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

[Crimson Longinus]

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.

It is no ones fault per se. And one option would indeed to play Star Wars, but then someone else might need to run it. So same thing with D&D, if I want to run Dark Sun but players want to just play characters that are more in home in Forgotten Realms, then miscommunication has happened and the game is not gonna work, and just letting those Forgotten Realms characters in DS via some sort of portal etc is unlikely result a satisfactory experience to anyone.

 

[Aldarc]

It is no ones fault per se. And one option would indeed to play Star Wars, but then someone else might need to run it. So same thing with D&D, if I want to run Dark Sun but players want to just play characters that are more in home in Forgotten Realms, then miscommunication has happened and the game is not gonna work, and just letting those Forgotten Realms characters in DS via some sort of portal etc is unlikely result a satisfactory experience to anyone.

I agree that a lot of this boils down to miscommunication or bad communication between participants.

 

[Remathilis]

Difference is the restrictive DMs are saying anything goes is a legit view.

The other sides saying that's bad wrongfun.

I should add a new rule to my table rules. "You may challenge the DM to fisticuffs, winner gets to DM".

Ok, I'll fess up: I don't have a problem with limiting options per se, I've done it before as well. I've run settings where not all options are on the table.

I do have a problem with the elitist view that curated campaigns are inherently better than kitchen sink games. And I've had a huge problem with some of the reasons why people have given to omit content. Finally, I've had a massive problem with the notion that players are cheap and easily replaced when they disagree but DM's whims and tastes should be catered to.

For the record, you can replace "curated campaigns" with "low-magic" "grim-n-gritty", "open world sandbox" or "decade old homebrew world" as things people tend to view as superior and act like they play D&D better or more correctly than the unwashed masses.

 

[Minigiant]

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.

If a player wanted to play a gnome to be a tricksy tinkerer but gnomes don't exist in the DM's world, the DM should point to a place or race that has tinkers or artificers.

And if there isn't one, the player should go to their next idea.

However if a player goes through 3 ideas and all 3 are absent, the player should drop. The DM's world is too narrow for them. Three seems to be a good number.

No rock gnomes or tinkers?
No dragonborn or draconic characters?
No druid or woodsy characters?
Then Suzie should drop.

If the DM wants Suzie to play, they need to have something in their world Suzie wants to play.

 

[Jack Daniel]

Culture is important to character.

It is what your PC's bonds, ideals, flaws, and personality are built from.

So if your cultures are shallow or your setting has few cultures, then the PC's personalities are limited.

How so? How do you suppose then that writers manage it when they tell a story set within the bounds of one culture? Why, their characters don't even have stats to distinguish one from another…

An all samurai campaign would be boring as heck to me. You'll all be human fighter samurais with the same ideas, bonds, and traits. Just a different flaw.

I don't play an edition that uses ideals, bonds, flaws, etc. Mechanizing that sort of thing strikes me personally as a ghastly notion. But supposing that I did… why in the world would you imagine that they'd all have to be the same for every member of a party of samurai? Culture is not character. Do you think that in an Arthurian setting, Lancelot and Gawain and Galahad have all the same personality traits because they're all Arthur's knights? That in an Ancient Greek setting, Achilles and Odysseus and Agamemnon (who are all human fighters who share a culture, a language, a pantheon) are somehow similar characters!?

I do have a problem with the elitist view that curated campaigns are inherently better than kitchen sink games. And I've had a huge problem with some of the reasons why people have given to omit content.

For the record, you can replace "curated campaigns" with "low-magic" "grim-n-gritty", "open world sandbox" or "decade old homebrew world" as things people tend to view as superior and act like they play D&D better or more correctly than the unwashed masses.

The prevailing view on the DM's side has been that we have a right to our curated campaigns, and you don't get to call us tyrants for having them. We've further demonstrated that there's no such thing as a campaign that isn't curated, in practical terms. Even the most wide-open kitchen-sink has character types that won't fit and must be disallowed, and boundaries (however soft) on what rulebooks are considered canonical.

And for the record, the only time I've seen anyone on this thread claim objective superiority, it's been when the likes of doctorbadwolf and loverdrive make sweeping claims that (a) "the hobby" has "grown out of" the DM being an authority over their campaign, and (b) that this is an objectively good thing. Both claims are highly suspect at the very least (and they positively reek of elitism—lesser in degree but similar in kind to that same elitism that one can detect around zealous players of GM-less storygames who love to crow about how they've thrown off the "shackles" of D&D).

