Too weird for town....

[Immortal Sun]

Typically there are two answers:
A: they know they're "weird" and will provoke a poor reaction from town.
or
B: they just kill the townsfolk who give them trouble.

 

[FrogReaver]

I'm pretty much in agreement here. There definitely are wrong ways to do it, just like there are wrong ways to do almost anything on the DM side of the screen. There needs to be balance with times it's not a detriment and times when it's a positive.

As I've mentioned several times, I often use default racial tensions before the characters have started to make a name for themselves, something to provide a contrast from "dirty goblin" to "folk hero" to "Guardian of the Realm". What I haven't mentioned is the times when because the PC is a goblin that hobgoblins were tricked, or goblin clans convinced, or other times that it was useful to be a goblin. And you are right, those need to exist and in sufficient quantities.



And this is an example of a bad way to do it. But pointing out that it can be run badly doesn't mean it shouldn't exist at all. That argument could be used that there shouldn't be adventures because some could be railroads.

That sounds much better.

A generic wizard who running into melee and swings a greatsword wearing heavy armor will find that their class choice is much more meaningful in terms of their melee offense and defense then their action.

That's because the action decision was made to do something stupid like take a greatsword into battle on a low AC low HP non-proficient character. The class choice wasn't what caused the problem here, it was the choice the player made in game long after choosing the class. He never had to choose to go into melee and swing the greatsword in the first place.

But even if there is a difference, as long as you agree that both choices have some meaning then hopefully can you see that taking that meaning away from the player in either case is incorrect.

I agree the choice should have some meaning. I think it should be more measured. If it's really an everyone hates this race so badly it can't even enter town or while in town no one will talk to him or the party he came with then it shouldn't be a playable race in the campaign.

 

[Ancalagon]

In my Yoon-Suin game, half the players are "outsiders" where they have access to the standard D&D races, and half are "locals" where only the "local races" are available (2 of them being unique to the setting).

I made sure that the player playing the outsiders knew how their races would be received in this new society. For examples, dwarves are seen as untrustworthy in Yoon-Suin. It wouldn't be fair to spring that up unexpectedly on a player.

Just to be absolutely clear. This sort of thing is fantastic. It's great. It's interesting and it really brings the character to life. It's a nice schtick to hang off of a character. I love this sort of thing.

But, as a DM, I would be very, very wary about forcing it on players. If the player is groovy, then go for it. Otherwise, you really have to ask yourself, is it making the game more fun to bring up the character's disadvantage every single chance I get? Or, maybe, just save it for a few, meaningful times. Or, pass it off as a running joke. Go with what the table will find the most fun.

The character had an interesting back story. He was a sewer goblin who had been "adopted" by a party and eventually mastered some magic via dubious means (ie warlock). When his party was wiped out (he managed to escape), he didn't want to return to the life of a goblin - he wanted the freedom and prestige (ish) of being an adventurer!

... buuuuut he knew it would be hard to be accepted as a goblin. So using his magic, he pretended to be a dwarf, basing himself on one of his party members (before he got killed that is). It actually slowed the character down a bit, power wise, because I couldn't take agonizing blast, but he was fun to play anyway!

Sadly, the campaign didn't last

 

[Hussar]

Part of the issue here is that in previous editions of the game, taking "weird" race characters actually often meant that your character flat out was more (and sometimes MUCH more) powerful than the baseline. So, they added in "roleplaying" elements to balance the power. For example, a minotaur character from Dragonlance could start with a 20 strength in AD&D, which was similar to about a 30 strength in d20 D&D (give or take) and a 20 Con (actually granting the character regeneration). To counter that, the race was hated.

It really, really didn't work. It just flat out didn't work.

So, now, we have more or less balanced PC races (no one is powergaming by playing a goblin) but, the legacy notion that we need to "balance" these oddball races remains.

 

[Oofta]

Part of the issue here is that in previous editions of the game, taking "weird" race characters actually often meant that your character flat out was more (and sometimes MUCH more) powerful than the baseline. So, they added in "roleplaying" elements to balance the power. For example, a minotaur character from Dragonlance could start with a 20 strength in AD&D, which was similar to about a 30 strength in d20 D&D (give or take) and a 20 Con (actually granting the character regeneration). To counter that, the race was hated.

It really, really didn't work. It just flat out didn't work.

So, now, we have more or less balanced PC races (no one is powergaming by playing a goblin) but, the legacy notion that we need to "balance" these oddball races remains.

It may be a "legacy notion" in your campaign. In mine it's simply that I don't think it would be logical for your local neighborhood tavern to look like the cantina in Star Wars.

If you run the game as written, there are evil races. Races where effectively every member is the equivalent of a murdering sociopath that can be identified on sight. I find it hard to believe they'd be able to walk around freely in most areas. If every troll anyone has ever encountered immediately tries to eat the people encountered, a troll in the city would be no more welcome than a great white shark in a swimming pool.

