This is something I learned a long time ago. In the RPG world tropes, cliches, time worn plot devices, it's all good! In fact, the best RPG games hit you over the head with a cluehammer and don't let you forget what the point is. I mean, sure, by all means, switch it up, pull some twist, etc. I'm not saying everything needs to be what it seems or 'should be'. It is just that, in play, people orient best to what they know and expect.
This is a particular pet peeve of mine, so I don't consider it a good thing. To my ears, this is just a passive aggressive way for the player to tell me they don't want to play in this campaign. It's disrespectful. It's much more respectful for the player to be honest with the GM and tell him they don't want to play in a campaign without magic. I used to call this kind of player a special snowflake, before snowflake somehow became a politicized term, because their requests would fundamentally change the campaign to make it all about their character. i.e. Their character becomes the center of attention wherever they go.
I don't think I've ever heard consistency defined in that manner. For any work of fantastical fiction, it's necessary to establish rules on how things work and stick with them. Let's take Star Trek and their transporters as an example. One of the established rules for the transporters are that you cannot transport someone through shields. i.e. If the Enterprise has their shields up nobody can beam off or on the ship. In the TNG episode "The Wounded," the Enterprise beams Miles O'Brien aboard the Federation ship Phoenix even though they have their shields up. They're able to beam O'Brien aboard because they know the exact frequency of the Phoenix's shield or some technobabbly like that. But now you've established a new rule. If they knew the frequency of Phoenix's shield then Enterprise must know their own shield frequencies just as well. Shouldn't this mean beaming crewmembers on and off the ship while they have their shields up is a thing?
I don't think every unique and thematically potent character concept is an attempt to make the whole game revolve around you. Take care not to fall into the tired old "DM owns the world" mindset either.I think this touches upon what I will call the whole 'edgelord*' discussion -- when is someone wanting to play something special positive engagement with a creative endeavor and when is it a self-serving attempt to narratively dominate a shared fictional landscape with their own pet project.
*ugh, that word.
In general, I think the best advice/general trend for what works is that you should look for hooks that are the first orange in a narrative landscape, not one that turns over all the apple carts. Much of the above Tolkien examples fall into this category. There are unique monsters, each with a non-repeated schtick. Boromir has a moment of badassery (/preternatural timing) that shows a little of how special they are... but replicates nothing more than having been summoned for the great Council of Rivendell. Even Tom Bombadil's case of being some bizarre little demigod possibly immune to the 'dark lord's plot to conquer the world' narrative everyone else has to go through works because it is specific to his own little hex in the wilderness and can't be used to derail the main plot or premise of the fictional world.
Luke Crane's example of someone wanting to play the last mage is actually one that I would use with the most caution/only with complete buy-in from everyone else involved. Being the last mage in the world has profound impact on what happens for the rest of the world (and thus what the GM can do, and also realistically what they have to do); it impacts what other players/characters can play as, do, and react to the now-unique fellow characters (and also risks them feeling like playing a support role in someone else's story); and it means that the entire game world reacts profoundly to that one character making significant decisions/dying/succeeding/failing.
Again, this is a spectrum, and there are few right answers excepting what does or doesn't feel right. We all (of a certain length of gaming) experienced Drizzt clones, and that was clearly a cliché too far. At the same time, some even more well-worn tropes like small village boy dreaming of growing up to become a (skewed vision of what it means to be a) great knight are effectively ever-fresh.
I think you are seeing the real-concern scenario of a GM-novel on top of this one. To be sure, this kind of situation will have more collective-fiction elements at the expense of shared-game elements than other campaigns, but it's not inherent that this will be a GM-dominated event.
That is all the very point of play in the sorts of games Luke Crane designs, except it's true of all the PCs.
Please re-read my first paragraph. The entire premise of my post was that these were the theoretical extremes of a spectrum of possibilities. Certainly not that only one of the two mentioned was the entire universe of what happens.
That's similar to the GM-novel situation I mentioned. They, like the player trying to have the game revolve around them, are all fail-states of any given preference to the primary question of how much to make the game played be more character-dependent or independent. Fun can be had with all permutations, as can abuse and frustration.
Sounds like they are interested in exploring the extremes. There's value in each. I imagine there's some emergent gameplay or enjoyable reaction to playing a character in a (from what I remember) really uncaring world that Crane found he wasn't getting in one of his other games that lead to the creation of Torchbearer.That is all the very point of play in the sorts of games Luke Crane designs, except it's true of all the PCs.
Edit: Well except for Torchbearer I guess because the point there is all the PCs are gutter scum.
I agree. I wasn't attacking your point so much as pushing towards the middle. It's all a bit variable, PCs can fall within a range that fits into the milieu without upsetting it, or they can be really extraordinary and break things. It's probably harder to mix the two, and everyone will need to be 'playing the same game' at some level. Still, even D&D has high level wizards...
We're talking about concepts that directly fly against the established parameters of a campaign rather than complaining about unique or thematically potent concepts. I remember when a friend of mine accounced that he was running a Star Wars (Fantasy Flight Game) campaign where we'd all be Scum & Villany type characters and he specifically excluded Force users as an option. Without missing a beat, one of the other players immediately came up with a character who used the Force. It's just obnoxious, boorish behavior on the part of the player.
