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

[Hussar]

Badwringfun is short for you must do it this way or the DM has to consent to the player.

It's an informal term conveying an idea.

I understand the term.

I still haven't seen it.

 

[Hussar]

I hear you. But I don't know. Many game worlds I have played in are smaller in scope, much more like a smaller version of Hyboria than FR. I think many of their square miles are known by the DM. And the ones that are not known by players are inhabited by something sinister that keeps regular folk out.
But if it is huge. You are 100% correct.

Doesn't even have to be huge.

Look at all the different cultures you can find on one damp little island off the coast of France. If you include Ireland in there too, there's a huge range of cultures, languages, religions and areas that were largely terra icognita for a long, long time.

People tend to forget how sparsely populated a pre-industrial land would be. We're talking population densities that make Canada look overpopulated.

According to Wikipedia, in 1086, the population of England was less about 1.5 million people. That's it. In ALL of England, you've got half the population of Wales. That's a LOT of empty space. And it's not like England is that big of a place. Hyboria? Hyboria is the size of Europe. It's massive. People forget how easy it is have small communities that largely no one knows about back then.

 

[Hussar]

There's another point to remember here too. 5e has been around for about 5 years now. It's entirely possible for a player to have already played the core races, at least once each, and is looking for something different. My own group has run 7 campaigns since 5e started, which means everyone in the group has played at least 7 different characters. And I know that three of the players also play in other groups as well, meaning they've played, probably, close to 15 different PC's since 5e came out.

Never minding old farts like me who've been gaming for close to 40 years.

Play yet another human cleric? In a setting with fighting man, wizard and cleric and everyone is human? I'd rather jam a pen in my left eye. I have zero interest in that game. It sounds mind numbingly boring to me.

If I'm going to play an all Arthurian Knights game, I'm certainly not going to be playing D&D to do it. I'd much rather break out something like Pendragon which is actually tailor made for that kind of game rather than taking this massive 5e game and ripping out 99% of the material. No thanks.

I think DM's who never play forget that while we DM's get to play all sorts of different stuff every week, the players don't. We get to be dragons and vampires and barkeeps and everything else under the sun. We get to stretch our creative legs all the time. That player has one character. That's it. And, for the DM to then say, "Well, yeah, sorry, your creative ideas just aren't good enough to play in my game" and then go ahead and play all the things that the players are forbidden from playing tends to lead to some pretty hard feelings after a while.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

What I am saying is that the DM has to offer enough options for the players.

So when people say "A Song of Ice and Fire has only humans" they forget that it has seven kingdoms each with their own culture. And within them are subcultures. Then you add the Iron Isles. Then you add the Targ. Then you add all of Essos. So yes it's just humans but 20+ different detailed types of humans.

aka There is no getting out of the work if you do all the worldbuilding yourself. You can use shortcut by using a race's preconceived culture and fluff tofill out your cultures and ations list.

A friend of mine is doing GOT but all the houses are of different fantasy race. Daenerys Targaryen is a full on dragonborn. The Reach is full of elves. And the Starks are dwarfs.

Yes, sure. And what makes some of us a tad annoyed, is the suggestion that when a GM has done all that work, designed a world where everything has a place and there are a cultures and/or species that are connected to the setting the players can choose from, they should just alter that creation because the player wants to play something different. Sure, they could, but the player also could respect the work the GM has put in and they to choose something that has already been designed to be part of the world. Like could we come with made up reasons for putting gnomes, halflings and tortles in Westeros? yes, we could, but doing so would change the setting to be something else than it was intended.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

There's another point to remember here too. 5e has been around for about 5 years now. It's entirely possible for a player to have already played the core races, at least once each, and is looking for something different. My own group has run 7 campaigns since 5e started, which means everyone in the group has played at least 7 different characters. And I know that three of the players also play in other groups as well, meaning they've played, probably, close to 15 different PC's since 5e came out.

Never minding old farts like me who've been gaming for close to 40 years.

So because you're bored with what D&D has to offer, you want everything that exist in D&D to be shoved into every setting so that they all became more similar to each other? That in a world where the GM has taken effort to create completely new custom races the players should ignore them and play a PHB elf that the GM now has to insert into their world? Yes, I too am kinda bored with the standard D&D fare, and that's why I appreciate if the GM has taken effort to actually think things instead of creating yet another kitchen-sink Forgotten Realms copy.

Play yet another human cleric? In a setting with fighting man, wizard and cleric and everyone is human? I'd rather jam a pen in my left eye. I have zero interest in that game. It sounds mind numbingly boring to me.

Then I'd suggest that if a GM wants to run a game with humans only setting you simply do not play in that campaign instead of trying to force the GM to change their setting.

Like weren't you the one who was complaining about players making characters not fitting to your campaign ideas some time ago? How is this not the exact same thing?

 

[Aldarc]

Yes, sure. And what makes some of us a tad annoyed, is the suggestion that when a GM has done all that work, designed a world where everything has a place and there are a cultures and/or species that are connected to the setting the players can choose from, they should just alter that creation because the player wants to play something different. Sure, they could, but the player also could respect the work the GM has put in and they to choose something that has already been designed to be part of the world. Like could we come with made up reasons for putting gnomes, halflings and tortles in Westeros? yes, we could, but doing so would change the setting to be something else than it was intended.

"Will no one on this forum of mostly GMs ever think of the poor GMs?!"

