A game world in which every single species in every single book across every single edition of D&D exists at the same time is a game world where species is an untenable blob and none of the individual species matter.
One of the big issues you regularly have in your posting is your tendency to see issues through an all or nothing lens—one that often hurts your credibility even when I agree with your underlying points.
In this case, you are making up and responding to a situation that no one on this thread is actually advocating for. You have made up a fictional duality that pretends your only options are the DMs limiting character choices at creation and a total melting pot which is, fairly obviously, a nonsensical and false dichotomy.
In the real world, it is really, really easy to give players unlimited options and still keep a tightly controlled world. You simply say “hey, you can choose any racial option” then work those choices into the world. Someone wants to play a centaur? Just add some herds to the plains and you have centaurs. They want to play a Simic Hybrid? They’re a unique lab experiment gone wrong. Minotaur where that doesn’t fit quite thematically? Maybe they’re an traveller from a distant land. Etc.
Just because every option is available doesn’t mean all those options make it into the final game - it just means you take the options folks actually picked and added them in. Adding 1-4 new races, some of which can be easily explained away as one-offs barely results in any change to the world… and suggesting the end result of open choice is “an untenable blob” is laughably hyperbolic.
Which, to be clear, is not to say that your way of playing is wrong as a matter of objective truth, just to point out maybe you could be a bit more understanding and less ridiculously dismissive of others.
^ This. "Any" is not the same as "all."
And hell, you can even allow "most" and still have some bans. I wouldn't want a Simic Hybrid in my Krynn game - even though I'd have no problem allowing Tieflings, Genasi, and even Dragonborn.
I'm one of the monsters. In one of my homebrew worlds, there are no elves, dwarves are a non-player race, and dragons died out a long, long time ago. I also really like playing E6 - so you level to 6 and no further - and on top of that, you cannot buy magic items beyond potions and maybe the occasional scroll.
This has a number of desirable effects, but ... well, it isn't popular with everyone =D
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Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
As someone who only DMs I have yet to meet a player who gets upset if I state up front that certain species or subclasses will not be available this campaign. I never restrict classes, but I have found that certain subclasses can unbalance a party. For instance I was running a campaign with a gloomstalker ranger that was primarily based in the under dark. The gloomstalker features meant it overlapped and in some ways surpassed the rogue player so they felt a little pushed out because thematically and mechanically it made perfect sense for the subclass that doesn’t just go invisible but disappears in darkness to be the main scout.
But I always have those conversations with players, if a player has an amazing backstory that is reliant on a certain species that I had previously said no to then I will always sit down, work with them and figure out how we incorporate it into the world.
I would though also agree with others that this idea of DMs restricting player choice is the reason there are not enough DMs is I think ignoring the other causes for this. Being a DM is hard and a far bigger time sink, add into that the hopeless expectations put on DMs by players who watch any streaming service and expect that detail and level of world building and lore and it can seem almost impossible as a new DM to take those first steps.
A game world in which every single species in every single book across every single edition of D&D exists at the same time is a game world where species is an untenable blob and none of the individual species matter.
One of the big issues you regularly have in your posting is your tendency to see issues through an all or nothing lens—one that often hurts your credibility even when I agree with your underlying points.
In this case, you are making up and responding to a situation that no one on this thread is actually advocating for. You have made up a fictional duality that pretends your only options are the DMs limiting character choices at creation and a total melting pot which is, fairly obviously, a nonsensical and false dichotomy.
In the real world, it is really, really easy to give players unlimited options and still keep a tightly controlled world. You simply say “hey, you can choose any racial option” then work those choices into the world. Someone wants to play a centaur? Just add some herds to the plains and you have centaurs. They want to play a Simic Hybrid? They’re a unique lab experiment gone wrong. Minotaur where that doesn’t fit quite thematically? Maybe they’re an traveller from a distant land. Etc.
Just because every option is available doesn’t mean all those options make it into the final game - it just means you take the options folks actually picked and added them in. Adding 1-4 new races, some of which can be easily explained away as one-offs barely results in any change to the world… and suggesting the end result of open choice is “an untenable blob” is laughably hyperbolic.
Which, to be clear, is not to say that your way of playing is wrong as a matter of objective truth, just to point out maybe you could be a bit more understanding and less ridiculously dismissive of others.
