D&D 5E What is the appeal of the weird fantasy races?

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I posted this a while back, on the old version of the forums...

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I could see Pigsy as a orc.
But Wukong as a gnome?

 

[Twiggly the Gnome]

I could see Pigsy as a orc.
But Wukong as a gnome?

Humanoid, arboreal trickster spirit.

 

[Minigiant]

Humanoid, arboreal trickster spirit.

Yeah but he don't tinker not talk to badgers and is not small.

 

[Twiggly the Gnome]

Yeah but he don't tinker not talk to badgers and is not small.

Definitely small...




... and he befriended various animals after his birth from the stone.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Or, it could just be fear of the unknown. It doesn't have to be racism.

Why is the Tabaxi unknown? They have been a part of the world just as long as the humans.

And, again, that is the "fantasy Racism", that is literally "they are different from us, so we must treat them with fear and suspicion"

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I'd… actually cop to that. Yes; when the DM is defining the parameters of the campaign, it's pretty hard to imagine any character creation limitations set by the DM which are inherently unreasonable. Assuming, that is, that the DM has defined those limitations in vacuo, without player input (which IME is typically how it's done). For the DM to be "the naughty word," they would have to solicit player input and then work to subvert it. If a DM were to ask a group of potential players about what characters they'd like to play and then (through either malice or negligence) create a campaign world that excludes those particular character types, that would be a dick move, without question. But it's such an unrealistic scenario—I can't see any DM acting in good faith ever doing such a thing.

Yes. And not just because the DM has more "authority" (however it's been vested or defined) over the setting and the rules than the player; it's because the DM has more information. The DM by virtue of having created the campaign knows more about the campaign than a player at character creation possibly can. It might sound paternalistic to say "the DM knows best," but in this case it's literally true.

So, here it is. This is why people are disagreeing with you.

Except under the most ridiculous of circumstances, the DM can be nothing except correct and have the moral high ground.

They have more information, more authority, and more right to their opinions than anyone else at the table. While the player has... whatever the DM decides to give them.

During play, the DM can be the source of all kinds of problems. That's not in dispute. But what could possibly constitute problem behavior when defining a setting and its parameters? Subverting the players' intentions preemptively; I've dismissed that as implausible. Creating a naughty word-up setting (e.g. Gor or some such dreck) when the players aren't on board with it would count, I suppose, but again that's not good faith DMing, that's just a bait-and-switch.

Excluding dwarves (or whatever) from a given setting and being non-negotiably strict about it is hardly on the same plane. In fact, I'm having trouble envisioning any scenario (short of the DM deliberately targeting a player they know who e.g. always plays dwarves) where this could constitute "problem DMing." I say again: there is no meaningful difference between a hypothetical D&D campaign that doesn't allow dwarves and a Cthulhu or Traveller or Vampire campaign that doesn't allow dwarves. And yet you never hear anyone argue, "the ST should be willing to negotiate—maybe make a little room in the setting—insert the Dvergr as a clan neatly between the Tzimisce and the Ventrue!"

But look at it this way.

Two people sit down to play a game of DnD. One wants to have dwarves in the games. One wants to not have Dwarves in the game.

Depending on where they sit at the table, one of them gets their way, without question, and if the other person tries to argue for what they want, they are an naughty word causing problems for the game, and they can either accept the authority of the other person, or leave the table.

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I'm honestly absolutely not a fan of weird races as well as many customization options in general. And weird races (or, well, any races except humans) in particular -- I feel like they're a shallow shortcut for creating "uniqueness". It's easy to boil elves and dwarves and dragonborn to a bunch of stereotypes, but you can't do the same with humans -- you are basically forced to come up with some kind of culture.

The designers specifically have avoided saying anything at all about humans in general in DnD, to avoid racial problems.

Therefore everything else is a shallow shortcut, because you can define them like you can't define humans.

That seems to miss the causality at play.

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They aren't be feared based on race. They are being feared based on appearance. Fearing a humanoid cat is no different than fearing a Puma. And I already showed how outside of a metropolis, they would be relatively unknown.

Lets move from Tabaxi for a brief moment to Lizardfolk, only because I don't know where Tabaxi normally live.

Lizardfolk would be unknown outside of cities... or outside of towns near swamps and lakes where Lizardfolk live.

