Why would I have to allow it? They don't exist. Even if they existed, officially, why can't I say "No!"? they don't exist when I run. Genasi exist in 4e Darksun, I can still say, "No" to them. The only time that I cannot say, "No" is if they are established in organized play, but I avoid organized play like the plague and, therefore, would never run anything in organized play.
D&D 5E World-Building DMs
Why would I have to allow it? They don't exist. Even if they existed, officially, why can't I say "No!"? they don't exist when I run. Genasi exist in 4e Darksun, I can still say, "No" to them. The only time that I cannot say, "No" is if they are established in organized play, but I avoid organized play like the plague and, therefore, would never run anything in organized play.
Phantarch
First Post
JUST for the sake of discussion (because really, my answer would be no), let's imagine that Chris Hardwick, Wil Wheaton, Nathan Fillion, and Felicia Day called me and said they REALLY wanted me to DM a Dark Sun game for them, but Felicia REALLY wants to play a gnome.
OK, fine. She can play a gnome. How would I work it in? Well, either she's actually a delusional halfling that fully believes that she is a gnome, or she's some random gnome that got sucked into a time vortex from the time when there were gnomes and got spit out in our current campaign...which will then make everyone think she is a delusional halfling that fully believes that she is a gnome. So, in short, she's a halfling.
Celebrim
Legend
All starting sorcerers regardless of heritage in my game are told that if it comes out that they are sorcerers, they are liable to be burnt at the stake. Some areas give a wink and a nod to such laws and customs depending on whether they know you and how cosmopolitan they are, but in general all sorcerers are assumed to be non-human monsters. Wizards are a different story. Wizardry is 'good' magic, and as long as you follow custom, don't practice witchcraft (mind controlling spells, necromancy, diablerie), and don't abuse your powers - you'll be treated as a 'good wizard' in most areas. There are some areas that don't trust even wizards, particularly in the savage north and remote areas of the western interior.
But I don't think you really do get my reasoning on tieflings. The reason I hate tieflings is their presence basically means that there are no demons in the world, and so along with that no real possibility of that which is alien, and that everything will be treated as basically variant humans in the campaign world. Planescape is a good example; even reified ideas are treated as variant humans. The presence of a tieflings in the world basically means the whole idea of mythology has collapsed in the world and its just become shallow pastiches where you name drop things ('they've got demonic heritage, which means horns and stuff!') that have long had mythic power out of your inability to create anything for yourself. At best, you end up with tieflings as some sort of stand in for a human racial group or simply racism itself, which is itself not that well thought out (people might actually have a darn good reason to discriminate against things with demonic heritage assuming that word demonic has any meaning at all in the setting). At worst, you've got some sort of childish impulse to have a pretense of being grim and gritty because you think it's so darn mature - like saying 'poo poo' and giggling.
So yeah. I dislike tieflings.
Depends on where you are from. Dwarves are pretty cosmopolitan and get around. Elves are xenophobic, tend to shoot first ask questions later, and often do have mutually antagonistic relations with their neighbors. But there are areas were elves do mix with humans on usually friendly terms.
I can't really help that. I've been DMing for 30 years and certain concepts just raise big warning flags for me especially in a player I don't know well. Guy I've never met once to play an evil character or even just a gothic 'black is the new white' character, it sets off big warning bells about player motivation and party cohesion.
No. Not really. Gnomes are considered mythic on my world. There isn't a lot of evidence they ever existed, and most scholars will tell you that they are a myth, or that they are tales invented by the ignorant by encounters with Leprechauns, Forest Dwarves, or Sidhe. Some believe that they were a story invented to illustrate a moral point, which was critical of the Gods, and therefore potentially blasphemous. The truth is not something any living mortal knows, and the gods that do know are keeping it very secret for reasons that are world shaking. A gnome just showing up in the game is well, ridiculous.
Again. The gnomish race is not available. The gnomish pantheon does not exist. Part of that is simply 'I wanted to simplify and gnomes didn't have a lot unique to them to make them worth keeping'. There has never yet been a setting where they had lots of diverse gnomes. Gnomes are consummate single trope races wherever they turn up. Eventually in a completely different campaign I hit upon an idea that made gnomes interesting enough for me that I was willing to even have the word 'gnome' have meaning in the campaign world, although to be honest it's such a rare word most starting PC's would never have even heard it.