I would argue there's nothing fictional about the duality, and that "EVERYTHING IS EVERYWHERE" is exactly what most of the Free For All players are looking for. Where, ANYWHERE in this thread, has anyone suggested they're okay with any restrictions or limitations on what exists in the world at all? The prevailing attitude has been that every single species, class and subclass belongs in every single game no matter what that game is otherwise doing and anyone who restricts a player's choice in any way for any reason whatsoever is an absolute soulless monster who shouldn't DM - or even just play - ever again.
One of my current games takes place in a cyber-spellpunk world in which Nature has died and almost all the old gods are absent. The druid class was banned outright at character creation and only Death domain clerics were allowed. Many other classes had subclass restrictions, and less than half of the game's species were available. Should I tell this DM that his game is unrecoverably toxic and unplayable and inform the group that this game we all agreed to run and have been playing for months needs to die because nobody could play a plasmoid Spore druid in a world with no natural energies in it anymore? Because frankly that seems like way more of a dick move than imposing restrictions in the first place.
Where, ANYWHERE in this thread, has anyone suggested they're okay with any restrictions or limitations on what exists in the world at all?
Only multiple times on every page
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Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock) Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
A game world in which every single species in every single book across every single edition of D&D exists at the same time is a game world where species is an untenable blob and none of the individual species matter.
One of the big issues you regularly have in your posting is your tendency to see issues through an all or nothing lens—one that often hurts your credibility even when I agree with your underlying points.
In this case, you are making up and responding to a situation that no one on this thread is actually advocating for. You have made up a fictional duality that pretends your only options are the DMs limiting character choices at creation and a total melting pot which is, fairly obviously, a nonsensical and false dichotomy.
In the real world, it is really, really easy to give players unlimited options and still keep a tightly controlled world. You simply say “hey, you can choose any racial option” then work those choices into the world. Someone wants to play a centaur? Just add some herds to the plains and you have centaurs. They want to play a Simic Hybrid? They’re a unique lab experiment gone wrong. Minotaur where that doesn’t fit quite thematically? Maybe they’re an traveller from a distant land. Etc.
Just because every option is available doesn’t mean all those options make it into the final game - it just means you take the options folks actually picked and added them in. Adding 1-4 new races, some of which can be easily explained away as one-offs barely results in any change to the world… and suggesting the end result of open choice is “an untenable blob” is laughably hyperbolic.
Which, to be clear, is not to say that your way of playing is wrong as a matter of objective truth, just to point out maybe you could be a bit more understanding and less ridiculously dismissive of others.
I would argue there's nothing fictional about the duality, and that "EVERYTHING IS EVERYWHERE" is exactly what most of the Free For All players are looking for. Where, ANYWHERE in this thread, has anyone suggested they're okay with any restrictions or limitations on what exists in the world at all? The prevailing attitude has been that every single species, class and subclass belongs in every single game no matter what that game is otherwise doing and anyone who restricts a player's choice in any way for any reason whatsoever is an absolute soulless monster who shouldn't DM - or even just play - ever again.
One of my current games takes place in a cyber-spellpunk world in which Nature has died and almost all the old gods are absent. The druid class was banned outright at character creation and only Death domain clerics were allowed. Many other classes had subclass restrictions, and less than half of the game's species were available. Should I tell this DM that his game is unrecoverably toxic and unplayable and inform the group that this game we all agreed to run and have been playing for months needs to die because nobody could play a plasmoid Spore druid in a world with no natural energies in it anymore? Because frankly that seems like way more of a dick move than imposing restrictions in the first place.
As I said, you undermine your points when you are responding to things that do not exist. Let me try to put this in as simple of terms as I can for you:
This is a thread about choices during character creation. It is not a thread about the makeup of the final world.
Everyone advocating for options wants to have all OPTIONS available to them during character creation.
No one is advocating that all available options make it into the actual game - only that the specific options which are chosen make it into the game.
I honestly cannot fathom how you are confused - it seems really obvious that “hey, can we work together to make sure my particular choice is added?” doesn’t mean “I want all 20+ other options added as well.”
Everyone advocating for options wants to have all OPTIONS available to them during character creation.
No one is advocating that all available options make it into the actual game - only that the specific options which are chosen make it into the game.
But if all options have to be available at character creation, and if any option chosen has to make it into the game, then that means all options have to potentially be available in the game. If I as a DM decide that there are no Tieflings, Genasi, or Aasimar on my world as an example, then no, those options are not available. Period. End of conversation.