I mean, let me just throw this map up on the board

The High Moor seems like a place where Lizard folk would live, and eyeballing other maps to see the scale, I think a single weeks travel from the High Moor would get you... maybe to Triel?

And I'd say since they are on the Trade Way, you will likely hear about them as far as Scornubel.

So, you've got Sunset mountains and anything South of Scornubel might be the limit of people having heard about Lizard folk from the Moore. Which means that 3/4 of this map would know about Lizardfolk.

I mean, if we go with taking a week's travel in every direction, and every big city, that is a lot of territory where the Lizardfolk would be well known.

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-Snipping a lot-

Yes, we were having fun, but no, we weren't really playing D&D,

the fantasy milieu is an end unto itself, and if the milieu is gameable, then you select or adapt or invent mechanics to play in it.

I invent my own settings without input to keep setting details secret from the other players (the point of playing is to reveal the game-world by exploring it). My values have shifted off of narrative arcs and character arcs and onto worldbuilding and (in-game) player agency.

Could I incorporate players' ideas into a setting? Even surface-level ideas, things that aren't there to be sussed out through exploration, things that everyone in the setting knows (e.g. "Elves exist and they live Over There")? In theory, sure. As a matter of practicality, how would that even work? I don't even decide on mechanics until I've already got an idea for a setting mostly fleshed out. Then it's onto hex maps and graph paper (whether that means high fantasy continents and dungeon levels, or star systems and ship schematics, or whatever). Then, once I have something reasonably workable and complete, that's maybe when players first hear about it.

To me, to do things any other way seems pointless and self-defeating. The primary source of fun derived from play is discovery; but for every setting element that the players have had a hand in defining, that's one less thing for them to discover. Player collaboration would literally be subtracting fun from the game, bit by bit. I don't want my players to have a hand in defining my setting elements for the exact same reason that I keep a dungeon map hidden behind a DM screen while playing.

So... this is a problem with how we want to approach the game.

For example, if I have a player who is playing an elf, and there is a secret war that the Elves are having against the Mindflayers... the Elf player is going to know about that. It is something that the players might discover, but it is also something another player might reveal as part of their backstory.

So, the only way to make them all setting secrets is... to prevent anyone from playing a race that has any secrets.

And what if there is a secret about a religious order? Can I play someone from that religious order, who might know the secret? or is that also revealing a setting secret.

Eventually, you just narrow all options until there is little left, and the players can't have important secrets, because then they would know the setting secrets that you don't want any player to know.

And again, this ends up just causing problems in my opinion. You are deciding that it is more interesting for the player to discover something alongside the other players, instead of knowing it ahead of time. While most of the players I know, they want to have some secrets from the other players, they want to be embedded in the world and exploring within things they are already at least somewhat familiar with.

 

[Crit]

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Since nobody wants to address a question that I've been asking and asking ("How is a D&D campaign without elves meaningfully different from a V:tM campaign without elves?"), let me reframe it.

Lots of RPGs take place in the present day, in some version of the real world, and presume ordinary human characters. A modern-day Call of Cthulhu campaign, for example. DMs who are big on collaboration and accommodation, would you allow a player to play an obvious self-insert in such a campaign?

Now let's shift the scenario over to a high fantasy setting. (Maybe it's D&D, maybe it isn't, but the point is that the game's setting is pure high fantasy—an invented fantasy world with no connection to Earth, unlike portal fantasy or low fantasy.) Would you allow a player to play an obvious self-insert in this sort of campaign? A displaced Earthling human (the presence of which literally shifts the genre of the game and its world from high fantasy to portal fantasy)?

I'm incredibly curious about this.

You can ask what you wish, but I don't think that these questions tie in particularly well to the discussion.

I am not familiar with V:tM, but my question is, does their Player Book have Elves in it already, or something? That'd be a pretty big difference to start with. With that said, doesn't that game represent a different genre with different expectations and possibilities?

I guess I'd allow them to be a full self insert in a modern set RPG. But to what extent is the PC a self insert in the fantasy game? If they're literally from Ohio that could be a problem, but in a fantasy game, I'd probably take issue with the real-world location compared to their character's personality or race- ideally, all things discussed when making the campaign concept with the players. Under what context are they trying to propose this in relation to agreements about the campaign's nature (restrictions, genre etc.)? Isn't that what would change the answer more than what they're trying to do?

