D&D 5E Should Published Settings Limit Classes and Races Allowed?

[Satyrn]

If I were playing in a Game of Thrones setting, elves and gnomes just wouldn’t fit. Similarly, dragonborn characters wouldn’t feel right to me in Middle Earth. It would break the immersive feel for me. Taking it to it’s extreme, do we allow Vulcans in a Star Wars game and Jedi on the Enterprise?

I personally find settings more attractive if the fiction is more directed.

Aye. I'm still not wording this well (ironic, since I started in this whining about a semantic quibble with the OP)

I'd just prefer a setting say "these are the options" and not say "these are not options." But it's not a hill I'd die on, or even consider fighting for.

 

[ccs]

I think we're actually rather the same. I didn't say it very well, but what I don't want is for a setting book to tell the DM "no gnomes allowed."

I don't mind if the book says "no gnomes/whatever allowed".
Afterall I'm the DM. So if I read the setting & decide that gnomes etc should be added? I'll add them. Likewise I'll scrap bits of a setting if I dislike something. Like psionics. I like Dark Sun in general, but I've never liked psionics. So there are no Psionics in my games. {Yes, it's been pointed out that it'd seem hard to run a non-psionic DS game.}

 

[Sunseeker]

No. Limit your table as much as you like. Leave the default setting material open to player and DM preferences.

 

[Morrus]

No. Limit your table as much as you like. Leave the default setting material open to player and DM preferences.

Surely at that point you haven’t written a setting, though? You’ve just written the word “everything” on a sheet of paper?

OK, I exaggerate. But in my mind a setting both adds and excludes things in pursuit of a particular flavour. You don’t put dragons in a gangster movie, after all. I find that I prefer the “set” of elements to be defined.

Sure, a sidebar could say “You’re the DM. Include what you want. But as written, elves do not exist in this world, and are not a good fit for it.”

 

[Sunseeker]

Surely at that point you haven’t written a setting, though? You’ve just written the word “everything” on a sheet of paper?

Look I can write a Game of Thrones (since the example is currently in use in the thread) settings and I can write it in such a way so that I denote that all the main characters are human. That all the generic NPCs are human, that all the kindgoms are run by human, but I can do that without simultaenously saying "no elves". I may not have written any in, but I there's nothing in the book that say you can't be one.

Maybe some creative DM thinks the Lannisters would make good elves, and the Dothraki could be orcs. Someone might find Game of Thrones vastly more interesting if Tyrells were Elves, if the Dorns were Yuan-ti, if the Pykes were genasi and *drumroll* the Targarians were dragonborn (please pardon my name misspellings here, I'm not looking them up as I go).

I don't like books and settings that say "NO YOU CAN'T DO THIS!". I like books and settings that are written a certain way and are not preventative to alteration. It's not terribly difficult to include a sidebar saying "Hey guys this is how I imagined this setting, but if you feel something could be more interesting for your group by being changed, feel free to do so." Without saying that it's left open to interpretation, which is fine as well. But you have to choose to say "No gnomes allowed!" or not. That's a choice the author had to make. It's a choice I don't tend to approve of and one, if I like the setting enough, will ignore.

As I said about Star Frontiers: if you can keep the theme and the feeling of a setting but make interesting changes to it, I'm really much more interested in "Creative Take On Old Property" than "Hey Look We Reprinted The Thing". I don't need a new copy of an old book. But I will buy a new twist on an old concept.

EX: I don't like dwarves. I tend to simply not include them in my games. But if someone really wants to play a dwarf, I'll figure out how to make room. It's easy to say "NO". It's more fun to say "Yes but..." in which case I have made a wide variety of non-typical dwarf options available (if someone wants to play a bearded racist parody dwarf, I will tend to ban that, which is sadly, the most common type of dwarf).

 

[Sunseeker]

Surely at that point you haven’t written a setting, though? You’ve just written the word “everything” on a sheet of paper?