The answer to that confusion, Caerwyn, is that I have yet to hear an answer as to why the DM gets absolutely zero say whatsoever in pre-campaign discussions and is obligated and required to swallow whichever bizarre obnoxious choices the players make no matter how badly those choices mangle the world and the story the DM is working on.
Again - if I'm trying to run a grim, Gothic horror game riffing on Curse of Strahd and Grim Hollow, why do I have to tolerate someone playing a loxodon one-man-band bard whose greatest ambition is to put on the greatest vaudeville show Krynn has ever seen? Even though A.) It completely destroys the tone of the game and makes a mockery of what everyone else is trying to do, and B.) We're not playing in Krynn and never will be.
Everyone advocating for options wants to have all OPTIONS available to them during character creation.
No one is advocating that all available options make it into the actual game - only that the specific options which are chosen make it into the game.
But if all options have to be available at character creation, and if any option chosen has to make it into the game, then that means all options have to potentially be available in the game. If I as a DM decide that there are no Tieflings, Genasi, or Aasimar on my world as an example, then no, those options are not available. Period. End of conversation.
Not true at all, for reasons I mentioned above.
You simply say “hey, you can choose any racial option” then work those choices into the world. Someone wants to play a centaur? Just add some herds to the plains and you have centaurs. They want to play a Simic Hybrid? They’re a unique lab experiment gone wrong. Minotaur where that doesn’t fit quite thematically? Maybe they’re an traveller from a distant land. Etc.
Just because every option is available doesn’t mean all those options make it into the final game - it just means you take the options folks actually picked and added them in.
It is always easy to add something, either by coming up with a reason for why the creature type is rare or just incorporating it into the game.
Personally, that is why I am incredibly permissive in what species I allow my players to choose - it helps build a better game world. I feel quite confident in my ability to come up with something that works and is interesting—but that doesn’t mean others do not have ideas that can contribute. In one of my present games, I have a player who wanted to play a centaur and one who wanted to play a homebrewed Kitsune - two options I never considered for the world. With a single quick conversation, it was easy enough to add both in. The centaur herds are nomadic people that fleshed out an otherwise empty swath of land; the Kitsune people have a very isolated society in a mountain valley I wasn’t planning on using, with their isolation meaning they have information from before a massive disaster the other races do not.
The world, as a whole, is richer because of their wanting to play strange races. And, of course, my adding them didn’t mean I also added minotaurs or Simic hybrids or Grung to the world. They could have chosen those races - but they didn’t, so why add options that never actualised?
But if I don’t want any Centaurs in my world, then no, there are no flipping herds of centaurs on the plains. No, I don’t care that you want to play a centaur, they simply do not exist here. No, I will not change my mind, there are no flipping centaurs in my world. Period. End of conversation.
If I don’t want any centaurs on my world, why should I have to allow them?!?
Instead of expecting DM’s to work with players to accommodate the players’ choices, I’m of the mind that it is important for players to respect the extra lengths a DM goes to when creating the game in comparison and accommodate their DM’s choices. The reasons a DM restricts something are almost certainly more meaningful and have greater consequences than any reason I have for wanting to play any particular race, class or subclass. Even if they aren’t, who am I to ask the person putting a dozen or more extra hours into the game each week than I do to justify themselves to me? How rude. The DM busts their butt to make me a game; I’m going to accept pretty much anything that isn’t outright abusive and appreciate it.
Instead of expecting DM’s to work with players to accommodate the players’ choices, I’m of the mind that it is important for players to respect the extra lengths a DM goes to when creating the game in comparison and accommodate their DM’s choices. The reasons a DM restricts something are almost certainly more meaningful and have greater consequences than any reason I have for wanting to play any particular race, class or subclass. Even if they aren’t, who am I to ask the person putting a dozen or more extra hours into the game each week than I do to justify themselves to me? How rude. The DM busts their butt to make me a game; I’m going to accept pretty much anything that isn’t outright abusive and appreciate it.
The answer to that confusion, Caerwyn, is that I have yet to hear an answer as to why the DM gets absolutely zero say whatsoever in pre-campaign discussions and is obligated and required to swallow whichever bizarre obnoxious choices the players make no matter how badly those choices mangle the world and the story the DM is working on.
That is because you are looking for a defense of a position no one is making and which only exists as a fabrication you created. No one is saying that a DM can have “no” say in their world - just that they would prefer a DM to be flexible and work with the player to come up with a mutually agreeable solution.