Even if the character were accepted as is, doesn't high fantasy often blend with the idea of inter dimensional portal magic in fantasy in general? Is "portal magic" a genre or setting? How would this even be disruptive to the setting, if the DM doesn't choose to build on it? Isn't self insert a type of character that has more range than literal player space-time displacement?

I don't know what those questions are supposed to be in service of, especially not in the context of this discussion. I can't answer them in a meaningful way without an abundance of clarifying statements which take us nowhere. Can someone explain?

To me, to do things any other way seems pointless and self-defeating. The primary source of fun derived from play is discovery; but for every setting element that the players have had a hand in defining, that's one less thing for them to discover. Player collaboration would literally be subtracting fun from the game, bit by bit. I don't want my players to have a hand in defining my setting elements for the exact same reason that I keep a dungeon map hidden behind a DM screen while playing.

This is kind of strange too. There's a big difference between knowing the broadest of broad strokes that a Player should be familiar with through their PC, and seeing the entire plot of the campaign. Maybe that still is your line of reasoning, but I don't see how these things are comparable. The "mystery" of what the campaigns genre is would be up within the first ten minutes. Wouldn't you tell the Players what their PCs would know, which would once again give away some of the big setting details that the players would have participated in beforehand? The only difference is if the players are "discovering" what you're telling them, and I think that this short lived instance of discovery isn't worth the much, much longer potential feeling of not liking the campaign, or being unable to tell the story they want that would only take "Elves Over There."

There's still "discovery" to be had- if you buy a book with a Fantasy cover, you know what it'll be about but there's still something to discover. You still get to choose what you read, too.*(see bottom) There's nothing self defeating about making sure that your players have an expectation for the campaign they're going to have to play. Or not, but that's why we talk so there's more to it that play-or-walk.

And it would only "subtract the fun" if your only enjoyment is from discovery (that isn't being sabotaged**). RP, interactivity, progress, gameplay, suspense, aren't those fun too? Saying "discovery is the heart of play" is ignoring every other facet of games, unless you stretch the definition of discovery. Is a chess player "discovering" something when they have fun in casual play? Do speed runners, gradually ironing out mistakes in their runs, discover anything? Does a sculptor, perfecting their vision in stone, discover anything? Yeah, maybe they "discover" fun or success, but that would be so generic a statement that you could put it towards anything.

*A noteworthy gap in this analogy is that the player and DM interact more than an author and reader. If I wanted an un-interactive experience, I'd read the book or play a videogame. What's the difference between a DM restriction and the predetermined path of a book or video game? Nothing, but only if you treat your DM like an author to your reader, a balance already tested by the freeform interactivity of the medium. With that said, each creator has the same goal, to create a enjoyable experience. If that's your motive as a DM, you should consider your options based on your players. Some would accept your unquestionable authorship, but the big part of that would be consent of the governed. That by no means is the default manner of play, nor the best way to handle player requests, nor the best player-DM relationship depending on the situation. With that said, even with the author-reader relationship, the "reader" still chooses the book they want to read, based on what their author provides. So if you're going to "author" a campaign, it stands to give them a wider selection in session 0, enabling them to agree to restrictions or whatever else prior to things being built. Without any choice, it's like having a TV stuck on one channel. Watchers don't get to choose anything and what ever happens happens, unless they just leave and find a new TV. Bad idea for a DM style, I'd say.

**Edit: "Which isn't being sabotaged in this situation, anyway-"

 

[Maxperson]

Why is the Tabaxi unknown? They have been a part of the world just as long as the humans.

Says who?

And, again, that is the "fantasy Racism", that is literally "they are different from us, so we must treat them with fear and suspicion"

It's not racism.

 

[Jack Daniel]

So, here it is. This is why people are disagreeing with you.

Except under the most ridiculous of circumstances, the DM can be nothing except correct and have the moral high ground.

Well I'd love to hear even one example of how the DM setting limits on character creation could possibly make them incorrect or constitute ceding the "moral high ground" without venturing into the realm of the absurd. Seriously, just one example.

They have more information, more authority, and more right to their opinions than anyone else at the table. While the player has... whatever the DM decides to give them.

But look at it this way.

