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Four humans wearing mithral chain armor... pretty much describes 50% of the games I played in.

I have a friend who is slightly racist IRL, and very racist in-game. Though racist isn't the ideal word, it's just that he doesn't really get into a character with too alien of a mindset and life experience. He has no desire to play an Elf, or a Half-Orc (Dwarf is right out), so he's pretty much been Human since AD&D. The mechanics involved wouldn't even matter.

I have a fondness for Elves. There agility, beauty, and especially the immortality (or 1,000 years same diff), that is *so* how I want to feel when I get wrapped up in a character. Whats more is that I strongly prefer playing multiclassed characters to a straight classed one (even with the mechanical drawbacks in 3e). Back in the AD&D days I played alot of elves, and truly the build that feels the most right is a Fighter/Mage.

It can also be said (and I would agree) that a multi-class character in 2e was probably a more powerful character. I mean when you can choose between a Fighter 15, Magic-User 15, or a Fighter/Mage 13/13... further I felt that pretty much every race was better than Human in AD&D, as the human pretty much didn't get any racial features, while all other races got cool stuff, *especially* a +2 to a stat!

Now I can be as "theatre" with my roleplaying as anyone, it all depends on how deep the other players go, or I can be as Hack-n-Slash as anyone. Even not meaning to uber-build or powergame, when I'm alone and get to thinking about characters and builds I'm a full on powergamer. It's the fun of building this chess piece to do exactly what I want it to do and be the best at what it does, whatever that is.

So I have to admit that in 3e it's *very* hard for me to not be Human. There is really no compulsive reason mechanically to choose anything else (unless it has a LA or racial HD which isn't allowed in alot of campaigns).

Races happen to be one of my most *favoritist* things about 4e. Not only can I sit down and flip through books envisioning cool builds for each race, but whats even cooler is that I can work on a build and really be torn over what race to go with.

I find it funny and a little strange that the 4e Human has pretty much fallen to the bottom of the list for me. I mean I think it's perfectly fine mechanically (maybe slightly inferior), and would certainly be a good fit with certain builds, but it's benefits are mostly boring. They do have some cool racial feats that I'd love to have, but not at the cost of a cool racial power. Breath Weapon, Fey Step, a Reroll... that stuff is awesome.

I'm not running a game currently, but I'm toying with a houserule (4e) that you can take any race's racial package, but reskin it and call it whatever race you want. Mechanically you are your racial package, but I think the flavortext could make for some really cool characters. There may be a few issues that wouldn't work, like you can't take the halfling racial package and then call yourself a 7' tall Goliath... but I don't think it would cause too many problems and any that arose would be worked out by the time the game is underway.