You know, one of the things that greatly appealed to me about TFT back in the day is that it not only allowed, but positively
encouraged you to play something besides a Human, Elf, Dwarf, or Halfling! You could be an Orc, Goblin, Gargoyle, Gnome, LOTS of different things. Heck, you could even be a Dragon (at one extreme) or a Prootwaddle (at the other).
The only game really on the market at that time that encouraged such characters was
Monsters, Monsters (and maybe T&T; I've never owned or played that one, so I can't say), so TFT was quite unusual in that regard. D&D really wasn't set up for it, though they tried to do something with the idea eventually. And it was FUN to play those kinds of characters from time to time. And yes, often their career was relatively short, but one time a group of us decided to play an Orc mercenary band who got hired to go and do various things, and while the campaign didn't last long (our GM went away) it was really amazingly fun.