Two people sit down to play a game of DnD. One wants to have dwarves in the games. One wants to not have Dwarves in the game.

Depending on where they sit at the table, one of them gets their way, without question, and if the other person tries to argue for what they want, they are an naughty word causing problems for the game, and they can either accept the authority of the other person, or leave the table.

Two people sit down to play a game of D&D. One wants to have dwarves in the game. One wants the opposite. The conflict will be resolved by however these two individuals would ordinarily resolve such a conflict. The scenario is otherwise meaningless absent context.

A more realistic scenario, of the sort I've been discussing, is this: a DM has been running a campaign for three months at the local game shop. The DM's campaign setting happens not to have dwarves. All of the other players at the table are cool with this; after all, they've been playing for three months without problems. A new player sits down, asks to join the game, and receives a list of allowed options from the DM. "Dwarf" is not on the list, but the player asks if they can play a dwarf anyway. (At this point, the player has not done anything wrong, obviously!)

The DM says no, because there aren't any dwarves in the setting. (At this point, in my view, the DM is merely maintaining the coherence of the game-setting and has not done anything wrong either. Someone will have to explain to me how refusing to spontaneously add dwarves to the game-world constitutes a moral failing.)

What happens next depends on how attached the player is to the idea of playing a dwarf, and how mature the involved parties are. (The DM's attachment to the setting is taken as a given. Presumably, after months of play, the existing players are at least somewhat invested in it too—and their opinions outweigh that of the new player as assuredly as the DM's opinion does!) 99% of players would just drop the issue and create a different character, but maybe this player really really wants to play a dwarf and tries to press the issue; and maybe the DM is willing to have that discussion, or maybe they aren't. But if they aren't, that doesn't make the DM an obstinate jerk. It does make a player who keeps insisting (at best) a poor fit for the campaign and (at worst) pushy and rude. And again, as I've already admitted, players who act like this are rare.

< snip >

And again, this ends up just causing problems in my opinion. You are deciding that it is more interesting for the player to discover something alongside the other players, instead of knowing it ahead of time. While most of the players I know, they want to have some secrets from the other players, they want to be embedded in the world and exploring within things they are already at least somewhat familiar with.

I'm not entirely sure what you're going on about here, but players wanting to have deep secrets sounds to me suspiciously like players who want their characters to have dramatic backstories despite starting at 1st level and 0 XP. Which isn't something I normally go for. A character's backstory is everything that happens between 1st and 4th level. If they collect some secrets along the way, cool; if they develop deep ties to the setting along the way, awesome. But at 0 XP, they're a nobody, a newcomer, a tourist in the game-world. The whole point of play is to go from being a mere tourist in the setting to one of its impactful movers and shakers.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Yes. If the players deny the authority and the DM won't change his mind, their ONLY recourse is to leave the game. Leaving the game doesn't remove the DM's power over his game, but it does leave him rather lonely.

There is a reason I asked my question as generically as I did, so I'd like to ask it again before I continue. Are you saying that any situation where the thing works this way is "absolute authority"?

Has that argument been made in this thread?

To the best of my knowledge, yes. At least one poster (IIRC multiple) specifically talked about how DMs do way, way, way more work than players, essentially bringing the whole world to the table. And certainly early on there were comments about the DM asserting that they need to have every race with a highly well-established level of worldbuilding before it can ever be allowed, with a game that's stuck to a single world for seemingly a very long time.

In the past when I've made a campaign prior to the players showing up, it was just fine for them to bring ideas to the table without knowing the campaign. If an idea would be disruptive, I would say so, but that rarely happens.

I can DEFINITELY say at least one player has explicitly said that this is supposed to be a bad thing. I'll go dig it up later, I'm writing this while I hang out with some friends so it'll be hard to skim through to find it and listen to them too.

For the last 10 years or so it's a non-issue. We have a special session 0 where all 5 of us put 3 campaign ideas in for consideration. We all have one veto that we can use if we absolutely don't want a campaign to happen. Those get used sometimes, but not every time or by every person. Then everyone except me ranks the campaign ideas from 1 to X and we tally up the highest numbers. The top three campaigns get set aside and everyone re-votes. The highest of those three is what I'm going to run. The reason I don't vote is that if I don't really want to run a campaign, I'd have vetoed it already and I want to run the one the players want to play in the most.

