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

[Remathilis]

That seems like a perfectly fine attitude to have in a home game with a fixed roster of players and a not terribly practical one in an open table game with a rotating roster.

Depends how "open" you are talking. AL games are very open (subject to the +1 rule) with a few limits based on the very open standards of FR and Ebberon. I would be more hesitant to run something like Theros open table due to the restrictions the setting places both thematically and racially.

 

[Minigiant]

So all the DMs who don't agree with your preferences are bad DMs?

I mean, have you done a scientific study to prove that a curated world vs kitchen sink adds to or detracts from the hobby? Is it published and peer reviewed? If no, then you're just making up a justification to support your preference.

Why so hostile?


I'm saying my cousins got into D&D because of me and NONE of them read LOTR and only one saw the movies.

It's not your responsibility to cater to the new crop of D&D fans.

But they deserve DMs for their styles of play as well.

 

[Oofta]

I tend to focus more on the plot of the adventure and campaign than I do in any actual world building. It's a big part of why I can shrug my shoulders and just live with eleventy billion playable races.

Fair enough. There are many, many different play styles that are all valid. I tend to do more world building with events occurring that the PCs can react to. The look and feel of the setting is important to me.

In any case, if you and your players are having fun you're doing it right.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Sometimes ideas get away from you. I started my current setting based on the idea of a mostly-human empire that hates arcane magic. Of course, I got a lot of caster concepts from players, but they all acknowledged that were living in an area where magic was outlawed and so tried to be subtle about it. Over time, I expanded the world to show that their starting point, while powerful, was a bit of an outlier regarding their attitudes, and were kind of dicks in general anyways. Now I've got them resisting their own government, while a second party is composed of goblins and other folk from the nation the empire invaded without provocation. It's pretty cool. The active game has sparked my creativity and led to a setting that's much more interesting than it would have been if I made it entirely in a vacuum.

 

[Oofta]

Why so hostile?


I'm saying my cousins got into D&D because of me and NONE of them read LOTR and only one saw the movies.

It's not your responsibility to cater to the new crop of D&D fans.

But they deserve DMs for their styles of play as well.

I've introduced several people to D&D as well. They never once questioned what races were allowed once I gave them the option. I don't see any correlation between curated vs kitchen sink and adding new people to the game.

The players deserve a DM who will run the type of game that will be enjoyed by everyone at the table including the DM.

 

[MGibster]

Fair enough. There are many, many different play styles that are all valid. I tend to do more world building with events occurring that the PCs can react to. The look and feel of the setting is important to me.

Bingo. I've adapted my play style to fit my circumstances. My players barely have any interest in reading official settings and they're not going to spend a lot of time on mine so I just deal with the hand I've been given. I'd love a campaign where the setting with a lot of depth, where being a tiefling or a human mattered, but that just isn't in the cards for me.

 

[Charlaquin]

I guess a question for the '"focused game" limited race folks. What's the threshold where you get to "kitchen sink"? And why is that the cutoff?

Or I guess to be clearer, what number of races triggers the "lost focus"

It’s not a numbers thing. A race feels unfocused when it doesn’t have a clear place within the setting. When it feels thrown in for the heck of it instead of written in with a specific purpose.

 

[Maxperson]

Exactly why I nurture enthusiasm. Jazzed players RP better, and make my job easier. But jazz doesn't last forever; you gotta cultivate it.

But......when my neighbor planted some jazz musicians in his garden, he got in trouble for it.

 

[Jack Daniel]

Depends how "open" you are talking. AL games are very open (subject to the +1 rule) with a few limits based on the very open standards of FR and Ebberon. I would be more hesitant to run something like Theros open table due to the restrictions the setting places both thematically and racially.

By "open table" I mean a game where you don't necessarily have the same players week to week, and the players don't necessarily play the same character every time they play. The DM is the only expected constant in a campaign like that, and whether any given player attends every session, or one session, or several in a row, or only attends sporadically, is up to that player.

A "closed table" by contrast would be one where there's a general expectation of regular attendance on the part of all involved.

 

[Charlaquin]

See, the thing is, I didn't have lore for shadar-kai before, because I didn't care about them and no one wanted to play one. Now I've created lore to include, without changing anything I've done before, and that lore defines the shadar-kai from now on. Nothing wishy-washy about it. Just new stuff about the world. I don't ban things in my games (usually) for that exact reason.

But what if you did have lore for a race, and that lore made the idea of a PC of that race strain credulity? The typical example is of course the “always evil” race or the “they’d be attacked on sight” race, neither of which I’m a fan of. But, like, in my campaign, the Eladrin disappeared from the world ages ago. Modern elven cultures tend to define themselves by their relationship to the Eladrin. It’s like, a major setting element that they’re just gone and nobody really knows why, and what’s known about them is all conjecture based on fragmentary archeological evidence. It would be really, really weird for a PC Eladrin to just walk around doing adventurer stuff in my games.

Now, that doesn’t necessarily mean I outright ban Eladrin PCs. But accommodating one would take a lot of work. Maybe in a campaign set in the faewild they would make sense. Or maybe the character has somehow been transported back into the world. It’s something I would have to discuss with a player who wanted to play one pretty seriously, and there’s every chance we might not be able to reach a satisfying compromise.

What I do is I present a set of races that are appropriate to the campaign, that the players can choose from. If they want to play something from outside of those options, they can discuss it with me and we can try to come up with a way to make it work. But there are no guarantees.