OK, I exaggerate. But in my mind a setting both adds and excludes things in pursuit of a particular flavour. You don’t put dragons in a gangster movie, after all. I find that I prefer the “set” of elements to be defined.

Sure, a sidebar could say “You’re the DM. Include what you want. But as written, elves do not exist in this world, and are not a good fit for it.”

Well okay your edit basically said what I was typing but hey, maybe Gangsters & Dragons would be an awesome take on your generic gangster plot where you're all like, living in this very modern semi-magical society and specially bred dragons are the equivalent of cars, and you've got guns and crime drama and bank robberies but then you've got car chases that are now "dragon chases". All the while there's like this sub-plot where the dragons are slowly awakening their intelligence so it's got a kind of "Rise of the Machines" vibe in the background and ya know the fastest, best getaway dragons are also the ones most prone to self-awareness so the characters have to deal with the fact that their car may have a moral disagreement with their bank heist, or ya know, want a share of the loot!

"Generic Gangster Movie 5: The Robbery" doesn't interest me. Gangsters & Dragons? I'm listening....

 

[Tallifer]

For the sake of marketability and flexibility, I would only like to see very small limitations. Dungeon Masters who want more severe limitations can always make that decision for their own campaign.

 

[Jester David]

Look I can write a Game of Thrones (since the example is currently in use in the thread) settings and I can write it in such a way so that I denote that all the main characters are human. That all the generic NPCs are human, that all the kindgoms are run by human, but I can do that without simultaenously saying "no elves". I may not have written any in, but I there's nothing in the book that say you can't be one.

...

EX: I don't like dwarves. I tend to simply not include them in my games. But if someone really wants to play a dwarf, I'll figure out how to make room. It's easy to say "NO". It's more fun to say "Yes but..." in which case I have made a wide variety of non-typical dwarf options available (if someone wants to play a bearded racist parody dwarf, I will tend to ban that, which is sadly, the most common type of dwarf).

I disagree with that because it's NOT easy to say "no". It's NOT easy to tell your friends they can't play what they want. It's confrontational and ugly and uncomfortable.

If the books say "by default, there are no elves and dwarves in Westeros" it empowers and emboldens the DM to say "no" to their players. They're just going with what the book says, by what the default options are in that setting. It shifts the blame.
And if that DM decides to open things up and let a player be an elf, they're being additive. They're loosening a restriction. That makes the DM the good guy.

In the reverse, if the book makes no such assumption of races and the DM bans those races, they're the ones taking things away from the players and not the book. It changes expectations and reactions to the prohibition.

It's always easier to let DMs add content and take away restrictions than to make the DMs take away content and add restrictions...
Heck, that's the whole reason there's only four races in the Basic Rules, with the rest being "other races" and effectively optional.

 

[BoldItalic]

I've gone against the grain and voted 'No'.

If a setting is characterised by a complete absence of some of the core classes or races, that doesn't mean you have to ban PCs of those classes and races from playing in it.

Playing the only Half-Orc Paladin in a world with no Half-Orcs and no Paladins, or playing the only Gnome Druid in a world with no Gnomes and no Druids, can be an interesting challenge for the player. They may have no obvious allies other than the other PCs, they may be regarded with suspicion by NPCs, they may be hunted by sages wanting to dissect them, or by authorities who declare them anathema, and so on.

All kinds of plot hooks like those are suddenly available to the DM. Why forego all that potentially interesting story development by banning them?

 

[Gadget]

First of all, no setting book can send the rules police to your gaming table and bust up the game if "banned" races/classes are employed, so I find it hard to take seriously worries about excluding certain aspects of the core rules. I would prefer if things were stated right out (there are no elves in the Wheel of Time), maybe with an appropriate sidebar about elements that could be easily added back in, rather than an obtuse "lack of reference" that hopes to get the point across. Clarity is to be praised and sought after.

That said, I think marketing and sales considerations would cause WOTC to cast as wide net as possible, so I would not count on this too much from them. Cubicle 7 has shown this possible for smaller players though.


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