I'll come back to this later, with the above bolded question answered.

Since the campaign is chosen first, all of the PCs are made to fit that campaign and there's no possibility of a player coming to the table with a PC without knowing in advance what the campaign is.

My players have to write up a background for their PCs and they like doing so. I encourage them to make NPC contacts and even small towns if they come from one. That's the extent of it, though. Once the game starts, they don't have the ability to create world content except through game play.

Sure, and that's a great and easy thing to do when you primarily do your gaming with friends. I don't. Well, I run for friends. But I don't have a friend group meaningfully compatible with being a player in someone else's game. I have to go find campaigns online, mostly with people I don't know, and as a result I'm always going to have notions I can't simply communicate and definitely won't come in knowing the textures of a person's preferences like I would a friend's.

I'm honestly absolutely not a fan of weird races as well as many customization options in general. And weird races (or, well, any races except humans) in particular -- I feel like they're a shallow shortcut for creating "uniqueness". It's easy to boil elves and dwarves and dragonborn to a bunch of stereotypes, but you can't do the same with humans -- you are basically forced to come up with some kind of culture.

As we previously discussed in this thread: No, you really aren't so forced. I have known plenty of people whose human thief could be completely distilled down to "greedy and grabby-hands." To paraphrase the AI Morpheus from Deus Ex: "No residence. No parents. No employer. No culture."

They aren't be feared based on race. They are being feared based on appearance. Fearing a humanoid cat is no different than fearing a Puma. And I already showed how outside of a metropolis, they would be relatively unknown.

I really don't see how you can argue that it's "not based on race" when it is based on appearance. Like...are you saying race has nothing to do with appearance? This really doesn't make any sense to me.

I also don't think your assertion about metropolises is really warranted. Even if we are limiting ourselves to the pseudomedieval Not-Europe milieu, it was completely understood back then that you had humans in various colors...and as others have noted, the much more pressing question with hypothetical animal people was "are they cool with the Big J?" not "are they safe for us to interact with?" I mean, for goodness' sake, you legitimately had people living in Ireland or Germany or whatever who believed that there were wolf-men out in the forests. I've personally read (and translated) the passage from the Satyricon where Niceros relates his werewolf story; it was absolutely a ghost story, but it doesn't inspire Niceros (or anyone around him) into hunting this soldier friend down and killing him, instead they (claim to) fear and avoid him.

So acknowledging that some people would probably be racist ***holes, what, means that it's a reflection of the DM's attitudes? I'm really trying to understand where you're going with any of this.

Actually, the point was more that not everyone will be racist buttholes. A lot of people will be openly embracing the weird and strange and foreign--especially if there's a chance to evangelize. There's a reason I spoke of humans being completely unable to consistently decide whether we like or dislike the Other, and that the ultimate effect is often not "should we fear X" but "were X able to fend off our attempts to conquer and subsume/exterminate them?"

If the setting doesn't make sense to me (I was going to say something about having to like the setting, but there are things in the setting I'm running that I don't particularly like--in the sense that the city with debt-slavery is a perpetual thorn in my side, even though it makes sense in context) then I can't manage the suspension of disbelief that I need to run the game.

This is perfectly reasonable. I may be bringing a slightly rosy perspective here, but I believe in general it's possible to find enough middle ground satisfying everyone. Then again, I have relatively few bright lines for what I won't run (main issue being I don't do Evil PC stuff, neither as a player nor a DM), so it's often easier for me to blend into the world. But as a good example of what I mean, my players wanted to make use of a thing (in the default Dungeon World rules) that involved drinking demon blood. I wanted demons to be something much rarer and more special, so I worked with them to replace it with something equally potent but not demonic; we settled on them having stolen some Jinnistani wine from the cellar of a genie living in the mortal world, which has fueled future stuff.

I'll admit that there are things I've either written out of the setting or not written into it because I don't like them, but if a player has an idea for a character and is willing to cope with being literally the only [X} that practically everyone they meet has ever seen, I'm willing for their character to be from elsewhere. I'd kinda prefer if they could make something native to the world work, but if they're willing to give some I'm willing to give some.

And that's sort of where I'm at. I'll often go a bit further and try to find something that will equilibrate things more fully.

I mean, my campaigns are kinda picaresques--I don't start them with ideas for more than the first couple-three sessions; anything after that usually emerges from play.