And while it's possible to worship an entire pantheon, it's not possible to be a cleric of one. You must pick, again for reasons that are campaign level secrets not known to mortals. But the whole idea is wrong, because the various racial pantheons are intermarried and often inter-worshipped. Indeed, the whole idea that you must worship a particular deity is rather antithetical to the campaign world. Sure, lots of elves will worship Corwin the Holy, but some of them will be perfectly happy worshiping 'human' deities like Lado or Aymara, and conversely humans worship Dianciana and Aerdreth. This is a hugely important point, because most people define personhood as the freedom to worship (or not worship) the deities of their choosing. Creatures that worship a racial deity exclusively are considered little more than fancy puppets or constructs, lacking free will and true personhood. You don't kill them solely out of respect for the deity or for yourself, if you have such respect, and otherwise most people don't consider killing them to be any more murder than squashing a cockroach or killing a puppy (depending on their perspective on life).
So again, I recognize your desire to be in touch with mythic lore that is familiar to you and inspiring to you and to bring in all that overhead of published lore from particular settings, and that's fine, but little or none of it exists where I play. In your homebrew, things are very different and that's great and awesome. And when I'm a player there, I'll want to explore what exists in that space precisely because its not my creation but your invention wholly unknown to me. And that's awesome. But I am by no means required to make my world work like yours.
Great. I've got four page hand outs for people like you giving an overview of each race. But Gnome is not an option. You can play Sidhe, Changling, Pixie, Goblin, Half-Goblin, Hobgoblin, Elf, Human, Half-Elf, Dwarf, Orine, or Idreth. That's it, especially if I don't know you and have reason to admire the maturity of your role-playing.
Why the heck would you expect that? That's not reasonable.
Ok sure, I totally get that. But is Goliath a core 5e race in the PHD? Goliath in 5e is in a supplement not everyone is going to use. So, by your own standards, why would you expect Goliath to be an available option? Moreover, Goliath isn't a race with a very long history in D&D, so if you walked into a 25 year old homebrew, would you expect Goliath to be fitted into the game. Ok, so its great that you admire the lore that the creator of the Goliath concept gave to the race, but why would you expect his homebrew race to get imported into someone else's game just because he got it published?
Someone says, "One of my favorite characters was a Goliath barbarian. I'd like to play that if possible.", then I'll be like, "Cool. Neither Goliath nor barbarian exists as an option in my game, but if you like the idea of playing a massive race then I suggest playing Orine. And you can build a barbarian by taking the much more flexible Fanatic class, customizing it with some wilderness skills, and backgrounding it as being a member of a tribal warrior society. Orine beserkers are well known and feared throughout Korrel, and great Orine tribes roam the steppes of Sartha in large numbers."
Why? Why not start with no assumptions until the group has decided what will be played?
I guess that depends on the era you started in. If someone had said they wanted to be a Tiefling Warlock in 1988, once we understood what he was saying, we probably would have showed him the door as a bad apple for even assuming such things would be allowed and then laughed at him when he was gone for such a strange and munchkin request. If someone comes up to me now and says they want to be a Tiefling Warlock, I'll inwardly groan and think, "Oh no. A 4e player. How am I going to cater to someone that actually likes that?"
To be frank, thinking you know anything about what will be played just because you know a group is playing "D&D" suggests to me small and limited experience with D&D. The more groups you play with and the longer you play, the less such an assumption seems reasonable. In some groups, playing anthromorphic Hippos makes perfect sense. I've run campaigns were human wasn't a playable race but kobold was. And the world of variety out there in what people play is enormous. The majority of campaigns are set in very unique homebrew worlds, and many of the published worlds are no less strange. In some campaign you can play a half-giant or an anthromorphic preying mantis, and in others a Tinker Gnome. You shouldn't ever assume that because you played something at one table it's available in another. Playing with a stock setting and default lore is the unusual case.
If they have a choice between good and evil, what do they offer a story that a human can't? The problem with tiefling, among many other things, is that 'demonic' is the only resonate concept that they bring to the game. I don't need a whole race of Hellboys, and I don't need races that have so little to explore in and of itself, and well, 'Hellboy' has been done. I'm not sure where you are going to go with that that won't feel as redundant as a Drizzt Do'Urden clone.
