Quote Originally Posted by Schwann145 View Post
I think I'd be more inclined towards this argument if those people were actually interested in roleplaying as said exotic races. But in several decades of ttrpg gaming, the kenku player I mention above is the very first time I've seen anyone even make the attempt.
Instead, it's just a long history of "human with horns," or "human with a tail," or "human with scales." Not at all different from your mention above of, "human but pointy ears," and "human but stocky," just the list of, "but with..." features has grown some.
(To be fair, I've never seen anyone try to play an Elf or a Dwarf as anything other than "human but..." either. That's also a big disappointment of mine. They're not human, they shouldn't be played as human.)
That feels like it's veering into "only I can decide what qualifies as 'human but XYZ'!" territory to me.

It's hard to play a fundamentally non-human character. I try to do it as a DM and I struggle terribly every time. It's even harder if you need to get along with a bunch of other party members -- you must necessarily be some degree of human-relatable, i.e. social and cooperative and moral. And you, yourself are a human, so your own worldview and baseline assumptions are always going to bleed through.

TL;DR - I don't think "inhuman" should ever be someone's benchmark for roleplaying non-human races. It's just not feasible and, unless everyone is onboard, it's likely to hurt the party dynamics. "Human but XYZ" is honestly a much more realistic expectation.