DM Entitlement...

[Aeolius]

...no aquatic elves....bleecch...

And then there's my game, where aquatic elves, locathah, and merfolk are the "core" races. PCs must have a natural swim speed and be able to breathe underwater without the use of magic.

I would allow a player to choose a core race from the PH, though. Their character can be played... for as long as they can hold their breath. Then they can play their character as an undead.

 

[Greg K]

Maybe the gaming around MI is poor, but I've successfully poached players from other games by, oh, simply running a better game than the jeckwad DMs they used to play under.

No blacklist for me!

It all depends on the circumstances. For instance, if you are in a group and a player (or players) are not enjoying their DM's game, it is one thing to offer to run. It's also ok to run a game to give the DM a break and have people to decide they like your game better.

However, to complain that you don't like the restrictions, call the DM a jerkwad, and try to steal players is not going to go over well if the other players are enjoying the game. Such behavior is probably going to get you labeled a problem player. And, if the members of the group, are pretty well connected with the local gaming community via cons, the largest larp groups (comprised of many table top players from various local cities and suburbs), and players that play in multiple rpg groups, word can spread quickly among a decent segment of the local gaming community.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Ladies & Gentlemen...really, its a spectrum of behavior.

The DM is the ultimate arbiter of the rules in a given game, and lets be honest, its because he's the one who has the responsibility of running a campaign that is both enjoyable and internally consistent.

If including elves and dwarves would mean the campaign's history or structure is somehow disrupted, the DM is perfectly right to exclude them.

If including Paladins makes certain elements of the campaign fall apart, again, exclusion is warranted.

These aren't arbitrary, jerkish decisions. They are the result of a DM taking his responsibility seriously.

If the DM eliminates Paladins because he doesn't like them, it may seem arbitrary. But making him run a campaign in which you've "forced" him into letting him run a Paladin is ultimately futile. Its probably going to suck, and he's probably going to stop running the campaign.

If the DM prohibits Paladins because of the way YOU run Paladins, there may be all kinds of issues on both sides.

If, OTOH, a DM lets you play whatever, but mysteriously kills every Paladin in the campaign? THAT is being a jerk. At least the person who barred them during the initial stages was being honest with you.

Again, if you don't like the strictures the DM places upon the game, run your own game (heck, he might thank you for giving him a break) or find another DM.

 

[Korgoth]

And, as a side note, I'd do it to any DM who tried it on me. If the only reason that you're banning something is due to your own aesthetic issues and nothing else, and you cannot be swayed from that, I'm going to gank your players and start my own group.

So you'd try to destroy an entire campaign just because it's not all about you? Well, that tells me what I needed to know. Fortunately, any of my players who would associate with such a scheme would not deserve to be my players.

You and Cadfan can hang out in the No Personal Problems wing of the gamer retirement home someday and re-kill all the gods in the Deities and Demigods book with your Dragonborn Ninja Bladesingers.

Meanwhile, I'll happily ban Dragonborn from all my campaigns. Why? The same reason Tinker Gnomes and Kender and Gully Dwarfs are banned from my campaigns. Because they're stupid.

 

[Darrin Drader]

You did, Darrin (among others). Seriously, when you talk about ejecting people from the game, refusing to consider the interests of other people in the group, or it being "their game", you're talking about meta-issues that involve the social dynamic of the group. A group could certainly have an existing agreement to take what the current DM dishes out, no questions asked (i.e., they're happy with that setup), but assuming that being in the role of DM in a D&D entitles a person to this agreement is ridiculous.

Hardly. I invite the players, I host the game at my house, and sometimes, I provide them with books. Players are a guest at my house and as long as I'm running the game, I'm the one laying the ground rules. If they can't abide by the ground rules, it's their loss, not mine. That isn't being a control freak, refusing to be coorperative, or asserting control over things outside of the game, it's just performing the function of a DM. To say that there is something wrong with running the game instead of simply acting as a referee is to have an inherently flawed understanding of the way D&D has worked for the past 34 years. Squishy DMs tend to get trampled. I'm not one of those.

