Dragonlance Would you allow Kender outside of Dragonlance?

[Zaran]

So much hate. Playing a kender doesn't mean you have a license to disrupt the game. The same goes for the following:

playing a Drow
playing a gnome
Playing a rogue
Playing the Chaotic Neutral alignment because evil is now allowed
Playing a paladin
playing an evil alignment when everyone else is not.

Basically, if you want to be a special snowflake and tick off the other players then you are being disruptive.

It is possible to play a kender for fun of all in the group. It's how it should be played like every other part of the game.

 

[Sunseeker]

So much hate. Playing a kender doesn't mean you have a license to disrupt the game. The same goes for the following:

playing a Drow
playing a gnome
Playing a rogue
Playing the Chaotic Neutral alignment because evil is now allowed
Playing a paladin
playing an evil alignment when everyone else is not.

Basically, if you want to be a special snowflake and tick off the other players then you are being disruptive.

It is possible to play a kender for fun of all in the group. It's how it should be played like every other part of the game.

If only more DMs had the stomach to clamp down on such behavior.

 

[Nebulous]

I'd allow it if a player wanted to. They're just little halflings to me. I don't care.

 

[Mishihari Lord]

I don't understand why folks happily accept that the personality traits listed for dwarves and elves are guidelines but assume every kender must be Tasslehoff Burrfoot.

I read a Dragonlance book where Tasslehoff and the dwarf visited the Kender capitol. They were pretty much all like Taslehoff.

 

[mlund]

Dragonlance in general, IMXP, has kind of a problem with poorly characterized races, a legacy of the setting being invented for a novel series. Like, an elitist elf is a good character, but this is DL, so ALL ELVES ARE EXTREMELY RACIST. A wacky gnome is fun, but this is Dragonlance so ALL GNOMES ARE INSANE. A chlidlike halfling is nice, but this is Dragonlance so ALL KENDER ARE ADHD AND ANNOYING. A greedy dwarf is cool, so ALL DWARVES ARE OBSESSED WITH WEALTH. Every race is like the worst stereotype, Flanderized to the nth degree.

To be fair, though, demi-human races are rubber forehead aliens anyway. I actually kind of like the fact that the stereotypes are "baked in" - genetically and spiritually. It makes them less human without the pitfalls of either making them incomprehensibly alien or just "cultured" incorrectly. No amount of alternative nurture takes the klepto out of the kender, the mania out of a tinker-gnome, or the racism out of the elf it just helps suppress it / channel it in a more positive direction.

Frankly, it is really hard to present a non-human race as anything significantly alien and still figure out the social dynamics necessary to have a viable adventuring party. All the demi-humans basically have to think and feel exactly like humans with the odd flavorful caveat or the humans playing the characters are hopelessly lost. Yet an approachable demi-human race is just a flanderized human of some sort. I think the more alien a demi-human race gets, the more suited they are to non-protagonist roles in books and the less suited they are to being protagonists in literature or games. Dragonlance originally did a nice job with the Elves and Kender that way, IMO. In contrast, Drizzt seems to be a horrible signal that there's really nothing mysterious and alien about Drow in FR at all - just the products of a Society of Vicious Jerks.

Marty Lund

 

[I'm A Banana]

To be fair, though, demi-human races are rubber forehead aliens anyway. I actually kind of like the fact that the stereotypes are "baked in" - genetically and spiritually. It makes them less human without the pitfalls of either making them incomprehensibly alien or just "cultured" incorrectly. No amount of alternative nurture takes the klepto out of the kender, the mania out of a tinker-gnome, or the racism out of the elf it just helps suppress it / channel it in a more positive direction.

Frankly, it is really hard to present a non-human race as anything significantly alien and still figure out the social dynamics necessary to have a viable adventuring party. All the demi-humans basically have to think and feel exactly like humans with the odd flavorful caveat or the humans playing the characters are hopelessly lost. Yet an approachable demi-human race is just a flanderized human of some sort. I think the more alien a demi-human race gets, the more suited they are to non-protagonist roles in books and the less suited they are to being protagonists in literature or games. Dragonlance originally did a nice job with the Elves and Kender that way, IMO. In contrast, Drizzt seems to be a horrible signal that there's really nothing mysterious and alien about Drow in FR at all - just the products of a Society of Vicious Jerks.

Marty Lund

I see what you're saying, but I think there's a fundamental problem with trying to achieve "alienness" in races who must as a design goal be played by actual human beings and you are much better off typically in going with "these are humans, but a little different" for simple playability reasons. Taking a quality some humans have and exaggerating it to cartoonish ubiquity isn't making something alien, it's just making it two-dimensional.

But like I said, I could Get Into It on DL races, but it probably wouldn't be entirely productive. Happy to off-thread the convo if you'd like!

 

[mlund]

I see what you're saying, but I think there's a fundamental problem with trying to achieve "alienness" in races who must as a design goal be played by actual human beings and you are much better off typically in going with "these are humans, but a little different" for simple playability reasons.

I agree completely. That playability conflict makes it so that things that are cool in fantasy lit are often awful in fantasy gaming.

Marty Lund

 

[Ed_Laprade]

[QUOTE=GMforPowergamers;6583213]Yes and if played by the right up by raw YOU would be wrong...BECUSE EVERONE LOVES THEM.... That is themain problem thesame race treated like outcast and mistrust AND the PC could learn in game and grow wouldn't be half as bad... Although that would still be a hard race...[/QUOTE]

Yep. It was being told that my character HAD to love them, even though it was blindingly obvious that I wouldn't, that led to my taking a vow to kill 'em all on sight!. It was basically a "You're not telling me how to play MY character!" response. And since I've mostly seen horror stories about them ever since, I've stuck to my guns. Even here, the horror stories far outweigh the "I've never had any problems with them." ones.

 

[aramis erak]

To be fair, though, demi-human races are rubber forehead aliens anyway. I actually kind of like the fact that the stereotypes are "baked in" - genetically and spiritually. It makes them less human without the pitfalls of either making them incomprehensibly alien or just "cultured" incorrectly. No amount of alternative nurture takes the klepto out of the kender, the mania out of a tinker-gnome, or the racism out of the elf it just helps suppress it / channel it in a more positive direction.

Actually, it's canonical that watching their homeland burned to the ground by evil dragons did burn the klepto out of a significant chunk of them. Look up "Afflicted Kender"...

Kencyclopedia has a good article on it: http://www.kencyclopedia.com/kender/races/Race_display.cfm?page=dl3eafflictedkender

 

[DMZ2112]

I read a Dragonlance book where Tasslehoff and the dwarf visited the Kender capitol. They were pretty much all like Taslehoff.

And every dwarf R.A. Salvatore has ever written might actually be the same person. It doesn't invalidate my point.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/PlayingWith/OurDwarvesAreAllTheSame