PHB2 Races = Mos Eisley Cantina

[CPT PLAYDOH]

Originally Posted by Campbell

With any game there's bound to be some material you don't like — that's why banning stuff was invented. I did it all the time when I ran 3e – with bards, druids, Frenzied Berserkers, gnomes, halflings, etc. I hear some people even banned Wizards. It's not that hard. When a player says 'I want to play X' you just say 'No. I don't like X.' It really is that simple.

Thats why I kick it old school, still playing AD&D or C&C. I am the Dm and I am spinning the setting for the players. There are too many rules in 3e and (probably) 4e (haven't read it). The players are going to argue regulations with you and you get tied up in the rules. It is good to see Campbell keeping it real as a DM.

[Scott_Rouse]

So are you saying this book should make as much money as Epidsode IV: A New Hope and will give generations of fans years of enjoyment?

Awesome!


Han barfed first

[Garthanos]

Originally Posted by Nivenus

...There's nothing particularly ancient about any of the PC races.

Thanks for say that (better explained than I managed) . D&D invokes myth on a shoe string appearances maybe (anthropoid animals are probably old egypt had croc headed gods) , but the elements we think give us roleplaying handles are the modern parts not the ancient ones.

[CubeKnight]

Originally Posted by exile

This thread made me look through my catalog of 4E characters (all made for the LFR campaign and prior to teh release of PHB2). I'd be curious what other players' character selection looks like.

Human x 8
Halfling x 1
Tiefling x 2
Genasi x 1
Half-elf x 1
Warforged x 2
Elf x 1
Dwarf x 2
Dragonborn x 1

Those that have actually seen play include an elf rogue, human cleric (x2), and dwarf wizard.

Chad

Hmmmm, that I remember, I've played: 2 elves, 1 kobold, 1 goliath, 1 human, 1 shifter.

Tho that is 3.5, I have yet to play 4E, only been DMing so far *sigh*
But I'm itching to play a Genasi Swordmage.

[Fallen Seraph]

Originally Posted by Scott_Rouse

So are you saying this book should make as much money as Epidsode IV: A New Hope and will give generations of fans years of enjoyment?t

Scott you better be careful then when, PHB5, 6 and 7 comes out. You better make sure you get my Psionics out before then!

As for the actual conversation in this. I am perfectly fine with out there races. My main complaint is that unless there is some logical reason, ie; they have travelled here from all various realms like Sigil. I prefer there to be some amount of co-history and connection between the races. I dislike it when races just exist within a vacuum of each other. I really like the idea too of all sorts of various races rubbing shoulders with each other in close-proximity thus why I run so many urban campaigns in densely populated, multi-racial cities.

As for how I add races I go with what other people have said. I tell the players to pick the race they want based on stats. Then we together decide their culture, appearance, etc. for the campaign.

Heck my current campaign setting has as far as really out there races:
-Demon Spirit possessing Humans: Their appearance altered substantially in multiple ways from simple things like horns to centaur like insectiod bodies, etc. (This covers a lot of races actually from Tiefling to Dragonborn, etc.)
-Cybernetic bodies brought to life by a Spirit: You can figure out this appearance pretty quickly essentially a cybernetic Warforged kind of appearance.
-Various animals who have become anthropomorphic. This is self explanatory.
-Shape-shifters whose basic appearance is the same as the Doppelganger.

As for myself I usually DM, but the races I have played the majority of the time:
-Gnoll
-Elan
-Tiefling (my most common and appearance has varied wildly)
-Human

[Mallus]

Originally Posted by Celebrim

The basic problem I have with wierd PC races is that they are basically unroleplayable.

Only if you spend more time on problematizing than characterizing. First and foremost they need a limp and few interesting things to say...

They are all just humans that look wierd.

Welcome to science fiction and fantasy literature. I hope you enjoy your stay.

(Really, how many classic SF aliens beat that rap? The only one that comes to mind --and mind you, I haven't had any coffee yet this morning-- is Lem's sentient ocean in Solaris).

But Dragonborn? No clue.

Can you characterize a dragon? Start w/that (but make it a biped). This seems like a fairly rudimentary fiction for a fantasy aficionado to create.

(In our 4e campaign they are a proud race that once ruled a massive Statist bureaucracy w/both Roman and British undercurrents, known for their baroque clockwork technologies, that now spend most of their time living in the stories of the past.)

[Mallus]

Originally Posted by CPT PLAYDOH

4e is superhero fantasy miniatures with a splash of role-playing tacked on to it.

You should see the way my group plays 4e!

