D&D 5E Bad Wrong Fun

[Azuresun]

Like the conversations about metagaming, I think it comes down to trusting your table. If somebody in my group is starting a new campaign (we take turns DMing) and they say, "Hey, in this campaign the only allowable races are...." it just wouldn't even occur to think they're doing this for some kind of passive-aggressive reason. I assume they have a concept in mind for a world, and I certainly don't want to start the whole campaign off by trying to break that concept for them.

The weird thing is, "settings where some of the standard options don't exist or are different" already exist entirely outside of homebrew settings. Theros limits the races that are native to that world, it didn't feel the need to give dwarves or tieflings a stated place in there just because they're in the PHB. Likewise, Eberron has the standard races and classes, but they can be very different--no, you can't play a drow who is hunted by the priests of Llolth for being a renegade, because the drow are rugged survivalists from the lost continent, and Llolth doesn't exist in this setting.

 

[Seramus]

And if you can't deal with other people having preferences different from your own, you probably shouldn't be trying to run a collaborative game.

Have to side with @Elfcrusher on this one. It would be like playing a Kender in Forgotten Realms, or a Warforged in Athas. Not fundamentally wrong, but it would be quite reasonable for a DM to say "No."

 

[ccs]

If the DM sees Dragonborn as monsters first and PCs never (and that'd be me, by the way), then trying to play one is either going to be met with a flat "No" or a warning that you're giving yourself a severe challenge and to have a second character on standby for when - not if - the Dragonborn gets killed either by the party or the locals.

Sounds like my stance on PC Drow. And other typical "monster" races as PCs.
I don't like them. I will tell you this straight up. And I will tell you how the world in general reacts to such monsters.
I will ask you not to play such a thing in my game. I will encourage you to save it for someone else's campaign.
But if you insist.....
I won't stop you. But I will proceed to demonstrate to you how the world reacts to such monsters.

 

[ccs]

Thank you for reminding me of another thing I hate and loathe: Monocultures. The "All X are Y" side of things. Which is not, y'know, realistic in the slightest.

How are drow in your world always 'The boogyman'? Do they not have people seeking ambition by other means? Perhaps, say, money? Selling secrets off to the surface folk so one of their enemies gets taken down a few pegs? Or, heck, drow who want to see more than what's there? Wizards fed up with the politics and instead deciding that only by seeking out all arcane knowledge can they be content? Or, heck, rebels and the ever popular Dritz archetype, which is popular for a heck of a lot of reasons and unquestionably a strong archetype?

Don't forget the last time D&D had a really strong archetype counter to the established race, they scrapped and rewrote the whole race, and that's why Githzerai have a niche today rather than being 'i unno githyanki but less naughty words lol'. Popular don't mean bad, and honestly, the strength of the Dritz archetype is probably salvaging part of the flanderised mess that Drow were earlier in FR lifespans. The Dritz archetype made drow worth playing for people because it was a logical outcome to the Drow problem of 'Why would you actually want to live in a civilisation like this and not burn every single bridge the moment you can and go somewhere that's actually, y'know, reasonable to live in'

Logically and reasonably there has to be divide in a society because, struth, even eusocial things like ants have personality. Drow being only raiders and never anything more than that is not realistic, plain and simple.

Shooting an unknown person walking into a city when there have been no firm reports of them, per your own words, is a bloody reckless action. Arresting for questioning? Sure, that's sensible, reasonable, because you don't know who they are, what they're doing, or who they represent. Per the campaign lore you've presented here, a guard who shoots someone like this walking into a city? I'd expect their ass to be arrested because, well, can't very well interrogate the dead as to why this is happening, or where people have been taken to. Can't discover there's fractures in the drow society to exploit and gain a foothold to stop a problem if you do that, can you?

I dislike its wider thing as well. "All forest elves have this one culture, no matter where they live" is just as bad as "All drow are just drow stereotypes with no divergence from the normal". But, I consider adventuring and just meeting and talking and learning from other places to be a big thing in the D&D experience. Less Mos Eisley Cantina where stuff is just fancy to catch the eye, and more Morrowind or Final Fantasy, where you're thrown full on into a culture you don't understand and just have to adapt, learn, and get respect

I'll still advise you not to play a Drow or such in a game I run. Just save the concept for someone else's. We'll both be happier.

 

[ccs]

And if you can't deal with other people having preferences different from your own, you probably shouldn't be trying to run a collaborative game.

What about the flip side of this? The player who can't deal with the fact that the DM has preferences different from theirs?

 

[ccs]

If someone tried to do that to my world, I would reach for the fire extinguisher and chase the hooligan from my kitchen.

?? So how would one write a backstory for a character in your game?
As soon as I did something even as simple as naming my characters parents I've added something. (yes, my characters have parents/siblings/etc)

 

[ccs]

I believe this is the best method of creating good groups. Find people who want to play together. Compromise only leads to disappointment.