Entirely reasonable. I've largely tried to do the same. As an example of what I mean by asking for player suggestions, there's a faction I got from one player, the Silver Thread. They're the "good guy thieves guild" kind of thing--Robin Hood-types who try to counter the influence of the merchant-princes. It hasn't been a huge thing, but it definitely works with the setting. Overall my players are generally eager to contribute things that are constructive for the setting premise, an Arabian Nights adventure in an area with a Morocco-like climate and an Al-Andalus inspired culture. (The culture is actually SUPER useful here because it was highly tolerant religiously and ethnically, so it's actually easy to presume that most stuff is welcome.)

While I'm sure there are lots of groups who collaborate on setting creation, it seems to me that the norm is more of an informal, "What would we all like to play?" where campaign ideas and character ideas are spitballed until the group arrives at a working consensus.

That's more or less how I have done things, yes. It's a little more complicated, as I approach it with "here's a very high-level premise, let's iterate on it and build something cool together." I absolutely bring things I want to see (and have a very small set of things I don't),

That's not how I've ever done things. <snip> Could I incorporate players' ideas into a setting? Even surface-level ideas, things that aren't there to be sussed out through exploration, things that everyone in the setting knows (e.g. "Elves exist and they live Over There")? In theory, sure. As a matter of practicality, how would that even work? I don't even decide on mechanics until I've already got an idea for a setting mostly fleshed out. Then it's onto hex maps and graph paper (whether that means high fantasy continents and dungeon levels, or star systems and ship schematics, or whatever). Then, once I have something reasonably workable and complete, that's maybe when players first hear about it.

To me, to do things any other way seems pointless and self-defeating. The primary source of fun derived from play is discovery; but for every setting element that the players have had a hand in defining, that's one less thing for them to discover. Player collaboration would literally be subtracting fun from the game, bit by bit. I don't want my players to have a hand in defining my setting elements for the exact same reason that I keep a dungeon map hidden behind a DM screen while playing.

Alright. That's...a pretty alien approach to me too, seeing discovery as a zero-sum game. Each element added to the mix of a game, as far as I'm concerned, is a new journey to take, a new thing to explore that I haven't seen the end of yet. When a player contributes something to my world, it still is something that everyone else needs to learn about, and it's still going to be interpreted through my lens as DM, so even the contributing player will learn more about it with time. Further, there's plenty about this world the players don't know about, or that the players don't realize that their choices have fed into. Simple example: The desert raven, in this world, is a highly symbolic animal. I didn't plan that; I had chosen to name a villain group after ravens (Zil al-Ghurab, the Raven-Shadows), but otherwise hadn't meant it to be particularly noteworthy. The cemented importance resulted from 3/5 players just happening to choose raven-related stuff: the druid used raven form to fly around, the ranger had a raven animal companion, the barbarian came from the Raven clan in his homeland. As a result, it became clear that Ravens Mattered, and have continued to matter throughout the game.

As a different example, one of the players wanted to play a tiefling. I had intended fiends to not be much of a thing at first, but I decided to roll with that. I've woven the character's heritage into the story of the game, and it's been a real journey for the player to learn exactly what they signed up for way back when. Real shocks, real fury, real delight as that story unfolds, yet it only happened because the player chose to play a tiefling and told me that both of the character's parents were themselves tieflings.

I see players defining setting elements--races, locations, organizations, whatever--as just handing me even more tools and materials to work with. We all discover something new, and I then accept the materials and build more with them. My game would never be as rich or detailed as it is if I hadn't done so; I really meant it when I said that I just am not talented enough to fill a world to this level of detail. It's not that I'm not imaginative or interested in world-building, it's that I know no matter how hard I work on it I will always fail to consider all possible perspectives and alternate interpretations of things. Player input is the gift that keeps on giving, because it makes the players feel they have a stake in the events that happen, and because while I may not get all the perspectives I'm very good at iterating on perspectives I've already been exposed to.

Since nobody wants to address a question that I've been asking and asking ("How is a D&D campaign without elves meaningfully different from a V:tM campaign without elves?"), let me reframe it.

Lots of RPGs take place in the present day, in some version of the real world, and presume ordinary human characters. A modern-day Call of Cthulhu campaign, for example. DMs who are big on collaboration and accommodation, would you allow a player to play an obvious self-insert in such a campaign?

