I also forgot another category for "freakshit", which is very clearly someone's fetish.
I mean my own personal label for them is basically "shitty broken races", but Freakshit carries the point and is more universally, used for better or worse.
I know this might get me lynched, but I liked that 4e officially split Wood Elves and High Elves into their own distinct races.
And no one liked Dragonborn despite Wizards trying so hard to make them "a thing" because they were A) able to copyright Dragonborn and B) I remember half-dragon being super hot in the middle of the 3.x run, but it was already dying off by the time 4e was announced.
Uh that's interesting, what kind of homework? Like, think more about the background of your character, write a short description of the NPC you've encountered...?
It depends and varies wildly.
Sometimes its just as simple as "Get your inventory straight" or "Tell me what you want to do next" , sometimes its a pop quiz about past events/NPCs. Ask them what they remember about something that happened earlier. When I'm starting up a game, I ask for some "player/character" reactions/backstory. "Who is your oldest friend"/"Tell me a time you got into trouble"/"What's your goal?". For new players, I sometimes just ask what they enjoyed about a session.
I also give out reading assignments.
So I write huge involved backstories for my worlds, and I understand that it only interests me. So I usually give players the very basics when they start out, and build as we go; The town of Gopzeight has a great back story and is an import lynchpin the world's trading network with a cast of NPCs and personalities.... but if the players never visit it, there is no reason to burden them with (to them) useless information. So often times Homework is a reading assignment of a couple paragraphs of background information that might influence their Character's reactions. No more than a page, with minimal things that are relevant or could become relevant given what the party is doing, and let them ask for clarifications or suggest modifications.
"Here's how people from your town generally feel about the Merchants guild", etc.
As note, I tell players how people of their Race/Class/Origin/Religion
generally feel about things, making it clear they are free to have their character have their own thoughts and feelings. But if in general Dwarves hate Elves, your Dwarf can have an elven girlfriend (or boyfriend. Its elves, no one can tell) but everyone around you will assume you hate elves and treat you that way.
Its important to reward players for doing this too. Because we're adults, life happens, and if you aren't able to put in a hour occassionally its fine (if it becomes an every week thing, I talk to them because usually that mean they have lost interest and only continuing based on inertia). So it should be something good, but also not to big of an award so if people miss a week they don't feel demoralized. You want to incentivize players who want to be engaged to be engaged, not try to enforce mandatory fun on a player. It should be a treat, not a bribe.
Currenly the reward for doing homework is a bonus token that is good for a +1 on any D20 roll and goes away at the end of the session to encourage use and prevent hording. (You get one for showing up, and one for doing homework). I also give them out for being a good player: Good roleplay, a good game-relevant joke. I got some chinese 28g poker chips off amazon I use as the physical counters, they feel really nice and my players like to hoard them - but really hate to spend them.
And again, to agree with
@Corn Flakes start them out with a crawl. Toss in puzzles. Then toss in combats that the players can negotiate or talk their way past.
Also, don't be afraid to steal from media. Run the first campaign as RuneGate: MH-1 where the characters go through an arcane gate into one-shot dungeons to disrupt an evil overlords plans - this also gives people an excuse to drop in/drop out and to change characters/race if what they selected just isn't working.
