Too weird for town....

ParanoydStyle · Mar 15, 2019

All I can say with any real depth of feeling behind it is...

"Or that you've chosen one of the races with an image problem, like drow or duergar. How do you deal with it when your PC is too socially unacceptable to go into town?"

...I hate when DMs just IGNORE stuff like this and treat the party like they were normal, trustworthy races and didn't have tieflings or drow or whatever amongst them (which seems to be the default based on the AL/Forgotten Realms play I've seen). Seriously, I joined like a seven member party as a dwarf fighter (Dain Fireforge, Guild Artisan/Battle Master) and the rest of the party were a 2' tall Kobold Luchador (LG monk), a golden dragonborn Gunslinger with golden guns, a Goliath barbarian, an Aarakockra ranger, a Tortle...something....can't remember the rest, except there wasn't one "normal" race among them. When my character would say (in character) "what a bunch of freaks" or "since I'm the only normal person here", it was like they didn't even get that their party would logically be, if nothing else, incredibly conspicuous, if not a gang of literal circus freaks, and thus frequently dealing with NPC prejudice...and since there was no NPC prejudice, I felt dumb for roleplaying it the way I did. Dain was apparently the only person in Waterdeep who saw these guys and thought "man, would you look at this freaking crew".

I've started my own game at a different FLGS and one player said they really enjoyed having to roleplay hiding/disguising/defending their character being a Tiefling for once, and that it had literally never come up before with any other DM. If you are a Tiefling it means your great grandma banged a devil or a demon, I don't know which is worse but yeah, I can't imagine the general public sentiment not being equivalent to "she's a witch, burn her!".

Oofta · Mar 15, 2019

Depends on the campaign. As with others, I address it up front in my campaign document and session 0. In my campaign world drow would be killed on sight, you would not be allowed in the gates with a pet tiger. It's a world where monsters are real, dark elves really do come out at night and decimate entire villages just for fun before disappearing once more.

The Forgotten Realms are fun in a way for what it is, but I don't think it's never been a particularly realistic depiction of what the world would be like if there were magic and entire races of intelligent creatures that were inherently evil. My world doesn't have to be realistic, but it do my best to have it be logically consistent.

DND_Reborn · Mar 15, 2019

We haven't had any dangerous pets yet, but most of the players seem to be in love with dragonborn, tiefling, and half-orcs. We've had two characters of each of those races, none of which to our DM are normally socially welcome in a human-centric/ monster-phobic setting. As the characters have gained acclaim, however, the local populace has warmed up considerably, even to the drow in our party (although not quite as much

). Otherwise, we've had two other elves (one high/one wood), one dwarf, and one human.

Can anyone say "The Monster Squad"?

Anyway, our DM explained in session 0 that most monster races wouldn't be allowed as PCs. One player wanted to be a Goliath, for instance, and choose Tiefling instead. The first city we went into, we entered at night, cloaked, and under guard until we met the local Lord of the Castle, who gave us our first mission. After several successes and levels, we now have some local approval, but are branching out, splitting up the party because we have too many characters, and moving on into new territories.

My characters have been a dwarf and elf (high), so personally I would like less of the monster races, but I won't fault someone for playing the character they want.

aco175 · Mar 15, 2019

I tend to allow the PHB races with no problems. There may be some roleplay with a dragonborn or tiefling, or a 1/2orc. Monsters are monsters for a reason, so the commoners treat PCs that are monsters like monsters until they prove otherwise. Some of the more humanoid-ish monsters (goblins, orcs, etc..) may be allowed in frontier towns after they prove themselves and are with more 'normal' PCs, but larger cities still would attack them unless they are in chains.

You could AL handwave the whole thing and allow players to chose anything offered in a book. Monsters are allowed and goliaths fight along with turtles and frogs. It would be kind of like Star Wars rather than LotR or even Warcraft. If nobody has a problem with it, it could work. I may play it in a one-shot or pick up AL game, but for a homebrew campaign I would most likely push for PHB races.

Draegn · Mar 15, 2019

In my game players can play a dwarf, elf, faerie, gnome, halfling, human, or bugbear, giant (GoT inspired), goblin, hobgoblin, orc, ogre, or troll. A player can also play multiracial characters. I gave each race homelands where they are the majority. If you imagine an archery target being the center of the homeland where the race has the greatest concentration and the outer rings having fewer. Overlapping areas with other races are where the half races are generally found in larger numbers.

When we started our campaign I explained the starting realm is in a border area of a fallen dwarf empire and is majority human, halfling, gnome and dwarf with nearly a third of the dwarfs being exiles who have a strong dislike of elves. The other races if present collectively fall in under five percent total with most being of mixed ancestry.

So my players choose elves, half elves, half goblin, half ogre for characters and wonder why some groups look down on them and are hostile. I feel this is due to wanting to be either pretty or scary.

Flexor the Mighty! · Mar 15, 2019

Depends on the settlement. There are no half orcs in my current game but in other games it would depend and you could expect to pay more unless you made friends with people. If your 1/2O goes to a dwarven settlement...well that may be interesting. If you are trying to drag a undead or some kind of horrific monster into a major human city you may be attacked on sight. I just play it by ear depending on where they are at and how well they are known. I know in FR many towns are like Mos Eisley, with 135 different species running around, but in my game in the human areas demi-humans are fairly rare and there are no dragonborn or demon spawn running around.

Bawylie · Mar 15, 2019

My groups do a lot of disguises.

That’s not a gelatinous cube at all - see his mustaches and guitar? He’s a simple mariachi.

Jer · Mar 15, 2019

Ranger pets tend not to be an issue at my table - I've never had anyone take anything that wasn't a wolf, because the one person who likes to play a ranger will always pick "wolf" even in games where the mechanical benefit for picking something else is clear. And literally nobody else I've played with ever wants to play a ranger.

As far as outlandish races go I tend to talk to the player about their intent behind picking that for their character. If the idea is that they're picking it because they want to roleplay being an outsider who gets weird reactions then we play into that. If they have some other concept in mind, we go with it instead. It impacts the world that we're building if we decide that nobody freaks out about a tiefling or a warforged or a half-orc or whatever walking into a bar, but since the games I run usually involve a lot of collaborative world-building rather than the world being the single vision of myself in the role of DM anyway, it's generally not an issue.

billd91 · Mar 15, 2019

Fauchard1520 said:
Suppose you've got a dangerous pet. Or that your character concept is "hideous monster." Or that you've chosen one of the races with an image problem, like drow or duergar. How do you deal with it when your PC is too socially unacceptable to go into town?

It depends on the type of campaign you want to run. If you like the "cavalcade of weirdos', then go nuts. But if you don't, then the PC with the hideous monster concept is really choosing to deal with the complications of their choices.