Eh. Depends what it is & how much. Some things aren't worth the fight or the loss.
For ex; My friend Joe? Great guy to game with in general. But REALLY doesn't like Dragonborn. With the exception of Draconians in DL, the existence of dragon-people just sets him off. It's not really rational. And it's not some sort of passive aggressive/subtle/not subtle effort on his part to make people not play DB.
Myself & the one gal in the game? We've both played DB in other peoples games, have DM'd games including them, have nothing against them. The other three players? They don't care one way or another (because they've yet to have a good character idea involving one I suspect).
Most of us have known about Joes anti-DB mindset for years before him joining our game. We're all in agreement that we're here to play D&D. That it's not worth hearing Joe rant about them again & again & again. That there's more entertaining ways of wasting game time. So we just save playing DBs for the Sunday game some of us are in & don't mention it to him. In the Thur game though? Joe's PC has heard vague rumors of such beings. But he's never met one yet. Any DB NPC? I've just swapped them for Lizardmen. And any DB villians? Draconians.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

We have not had these problems in a looong time, there needs to be some sort of social agreement among the players. Today, the most problems come from one player wanting to take a side quest and dominate the night instead of just moving the story along.

First response in the thread and you nailed my experience too.

I haven't seen real inter-party fighting since the 1990s. Some frowning and sword-waving/gun-pointing and even lengthy discussions, but not actual conflict like that.

And yep, the major problems are PCs who tend to side quest, or are a cool idea, but don't necessarily fit into the campaign well. I don't actually allow these in my campaigns (or rather, I work with the player so they do fit, and they don't need to "side quest"), but in the other games I play in, it is an issue. For example, one PC in one of the games I play in is a shapeshifter (I forget the race-name, not a shifter - the other kind, quasi-dopplegangers), and the player insists on keeping this fact secret from the rest of the PCs, and insists on doing "investigations" of all sorts of stuff, which involves their PC doing a lot of sneaking around and/or talking to NPCs when we aren't there. We're all grown up enough that we can pretend not to know that they're a shapeshifter and so on, but it does take up an awful lot of time and cause an awful lot of "Okay I guess we spend 15 minutes of the shapeshifter sneaking around". Sometimes it's cool because the player is creative and amusing, but... not always... and the effort involved in pretending we don't know, especially when the player finds something interesting/useful out, but the PC wouldn't tell us (because the PC is kind of an annoyance), is not insignificant.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

"Because I don't like them" is the precise amount of explanation required. No more is needed: it's the DM's world and if you don't like what she's done with it then sure, ask questions (gawd knows I do, often enough!); but in the end you're stuck with whatever the answer is.
You could, but - and here's the key point - you don't have to.

If the DM sees Dragonborn as monsters first and PCs never (and that'd be me, by the way), then trying to play one is either going to be met with a flat "No" or a warning that you're giving yourself a severe challenge and to have a second character on standby for when - not if - the Dragonborn gets killed either by the party or the locals.

This thread is about warning signs though, and those are both totally legit warning signs.

DMs who ban a bunch of stuff (esp. races/classes) with poor/no/irrational explanations is a definite warning sign/red flag. A DM who says "In my campaign there are no halflings, because they're just not part of my setting" is fine, but when you have DMs saying "no Tiefling PCs because they're for edgelord losers" or "no Warlocks because they're OP!" (whilst allowing Wizards/Clerics/Druids/etc. lol of course) or just presents you with a big list of "banned" stuff, well then that's like red flashing light and klaxons level of warning signs.

Likewise a DM who lets you play a race, but then decided to grief the hell out of you by having NPCs react as if you are a monster, especially without a clear and polite explanation of the issues involved beforehand. Particularly if they clearly enjoy being racist as hell to your character. Bonus "run a mile" points if they actually re-enact "Deep South"-type stuff instead of merely "angry peasants".

DMs who are surly/rude about character choices in general are almost always very bad DMs. I mean, surly/rudeness is always a bad sign in a DM, but that's a particularly good warning sign, because if you see a DM actually get rude or angry about say, you even asking about playing certain races/classes, he is almost certainly a completely toxic DM with anger/control issues.

Giant lists of house rules in 5E is another good "red flag" for me from a DM, especially if they try to minimize them, or can't explain them rationally. I have met people who have a bunch of house rules and run a good game, but it's usually a highly stylized one with a very specific focus, and they know it, and can explain all their choices. I've come across more people who have a ton of house rules and most of them make no sense, often contradicting each other (sometimes literally, sometimes thematically), or worst but perhaps most common, they have a bunch of house rules to "cover stuff the rules don't", when the rules actually do cover that, often with a near-identical rule, but they clearly don't know that.

 

[WayOfTheFourElements]

?? So how would one write a backstory for a character in your game?
As soon as I did something even as simple as naming my characters parents I've added something. (yes, my characters have parents/siblings/etc)

I don't expect characters to have backstories. A character's story begins at 1st level. Whatever he/she did before that is irrelevant.