[the REAL Minos Prime]

Alright, this discussion has been done to death over and over, but I might as well start it again because why the hell not, because really, it's never gone anywhere, and I've never gotten an actual answer whenever it's been done:

SL2 hardly has separate races. They're all just humans with different origins or animal parts.

Now, I don't know why Dev insists on making each race mostly visually the same. I hear people insist that dev doesn't want "furries", but that doesn't explain the lack of monster races, or why the artificial races also need to be visually human. Hell, Karakuri initially had very little visual restrictions. Dev started making them after release when he realized how few there really were.

Seriously - why can't the living puppet race look like puppets? Why can't the magical automata look like magical automata? Why can't the fucked up Frankenstein people actually look like weird Frankenstein abominations? Why is it just spiritual android, robot android, and biological mud android?

I do partly understand the artstyle problem, but there are plenty of ways to integrate magical automata or chimeric creatures that don't break the general fantasy aesthetic. There are Poppets from Pathfinder 2e, and the living doll bit has been done countless times. For homunculi there are things like flesh golems, the Duergar, or Frankenstein's Monster itself, or you could just be a monster upper half that was given a human lower half (or vice versa). For mechanations, there are things like the Warforged from D&D, the Automatons from Pathfinder, and countless different steampunk automata.


Humans are nice and animal-people are cute and all. But why can't we break away from that mold of just being visually inhuman? Especially when there are so many other RPGs that do inhuman PCs perfectly fine?

[Poruku]

How the hell are you gonna find a variety of playbys for a non-humanoid race? It's hard enough to find proper playbys for things such as reptilians etc. This is a central part of sl2 that we can't overlook, the game relies heavily on external art.

Remember another thing; sl2 is an anime game. It's based on the various tropes of Anime, at least in the race sense. Every possible genre of anime girl is represented by sl2 races, which is why it's the way it is. This allows SL2 to be relatively consistent stylistically because people can pull playbys from... Anime.

[Rendar]

How the hell are you gonna find a variety of playbys for a non-humanoid race? It's hard enough to find proper playbys for things such as reptilians etc. This is a central part of sl2 that we can't overlook, the game relies heavily on external art.

Remember another thing; sl2 is an anime game. It's based on the various tropes of Anime, at least in the race sense. Every possible genre of anime girl is represented by sl2 races, which is why it's the way it is. This allows SL2 to be relatively consistent stylistically because people can pull playbys from... Anime.

'It's hard to find Lizard people'




Not to detract from your point there Polk. But trust me. 'Doll people' 'Giant armoured knights', 'Freaky looking' playbys are 100% easy to find, and frankly? The furry hate is a bit zzz.

'It doesn't fit the setting!' -- Neither did mouse people before they were dropped with zero RP leading up to their arrival to the world.
'Humanoid monsters?!' -- We've had a number of humanoid monsters/monstrous chimera running around.
'B-But--' -- Oni existing. They were literally player begged as Yokoshura was teased to the point that Dev added humanoid ones because SO many people wanted to humanize / play a slightly 'monstrous' race.


Like. Idk. Human playbys on loop with varying degrees of animal features gets old after awhile.

[pilcrow]

How the hell are you gonna find a variety of playbys for a non-humanoid race? It's hard enough to find proper playbys for things such as reptilians etc. This is a central part of sl2 that we can't overlook, the game relies heavily on external art.

Remember another thing; sl2 is an anime game. It's based on the various tropes of Anime, at least in the race sense. Every possible genre of anime girl is represented by sl2 races, which is why it's the way it is. This allows SL2 to be relatively consistent stylistically because people can pull playbys from... Anime.

This is a false dichotomy - opening up playbys to weirder critters for the races that could be weirder critters isn't going to stop you from playing a doe-eyed anime girl version of it. There's also the fact that you can EASILY find less-human playbys for many of the races that are restricted to the bare minimum regardless of that.

Doriads are a particularly frustrating example that illustrates the point exactly - my first instincts looking at them was 'how close to a deku scrub could I go' and the answer apparently ends at 'green-tinted elf'. No leaf-hair or ANYTHING, despite that kind of thing being a defining characteristic of plant people across ALL MEDIA, EVERYWHERE.

Mechs are also another frustrating example - where we're ostensibly allowed to play a mech with nonhumanoid features, but they're expected to weed themselves out through painful alzheimers RP within the season, month, week, or even day, with little justification beyond 'they just have to look human'. This point isn't really explored or justified in-lore and never has been, it's just a purity edict. Karakuri get it even worse, where the only thing preventing them from having an unusual form is.. culture..? And then also a shadowy cabal that will kill anybody trying to make one that doesn't conform to norms. 
Which is weird because if ANYTHING got the 'body dysmorphia so bad it physically kills you' treatment I'd expect it to be the youkai forcibly brainwashed and bombarded with dead people's minds until they thought they were human. If anything the space rocks should be at CONFLICT with the human appearance made for them, but then we might run the risk of encountering a trans allegory and we wouldn't want that.

This isn't actually protecting some kind of playby availability or anything - the most consistent feature I've seen in new players playing mechs in the wild is, you know, obviously mechanical features even to the point of not having a face. It's what they first jump to, and it evidently isn't very difficult to find a PB for it. 
In fact, given the vast majority of mechs are just regular-ass human PBs I'd say it's more confounding to find a mech PB that straddles the line between 'regular human' and 'guaranteed to blot' under the current lore! It's honestly kind of disappointing NOT to see the robot-ears anime waifus, all the regulars play it way more safe!

I've also ran tabletop games with various groups in settings where humans aren't even an option and do you know what my players did? Found PBs! And this isn't even beginning to address the fact that artists like.. exist in our community, that there are those who will create with their own two hands the exact thing they want.

The 'it's for PB accessibility' refrain only rings more and more hollow the more it's repeated, honestly.