Reasonable. Reasonable. Reasonable. Darn you for stealing most of the reasonable players. 90% of time when I worked with a player with a problem build, it was a problem player which I could not dump due to the social contract. NEW DMS. It is okay to have limits. It okay to ask your buddy to play Atari while the rest of you game. Remember NO GAMING is Better than BAD GAMING. It only took me 20+ years to learn this. Don’t be as slow as I was.
Another thing I hated about problem builds. Is over half the time, once me and the player worked the problems out; either they quit playing due to real life, or something else caught their attention.
Some of you think it is BadWrongFun for the DM to set limits. Some of you think no limits are BadWrongFun. You are both right and wrong. And need to find a group which mostly supports your view.
The only reason I even added the word "reasonable" is because I knew people would fire back with "problem players do this all the time".
I haven't been DMing as long as some people, but I'd say I've played with a good number of different players over the years. Here are a few of the problem players I've had over that time.
(4e) Deva -> Wanted to have a relationship with a god, love story about them finding each other over multiple lifetimes. Was also a hyper pacifist and wanted said god to fix everything.
(4e) Dwarf Fighter (player #1) -> Had no concept of NPCs as people, and would murder fight and threaten his way through everything like he was DOOM guy. Insisted Moradin would save his characters soul after he got his just desserts
Human Ranger -> Wanted to play a Ranger specifically to make a better ranger build then another players rogue/ranger. Had no motivations beyond wealth. Left the party and joined an Aboleth in exchange for platinum
Human Champion Fighter -> No motivations, literally would roll a die to decide his characters actions. Seemed very disinterested in even playing.
Gnome Wizard -> Not even a pacifist, just a hyper coward. She hid in a bag of holding during every single fight to avoid her character getting hurt.
Goliath Barbarian (player #1) -> Once more, smash everything that moves. Better than the time he was a dwarf, but if it wasn't a combat, he didn't participate much. Kind of a theme with him. He also had another Dwarf Fighter, another Goliath Barbarian... and one time he played an Orc Fighter in a game where he actually roleplayed and engaged with the setting, because another player was the irresponsible one.
Then, I had about two "problem groups"
One was almost murder hoboey. They really seemed to come alive during combat, but felt like they were going through the motions for the rest. They said they were having fun, but seemed less engaged to me. Had Player #1, an Elf Fighter, a Dragonborn Cleric (this was the guy who started with the 14 Wisdom that had such a hard time with his character) and an Orc Bloodhunter (I'd asked the guy to help me kick the tires on the class and see how it worked)
The second was a much more diverse group. Had that Gnome Wizard, Player #1 (I think he started with a human gunslinger for that game, but killed him off rather quickly for his Goliath) the Tiefling Ranger I mentioned, a Changeling Rogue, Human Ranger, Elf Rogue, Shifter Rogue, Elf Monk/Druid. And that groups biggest problem was two fold.
First, The Human and Elf Rogue left the game due to real life, and Player #1 was in and out a few times. A two, I could describe the characters this way instead "Shy and silent, Violent Loner, Shy and Silent, Loner, Loner, Loner, Angry Loner, Loner" After a certain point, when everyone was getting frustrated with the game, I pointed this out to them, and they all went "Oh!" and the game went much smoother after that.
And, bonus round, race most likely to have been chosen by someone who either didn't participate or dropped the game? Human.
The people most engaged in my games have been Tabaxi, Kenku, Changelings, Kobolds. Even some humans, I ran a human only game once. But this idea that someone coming to my game asking to play a Tabaxi is going to be a problem player? It just doesn't match my experience. My expeirence is that those are my most engaged players, eager to be there, eager to participate, eager to see what the world is.
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As usual we have hundreds of posts that boil down to a simple argument. Some DMs and players like kitchen sink campaigns, some don't.
My personal preference is a more focused campaign with a limited set of races whether I'm playing or running. I simply have a hard time taking a campaign seriously where a cat person, a person that looks like a fiend, an elephant person, a snake person, a bird person, another bird person completely different from the first bird person walk into a tavern. The (nearly always) human patrons and bartender don't blink an eye at this.
Other people want to open it up to anything, the more the merrier. People should have the freedom to play that manufactured entity warforged if they want.
I think either approach is fine, as are variations of the themes. We all have preferences.
The problem is the hundreds of posts that if the DM doesn't support the kitchen sink approach we're playing he game "wrong".
- The DM shouldn't be such a control freak
- How dare the DM stand in the way of people having fun
- Players have the right to demand any race they want to play
- The DM is being a prima donna who believes their campaign world is a piece of art
I could continue but basically it comes down to: if you don't run a kitchen sink campaign you're doing it wrong.
Why do people feel the need to tell DMs they're doing it wrong? Can't each DM, each table, have a different take on how to run the game? If the DM and players are all having fun, why the **** do you care?
My advice? As a DM do what makes sense to you. You set the stage and the scenery. It has to make sense to you first and foremost. If you want to have the players help build the stage, fantastic! Just don't feel forced into it no matter how many people tell you you're DMing wrong.
Advice for players? If a DM's style doesn't suit you find a different DM or start your own game. No DM can be the right one for every player and vice versa.
Sure but we also have hundreds of posts saying that players who want to play something other than the core four are
- Requesting something weird
- Demanding the DM do more work
- Aren't respecting the DM
- Are Powergamers
- Don't care about the DMs world
- Are a problem
- Are making something that shouldn't be taken seriously
So, there is mud on both of our faces here. Both sides have said things I disagree with, both sides have good points. This isn't a players vs DMs problem. It isn't even a "strict world vs free form world" problem. It just.. is something we have to deal with as a community.
