Waterbizkit
Explorer
I feel like these threads come up regularly, so I'll try and stay concise. I'm generally an "everything goes" DM. All races, classes, UA material, 3rd party material (subject to my review), and even all alignments within the same party. If you have a strong character concept I'm going to support you in having it see play at the table.
If I do ever place restrictions it's usually to support a specific theme and in my case the more restrictive I am the shorter the campaign is likely to be. Perhaps I have all the players make characters that have to be some sort of goblinoid race because the "adventure" is them spearheading an assault on a settlement or fortress. Or maybe everyone has to play a dwarf because they're a group scouting for new veins of ore deep in the bowels of the mountain range they call home. These are typically short runs though because I just don't like putting so many restrictions on my players.
Now, to slightly sidestep some of the vehemence going back & forth in the thread I just also want to say this, and I typically do in these types of threads anyway: the differences in how we all run our games is what's so great about D&D and similar games. One DM might have a handout listing several restrictions on what players can and can't play while the next DM down the line just says "anything goes" and there's everything in between... and it's all good. What others do in their games won't impact your games, and so long as everyone is having a good time who cares? Either way I like reading these threads to get a glimpse of how other people run their games.
If I do ever place restrictions it's usually to support a specific theme and in my case the more restrictive I am the shorter the campaign is likely to be. Perhaps I have all the players make characters that have to be some sort of goblinoid race because the "adventure" is them spearheading an assault on a settlement or fortress. Or maybe everyone has to play a dwarf because they're a group scouting for new veins of ore deep in the bowels of the mountain range they call home. These are typically short runs though because I just don't like putting so many restrictions on my players.
Now, to slightly sidestep some of the vehemence going back & forth in the thread I just also want to say this, and I typically do in these types of threads anyway: the differences in how we all run our games is what's so great about D&D and similar games. One DM might have a handout listing several restrictions on what players can and can't play while the next DM down the line just says "anything goes" and there's everything in between... and it's all good. What others do in their games won't impact your games, and so long as everyone is having a good time who cares? Either way I like reading these threads to get a glimpse of how other people run their games.