 

[S'mon]

To the OP: What you do in your own game is fine, Scribble. But never criticise other GMs for running their own games in their own way. Never forget: Without the GM, there's no game.

 

[Andor]

A GM banning a race because his boss yelled at him that morning is a bad thing.

A GM banning a race/class/name/haircut because it doesn't match his world is not only acceptable but desireable.

Otherwise you rapidly get a party composed of an Illithid Bard, A Shambling Mound Pyromancer, Sue the Human (male) fighter, and the Plasma Cannon toteing space marine whose race is unknown since he(?) never takes off his power armour.

Said party is usually trying to scrounge work from King Arthur and his generic human knights of the round conference table.

 

[carmachu]

I have no probelsm either setting limits or making things off limits or a DM doing so. So long as your up front about it, and fair and consistant about it(ie-your best friend playing one day doesnt get to play the race you said no to in the beginning or other nonsense), its all good.

Its a group effort, but the DM runs the show. His call.

 

[Steely Dan]

Otherwise you rapidly get a party composed of an Illithid Bard, A Shambling Mound Pyromancer, Sue the Human (male) fighter, and the Plasma Cannon toteing space marine whose race is unknown since he(?) never takes off his power armour.

Shemale, better. *in the voice of Dr Evil*

…Though that does sound remarkably like a Planescape party I once DMed.

 

[Cadfan]

If the DM eliminates Paladins because he doesn't like them, it may seem arbitrary. But making him run a campaign in which you've "forced" him into letting him run a Paladin is ultimately futile. Its probably going to suck, and he's probably going to stop running the campaign.

Do you feel that a player who is "forced" to play in a campaign where there are Paladins, even though he hates Paladins, is also going to "suck" at his contributions to the game, and probably drop out?

When I was a kid, my younger brother used to insist that if my mother made him eat foods he didn't like, he would throw up because they were so gross. Now, I'm willing to agree that its objectively mean to make a kid eat food that he hates so much that it actually makes him throw up. Its a good reason not to eat something! Except that it wasn't true. He threw up because he'd intentionally dry heave over and over and over until he got a little stomach acid, then proclaim that he'd proven his point. No one was fooled, and we ignored his antics until he quit doing it and just ate what my mom cooked.

That's the impression I'm getting from this style of argument. If it were genuinely true that the presence of dragonborn or whatever in a campaign were so offensive that they genuinely ruined the ability of someone in the game to even enjoy running the game, then I suppose they should be removed from that campaign, even sans any other reason. The player who wanted to play a dragonborn would probably be ok with choosing something else if choosing a dragonborn genuinely wrecked someone else's enjoyment of the game. He'd way his desire to play a dragonborn, and compare it to his friend's distaste for them, and say, "Woah! He totally hates dragonborn! His misery will far outstrip my enjoyment of my own character, so I will choose something else!"

Except that this whole scenario is crazy. Why is it exclusively DMs to have this problem? Shouldn't players logically have it too, at the same rate? And of course we'd see even more of it, since there are more players, right? But we don't. We just see DMs proclaiming that this or that would wreck their ability to enjoy the game so much that they wouldn't even be able to be interested in running the game well.

I'd posit that this is because DMs have the power to ban things, and players don't. So players roll their eyes and get over their dislike of dragonborn when their fellow player wants to play one, and just go enjoy the game. DMs don't have to do that, so they don't.

Its like a really big strong guy claiming that someone else's insult made him so mad that he couldn't help but punch them in the face. He might even genuinely feel that way, but if he were a smaller, weaker guy, he'd have learned to control his anger by now.

A DM might genuinely feel that a particular player choice is a campaign wrecker, but if he wasn't accustomed to having his whims become law, he wouldn't feel so bothered by his whims not being followed...