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

[Crit]

I'm merely curious as to where the more accommodating DMs are willing to draw the line, if at all. How is "no humans from Ohio in my fantasy world" meaningfully different from "no tabaxi in my fantasy world"?

It's different in a lot of ways, because "from Ohio" are the key words there. The equivalent to "no Tabaxi here" would be flat-out "no Humans here." The problem for the self insert isn't the race, it's that their background has to be tweaked to fit in.

But it doesn't have to be justified to you. If the DM knows that it's solid, he doesn't need your approval.

No, secrets aren't bad. Discovery is like, a thing. A huge swathe of gamers like to discover secrets in game. Who are you to tell them that they are having bad wrong fun?

Not in D&D. D&D explicitly gives the DM and DM only the authority over the rules. He can cede that to the players, but they cannot take it and are not entitled to it.

No one is questioning if the DM has that power, but the PHB doesn't say the players can't have a response. "I have final say" implies other people have an opportunity to say something. I covered a lot of this in my response to Jack Daniels on pg 57.

 

[Crit]

The DM banned them for a reason. How can he be wrong? You can disagree with that reason, but I don't see how he can be wrong about it.

Oh, he could very easily be wrong. If I banned the Dart weapon for fear of causing violence in game, I'd be wrong. What I did does not solve the problem I think it's going to solve. The DM is not infallible, and their power is meant to be a tiebreaker/final word, not tyranny over Players. Like it or not, DND is a collaborative experience (because it's based on the interactions of several people who affect each other) and it would be highly unusual for a DM not to account for their players in making a campaign while wanting it to be good for those players. Do you want people to play your game? Then maybe don't give them the kneel-or-walk ultimatum when you don't have to. Talk first, come to an agreement, give your answers for ideas, and then play.

Based on my earlier post, DnD is a more interactive and responsive medium than books, games or TV. If your DM took that freedom and made the Netflix Fantasy genre tab feel more responsive to the experience you want to have, then I think the DM is approaching fun-with-friends a little backwards. If a DM won't explain for easily negotiable house rules because they think the player's acting entitled, I think that's a bad DM and that attitude would likely cause harm elsewhere. Especially if it's at a point in a campaign when it could be edited to make everyone happy.

 

[Scott Christian]

And that was the question I was asking, all those pages ago. Why does it seem that when people are talking about worldbuilding, and the races they allow, they look exclusively at the "safe" parts of the map, the human kingdom and their allies and take that as the whole of their worldbuilding?

The exact reason I mentioned starting points for good and evil campaigns. Some DM's that have fleshed out their world have the drow as evil. They base this off the thousands of pages of lore available. And I have discussed more than enough the complications this can make on a table and player and DM level. If a DM chooses to do have all these races get along, cool. But many many many do not. You seem to disregard this point.

Because the problem being discussed at the time, was that adding a single new race to the world would be highly disruptive. So you can't have an unbuilt West Coast, because if you did, then...why couldn't the race the players want come from there.

Chaos, there are times I really think you are not even reading what I wrote. I have stated a dozen times that a DM can add them. But it comes with complications, and those complications are often unfair to DM's that already have their world built, to players that lose immersion because there is a spectacle walking around with them, or to a table that chooses to not pay attention to the race, thus making it just a skin (eliminating the culture, origin, history, etc.)

Unless, when talking about world building, the DM only takes the player races from that list. Human, Dwarf, Elf, Gnome and Halfling. But even still, Drow, Duergar, Yuan-Ti, Goblin, Hobgoblin, Bugbear, Kobold, Tritons and Lizardfolk all exsit in that list, and are all also player options.

At some tables. Not all. Specifically because of the complications I have listed.

Right, so if you have build every culture in your world out to that point, where does the Canteena argument come from? You have at least 25 fully formed cultures in your world already, interacting with each other. That is the basic level of DnD, and that seems to be fairly diverse already.

