[Ji ji]

Recently we decided to "come back to origins" for an adventure and we take The Temple of Elemental Evil, playing with D&D.
The party is made of two members. A halfelf/halfminotaur cleric and a draconic tiefling rogue. When we created there characters, we simply thought "in a world where it's common that two guys travelling from a village to another can encounter a fliyng Yeth hound or a fire salamander (more similar to a lamia than to a salamander), how could be freakish a similar party?"

DF is D&D flavour stuff. A lot of player in the world enjoy this kind of fantasy settings. Having dozens or hundreds of sentient races living in a similar melting pot can obviously bring to odd parties. But are they odd in the game world?
In a classical fantasy setting (thinking of '70es an '80es) playable races are usually little. Other, more exotic races are ususally forbidden by BG reasons: an half-ogre cannot go in a city, village, nor stay near them, because he would be attacked as soon as seen. In modern mainstream fantasy, it is often stated that there is hate between races, but in the end nobody care a lot of a lich necromancer going to shopping in central plaza with his halfmermaid/half demon friend.

A party is freakish or not only with regard to setting. The really important thing is that you and your players set in advance which degree of harmony you wish in the party. I never made a problem of a super loyal and cohesive party even if in the setting members come from enemy races. Simply settle in advance characters' life history, how they met, why they work together. An orc can be the best friend of an elf, if you settle so, or they can share a goal and be willing to forgot their reciprocal dislikes for a brief period. On the other hand, I stress that in a overly freakish game world there's no odditiy in a pixie, a minotaur, a halfhobbit/halfdwarf and a fire fiend going to restaurant together.