Role-playing Different Races.

In roleplaying I tend to chose to be only human. As a matter of fact I think I would have to go back a long time to my early days of playing to find a Dwarf or an Elf in my characters. I would like to make my players and even myself chose to play another race. So I am looking for any advice or optional races you can recommend to help people to want to play different races.

Elves: A long lived race that seems to think that they know best.

Dwarves: They spend way to much time underground and worrying about gems and metals.

Halflings: The Halfling race reminds of small children who need to be guided.

Gnomes: Man do they not have a garden some where to sit in.

Half Orc / Orc: Tough but such a social outcast.

Goblin: A little annoying race normally a servant to another race.

Now some I would like to see developed are.

Lizard men: Some type of Nomadic desert Warrior with a berserker style frenzy.

The Dead: To see how a re animated soul goes from one of the minions to the Lord of the Dead. Maybe by stealing the life essence from the living and the dead.

Please give me your thoughts on the subject

What books have influenced your role playing?

For me as a young teenager I was enjoying D&D. Then I discovered the Guardians of the Flame a long running series by author Joel Rosenberg. It was about role players and their game master. It just so happened their game master was a banished wizard from another world. The twists and turns in the novels had me hooked from page one. I even ran a slaver campaign based on it for a friend of mine. After the campaign I gave him the books and he could not believe the choices he made almost was a perfect mirror of the lead character.

Later in life while in the first gulf war I discovered the Eye of the World series. I just happened to pick up the largest book I could find to make sure I had something to read. As it turns out I got hooked on a new series by Robert Jordan. Now I never completely took the world or its ideas as a whole but it even has influence on my current campaign.

So my question is what books can you suggest that role players read to add the spark back into their game?

My top 10

1. Guardians of the Flame by Joel Rosenberg.
2. Eye of the World by Robert Jordan.
3. The Elfstones of Shannara by Terry Brooks.
4. Thieves' World by Robert Lynn Asprin
5. Dragonlance by Laura and Tracy Hickman
6. The Books of the Swords by Fred Saberhagen
7. MythAdventures by Robert Lynn Asprin
8. The Death Gate Cycle by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman
9. Sword and sorcery by Michael John Moorcock
10.The Black Company by Glen Cook.

* note I did not include Lord of the Rings. I just think that LOTR is well known and played.

Role Playing around the table.

In this world of MPOLG, XBOX and PlayStation on line games. I believe we are getting away from the reason a lot of us became Gamers. I am talking about the person to person interaction. I find that online I tend to mute or ignore most of the other players and you always have the dreaded griefer. The playing of table top across the inter has even come an amazing way. I just miss the little things. Like the one chair always set aside for a certain player. The snacks that were some times way to old to eat. The ordering of pizza. Some of the events that happened at those face to face games are priceless. One time a good friend got hot while playing and took off his socks throwing them over his shoulder. One sock stuck to the wall and for a good 30 mins play was interrupted by uncontrolled laughter. Those are the things that make the game really memorable. I mean we are all a bit geekish by just playing and those that play have expanded to different casts then use to be drawn in but who would not want to play a good table top session with these guys.

How to interact with the whole party?

I find that in role playing adventures that the plot of the game seems to focus around one character. It will normally be the more aggressive players taking charge of actions and decisions being made. So the campaign tends to focus around things the they are interested in accomplishing. Even when you try to work it in that the other players have some face time it tends to go down to a one on one. How do you make it to where the whole party is in the game. The only for sure answer I have found is combat. Not matter whether your are slicing with a sword, casting a spell or shooting a bow everyone gets a turn. So every one has the same amount of time given them. Some players are not good in combat and others excel at it so it will be with varying success but everybody gets a turn. So my Question is how do you do the everybody gets a turn with a conversation with the tavern owner or making the plan to rescue the maiden from the dragon. I have come up with two solutions.

One: in all you quote dungeon crawls do not just put monsters. Put some mental, physical, and magical puzzles that will require some of the skills of the less combat oriented players. This will give that I made a significant contribution to the team feeling. So knowing your party make up is important. It is also important to let them makes mistakes so that others can help them out of it. “Look the all powerful fighter has just fell down the stairs backwards.” we had better give him a hand.

Two: Force others to be in charge. If one player is taking the lead a lot come up with an adventure hook that one of the others is forced to be in charge. I have a fighter and a priest in the current game and the fighter is the primary. So I made and adventure of locating resources and placed the priest in charge and the fighter was sent to protect him. So find was to get you less interactive players out of their source books and into a more interactive role in the game.