This kinda sounds like the GM wants their game to be more about setting tourism and getting high fives for their world-building brilliance than the desired play experience of the players. Maybe the GM should not have done all that world-building in isolation of the players or without considering what the players were actually in the mood to play.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

"Will no one on this forum of mostly GMs ever think of the poor GMs?!"

This kinda sounds like the GM wants their game to be more about setting tourism and getting high fives for their world-building brilliance than the desired play experience of the players. Maybe the GM should not have done all that world-building in isolation of the players or without considering what the players were actually in the mood to play.

The game is not about the setting, but settings matter. This is why different setting actually exist. The same really applies whether it was a homebrew or a bought setting. Theros, Ravnica, Dark Sun, these things are not same, everything that exists in one doesn't need to exist in another. If I buy a Star Trek setting book and I want to run a Star Trek game, and if the players show up wanting to play Jedis I am not gonna let them even though I could come up with some wacky excuse why that would be possible in the fiction. It would be an indication that the players actually were not interested playing the same game than me, and then it is better to simply not play that than to create some frankensteinian hybrid that no one was happy about.

 

[Oofta]

That's not how cultures work though. I'm an American, a Southerner living in Arkansas to be specific, and while I share many cultural touchstones with my fellow countrymen we don't all have the same beliefs or habits. I don't like grits, have refused chocolate gravy for breakfast anytime it's offered, would rather own a car than a pickup truck, I spend my Sundays sleeping in, and I don't use Coke to refer to any soda pop I only use it when referring to Coca-Cola. (And I use the word soda pop which is weird down here.)

For one of my campaigns, I modeled the pantheon off of those wacky Greeks. There was one pantheon in the setting. Gnomes, elves, orcs, humans, etc., etc. all worshiped the same gods, though they might favor and be favored by one particular god. And priests dedicated to the same god didn't have to be alike. There was a difference between the LG priest of the storm god who did his best to placate the angry god and the CE priest of that same storm god who sought to unleash his destruction on others.

Well, in all fairness "soda pop" would be weird just about anywhere.

 

[Oofta]

"Will no one on this forum of mostly GMs ever think of the poor GMs?!"

This kinda sounds like the GM wants their game to be more about setting tourism and getting high fives for their world-building brilliance than the desired play experience of the players. Maybe the GM should not have done all that world-building in isolation of the players or without considering what the players were actually in the mood to play.

Thanks for giving an example of what people have posted on the past couple of pages never happens.

If you create a new world for every campaign and want to design it by committee, great. I don't. I like it when the DM has a concrete notion of what the world is, I love the feel of discovering that world through the eyes of my PC. It's like picking up a new book or watching a movie I've never seen. Even if the movie is the millionth version of Batman if it's well made I enjoy seeing what twist or nuance has changed.

Don't want to watch another Batman movie? Don't. Don't want to play in my campaign where I tell everyone that it's an established world that has history, depth and limitations on races? Find another game. Want to design by committee? Go for it. In my game I set the stage, make clear what the parameters are before a session 0. What you do on that stage is up to you and your fellow players.

 

[Aldarc]

The game is not about the setting, but settings matter. This is why different setting actually exist. The same really applies whether it was a homebrew or a bought setting. Theros, Ravnica, Dark Sun, these things are not same, everything that exists in one doesn't need to exist in another. If I buy a Star Trek setting book and I want to run a Star Trek game, and if the players show up wanting to play Jedis I am not gonna let them even though I could come up with some wacky excuse why that would be possible in the fiction. It would be an indication that the players actually were not interested playing the same game than me, and then it is better to simply not play that than to create some frankensteinian hybrid that no one was happy about.

If you are wanting to run Star Trek and the players come wanting to play Jedi, then I would be curious why you are trying to run Star Trek when the players clearly want to play Star Wars. Again, it seems like there is an absence of communication and a misalignment of play priorities here. Why present the choice as being only between playing Star Trek or playing a "frankensteinian hybrid"? An alternative choice, which seems conspicuously absent, would then be to play Star Wars rather than throwing a fit about the players not wanting to play Star Trek and choosing not to play at all. If you don't want to play Star Wars, but the players do, then I'm not sure why you are framing this as the fault of the players. My main point is that I think that GM world-building should be done with players' own play preferences in mind rather than solely their own.

Thanks for giving an example of what people have posted on the past couple of pages never happens.

You seem awfully quick to point fingers, but would you mind elucidating on what I have done or maybe ask me for clarification of my position first before triangulating me in your squabbles?

If you create a new world for every campaign and want to design it by committee, great. I don't. I like it when the DM has a concrete notion of what the world is, I love the feel of discovering that world through the eyes of my PC. It's like picking up a new book or watching a movie I've never seen. Even if the movie is the millionth version of Batman if it's well made I enjoy seeing what twist or nuance has changed.

Don't want to watch another Batman movie? Don't. Don't want to play in my campaign where I tell everyone that it's an established world that has history, depth and limitations on races? Find another game. Want to design by committee? Go for it. In my game I set the stage, make clear what the parameters are before a session 0. What you do on that stage is up to you and your fellow players.

Okay? A DM having a concrete notion of the world is not inherently at odds with player input in said world, particularly if that input comes early enough in the design process. I am also not suggesting that setting has to be designed entirely by committee. Only that many DMs would likely save themselves a lot of frustration about players throwing wrenches into their meticulously planned settings with requests for "oddball races" if the DM talks to the players as part of the process.