Now let's shift the scenario over to a high fantasy setting. (Maybe it's D&D, maybe it isn't, but the point is that the game's setting is pure high fantasy—an invented fantasy world with no connection to Earth, unlike portal fantasy or low fantasy.) Would you allow a player to play an obvious self-insert in this sort of campaign? A displaced Earthling human (the presence of which literally shifts the genre of the game and its world from high fantasy to portal fantasy)?

I'm incredibly curious about this.

I apologize, I missed this (it's a fast thread!)

I would probably allow a player to play an obvious self-insert in either game if I felt the self-insert were not exploitative or coercive. That's my fundamental standard; is the player trying to gain an inappropriate advantage (exploit) or control the behavior or characters of other players against their will (coercive). However, I would try to dig into what the player wants with such a self-insert character. Do they really want that fish-out-of-water feeling? Do they want someone who will find magic shocking in a world used to it? Are they uncomfortable playing a character that is too dissimilar from themselves? My whole goal is to ensure that they're going to be enthusiastic about play, so drilling down to what they're looking for through this self-insert is vital to accomplishing that.

If the player is absolutely dogmatically insistent on specifically a portal-fantasy character, and won't accept even the slightest modification of the idea, then sure, they're not arguing in good faith. That's already some evidence that they're coercive, unwilling to meet me in the middle. But if they're willing to negotiate with me, I'm absolutely willing to negotiate with them. Perhaps something really cool could come from it! For example, maybe the character comes from a different continent that's in a Dead Magic zone, so magic and magical beings really ARE terrifying and alien to them. Or maybe they just want to be comfortable with the character, so we work out a detailed backstory that feels good and natural, so the player can just react as they personally would and don't have to worry about play-acting someone else. (This sort of thing is relatively common for brand-new players, a fear they'll roleplay "wrong" or anxiety over not having the acting chops etc., so I try to be very understanding about it.)

I discussed this thread with one of my players earlier, and they specifically described my style of DMing as "consensus-building." I want everyone to be an enthusiastic participant. That means looking to offer things they want, and encouraging their investment into the world. Establishing a fact about the world through backstory or in-play discussion

 

[loverdrive]

A more realistic scenario, of the sort I've been discussing, is this: a DM has been running a campaign for three months at the local game shop. The DM's campaign setting happens not to have dwarves. All of the other players at the table are cool with this; after all, they've been playing for three months without problems. A new player sits down, asks to join the game, and receives a list of allowed options from the DM. "Dwarf" is not on the list, but the player asks if they can play a dwarf anyway. (At this point, the player has not done anything wrong, obviously!)

The DM says no, because there aren't any dwarves in the setting. (At this point, in my view, the DM is merely maintaining the coherence of the game-setting and has not done anything wrong either. Someone will have to explain to me how refusing to spontaneously add dwarves to the game-world constitutes a moral failing.)

What happens next depends on how attached the player is to the idea of playing a dwarf, and how mature the involved parties are. (The DM's attachment to the setting is taken as a given. Presumably, after months of play, the existing players are at least somewhat invested in it too—and their opinions outweigh that of the new player as assuredly as the DM's opinion does!) 99% of players would just drop the issue and create a different character, but maybe this player really really wants to play a dwarf and tries to press the issue; and maybe the DM is willing to have that discussion, or maybe they aren't. But if they aren't, that doesn't make the DM an obstinate jerk. It does make a player who keeps insisting (at best) a poor fit for the campaign and (at worst) pushy and rude. And again, as I've already admitted, players who act like this are rare.

Well, no, they naughty word talk.

First, the player needs to explain why they want to play a dwarf. Is it for armour proficiencies and +2 to STR and CON and they're fine with playing a dwarf reskined as a human.
Then, the GM needs to explain why they don't want dwarves. Is this because of a personal preference (and then, how deep that preference goes? Do they hate dwarves or just bearded people in general? Or artisians?) or because no one wanted to play a dwarf before, so no one thought of a place where they can originate from (so maybe a better solution would be to introduce the new PC as a far traveler from distant lands, instead of just banning dwarves outright).

If the GM starts screeching "NAH MAH WORLD I AM THE AUTHORITY" that's not just assholish, that's just idiotic.