This kind of rhetoric is where I would say a yellow flag becomes a red one. Saying “no” to a race that’s biology presents some problems within D&D’s mechanics is one thing. But there are ways to say “no” and if one chose to go with “period. End of conversation” instead of “hey, centaurs pose unique problems to DMs in terms of climbing and the optics of them traversing narrow dungeons, so I prefer you choose a different race. Any other character ideas you want me to help with?”, that looks a lot like a DM who cannot handle someone trying to do something a wee bit different, and who shuts down and gets defensive rather than engages.
Which, I know is not how you DM based on your other posting, so I do not mean that as a critique of you personally as a DM. But, in a vacuum, if I had someone tell me “Period. end of discussion.” about a question even prior to session zero, I am not going to bother continuing in that campaign. There’s only so much time to play D&D, and I am not going to gamble on an unknown entity who indicates rule by absolute fiat before the game even begins.
Where, in all this, is the player's obligation to try and respect the tone and genre of the game being pitched by the DM? Again - a campaign pitch comes BEFORE chargen for that campaign and all players have the chance to buy into the game being offered or to turn it down. If you buy in as a player, why do you then get to completely ignore the DM's given pitch and do whatever you feel like regardless of the game you're playing and expect the DM to warp and mutate the game YOU AGREED TO PLAY to accommodate your desire to be an instigating jackanapes?
If you agreed to the game, which you should have done long before Session Zero, then you by extension agreed to the reasonable limits the DM indicated would be imposed on that game. Trying to fit Literally Batman into someone's high seas adventure D&D game and encountering pushback is not, and NEVER WILL BE, a failure on the DM's part.
I like to think of D&D as a canvas, something you use to create an amazing painting. It's up to the DM to choose what paints to use and what colors to blend in order to create that world. Sure, some DM's can do a horrible job creating the painting and come up with something that looks like spilt diarrhea on a canvas, while others might use every color available to create an enormous mosaic, but ultimately, it's the DM's job to create the painting. It's the player's job to look at the different paints, to interpret the world, and choose how they view the painting. The shades of grey in a painting sometimes bring out the vibrant colors that much more. But players, unlike viewers of a painting, can change the image ever so slightly. While a good player won't ever drastically alter the world, they can add a dab or a brushstroke here and there, with the DM's approval, to interact with a world.
I believe that in an ideal painting, the different elements, such as races classes, and abilities will merge with each other to produce a cohesive and balanced world. That being said, it can sometimes be difficult for newer DMs to balance the different aspects so that the entire system isn't unfair. I'm fine with racial drawbacks, but only when A. it makes sense to include in a world. and B. it isn't incredibly unfair or unbalanced. But that's just my view, everyone's entitled to their own.
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Quokkas are objectively the best animal, anyone who disagrees needs a psychiatric evaluation
But it isn’t a matter of of any “unique problems to DMs,” it has everything to do with “they simply do not exist in my world.” It’s like saying “flying purple people eaters do not exist in my world.” It has nothing to do with them mechanically, it has everything to do with “they do not exist in my world.” Saying that I, as a DM, have to break my world to accommodate a single player’s choice is a major red flag to me as a DM.
But it isn’t a matter of of any “unique problems to DMs,” it has everything to do with “they simply do not exist in my world.” It’s like saying “flying purple people eaters do not exist in my world.” It has nothing to do with them mechanically, it has everything to do with “they do not exist in my world.” Saying that I, as a DM, have to break my world to accommodate a single player’s choice is a major red flag to me as a DM.
*Shrugs* I have only ever homebrewed as a DM; and never had a period in my D&D career where I am not DMing at least one campaign. I cannot think of a single time where someone wanting to play as something a bit different “broke” the campaign or the world; in each and every instance, it ended up releasing to a richer, more complex, more dynamic, and more interesting world, both for my players and for me to DM. The idea of being so married to “my world” that I would deny a player the ability to enjoy themselves and their character (perhaps with a few tweaks from their initial concept to make everything fit) leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
I'm reminded of The Gamers: Dorkness Rising. One of the players wanted to be a Kung-fu Elf in a setting where neither existed, threatening to not play and threatening to take the other players with him. (One said, she'd still play, regardless.) The compromise was a Human, Eastern-Orthodox Monk.
