something I wanted to actually run. I’ve had great fun playing elves and dwarves over the years, but I wanted a different focus in my future games.

I didn’t expect the core races to change as radically as I would prefer, but I did think that they could reduce redundant races and racial variants, eliminate half-races, and introduce some core races adapted from common humanoid monsters to create some non-Tolkien diversity. Starting with the typical core races (elf, dwarf, halfling, half-elf, human, gnome, and sometimes half-orcs):

*Eliminate half-elf and half-orc
*Avoid drow for a core race because one elf is enough.
*Combine the three small-stature races (dwarf, gnome, halfling) into one. If Wizards had followed this strategy, they’d have called the remaining race a dwarf. To be contrary, I’d get rid of dwarves and halflings and keep gnomes.
*Change the flavor description of elves and dwarves/gnomes to put greater emphasis on non-Tolkien ideas. Both races should be connected to nature and fey spirits rather than noble lineages.
*Don’t pigeonhole races into single cultural variants. While elves are connected to water and the forests, they should have settlements outside of the forest and pretty much everywhere except the remote desert. While dwarves are connected to earth spirits, they should not be consigned to live only in mountain fortresses, and should only eschew an entirely aquatic lifestyle.
*Add at least two and possibly as many four humanoid races without a strong Tolkien lineage. Good choices would be a reptilian race such as lizardfolk, kobolds, troglodytes; hill giants (so that there’s one large-sized race); hobgoblins (so that there’s one goblinoid race that doesn’t evoke Tolkien); and possibly one or more lycanthropes.
*Add other races in future books as thematic groups, possibly including some as NPC races from the beginnings. Examples include aquatic races (sahuagin, kuo-toa, locathah), flying races, and extra-planar races (gith, tiefling, illithid).

So call it human, elf, gnome, lizardman, hill giant, hobgoblin.

The actual 4th edition races disappoint because I have little interest in the two new-to-core races, hate that the half-elf is still around, and am bored that halflings and dwarves are the same as always. Oddly enough, I consider the elf and eladrin to be high points, because at least that takes one cliche race and makes it two different ones, and for some reason the eladrin come off less like Noldor and more like the fairy folk of mythological tradition.

Did you see the listing of “temp” race writeups at the end of the Monster Manual? Did you see the full online writeup for the Warforged Race that they posted online?

If you don’t like a race, drop it from your campaign world. ‘Nuff said.

Half-orc got dropped because of unpleasant “lineage” issues. They needed a “strong” race to replace them. Why not lizardfolk? In point of fact, they were going for a playable, balanced half-dragon that you could actually use at first level. If you prefer lizardfolk in your world, then you can hack something together pretty quickly (look at the MM appendix and write up a few extra feats - should be good to go).

In the 3.5 rules, you had dozens of races that were theoretically available as player races, but which were completely useless in practice because of level adjustment rules, which weren’t really fair and balanced - gaining spell resistance is good, but not at a cost of two levels. The model in 4e takes away a few “broken” racial abilities but makes a LOT more races actually playable at first level.

We’ll get plenty more races over time with full writeups. The selection for now is just fine.