Well, I guess WotC is giving me a birthday present, as, according to Polygon, tomorrow we'll be getting a new unearthed arcana to preview character options for the upcoming Strixhaven-set Curriculum of Chaos.
I'm honestly a little unsure of what to make of this. Typically, we've only gotten races and subclasses in campaign setting books, or ordinary rules/monster expansions. Of course, that's not 100% the precedent - Princes of the Apocalypse has the Genasi playable race in it (though they also came out in the free Elemental Evil Player's Companion along with some other races). It's possible, of course, that WotC is expanding the purview of adventure books - if the Folk of the Feywild UA means we might get new races in the upcoming Wilds Beyond the Witchlight, perhaps we'll have new things to play in Strixhaven.
Indeed, Magic's worlds tend to have a different array of playable races on each setting - Ravnica doesn't have dwarves, but they do have Loxodons. Theros doesn't have elves, but they do have centaurs. I wouldn't be surprised in the intention for this book is to give us playable versions of the humanoid races found in the Strixhaven set.
According to MTG Wiki, the plane of Arcavios is home to... ahem:
Archaics, Aven, Bear-folk, Burrogs, Demons, Djinn, Dryads, Dwarves, Efreeti, Elder Dragons, Elves, Giants, Goblins, Humans, Kor, Leonin, Lizard-folk, Loxodons, Merfolk, Minotaurs, Ogres, Rhox, Sphinx, Treefolk, Trolls, Turtle-folk, and Vampires.
Granted, there's precedent for not including every obvious playable race option in other settings. Ravnica has the Viashino, who are MTG's reptilian lizard folk. I would obviously allow players who wanted to play one to simply use the Lizardfolk stats from Volo's Guide to Monsters, even though they weren't included in Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica.
For those less familiar with MTG races, a few of these are recurring across multiple planes. Leonin are lion-people (whose stats were included in Mythic Odysseys of Theros). Loxodon are elephant people (seen in Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica). Aven are bird-people, who can probably best be represented with the Aarakocra stats. Kor are tall humanoids with alabaster skin and white hair, the males of which sometimes have little tendrils coming off their chins, but mostly look like humans. Rhox are rhinoceros people.
(In MTG, the way these animal-people are typically represented is to simply use the animal they're based on as a creature type. So a Leonin Warrior could have the creature type "Cat Warrior," and is thus affected by any card that affects either cats or warriors.)
I think it's most likely that we'll see some of these races made into player options to fit with the setting's population.
The bigger question, though, is whether we'll be getting any new subclasses. Given that it's a school of mages, subclasses for the Wizard and Sorcerer class both make a lot of sense. Sorcerers are a class that's never gotten a setting-specific subclass. Wizards got two in Explorer's Guide to Wildemount, but they were the only two that didn't see a reprint in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything (the Echo Knight fighter also didn't see a reprint). And frankly, any "school" of mages seems extremely wizard-themed.
Naturally, I'll have a post about the UA when it comes out.
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