Quote Originally Posted by JoeJ View Post
Yes, and not just a race of hats. All races that aren't human need to be, in some sense, races of hats (although they don't necessarily have to be evil hats; that's a different question entirely). Any non-human group needs to have some identifiable trait that sets them apart from humans, because non-human races exist specifically to allow stories that you can't tell with humans only. The differences between, for example, any human and any elf need to be greater than the differences between any two humans. If they aren't, then that race (or species, or whatever you call it) has no narrative reason to exist; they should be replaced with a human culture.
Elves live for 750 years and don't need to sleep, instead going into a trance where they relive bits of their past lives. That's something you can't do with a culture of humans, unless they've used magic or something to make themselves basically not human anymore.