A former player/roommate of mine would only play elves. Period. No exceptions. Unfortunately for me (and fortunately for him) he moved away while I was in the middle of planning an all dwarf campaign. The campaign sounded like a blast to me, but I knew he would hate it and would probably commit suicide as soon as he reached elven lands, just so he could play an elf.

It’s not much of a story, I’ll admit, but there’s a moral to the story that is longer than the story itself. I’m not Aesop, but here’s the reason for my tale.

As a player, be flexible, try different things, experiment and have fun. Sure, I love elves just as much as the next guy. My first D&D character was an elf, and I love him dearly. However, in the 26 years I’ve been gaming, I’ve branched out and played every “normal” race and quite a few others than are not normal. In real life, I’m always going to be a human of average looks, average height, average weight and more than average careers. However, when I sit down at the gaming table, I want to become more. More what? More than average. If I have sucky stats due to poor dice rolls during character creation, so be it. I’ll hype up the weaknesses and make a great character trait or three out of the numbers. If I have great stats (which is more rare than the lower sets of stats), then I’ll find some character traits to hang on the numbers and play that up as well. I guess the moral of my story for the players is to be more than you could normally be through the act of role playing.

As a GM, be generous. Allow your players to stretch their personal boundaries by allowing them to play characters that let them be someone totally different. I also highly recommend that you push your players when they appear to be in a rut and playing the same character over and over. Perhaps start up a new campaign where you’ve written up character backgrounds and hand them out “at random” but make sure the right players get the right backgrounds to help them find more out about themselves than they would have on their own. I’ve never actually tried this because most of my players push themselves to be bigger, better, faster and more. However, if I see this happening, I won’t hesitate to break out my creativity on their behalf.

Remember, elves are awesome and cool, but they are never awesome and cool 100% of the time. Try something new!