In the second-to-last session the PC's put on a pseudo-Bollywood musical (about the giant boar sow that they started a false religion around), complete with sexy dancers dressed as wraiths, fireworks, and actual combat, both intentional (why use stage combat when the play stars mercenary adventurers?) and not (a wealthy rival playwright hired assassins to infiltrate and disrupt the performance).

[Klaus]

Originally Posted by Scott_Rouse

So are you saying this book should make as much money as Epidsode IV: A New Hope and will give generations of fans years of enjoyment?

Awesome!


Han barfed first

I think what he means by "PHB2 Races = Mos Eisley Cantina" is that they don't serve droids, either.

[Klaus]

Originally Posted by Celebrim

Dragonborn? No clue. Don't know how to use them. Don't know what role they'd fit in a story. Don't know how to imagine being one. Not sure that I'd enjoy imagining being one if I knew how. Maybe what I need is out there somewhere, but the problem is that as a race with no mythic connections really, its entirely dependent on the fluff provided by the game designer to make it interesting. Generally, I haven't found that working. You'd need 30 pages or so just to flesh the culture out a bit.

In a 4e PbP game, I'm playing a dragonborn like the character of Azeem, from "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves", who is fond of cursing "By the sweaty armpits of Tiamat!"

But the first thing that came to my mind after reading about the dragonborn:


They're samurai from the desert.


Try that.

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Originally Posted by Klaus

In a 4e PbP game, I'm playing a dragonborn like the character of Azeem, from "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves", who is fond of cursing "By the sweaty armpits of Tiamat!"

But the first thing that came to my mind after reading about the dragonborn:


They're samurai from the desert.


Try that.

Klingons. They are Klingons.

"Today is a good day to die!"

[Jack7]

First and foremost they need a limp and few interesting things to say..

.

That gives me an even nuther take on some new races:

If you had a new race that don't talk much and everybody has a gimp then you could use magic to create spear tips that shoot out streams of hot lead with a hearty "YEE-HAW!" when they backfire. Otherwise a race like this should mostly be role-played like a cross between Gabby Hayes and Randolph Scott. To get that "classic" feel.

I think such a "new race" should all ride palominos named Honeydewdrop with the "death-hoof grip" just in case a necromancer should show up and decide to try and scalp em for their ten gallon hats, and way a' riding side-saddle. We could call this race the Horse Riding Dewdrop Men from Nordinium. Or, you could call em the "Honey Rangers" for short. But some will call them the Tar-Mouths cause they mix milkweed and volcanic ash from mount Thundercats to make their chewing tobaccee.

After that I'd also kinda like to see a new race I call the Constructo-bots Supreme. These would look just like regular folks about 40% of the time but would all wear construction hats and carry around a miniature parrot named "Moondance Firewater" on their shoulders that smokes out black sulfur and nitro-glycerin whenever it wisecracks. But that wouldn't be the real limit of the tricks and powers this new race has, not by a long shot. They would also have mysterious desert inspired and after twilight "Kung-Fu" powers that would make them an excellent balance to the HRHM from Nordinium, so that they would naturally partner-up in a tough fight, one being like the Lone Honey Ranger, the other being like the hardy and reliable Constructo Buster-Bot side-kick. If worse comes to worst then the Cosntructo-bots can also get back on-line almost overnight the entire magical X-ray energy grid of the Kingdom of New Magnesium after a vicious Sorceress storm of miniature mice and men. (Soylent Green is People, people!!!) That's their non-combat related role. But in a knock-down drag-out then Constructo-Bot Supremes, or CBSs would mostly ride mechanical lawn chairs with built in chain saws for jousting heads, unless of course they wanted to fly then they could build rocketships made out of quick-glued colonies of hoppin Pernicons and powered by Lord Alsteron's Rainbow-bridge dust. Constructo-Bot Supremes tend to worship Bruce Campbell, or sometimes a local engineering student named Wilbert who has won the country fair prize for the tri-state Lego Challenge on at least three consecutive occasions.

I'm gonna suggest to WOTC that they look carefully at my ideas for the Dungeons and Dragonmens from Mars Player's Handbook XXI, or at least credit me for the Bruce Campbell reference.

Let's keep at this folks til the Man has to listen to the people!!!
We can take back this game for the future!

[ferratus]

I've been thinking about the "Mos Eisley" problem some more. While he was unnecessarily insulting, he was talking about was the dial of "exotica" in your high/low fantasy. If what you are going for is a fairly standard medieval Tolkien inspired world that doesn't really adopt all the implications of D&D magic and alternate planes then there is probably less tolerance for really exotic characters. A place like Sigil or Ebberon's Sharn in contrast, would be less interesting without the exotic races.

