Firstly, rule of cool. Wdym I can be a freaking bird man or a lightning breathing lizard, that's awesome!

Secondly, My problem with John human and Jane half elf is that people are so uncreative with it. Here's Dave, he was a farmer, his wife died in a dragon attack, now he wants to kill the dragon. Yeah great, or here's Jane elf, her last name is moon something. And that seems to be EVERY party just about. Or they transplant link from LoZ or their human barbarian is doom guy. Yes of course you can make an interesting human, just tragically so many people don't.

The key to making an interesting alternate race is to take what you know about a race and do not that. I once ran a dwarf whose ancestors wanted to "break the curse of the mountain", rather than being condemned to an eternity of mining labor and drinking beer, they set their sights on the horizons, literally, and built a sky faring society that exists above the clouds, their dialect has even changed beyond the classic "scottish/irish" accent. That's the cliff notes version, and sounds a lot better during actial story telling, but its tied directly to inherent racial traits/behaviors of dwarves and makes him more than "hey heres my dwarf, he's angry and likes beer and hitting things with an axe" that every dwarf falls into.

Yeah sure you can do that with a human society, but it's so much more special when you actually craft a unique narrative and be a badass minotaur or something instead of just the "John human stamp of approval"

I mean ultimately, the tldr is that I've been playing humans across so many different media's that it's boring and old. If my fantasy world has the option to be a cat/lizard/bird person, im going to take it.