The hitch was that this was yet another attempt to finish the campaign they were already playing and one of the players wanted to change the conditions. To be fair to the series, that one player came off a bit obnoxious until the very, very end when he kinda realized he had been a bit obnoxious about it all.
So, to go with Yurei's view: Once the terms are accepted, don't be a Darth Vader. (YouTube link)
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Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider. My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong. I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲 “It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
I've not yet posted in this thread since the original post but I must say coming from a time when it was not unusual for friends and I to play long campaigns set in everything from classic sword and sorcery settings like the Hyborian Age to the sixteenth and seventeen centuries of our own world with strictly or mostly human characters and low magic and have the time of our lives I find it nothing short of troubling that some find this too limiting. We live in a world alive with variety as far as culture goes but some are acting like not being allowed to mar a setting drawn from literature or even history by inserting into it something that just doesn't belong is practically driving a ******* lance through variety. I blame the role-playing video game mindset: "D&D is a game. When I make a character I've all the autonomy I have when I do so for a video game. This means I can make what I want using all available options." This approach to D&D leads to a homogeneity I and many DMs I know find off-putting. D&D is a game. But it provides us with the tools to make, as I said, many worlds. A DM who puts in the time and effort to thoroughly research and build a world that captures the essence of a city like say Lankhmar or warring states period Japan is one whose table I'd be happy to sit at. It gets dull and repetitive real ******* fast when a party is yet another party full of demihumans in a world that now looks and feels exactly the ******* same as the last one.
^ This. "Any" is not the same as "all."
And hell, you can even allow "most" and still have some bans. I wouldn't want a Simic Hybrid in my Krynn game - even though I'd have no problem allowing Tieflings, Genasi, and even Dragonborn.
I'm one of the monsters. In one of my homebrew worlds, there are no elves, dwarves are a non-player race, and dragons died out a long, long time ago. I also really like playing E6 - so you level to 6 and no further - and on top of that, you cannot buy magic items beyond potions and maybe the occasional scroll.
This has a number of desirable effects, but ... well, it isn't popular with everyone =D
Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
Voted for:
"If any such restrictions are needed to build the world the DM has in mind, I'm very OK with it."
As someone who only DMs I have yet to meet a player who gets upset if I state up front that certain species or subclasses will not be available this campaign. I never restrict classes, but I have found that certain subclasses can unbalance a party. For instance I was running a campaign with a gloomstalker ranger that was primarily based in the under dark. The gloomstalker features meant it overlapped and in some ways surpassed the rogue player so they felt a little pushed out because thematically and mechanically it made perfect sense for the subclass that doesn’t just go invisible but disappears in darkness to be the main scout.
But I always have those conversations with players, if a player has an amazing backstory that is reliant on a certain species that I had previously said no to then I will always sit down, work with them and figure out how we incorporate it into the world.
I would though also agree with others that this idea of DMs restricting player choice is the reason there are not enough DMs is I think ignoring the other causes for this. Being a DM is hard and a far bigger time sink, add into that the hopeless expectations put on DMs by players who watch any streaming service and expect that detail and level of world building and lore and it can seem almost impossible as a new DM to take those first steps.
I would argue there's nothing fictional about the duality, and that "EVERYTHING IS EVERYWHERE" is exactly what most of the Free For All players are looking for. Where, ANYWHERE in this thread, has anyone suggested they're okay with any restrictions or limitations on what exists in the world at all? The prevailing attitude has been that every single species, class and subclass belongs in every single game no matter what that game is otherwise doing and anyone who restricts a player's choice in any way for any reason whatsoever is an absolute soulless monster who shouldn't DM - or even just play - ever again.
One of my current games takes place in a cyber-spellpunk world in which Nature has died and almost all the old gods are absent. The druid class was banned outright at character creation and only Death domain clerics were allowed. Many other classes had subclass restrictions, and less than half of the game's species were available. Should I tell this DM that his game is unrecoverably toxic and unplayable and inform the group that this game we all agreed to run and have been playing for months needs to die because nobody could play a plasmoid Spore druid in a world with no natural energies in it anymore? Because frankly that seems like way more of a dick move than imposing restrictions in the first place.
Please do not contact or message me.
Only multiple times on every page
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
As I said, you undermine your points when you are responding to things that do not exist. Let me try to put this in as simple of terms as I can for you:
This is a thread about choices during character creation. It is not a thread about the makeup of the final world.
