Kitchen Sink or Limits, Which for You?

[fba827]

i like limits in terms of what can go with the setting.

i find that the limits help define some flavor distinctions between campaigns. of course, that's just my personal taste.

of course, if someone is willing to help develop how something fits in, even if it was on the initial 'not for this setting' list, then it would be considered within reason.

 

[Stormonu]

Depends on my mood, campaigns can swing either way.

If you like kitchen sink settings, feel free to answer any or all of these follow-ups:

How far is too far? When does it go from a kitchen sink to “What are we playing, again?”

Is the kitchen sink any less acceptable if someone plays a character that went Too Far? (“Dude you’re playing a...pixie?”)

Do you homebrew even more options, or beg your DM to? (“I want to play an X, but it’s not published!”)

1) When the group says "no!" (with the exclamation point)

2) Player-run Half-fiend Raptorians, homebrew Dragonman race, Vampires, Minotaurs, Pixies, Greensbondmen, half-gods, gay kenku, intelligent familiars have all appeared in games I've run. I think the only thing I might pause at might be a PC-run ham sandwich, but I wouldn't put that past one of my players (last time, when we were discussing possibly doing a BESM Pokemon-style game, he was considering making a chocolate milkshake his "Pokemon")

3) Yep, I've helped draft or instigate countless wierd races and rules. Over half the fun of the game is getting to use your imagination, not borrowing someone else's.

If you like limited settings, feel free to answer any or all of these follow-ups:

Does it matter whether the restrictions stem from DM fiat (“I just don’t like sorcerers”), from setting themes (“The gods have abandoned Athas, so no divine PCs”), or from print origin (“Nothing from the Essentials books”)?

If you like strongly thematic settings, is such a setting any less acceptable if your favorite races or classes aren’t part of the theme?

What about strongly thematic settings that naturally foster a kitchen sink attitude, like Planescape?

PS: Yeah, my poll sucks. It’s just for your button-pushing satisfaction.

1) I try to stick with #2, though I do not allow the Book of Exalted Cheese in any game.

2) I haven't turned down a setting due to absence of race or class. In fact, one of my favorite campaign/games is Rokugan (L5R) where the only (core) playable race is human and class is samurai or shukenga.

3) What about Planescape? It wonderfully oozes with themes.

 

[Tonguez]

I prefer to play in worlds with strong themes and internal logics. I'm even happy to accept that kitchen sink can be a Theme in its own right. Pixie is an acceptable thing to play (but that dude will be mercilessly teased), afterall I once played an aquatic willowisp psion.

 

[Rechan]

It depends on the needs of the campaign.

If I'm doing something that is the RPG equivalent of a game of pickup basketball, I generally don't care what options the players are using, so anything goes, as long as its genre-appropriate.

OTOH, if I'm running something that has a strong story/mechanical core around which I built the game world, I can be quite restrictive indeed.

This.

If all the characters are members of a thieves guild, then a plate-wearing paladin isn't going to work. If the campaign is "Everyone's a kobold", then well, everyone's a kobold. If the campaign is "Explorers to the Jungle Continent", I want everyone to start from the Old World (where certain races/classes are from), and New World options (races/classes) open up as they play.

If the campaign doesn't call for limits, then I don't place them. There are certain classes I think are weak or dumb, but the only thing I stop are broken/OP options. And usually my objection is not what someone is playing, but how something is played (Hello, Dragonlance races). But I find it hard to swallow pixies from a tone perspective.

Another important note on limits: If a player really wants something that violates one of those limits, I'm fine with working in a way to defy it if it's interesting, and if nothing else we can reskin something. For instance, let's say a Warforged in Athas. Athas is a world where there's little to no metal. Ok, Warforged are creations of bone and stone, crafted by the Sorcerer Kings to be unwaivering guardians and bounty hunters that can travel the blasted earth without fear of exhaustion. A Deva with one of the New World classes and sparse memories of the Jungle Continent would work fine.

One of my favorite things to do with limits is, once the players have made their characters, say "The races you've chosen are the only common PC races in this setting." After that point, any other race would need some sort of unique story (First of its kind, Last of its kind, ONLY ONE of its kind, new race on the planet, etc).

