A couple of decades ago, I set out to make a non-Tolkien Fantasy setting for my gaming group. No dwarves, gnomes, orcs, or elves. I worked to the best of my ability as the GM to build out a world that had none of the “default” Fantasy tropes.
We never even got a first round out of the way. Out of the six core, members, only four really tried to build out characters and the group never got invested enough to jump on it. I had a reasonable amount of world building done and was really disappointed when we could never agree on a time to kick it off. The only feedback I’d gotten was from one of the two guys who wasn’t interested. He just wanted to game and not have to remember all this “new stuff.” He liked being his usual Fighter/Ranger/Brick character and playing that character.
¯\(ツ)/¯
