The Most Popular Race In 'Dungeons & Dragons' Revealed

A recent survery clearly suggests that D&D players don’t like to step out of their comfort zone.

In a healthy convo in Twitter, Jeremy Crawford, Dungeons & Dragons’ lead rules designer revealed which one of the game’s races was mostly used by players while playing D&D. Surprisingly, Crawford states that players usually prefer to create human characters even though there are many racial options available to choose in the game.

Want to know which D&D race is played more than any other? Humans, by far. #DnD https://t.co/FWKEJ8fcs3
— Jeremy Crawford (@JeremyECrawford) March 1, 2018

A repetitive complaints from D&D players revolves around many new playable races from the upcoming Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes book being descended from elves. In a video released recently revolving around some of the lore behind one of these "many" races, Crawford states that "people like to play elves" which lead to a complaint that this is only because elves are overpowered within the game.

Responding to this complaint, Crawford said that players are most likely to choose things like personality, aesthetic and story over racial abilities. Therefore, no matter how many races are available to choose from, people will always give preference to the latter. He then states that humans, elves and dwarves have always been the most popular choices regardless of whichever Dungeons & Dragons version is being played.

All this is a bit surprising considering huma characters have always been the popular choice in D&D given there are so many other options to choose. As of now, there are exactly 26 different playable races including lizardfolk to catlike Tabaxi and what more? This count does not even count subraces like wood elves and the drow.

Even though Crawford said that humans are only popular because of story reasons, it could be that players are swayed because of the human build. As we all know that humans get a +1 to all of their ability scores. Plus, variant human build also allows the player to pick an additional skill proficiency and a bonus feat in exchange for adding +1 to only two of their abilities. Variant humans are the only ones who get a default feat at 1st level which might come out as a tempting feature and sway players to create human characters ignoring other races.

Crawford ultimately said that Dungeons & Dragons has always given players the freedom to choose the story they want to narrate with their characters. Despite the fun of optimizing a character for combat , it seems like players instead enjoy the storytelling aspect of Dungeons & Dragons - Story is the soul of every campaign afterall!

Feel free to share your favorite D&D race in the comments section but before, why not enjoy some D&D memes?