Everyone advocating for options wants to have all OPTIONS available to them during character creation.
No one is advocating that all available options make it into the actual game - only that the specific options which are chosen make it into the game.
I honestly cannot fathom how you are confused - it seems really obvious that “hey, can we work together to make sure my particular choice is added?” doesn’t mean “I want all 20+ other options added as well.”
But if all options have to be available at character creation, and if any option chosen has to make it into the game, then that means all options have to potentially be available in the game. If I as a DM decide that there are no Tieflings, Genasi, or Aasimar on my world as an example, then no, those options are not available. Period. End of conversation.
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The answer to that confusion, Caerwyn, is that I have yet to hear an answer as to why the DM gets absolutely zero say whatsoever in pre-campaign discussions and is obligated and required to swallow whichever bizarre obnoxious choices the players make no matter how badly those choices mangle the world and the story the DM is working on.
Again - if I'm trying to run a grim, Gothic horror game riffing on Curse of Strahd and Grim Hollow, why do I have to tolerate someone playing a loxodon one-man-band bard whose greatest ambition is to put on the greatest vaudeville show Krynn has ever seen? Even though A.) It completely destroys the tone of the game and makes a mockery of what everyone else is trying to do, and B.) We're not playing in Krynn and never will be.
Please do not contact or message me.
Not true at all, for reasons I mentioned above.
It is always easy to add something, either by coming up with a reason for why the creature type is rare or just incorporating it into the game.
Personally, that is why I am incredibly permissive in what species I allow my players to choose - it helps build a better game world. I feel quite confident in my ability to come up with something that works and is interesting—but that doesn’t mean others do not have ideas that can contribute. In one of my present games, I have a player who wanted to play a centaur and one who wanted to play a homebrewed Kitsune - two options I never considered for the world. With a single quick conversation, it was easy enough to add both in. The centaur herds are nomadic people that fleshed out an otherwise empty swath of land; the Kitsune people have a very isolated society in a mountain valley I wasn’t planning on using, with their isolation meaning they have information from before a massive disaster the other races do not.
The world, as a whole, is richer because of their wanting to play strange races. And, of course, my adding them didn’t mean I also added minotaurs or Simic hybrids or Grung to the world. They could have chosen those races - but they didn’t, so why add options that never actualised?
But if I don’t want any Centaurs in my world, then no, there are no flipping herds of centaurs on the plains. No, I don’t care that you want to play a centaur, they simply do not exist here. No, I will not change my mind, there are no flipping centaurs in my world. Period. End of conversation.
If I don’t want any centaurs on my world, why should I have to allow them?!?
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Instead of expecting DM’s to work with players to accommodate the players’ choices, I’m of the mind that it is important for players to respect the extra lengths a DM goes to when creating the game in comparison and accommodate their DM’s choices. The reasons a DM restricts something are almost certainly more meaningful and have greater consequences than any reason I have for wanting to play any particular race, class or subclass. Even if they aren’t, who am I to ask the person putting a dozen or more extra hours into the game each week than I do to justify themselves to me? How rude. The DM busts their butt to make me a game; I’m going to accept pretty much anything that isn’t outright abusive and appreciate it.
Thank you.
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That is because you are looking for a defense of a position no one is making and which only exists as a fabrication you created. No one is saying that a DM can have “no” say in their world - just that they would prefer a DM to be flexible and work with the player to come up with a mutually agreeable solution.
This kind of rhetoric is where I would say a yellow flag becomes a red one. Saying “no” to a race that’s biology presents some problems within D&D’s mechanics is one thing. But there are ways to say “no” and if one chose to go with “period. End of conversation” instead of “hey, centaurs pose unique problems to DMs in terms of climbing and the optics of them traversing narrow dungeons, so I prefer you choose a different race. Any other character ideas you want me to help with?”, that looks a lot like a DM who cannot handle someone trying to do something a wee bit different, and who shuts down and gets defensive rather than engages.
Which, I know is not how you DM based on your other posting, so I do not mean that as a critique of you personally as a DM. But, in a vacuum, if I had someone tell me “Period. end of discussion.” about a question even prior to session zero, I am not going to bother continuing in that campaign. There’s only so much time to play D&D, and I am not going to gamble on an unknown entity who indicates rule by absolute fiat before the game even begins.