If I was to divide it up for my own campaign world I think I would do it this way:

Common races - races you could expect to see in an average village among the various lower classes. They have flavour which suits an everyday industrious existence. You can expect to find them as peasants or artisans and largely don't disrupt the local bourgeois order. Their flavour largely resembles that of everyday medieval life.

Humans
Halflings
Dwarves
Half-Elves
Half-Orcs

Uncommon Races - These races have flavour text which places them on the fringes of human life by being wild or fey. Shifters are far easier to imagine as the trapper that drifts in and out of town than as a peasant tilling the land. You don't tell stories about the leprechaun or brownie who is your next door neighbour, but the creatures you can find if you look closely at the hidden places of the world. They can be encountered by everyday people, but you might go your whole life without seeing one.

Gnomes
Elves
Shifters
Goliaths

Rare Races - These races seem by their very nature to evoke superhuman or supernatural power. Introducing a race that can step into an alternate dimension, is half dragon, or is evocative of the divine or ultimate damnation seems like it should be outside of the realm of everyday experience in a traditional D&D setting. This is why the Tiefling shopkeeper was so jarring for me.

Eladrin
Dragonborn
Tieflings
Devas

[Kask]

Originally Posted by Obryn

Wait, Gary Gygax created 3e and 4e?

He created D&D which remained fairly consistent in architecture until 3. 4.0 isn't D&D except in name.

[kenmarable]

Originally Posted by Kask

He created D&D which remained fairly consistent in architecture until 3. 4.0 isn't D&D except in name.

Can of Worms

That line of argument is just going to lead to thread locks and mod warnings. Just FYI.

[Chainsaw]

Originally Posted by Kask

4.0 isn't D&D except in name.

Tell us what you really think, haha! More seriously, I played ALOT of 2E growing up, took a looooooooong break, and started playing again in a weekly 4E LFR campaign (last two months). It's fun, but I agree definitely feels different from 2E. Some things I like more, some things I like less. Anyway, I'm just happy to be playing and, frankly, I worry that without a company as well funded as WotC marketing new editions, the game might slowly dry up or something. I'm sure there have been a billion threads about this, so I'm not trying to start one or derail this one. Just saying that I'm willing to accep the changes for the sake of the hobby. Plus, I have all my old stuff. I can always play it when I want, either making up stuff or converting 4E stuff. It's all good.

[Kask]

Originally Posted by Chainsaw

Tell us what you really think, haha! More seriously, I played ALOT of 2E growing up, took a looooooooong break, and started playing again in a weekly 4E LFR campaign (last two months). It's fun, but I agree definitely feels different from 2E. Some things I like more, some things I like less.

4.0 is a good game system. If someone else had published it without the copyrighted names, no one would recognize it as D&D though.

[Chainsaw]

Originally Posted by Kask

If someone else had published it without the copyrighted names, no one would recognize it as D&D though.

Maybe, I guess it depends on whom you ask. Asking people around here what "D&D" is leads to a 3498573498579487 page thread because everyone's come into the game at different times in the game's evolution, uses different degrees of house rules, has different degrees of combat/noncombat challenges and and has different ideas of how much fantasy/sci-fi/etc is appropriate.

Honestly, I'm absolutely NOT 100% totaly sold on 4E myself, so I'm probably not the right person to take the contra side of your argument, heh. If I could choose between a 2E and a 4E campaign, I'd pick 2E, but when faced with 4E or nothing, I pick 4E. Ultimately, I'm happy the industry still has corporate support (ducks), even if it results in things changing a bit.

Anyway, if I'm still saying something that doesn't sit well, we should probably just pick up in personal messaging.

[WalterKovacs]

Originally Posted by Kask

4.0 is a good game system. If someone else had published it without the copyrighted names, no one would recognize it as D&D though.

Couldn't the same thing be said about 3e?

[Keefe the Thief]

Saint Diaglo preserve me, where is my fireproof suit? *dons vestment*

I can already see a certain poster coming into the thread and saying his usual "and if they would have published Rolemaster with the words D&D on the cover, would that make it D&D?"

Now, there was this topic about exotic races we were talking about. Please note that if you do not think 4e is D&D, arguing about exotic races in D&D in this thread is more than pointless, because, uh, its about PHB2 and 4e.

[Kask]

Originally Posted by WalterKovacs

Couldn't the same thing be said about 3e?

No, still had the same spells mechanically, Vancian magic system, classes functioning basically the same way, etc...