Forgotten Realms - what playable races would an 'ordinary commoner' know about?

[Forechosen]

Hey everyone,

Question is pretty much in the title! Would all of the playable races be known to virtually everyone in the world?

I can imagine that quite literally every single person residing in the Sword Coast and beyond has heard of, for example, an Orc, or an Elf.

I imagine that a collosal number of them would know there are various elven 'types'. I *imagine* that even some illiterate, untravelled, out-of-the-way simpleton would have heard scary stories of the Drow.

However, what about some of the more exotic races? Would that same simpleton have heard of the Tabaxi? The Furbolg? Or the Yuan-ti?

Would a more educated commoner in one of the more cosmopolitan cities even recognise one of those folk?

In our 'real world' *everybody* has heard of goblins and dragons. But there are plenty of fantastical races that far fewer people know about, even some of the more common ones that us DnD players 'take for granted'. In fact, I'd say virtually all races that aren't mentioned in fairy tales are more-or-less unknown to he general public.

Are there 'fairy tales' about Yuan-ti in the Realms? Or the Tabaxi? Or any of the myriad of playable races we have. I suppose it sounds strange to me - but anyway, I would love to hear your opinions on the matter!

[Zhorn]

It would very much depend on where your common folk are from, and what relation it has to the surrounding civilisations.
a town near the serpent hills could be very familiar with the snake and lizard races, but no nothing of goliaths, where it could be the reverse for someone in the north from the ten-towns region.

In a lot of areas, it might just be more a case of miss-identification.
If someone had never seen a furbolg before; to them they might think it was a funny looking bugbear
Lizardfolk look like dragonborn
A tabaxi walking into a bar might be mistaken for a lycanthopy promlem
Yu-anti? Oh, you mean that draconic-bloodline person with the scales and eyes.

[Forechosen]

It would very much depend on where your common folk are from, and what relation it has to the surrounding civilisations.
a town near the serpent hills could be very familiar with the snake and lizard races, but no nothing of goliaths, where it could be the reverse for someone in the north from the ten-towns region.

In a lot of areas, it might just be more a case of miss-identification.
If someone had never seen a furbolg before; to them they might think it was a funny looking bugbear
Lizardfolk look like dragonborn
A tabaxi walking into a bar might be mistaken for a lycanthopy promlem
Yu-anti? Oh, you mean that draconic-bloodline person with the scales and eyes.

Well, that was my sort of train of thought. That the exotic races are *not* widely known by everybody… that they're not equivilant to our real world 'dragons and goblins'.

What got me thinking is that a player in my group wanted to play as a Yuan-ti. Both my DM (who's amazing) and myself read up as much as we could on them, and *all* over the internet is 'how bad it would be if people found out they were a Yuan-ti'.

But.. would it be bad? We were wondering if this Yuan-ti literally went up to an 'ordinary commoner' and said "Yo, I'm a Yuan-ti" - would the commoner have any clue what they were on about?

Would they not just think 'woah, this person looks kinda snake-ish, weeeeeird'?

Obviously you're absolutely correct, and the context does matter, a lot. But it just got us thinking.

Edit. When I say 'ordinary commoner' I suppose I am saying somebody with no special relation whatsoever to the exotic races. As you say, ten towns folk would surely know more on Goliaths than folk from elsewhere.

[Yanagi]

Hey everyone,

Question is pretty much in the title! Would all of the playable races be known to virtually everyone in the world?

I can imagine that quite literally every single person residing in the Sword Coast and beyond has heard of, for example, an Orc, or an Elf.

I imagine that a collosal number of them would know there are various elven 'types'. I *imagine* that even some illiterate, untravelled, out-of-the-way simpleton would have heard scary stories of the Drow.

However, what about some of the more exotic races? Would that same simpleton have heard of the Tabaxi? The Furbolg? Or the Yuan-ti?

Would a more educated commoner in one of the more cosmopolitan cities even recognise one of those folk?

In our 'real world' *everybody* has heard of goblins and dragons. But there are plenty of fantastical races that far fewer people know about, even some of the more common ones that us DnD players 'take for granted'. In fact, I'd say virtually all races that aren't mentioned in fairy tales are more-or-less unknown to he general public.

Are there 'fairy tales' about Yuan-ti in the Realms? Or the Tabaxi? Or any of the myriad of playable races we have. I suppose it sounds strange to me - but anyway, I would love to hear your opinions on the matter!

Give the history of the subcontinent (Faerun as opposed to Kara-Tur and the desert region which...editions ago when I played FR...was canonically part of the same land mass), the ordinary commoners would be most comfortable and knowledgeable about halfings, dwarves, and gnomes, because those groups tend to cohabitate and trade with humans a great deal. And commoners of those races would have a pretty good gauge of what a human was.

Elves would be "known" because they have such a deep historical footprint but just because they're fewer in number they'd be less familiar. I strongly suspect the average commoner would have a vague, culturally-communicated sense that elves are strange because of their longevity and complex history. For some this would lend an air of romanticism and positive exoticism, for others it makes them strange and suspect. The drow, though, would be bogeymen--a real threat but one that's inchoate and lends itself to wild speculation.

Unless the writing's changed a bunch, orcs and goblinoids are concentrated as antagonistic blocs--the former in Thay and in the northern mountains plus the Underdark orogs, the latter (last I recall, the Sothsillian Empire) having forcibly captured a chunk of the Sword Coast but having no normalized relations with neighbors. So the average commoner would probably, on one hand, "know" more about those two races on a socio-political level...what they're doing, what threat they pose as actors on the world stage...but have no firsthand experience or deeper knowledge. Once they're sorted into the pile marked "threat" there's not really a lot of need for further examination.

When you get to the very regional creatures...wemics in the Shaar, the Crinti...I think it would be a matter of concentric circles of familiarity: the farther removed from their origin the less familiarity and the less solid information.

Would at some point most people become a bit desensitized to humanoid variety? I kind of think they would. You'd get people who just kind of pay no heed but make no assumptions about threat, and people who just guess that anybody outside their familiarity should just be cautiously avoided and not gawped at. Particularly in cities and on big trade routes: it would just be normal to see people with unusual appearances and not know why their appearances is unusual.

And given that adventuring is sort of a demimonde, probably a lot of commoners would just have a mental category for "adventurer crap not worth thinking about." Another kind of different-looking person? Well, if they're going into the tavern where adventurers hangout it's just not our business.

On the other hand, mistaken identification could get ugly. If you're a commoner in a region with antagonistic lizard people, you'd be uneasy about scaled people turning up in town.