And sure, after getting all of that to work together, being forced to change something could be aggravating, but you might also just find easy places to slide things in. You've already got Stone Giants, Cloud Giants, Fire Giants, Frost Giants, Hill Giants, Storm Giants, Ettins, Ogres, Cyclops and Formarians as your giant races and how they all interact. Slotting in Firbolgs and Goliaths might be a lot easier, since you've built so much existing structure.

You have at least 25 cultures in your world. Not me. Not many of the DM's I know.

I see your point, especially about FR. I get it. It seems with so many sentient races running around, then maybe for the small village nothing is shocking - even a mind flayer walking up to the blacksmith and asking for a horseshoe for his centaur lover. I get it. But, those are not the worlds that many DM's have built. (Not to mention the races born of evil perception, godly interference, etc.)

So I'll sum it up so I'm not misunderstood:

• DM's can add races. It is easy. Poof - you now have half yuan-ti-half elf created. Magic resistance and immunity to sleep and charm spells. It's easy.
• Adding races comes with complications. And for some (which is all I have ever asked you to be able to see), it is immersion breaking, wreck, dissolves or interferes with years of work, or just pi*%#s in the face of traditional tropes and conventions.

 

[Scott Christian]

But, many DM's, when world building, don't bother looking at the wider D&D additions to race that have been going on for decades. They stick with the base five or six and figure that that's job done and then get pissy when players want something different. I mean, good grief, races like Lupins have a pedigree in the game almost as long as gnomes. But, while taking a gnome wouldn't even cause the slightest reaction from most DM's (with a couple of setting exceptions), if I came to the table with a Lupin, I'm apparently a "problem player" who wants a "flavor of freak" character.

Most DM's I know stick to what is published in the PHB. D&D sets what races are allowed from their first publication of the PHB, no matter what edition. Then later, they add to it with supplemental material. So if a DM started world building for 5e, and spent three years doing, they would almost always include all the races in the PHB. Because a DM doesn't want the added races from other books does not mean they are pissy. It means that it doesn't match their three years of world building.

 

[Crit]

Interesting assumptions.

(Well that's certainly an artful way to dodge my question about Ohioans vs. tabaxi.) But, no, I suppose I really don't care, when you get right down to it.

Can we talk about your focus the PHB and a PHB? Saying "the PHB" isn't a problem because it's referring to the uniform information behind each copy of the book's covers, which is being consulted regardless of how you access it. It doesn't matter if it's grammatically correct, it's a colloquialism.

And the Ohio vs. Tabaxi question is still completely irrelevant because one is a race that can manifest in many ways across fantasy fiction, and Ohio is a real place that comes as a part of much larger set of features. The context for Tabaxi is more fluid than Ohio's, and their inclusion would have different affects depending on the DM. Races are can be separated from setting to give the player what they want, but a literal setting feature can't be separated from itself while still being Ohio. The problem with Ohio is what makes Ohio Ohio and how that conflicts with the genre on multiple levels, unless you go Portal Magic or make a fantasy equivalent. But at that point, it wouldn't be Ohio anymore, so I must assume we're talking about the inclusion of Ohio as is. Being a Tabaxi and being from Ohio simply mean different things! Of course, there's more layers of nuance in terms of what's the same and what's not between these features, but this does not need to be explored further when the conclusion is obvious.

I can see what you're getting at, but when these are your sticking points, it makes me think there's some deeper misunderstanding you have that turned these into credible topics for argument, amongst similar lines of logic.

Also, did I misinterpret your questions earlier, back when I brought up Ohio? I still don't understand them.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

The DM is not final because she is infallible.

The DM is infallible only because she is final.

 

[Maxperson]

I don’t know. Stating that by RAW D&D is a game about creating stories does not seem meaningfully different to me from stating that dragonborn and tabaxi are exotic by RAW and therefore the DM should feel free to be a jerk to dragonborn and tabaxi PCs.

Cool beans. Not one person here has said that the DM should be a jerk to anyone, let alone specific races. Did you have a point or were you just tossing out fallacies for fun?