 

[jgsugden]

D&D is an RPG, a Role playing Game. Characters play a role in a story.

These are really common challenges for certain types of heroes in many stories. Quasimodo. Knott the Brave. Drizzt. The Beast. Use the challenge to tell a good story.

let's say the party has a bugbear rogue in it. When the PCs hit a new town, he hides in the woods and camps while the PCs settle into the inn. How does he feel about that situation? That is up to the PC. Maybe the bugbear wants to be accepted in town and will look for ways to disguise itself. Maybe they feel the PCs and their civilized lives are odd.

If the monster PC wants to be in the town - give it a storyline that makes it want it even more. Perhaps a monster hunter that murdered the bugbear's family is passing through town. Perhaps the bugbear rogue loves emeralds and this town has a famous emerald in it. Perhaps the other heroes are teleported out of town and he has to sneak in to figure out what occurred.

As for solutions - traveling the rooftops, traveling thr sewars, traveling the shadows, disguises... there are many that work to secret the monster. There is also the option of not being secret and taking their lumps from (or intimidating back) the populace.

Basically, think of good stories to tell that rely upon the challenge.

 

[Oofta]

D&D is an RPG, a Role playing Game. Characters play a role in a story.

These are really common challenges for certain types of heroes in many stories. Quasimodo. Knott the Brave. Drizzt. The Beast. Use the challenge to tell a good story.

But as an RPG, it's up to the DM to craft a world that makes sense. Quasimodo, Knott the Brave and The Beast are (or were) human or halfling. Drizzt lives in a world where racial alignments are thrown out the window now and then ... unless it's convenient to the more recent set of books where somehow goblins are evil because your goddess told you they were except your husband is a member of an "evil" race but he's okay because the gods decided to resurrect y'all so you could sell more books.

If alignments are "fuzzy suggestions" or ignored in your world, that's fine. But one of the things that bugs me about FR (and the reason I've stopped reading Salvatore) is that sometimes it's a hard and fast rule and other times it's more like The Pirates Code. More of a guideline really.

But when Cattie Brie says it's okay to kill every goblin on sight because they're evil while looking lovingly into her drow husband's eyes ... well it's just cognitive dissonance. Especially after all the "orcs just want to settle down peacefully" that was in the previous books and then reversed. Oops. Just kidding. Orcs really are evil. Who knew?

Again, I'm not telling anyone how to run their game. I just don't think DMs are failing to "rise to the challenge" if they make it clear that some things don't make sense in their world.

 

[jasper]

It may be a "legacy notion" in your campaign. In mine it's simply that I don't think it would be logical for your local neighborhood tavern to look like the cantina in Star Wars.

If you run the game as written, there are evil races. Races where effectively every member is the equivalent of a murdering sociopath that can be identified on sight. I find it hard to believe they'd be able to walk around freely in most areas. If every troll anyone has ever encountered immediately tries to eat the people encountered, a troll in the city would be no more welcome than a great white shark in a swimming pool.

DITTO!
I get ticked when players with pcs monster pcs, pcs from x, pcs who are known criminals, demand they can walk into a town freely because they throw on an XXXL t-shirt saying "I am not a monster. I am not the droids you are looking for!".
Some players think they can go into a bar/pub on game team wearing team y's shirt. Get roaring drunk. Smack talk team X while it is a team X bar! Then say I an unrealistic icky nasty DM because the whole bar pulls out blasters and shoot them.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

In larger metropolitan areas I go with that way of thinking, generally. I don’t want spend an adventure on how much a particular character race is hated and mistrusted. In smaller towns and rural areas, there might be some friction, but I tend to keep it minimal. In a world of magic, what’s one more bit of strangeness?


Though, I might make social checks a little more difficult for them. If the duergar is trying to rally the hamlet’s populace to aid the party, there’s going to be some distrust to overcome.

I am a lot more lenient with the standard races of the PHB. It's a really stupid to allow a player to play a Dragonborn, and then to subject this player to constant blatant racism in the game because some campaign setting says that Dragonborn are rare and people are scared of them.

 

[iserith]

In general, if I want to play up some form of discrimination as part of the social interaction challenge, it's generally going to be against adventurers in general rather than adventurers of a particular race. For example, an NPC might have a flaw like "I can't hide my disdain for adventurers after that one group wrecked my tavern!" Then that's a personal characteristic the PCs can suss out and potentially use during the social interaction challenge as with any other. Same effect in terms of challenge, but we neatly sidestep any racial discrimination during play or any player feeling singled out.

I've also done things where language is a factor. In a recent Eberron session, I added difficulty to social interaction challenges by making it such that speaking a language other than Goblin in Malleon's Gate in Sharn meant disadvantage on Charisma checks the PCs might make (if any). One of the players, a warforged cavalier, took this as an opportunity to pick up Goblin as a language for his subclass bonus proficiency feature. It's come in quite handy since!