Where, in all this, is the player's obligation to try and respect the tone and genre of the game being pitched by the DM? Again - a campaign pitch comes BEFORE chargen for that campaign and all players have the chance to buy into the game being offered or to turn it down. If you buy in as a player, why do you then get to completely ignore the DM's given pitch and do whatever you feel like regardless of the game you're playing and expect the DM to warp and mutate the game YOU AGREED TO PLAY to accommodate your desire to be an instigating jackanapes?
If you agreed to the game, which you should have done long before Session Zero, then you by extension agreed to the reasonable limits the DM indicated would be imposed on that game. Trying to fit Literally Batman into someone's high seas adventure D&D game and encountering pushback is not, and NEVER WILL BE, a failure on the DM's part.
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I like to think of D&D as a canvas, something you use to create an amazing painting. It's up to the DM to choose what paints to use and what colors to blend in order to create that world. Sure, some DM's can do a horrible job creating the painting and come up with something that looks like spilt diarrhea on a canvas, while others might use every color available to create an enormous mosaic, but ultimately, it's the DM's job to create the painting. It's the player's job to look at the different paints, to interpret the world, and choose how they view the painting. The shades of grey in a painting sometimes bring out the vibrant colors that much more. But players, unlike viewers of a painting, can change the image ever so slightly. While a good player won't ever drastically alter the world, they can add a dab or a brushstroke here and there, with the DM's approval, to interact with a world.
I believe that in an ideal painting, the different elements, such as races classes, and abilities will merge with each other to produce a cohesive and balanced world. That being said, it can sometimes be difficult for newer DMs to balance the different aspects so that the entire system isn't unfair. I'm fine with racial drawbacks, but only when A. it makes sense to include in a world. and B. it isn't incredibly unfair or unbalanced. But that's just my view, everyone's entitled to their own.
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But it isn’t a matter of of any “unique problems to DMs,” it has everything to do with “they simply do not exist in my world.” It’s like saying “flying purple people eaters do not exist in my world.” It has nothing to do with them mechanically, it has everything to do with “they do not exist in my world.” Saying that I, as a DM, have to break my world to accommodate a single player’s choice is a major red flag to me as a DM.
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*Shrugs* I have only ever homebrewed as a DM; and never had a period in my D&D career where I am not DMing at least one campaign. I cannot think of a single time where someone wanting to play as something a bit different “broke” the campaign or the world; in each and every instance, it ended up releasing to a richer, more complex, more dynamic, and more interesting world, both for my players and for me to DM. The idea of being so married to “my world” that I would deny a player the ability to enjoy themselves and their character (perhaps with a few tweaks from their initial concept to make everything fit) leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
But to each their own.
I'm reminded of The Gamers: Dorkness Rising. One of the players wanted to be a Kung-fu Elf in a setting where neither existed, threatening to not play and threatening to take the other players with him. (One said, she'd still play, regardless.) The compromise was a Human, Eastern-Orthodox Monk.
The hitch was that this was yet another attempt to finish the campaign they were already playing and one of the players wanted to change the conditions. To be fair to the series, that one player came off a bit obnoxious until the very, very end when he kinda realized he had been a bit obnoxious about it all.
So, to go with Yurei's view: Once the terms are accepted, don't be a Darth Vader. (YouTube link)
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider.
My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong.
I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲
“It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
I've not yet posted in this thread since the original post but I must say coming from a time when it was not unusual for friends and I to play long campaigns set in everything from classic sword and sorcery settings like the Hyborian Age to the sixteenth and seventeen centuries of our own world with strictly or mostly human characters and low magic and have the time of our lives I find it nothing short of troubling that some find this too limiting. We live in a world alive with variety as far as culture goes but some are acting like not being allowed to mar a setting drawn from literature or even history by inserting into it something that just doesn't belong is practically driving a ******* lance through variety. I blame the role-playing video game mindset: "D&D is a game. When I make a character I've all the autonomy I have when I do so for a video game. This means I can make what I want using all available options." This approach to D&D leads to a homogeneity I and many DMs I know find off-putting. D&D is a game. But it provides us with the tools to make, as I said, many worlds. A DM who puts in the time and effort to thoroughly research and build a world that captures the essence of a city like say Lankhmar or warring states period Japan is one whose table I'd be happy to sit at. It gets dull and repetitive real ******* fast when a party is yet another party full of demihumans in a world that now looks and feels exactly the ******* same as the last one.