But, now, we're back to the idea of the players forcing themes and events on the campaign outside of what the DM/GM is trying to set up.
That's kind of the player's
job, though - to give the DM story fodder. The DM shouldn't just be able to run any generic adventure with any random party. DMs SHOULD be taking into account what their players want in a game when they're considering the plots they're running in their setting.
When a walking stove is looking for his master/creator, that's a player "forcing himself" on the campaign, and that's
awesome, because now I can work that goal into the goals of the adventure and increase the character's involvement.
The druid trying to bring the rain? Not really such a problem. The water genasi druid trying to bring back the rain? That's an anti-setting character. And it was very problematic. There is a character that can create water in a setting that specifically forbids doing that. That's not simply a "ready made antagonist", that's a character that is turning the tropes of the setting on their ears.
There's nothing about 4e water genasi that lets them create water?
Now you're moving the goalposts a bit from character goals to character races. To stay on goals: If it's not a problem for a character to want to bring back the rain to Athas, why is it a problem for a character to want to tear down the Wall in FR or to replace the Balance in DL? There are characters who would have cause to want to do these things in each setting (druids in general in DS, dragonborn especially in FR, and everyone who post-Cataclysm abandoned the deities in DL). It's not out of the setting bounds. It transforms the setting in the best way.
Which is fine, if that's what the group wants. You want to play a game where the group includes someone who can create water in Darksun and deal with the repercussions of such a character? Fine and dandy. But, in an ongoing campaign, where you have several plot lines going on, suddenly you plop in this new character that derails pretty much every other plot line because the existence of such a character is such a huge setting changing event that you either have to turn the campaign in a completely new direction, or, as was more or less done in our campaign, lampshade it and ignore it. Same as the Mind Shard character. There is no realistic way that our group should have been able to function anywhere in Athas. We should have been mobbed every single time we appeared in public. Bad enough the warlock that uses magic publicly, which was my bad, but we had a mind shard AND a water genasi. The group very quickly evolved into an anti-setting group where everyone is acting against the setting.
Your experience of that and my experience of that were very different. It was part of my (human) druid's pathos that the water (re-fluffed swarm druid powers) she created was never permanent, it fueled her goals that brought her to bring a river back to Tyr. That's not anti-setting, that's entirely within the setting's bounds, using the setting and its conflicts to influence the type of character I created and what they did in the setting. The shardmind character was anachronistic in an interesting way that peeled back layers of the setting's history for us and created a very memorable villain. Those were some of my favorite moments in that game, and they happened because the players influenced where the DM's story went, just as they did when everyone banded together to save your character's mom.
Me, I would have liked to actually play IN a Dark Sun game. Problem was, no one else appeared interested. Not with the characters that kept getting added to the game.
...you played a fey warlock, going "anti-setting" in at least two ways (fey are considered dead or lost and magic is considered dangerous and destructive). And there were some awesome scenes that resulted from that (the fey lord that took secrets was cool!).
Yes, characters should be interesting and bring in all sorts of hooks for the DM to use to generate a campaign. I have no problems with a player driven campaign. But, like I said, I've really, really lost the taste for characters that are anti-setting characters. The psychotic, evil elf ranger in a Dragonlance campaign, the mindshard robot in Dark Sun, the endless lines of "fish out of water" characters that I've seen played in every single campaign I've ever played for the last thirty years.
Heroes aren't MEANT to fit into their worlds comfortably. If they did, we'd all be moisture farmers instead of Jedi Knights and senators instead of Princesses and normal stormtroopers instead of ones that take off their helmets. Heroes are heroes because they challenge the campaign world, be that the Wall, the Balance, the Sorcerer-Kings, the Empire, or any number of a million other heroic stories where the world ends differently than how it began. It's the mundane world that the Campbellian hero changes.
Is it really that hard to look at a campaign setting, particularly one you may have not played before, or at least, not played terribly often, and create a unique, interesting character with ties to the setting that isn't designed to run against the grain for the entire campaign? Is it really that much to ask that a group playing in a War of the Lance campaign to make actual, honest to goodness heroes? Why is it every time you hand players a list of classes/races for a campaign, there is always that one player who wants something off the menu? Is it really that hard to stick to the menu?
I've little desire to play a game of D&D where I'm Moisture Farmer Luke Skywalker, who obediently follows the Empire's directives. That's the "menu" in the
Star Wars setting. I'd much rather play Jedi Knight Luke Skywalker who challenges the setting's "dark dominant" paradigm and succeeds in restoring balance to the force. You might very well decry that as anti-setting since the Jedis are all lost and there's only even one that still exists in the canon and the setting is about the Empire ruling the galaxy. I mean you enter a world where there's no Jedi Knights, and where the Emperor rules supreme, and the first characters pitched are a farm boy who becomes a Jedi Knight and a princess who wants to fight the Empire! Talk about going against the setting!
I'd say that's exactly the kind of character I want to DM for - one who wants to DO BIG THINGS in the campaign world. To change it. To follow through with a narrative. Characters like Han - accepts the setting, works within it, tries to avoid commitment, just does individual missions - those characters are dull to DM for. Go to X and get the MacGuffin, go to Y and deliver it, that's not a story of world-changing heroism, that's a story of a particularly hazardous run to my mailbox. That's why Han is a supporting character - he's not interested in doing big things (well, eventually he is, too, and by that point he's become a bit of a protagonist himself instead of a plot device, but not for a while).
My gnome wild mage is crushing dragon cultists next to everyone else and wants to make the world a better place for everyone where there is no more Cataclysm and no more threat of an evil dragon goddess's return. He even wants it for bigger, more cosmological reasons than the "the dragonarmies were mean to me" narrative of most of the characters. He sees the great causes of suffering in the world, the things that allowed the dragonarmies to exist in the first place, and wants to fix them.
...and that's not heroic?
A dragonborn who wants to tear down the Wall sees a cause of suffering in this world and wants to eradicate it, to give his people reason to hope, to give the deities reason to provide, to make being good matter more than being faithful, to get rid of something hateful and restore something just.
...and that's not heroic?
Heck, why do we play games fighting against the dragonarmies - if they were eradicated, that would remove a fundamental pillar of the setting. To be in line with the setting, I guess we should play doomed townsfolk? Or members of the dragonarmies themselves? Certainly not heroes who change the world for the better! Those characters aren't part of the setting!
Hussar said:
I'm more than willing to accommodate player concepts within the constraints of the setting. What I'm not interested in anymore is the "anti-setting" character.
Except that's not really the case in your proposed Thule game - you're additionally constraining the setting beyond what the setting suggests (and also expanding it in terms of monks and paladins) because you want a particular vibe. That's cool, but that's not automatically what PT is. That's what you want to make it. And I don't think anyone has told you that they don't want to play that game. It's just a matter of finding out exactly what is on the table and what isn't.
When I see Conan (and I don't see much of him), I see him as an outsider beating the snot out of a world of decadent and corrupt wizards. The DM set up a world of decadent and corrupt wizards, and Conan is the proposed character: outsider, rude, violent, strong, independent. He is everything that the dominant setting is not. That's why he's the protagonist.
When I see the Fellowship of the Ring, I see them as unusual and exceptional, hobbits on adventures humans who are honored by elves, angel-mages who are considered eccentric in their own circles, in a world of spreading darkness. They are everything the dominant setting is not. That's why they're the protagonists.
When I see PT, I see a world of prehistoric monsters and madness-producing magic. I'd imagine its protagonists would tame the wilderness and bring order to spellcasting. They would be things that the setting would be changed by. That's why they'd be the protagonists.