What I like about Kitchen Sinks is working that thing into the setting. Eberron is a great example of this - the design goal of it was "If it exists in D&D, it exists in Eberron", so they intentionally made choices to work various things into the setting. You could ignore them, because they were often linked to geography, but if you looked (or you thought about it), you could work anything in there. So once you pick something oddball, make it work within the setting.

As a player, I love wacky inhuman races and exotic classes, so I'm all for non-strict limits. Any sort of "You can't play this" always makes me want to play it.

 

[Kaodi]

When I run games (which is almost never) , I prefer limits because I usually either want to run games that are strongly thematic or that have some sort of limit in options just to keep things relatively simple and uncomplicated. For instance, in the Eberron Pathfinder PbP I am running, characters are basically limited to what is in the Pathfinder Sourceboks, and are not allowed to use options from the Golarion setting books. They may aslo request conversions from the Eberron Campaign Setting, but not any of the other Eberron books.

When I play games I am more open to anything "official" goes. Not a big fan of games where a player can go hunt from any 3PP they want, unless that product is also one being drawn on heavily by the DM So, for instance, if Aeo was using Cerulean Seas, that would be cool because it is an underwater game. It would be less cool if someone wanted a random feat they found in Cerulean Seas for a game based in the desert... Obviously as a player I am powerless to make those calls, except insofar as I am less likely to start playing in a group or game where that sort of thing is going to happen.

 

[Aramax]

Since mostly I DM Ill answer from that angle.
I take it on a case by case basis.My son wanted to playCapt. America in my fantacy world so I created some guideline and vola Lt Eagle was born.
Usually I dont have any problems along these lines as my players tend to stick w/traditional Chars,but if I like the angle Ill try to go along w/it

 

[Viktyr Gehrig]

I normally prefer big, broad settings where there's a place for everything under the rules-- but that still maintain their own flavor. Eberron and Golarion do this for me, Planescape did this for me, and my favorite campaign setting is Spelljammer.

I respect that some people get a jones for a much more specific kind of setting-- low fantasy, samurai fantasy, Dark Sun-- and I want them to have those options. Rarely, I even feel the same urge. But most of the time, whether I'm running the game or playing it, I want to play with ALL the options.

 

[Quickleaf]

I am on both ends of the spectrum. I play in a Mystara B-series campaign, and I DM a Planescape campaign.

We have an ardent and a psion in the Mystara campaign, and even though we're all playing "old school races" (humans, elves, gnomes), some of the psionic stuff is a little weird against the feudal European backdrop. I guess if the player could describe their psionic powers with a "middle fantasy" twist it'd be a lot more palatable.

For my Planescape game, I let the players do whatever kind of PCs they wanted, sort of the ultimate wish fulfillment. Heh. We even have a pixie.

 

[Lanefan]

Give me death, I say; death to the kitchen sink in which archetypes drown in a morass of odd experimental monsters and overpowered muscle builds.



Lan-"then again, even a sink has limits: something has to hold the water in"-efan

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

As a player, I love wacky inhuman races and exotic classes, so I'm all for non-strict limits. Any sort of "You can't play this" always makes me want to play it.

Kinda like how not being able to scratch makes that itch all the worse...

3) Yep, I've helped draft or instigate countless wierd races and rules. Over half the fun of the game is getting to use your imagination, not borrowing someone else's.

Amen!

I'm the guy that likes to say no. No hobbit barbarian/necromancers. No centaur ninja/wizards. No half-orc bard/enchantresses. No tieflings (at all). No half-dragons. No drow. In fact, I really want you to play a human fighter, wizard, cleric or thief with no backstory at all but who might get a name if he lives past level 3.

Duuude...hardcore!

Muh? What's wrong with Pixies?

It was the first race that came to mind. Taken at face value, the 4e pixie is logically absurd. (Does it fly, or doesn't it?) So I can imagine a lot of DM chafing at it.

The ridiculous inclusiveness is a part of D&D, and I like it.

Personally I think this inclusiveness is a big part of D&D's continued success, much like a good holy book's success can often be attributed to its inclusiveness.

The Bible has a story for every occasion and every person, and D&D has a class and a race for every player.