 

[Maxperson]

No one is questioning if the DM has that power, but the PHB doesn't say the players can't have a response. "I have final say" implies other people have an opportunity to say something. I covered a lot of this in my response to Jack Daniels on pg 57.

The players can respond, but they can't force any change. I respond to what I feel are bad rulings all the time. If the DM refuses to change it, though, I either have to accept it and move on or leave the game. I can remove myself from his authority by quitting, but I cannot take away any of his authority.

 

[Charlaquin]

Not to be pedantic or anything, but a Player's Handbook is what's actually telling us.

Yes, the player’s handbook for D&D 5th edition, the game the tag on this thread indicates we are discussing.

I think that's close enough to what I mean when I draw a distinction between "adventure" and "story" that we're pretty much saying the same thing.

Fair enough. It’s just that to me the purpose of the adventure is to facilitate the creation of the stories, rather than the adventure being a goal unto itself. But I suppose I may just be drawing a distinction without difference here.

 

[Jack Daniel]

It's different in a lot of ways, because "from Ohio" are the key words there. The equivalent to "no Tabaxi here" would be flat-out "no Humans here." The problem for the self insert isn't the race, it's that their background has to be tweaked to fit in.

I'm not convinced that this is the case (but it does look like you elaborate further down, so we'll see).

… Jack Daniels …

Please don't.

Can we talk about your focus the PHB and a PHB? Saying "the PHB" isn't a problem because it's referring to the uniform information behind each copy of the book's covers, which is being consulted regardless of how you access it. It doesn't matter if it's grammatically correct, it's a colloquialism.

It's a teensy problem when people go around excerpting quotations from "the" PHB like its the King James Bible when there are at least five different PHBs for D&D alone, maybe six depending on how you count. The existence of a 5th edition D&D Player's Handbook doesn't invalidate the existence of a 1st edition AD&D Player's Handbook (or an Alternity Player's Handbook, for that matter, or a Castles & Crusades Player's Handbook…). On top of that, there are multiple entire D&D editions that don't have a Player's Handbook at all.

And the Ohio vs. Tabaxi question is still completely irrelevant because one is a race that can manifest in many ways across fantasy fiction, and Ohio is a real place that comes as a part of much larger set of features. The context for Tabaxi is more fluid than Ohio's, and their inclusion would have different affects depending on the DM. Races are can be separated from setting to give the player what they want, but a literal setting feature can't be separated from itself while still being Ohio. The problem with Ohio is what makes Ohio Ohio and how that conflicts with the genre on multiple levels, unless you go Portal Magic or make a fantasy equivalent. But at that point, it wouldn't be Ohio anymore, so I must assume we're talking about the inclusion of Ohio as is. Being a Tabaxi and being from Ohio simply mean different things! Of course, there's more layers of nuance in terms of what's the same and what's not between these features, but this does not need to be explored further when the conclusion is obvious.

I can see what you're getting at, but when these are your sticking points, it makes me think there's some deeper misunderstanding you have that turned these into credible topics for argument, amongst similar lines of logic.

Also, did I misinterpret your questions earlier, back when I brought up Ohio? I still don't understand them.

No, I don't think you misinterpreted my question at all. I'm just still not convinced that there's a meaningful difference between DM #1 who says, "No, you can't play a human from Earth in my campaign, because portals to Earth aren't a thing, that's just how my setting works," and DM #2 who says, "No, you can't play a tabaxi in my campaign, because anthropomorphic cat-people aren't a thing, that's just how my setting works."

Yes, the player’s handbook for D&D 5th edition, the game the tag on this thread indicates we are discussing.

@Monayuris also brought the OSR into the discussion in the very first post, so I think it's fair not to make assumptions. A little specificity is all I ask.

Fair enough. It’s just that to me the purpose of the adventure is to facilitate the creation of the stories, rather than the adventure being a goal unto itself. But I suppose I may just be drawing a distinction without difference here.

No, I don't think you are. For me, the purpose of adventures isn't the story that emerges, it's what the players experience during play: excitement, tension, pathos, whatever.