Kitchen Sink or Limits, Which for You?

[Tallifer]

Themes.

Not every race, class, feat, spell, or other option fits in every world. If the setting is the Reformation Germanies then a Samurai is not going to be an option.

For material from books I reserve the right to use a line item veto, and I do not much me care if it is an official book or not.

The Auld Grump

I agree for the most part.

But then again I notice that players can come up with the most creative ideas when they have to try to make something strange fit into a world. I would love to see a good back story for a Samurai in Luther's Germany.

 

[Yora]

You can come up with justification for anything. At which point the restrictions that define the setting become irrelevant.

 

[Lord Mhoram]

I think one of the big takeaways for a player is:

Don't even come up with a character concept until you have talked to the DM and found out what his world is like and what he allows/doesn't allow.

I think a DM should ban any race/class/powersource if it doesn't fit his world, or if he just finds it personally distasteful. He runs the game, he builds the world. He should have final say about what is allowed or not.

One of the DM's jobs (especially at character creation) is the ability to say "no"


Perhaps the DM was scared by spiders as a youth, and still can't look at them- it freaks him out - so no spiders in his game. That likely means no Drow (espcially with classic race flavor).

Maybe he has a continuing nightmare of all the women he knows turning into reptiles with human proportions. So no Dragonboobs.

If the GM says "This race or class is disallowed" I just go with it. But then I never even consider race or class until I talk to a DM about their world and campaign tone and style.

I run a high fantasy Big Dang Heroes type game. I personally find intricate politics boring - so I warn players that if they play characters made for that kind of game that they likely won't get what they want out of my game. Nothing wrong with that. I wouldn't enjoy the kind of game he wants to play in, so I know I would DM it crappily. As long as that is known upfront, then everything is cool.

I've always seen the rules as a buffet of elements a DM picks from to run his game. Just because it is in a rulebook doesn't mean that a player is entitled to run it in any particular DMs game - and yes I include the first PH in that as well.

 

[Mallus]

I would love to see a good back story for a Samurai in Luther's Germany.

I'd love to see a good back story for a samurai Martin Luther! (I guess he'd need to be a ronin Martin Luther, eventually) He could live in Germany, Japan, or the fantastic lands of Herren-Nippon, jewel of the Axis Islands.

I voted for Kitchen Sink -- but with reservations. It's a lot more accurate to say I prefer a mix of both; campaigns with strong themes/unifying aesthetics, but fairly wide open to different PC character concepts/campaign goals.

For example, my 3e homebrew removed all the common PC races except human (and later, warforged). It was also clearly a kitchen-sink setting, by virtue of all it's different influences, despite having a distinctive tone and flavor. Call it an idiosyncratic kitchen sink. However, if you really wanted to play a traditional, Tolkien-esque elf, you could. I built in ways to rationalize it (one of which was simply leaving a great deal of blank space on the map).

I'm also firmly believe the soul of D&D lies is kooky, genre-blending, kitchen sink fantasy. That is what has been described in the bulk of the published materials over the years.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I would love to see a good back story for a Samurai in Luther's Germany.

When Martin Luther was excommunicated, Toyotomi Hideyoshi was already persecuting Christians in Japan.

When Martin Luther's doctrines were really taking hold, there were already Samurai convering to Catholicism. Some were converted in Japan, others traveled westward and returned as converts. Many were martyred because of it, most famously, the twenty-six martyrs of Japan who were tortured and crucified on crosses outside Nagasaki to discourage Christianity in 1597.

(As it so happens, Feb 5&6 are feast days for Japanese Martyrs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martyrs_of_Japan#The_26_Martyrs_of_Japan )

So it's not a stretch to have one traveling deeper into the West, either as a refugee from persecution in his homeland or as a pilgrim visiting the lands in which his newfound faith took deepest hold...possibly working his way towards the Holy Land. His arrival in Germany could merely be an artifact of the caravan he could find to take him deeper into Europe.

 

[gamerprinter]

Well, my Kaidan: a Japanese Ghost Story setting, is, of course, a setting based strictly on Japanese culture, folklore and legend. Not general Asian, not Chinese, but specifically Japanese only, including races, monsters, ghosts, classes, etc.

I generally don't design entire worlds, rather regions within worlds, giving the excuse that a given region (say ghostly Japan) is merely a part of the world (any world it fits). The larger world, must be a kitchen sink, but I never look beyond the region, so I don't really know if that's true.

While I've stuck samurai, ninja and monks into a western setting via a China Town section of a large urban center, but I too generally keep oriental elements in oriental regions, only.

Now The Curse of the Golden Spear trilogy of adventures in Kaidan feature westerners visiting a Japanesque world, so there's a way to get western tropes into Asian Kaidan, but on it's own, its not a very European place.

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

I'm referring to statements I see about some settings like "if it's in D&D, it has a place in [X]!". Like Eberron (which sort of works because it's explicitly a riff on the D&D milieu) and Golarion (which seems like it's pandering to try and catch as much of the D&D fanbase as possible). I don't like it when designers explicitly say that they're taking a bunch of existing ideas, throwing them in a blender, and slapping a new label on whatever comes out. Worlds that are meaningfully different than 'base D&D' (whatever that is, Greyhawk maybe?) are more to my taste.

Okay, I think I get it. If the ideas that make up a kitchen sink are original enough, it's cool. But if it's just a bunch of oddball stuff with homebrew labels, it's lame.

Part of the reason I have folks waiting is that I run a believable game.

Yet another reason why I will never, ever run 4e. 'Everything is core!'? Not in my settings, bub.

For the record, not even 4e fans adhere to that slogan.

And IMO, a believable game isn't mutually exclusive with kitchen sinks.

My setting tastes match my cooking tastes I strongly believe in giving character to each of your soup, if you put everything in the soup it just tastes like "soup" and always the same; I never use more than 1-2 spices because if you use too many spices the the soup only taste of "spices", but no individual flavor.

Very true.

OTOH, some of my best meals have been made from a mix of oddball leftovers.

DM's fiat is not particularly nice, but I also believe that players should concede the DM her little habits and preferences. After all, she's taking the hardest job for everyone's benefit at the gaming table. So if the DM has some own wishes, I just try to see them again as setting themes.

I see it like this: every DM has his/her flaws. (Including me!) But so long as his/her good points outweigh those flaws, well, the DM has the toughest job to do so I'll just grin and play.

Perhaps the DM was scared by spiders as a youth, and still can't look at them- it freaks him out - so no spiders in his game. That likely means no Drow (espcially with classic race flavor).

Maybe he has a continuing nightmare of all the women he knows turning into reptiles with human proportions. So no Dragonboobs.

I've been watching a lot of Malcolm in the Middle lately, and I can't help being reminded of the neurotic Craig.

"He's a level 45 DM!"