The default fluff means nothing to me. I don't use WOTC's D&D settings, revised versions of pre-3e settings, or the PC the races created by them. Going back to pre-3e, I ignore all Planescape and Spelljammer material and references.
As someone that homebrews, D&D, to me, is a toolkit. What races I include, their role in the setting is up to me when create the setting not whatever default assumptions the designers assigned. The role of Tiefling in my campaign is Cambion- the powerful and unspeakable evil that results from the mating of a human and devil. It is a role reserved for someone like Iuz in Greyhawk, the Anti-Christ in Christianity. That WOTC gave them a different fluff and role is irrelevant in my campaigns
Actually if the one shot did not start at level 1, then it may work even better for a concept that requires significant downtime because we can assume that significant downtime has already occurred. If the one shot starts at level one then again there is no penalty because your character would have to start at level one in any case.
If I presumed that my character was great at fighting Demons and then all of a sudden we were fighting Giants then it literally is as easy as mentally crossing out Demons and replacing it with Giants. Or maybe he is just practising on Giants until he can fight Giant Demons - who knows.
And if I had a Character who specialised in political intrigue in a mega-dungeon - well perfect most mega-dungeons have intelligent monsters that would be perfect to team up with rather then mindlessly killing everything within swords reach.
Celebrim
Legend
A player who shows up for a Dark Sun campaign that everyone has agreed to, but who insists on playing a Gnome cleric of Garl Glittergold has literally nothing to offer the table, and the rest of the group would be better off without them.
That would be potentially very awkward and painful, but I can't imagine any other resolution. The player is stamping their foot about how important their concept is compared to everyone else's desire to play Dark Sun, and basically saying that they intend to steal spot light from before play even begins. I can't imagine any friend I've had ever doing that over something as lame as a Gnome Cleric in Dark Sun, but if they did I'd be very disappointed in them.
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3SpdDragster
First Post
This, whilst the DM has a responsibilty to the player. The player also has a responsibility to the DM to build characters in keeping with the setting. From what I have observed there are too many players that feel an entitlement that their needs as a player come first.
Just remember, there is no game without the DM and they want to have fun too.
Celebrim
Legend
I think this is a 3e created problem, as a side effect of WotC selling their system down the river in exchange for short term profit. The third edition era was incredibly prolific in terms of rules supplements, and each rules supplement - no matter how DM centered the content would appear to be - usually had in it a considerable amount of player centered character building options. The reasoning is obvious. There are a lot more players than DMs.
Back in the 1e era, the player could get away with buying only a PH and maybe an UA (and not even that if they were content to play non-spellcasters). The rest of the books were DM tools. Any supplemental material - say from Dragon - would need to be explicitly approved. In the 2e edition era, the focus on the DM as the target of publications largely continued. While there were some relatively minor nods to generic customization in the form of kit classes, most offered very little in the way of specific mechanical benefit, and were easy to brush over. The majority of highly specific customization was specific to a setting, and so went with the setting with no expectation that it necessarily ported to any other one. But in the 3e era, the goal appeared to be to sell as many books as possible to players by making the game rules much more player centric. That makes economic sense in the short run, but eventually crippled the game with rules bloat, poorly thought out rules, dysfunctional rules interactions, impossible to balance CharGen, at least three versions of every archetype. In the midst of this you had players with the quite understandable perception that since they'd bought the book, that they should be able to make use of it. Keeping track of this insanity involved very high levels of implicit social contracts regarding exactly to what extent and how you were allowed to break the game.
So now you have a lot of players out there with the experience that if it has been published, it's fair game and further that it's somewhat baffling why that wouldn't be true.
How does it matter to Dark Sun one way or another if there are Gnomes or not? Does having a lost tribe of Gnomes suddenly turn Dark Sun into a verdant Green paradise? Most likely not.
Probably the biggest thing to consider for a Gnome player is how they fit into the struggle for survival that is Dark Sun.
And there is no game without Players. The DM gets thousands of characters so why kick up a fuss about the Players one character.
Seriously just get some perspective.