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...and some people prefer authentic dishes done well, than fusion dishes done poorly.
More importantly, I'd rather eat the food of a chef that cares about the ingredients that are used, and not the chef who does not care at all what gets tossed into the pot. "Kimchee and peanut butter and egg salad and harissa and lutefisk? Sure!"
Inapt analogies can work all sorts of ways.
@Oofta is correct. In fact, I'd go to the example that
@Shardstone used- notice that no one criticized him, even though he didn't use, for example, humans, or dragonborn, or aarakocra, and he was even "preventing" drow! (Refresher- "Hope no one here ever learns about my setting that's only Shadar-Kai, Yuan-Ti, Loxodons, Ghostwise Halflings, Tortles, and Mountain Dwarves.").
This isn't really about races,
per se.
1) Why do you assume that people who are okay with a wider variety of options don't care, put in less effort, world build poorly ect? That seems rather elitist of you.
2) Did you notice that the only response to Shardstone's world was someone saying "I know you are joking"? The first assumption about his world was that it wasn't a serious endeavor, but an absurd example. So the fact that no one explicitly criticized him is mistaken, because implicitly the only response he got was that his world that he built was absurd and a joke.
Edit: and there is a second one.
To be frank
@Shardstone , the reason I did not comment on your world was because by the time I had read the post, I had seen people reacting like it was absurd, and I did not want to call them out on it. But this is getting frustrating to the point of needing to speak out.
People act like a world with no humans or elves is an absurd farce that no one would ever play. But that a world without Lizardfolk and Tabaxi "just make sense" This is a divide in more than just taste. Especially when the only side making judgements on quality are those trying to restrict.
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More accurately I suspect they know that DM agency is greater than player agency. They don't like DMs rubbing it in peoples' faces by controlling not only the world but who the players' characters can be other than for major reasons when they have the rest of the gameworld to play with.
"My game pitch is this game with this theme and that's why the world is tightly constructed round these concepts" works. But "Because I'm DM this is MY setting and I created it and I didn't leave any room for YOUR ideas" is pretty close to "So you killed my BBEG with a lucky crit. Well I'm DM and I say that didn't happen and they survive because it's MY story that we're playing."
Just because a DM can do something doesn't mean they should. And player agency should be protected where possible precisely because the players have less agency than the DM.
Exactly, and I think this comes back to the very core idea that the referee of the game is referred to as "Master".
If a DM is willing to ban things with no explanation, and I'm just supposed to go along with it because they are the Master of the World, then how likely is it they will alter other things? How likely is it that this stage they build already has a starring cast, and we are the side show?
Maybe nil. Maybe they are going to run an amazing game. But if even the idea of "Well, why is this banned?" gets met with anger and hostility, then that seems to me to be a red flag that maybe some clever ways to exploit the world are going to be shut down. Maybe my druid can't go to the Baron and get a contract for increasing their crop yields and starting a side business to get them into the political arena. Maybe I'm going to be told that Druids can't care about mortal politics and all they care about is the wilderness, and my insistence on bathing is out of character, because druids are supposed to smell like a wet bear.
Or again, maybe not. Maybe I can do what I want, as long as I don't cross the wrong line. But if I can't ask why the lines are there without being a "problem" then I'm going to probably just go more conservative and hope there are no lines in that direction.
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The rules serve the setting and enforce the genre. That's really all there is to it: setting and genre.
If everyone agrees to play Adventures in Middle Earth, it would be kind of rude and baffling to insist on playing a Tiefling Sorcerer just because the system is 5e-compatible and "hey, I spent all this money on the books!" Assuming one has a modicum of respect for particular game settings (maybe not a fair assumption, but I digress), one doesn't ask to play an elf in Call of Cthulhu or a ninja in Pendragon; so in D&D, where the setting is as often as not the invention of the DM, why the assumption that every setting must be a fantasy kitchen-sink that incorporates a race or class just because it's been published?
That seems absurd to me, when it's not uncommon to go even further and limit particular campaigns not by what exists in the setting, but by what makes sense for that campaign's theme (e.g. "No paladins, we're playing a thieves' guild campaign," or "Dwarves only, this is going to be a dwarf campaign.") And that one player who insists on subverting those parameters (because it's never a mass rebellion of players; it's always that one player): we call them "That Guy," "special snowflake," "prima donna," or "naughty word."
It makes even less sense outside of the context of home games. If you run a game-shop game with an open table or in a West Marches style, where players are free to drop into and out of the campaign at their leisure, it only makes sense that the DM—whose job is nothing less than to maintain a simulacrum of a living fantasy world!—has all the negotiating power concerning what's playable in that game (never mind what exists in its milieu). Players can always vote with their feet.
But I can say from personal experience, I've never had anyone gripe when I open my pitch with, "This is a classic fantasy campaign, so you're all nobodies who dream about being heroes. Roll stats and pick human or halfling. Druids aren't playable and warlocks don't exist in this campaign."
Because being creative and having an idea should always be equated with being a special snowflake or an naughty word.
I mean, I guess I'm sorry that a pitch for a world or campaign might inspire me to create something you didn't think of first, but I don't think I'm an naughty word for having a different source of inspiration than you do.
). 