The "DM partisans," from what I've seen, have been fairly consistent in saying do it your way, while a certain few of the "player partisans" have said do it our way or you're a bad DM.

 

[Minigiant]

How so? How do you suppose then that writers manage it when they tell a story set within the bounds of one culture? Why, their characters don't even have stats to distinguish one from another…

Their stories aren't D&D style adventures of randos from different parts of the world coming together to enter dungeons and fight bad guys.

Most monoculture stories have only one or two protagonists and a tons of side characters.
A lot of King/Prince/Sir X and the Ys.
Because in most monoculture stories, only a few people, castes, or classes have the freedom to do anything legally or culturally.

That's why D&D adventurers tend to have weird backstories. Because you need to make an excuse why they want to or get to leave.

I don't play an edition that uses ideals, bonds, flaws, etc. Mechanizing that sort of thing strikes me personally as a ghastly notion. But supposing that I did… why in the world would you imagine that they'd all have to be the same for every member of a party of samurai? Culture is not character. Do you think that in an Arthurian setting, Lancelot and Gawain and Galahad have all the same personality traits because they're all Arthur's knights? That in an Ancient Greek setting, Achilles and Odysseus and Agamemnon (who are all human fighters who share a culture, a language, a pantheon) are somehow similar characters!?

Lancelot and Gawain and Galahad are the same character with different virtue and vices. And BFF with the King.

The Illiad isn't a D&D style adventure. And the main characters are kings and demigods. And they barely did anything together outside of wooing Helen and fighting to reclaim her.

"Excuse me Mister DM. Can my papa be Lord Poseidon, God of the Sea? No. What about the King of Sparta?"

 

[Oofta]

Ok, I'll fess up: I don't have a problem with limiting options per se, I've done it before as well. I've run settings where not all options are on the table.

I do have a problem with the elitist view that curated campaigns are inherently better than kitchen sink games...

I don't think anyone has stated that one style of game is inherently better. I have my preferences, but I will never say that one style is better than another. Different people want different things.

...And I've had a huge problem with some of the reasons why people have given to omit content. Finally, I've had a massive problem with the notion that players are cheap and easily replaced when they disagree but DM's whims and tastes should be catered to.

For the record, you can replace "curated campaigns" with "low-magic" "grim-n-gritty", "open world sandbox" or "decade old homebrew world" as things people tend to view as superior and act like they play D&D better or more correctly than the unwashed masses.

And here's where we get into DM's that have curated campaigns and "badwrongfun". A DM doesn't have to justify their choices to you or anyone. I don't make decisions based on "whims", but yes, I do make decisions based on personal taste. There is no game without a DM, if the DM doesn't embrace the core concepts of the campaign I don't see how that campaign will be fun for everyone. I chat with players all the time about tone and direction, but ultimately the buck stops with me.

As far as players being replaceable, what can I say? I've never had problems forming a group or keeping players once we've gotten going. Life sometimes interferes with gaming and I've never had a problem replacing those that have left. I also acknowledge that I'm not the right DM for every player and vice versa. When did it become a moral obligation for a DM to allow whatever a player wants?

This has absolutely nothing with "better or more correctly". A DM is entitled to have fun just as much as their players.

 

[Jack Daniel]

Their stories aren't D&D style adventures of randos from different parts of the world coming together to enter dungeons and fight bad guys.

There you go again. Where is "from different parts of the world" written? I think you have an unexamined bias here.

Lancelot and Gawain and Galahad are the same character with different virtue and vices. And BFF with the King.

The Illiad isn't a D&D style adventure. And the main characters are kings and demigods. And they barely did anything together outside of wooing Helen and fighting to reclaim her.

HOLY CRAP. Seriously!?

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Their stories aren't D&D style adventures of randos from different parts of the world coming together to enter dungeons and fight bad guys.

Sure. But not every D&D campaign needs to be like that either. Narrow concept campaigns are fine, it just needs everyone to accept the premise. I can easily imagine a Knights of the Round Table inspired campaign where all characters are human knights, mostly represented by various paladin and fighter builds. Sure, it would be super limited on the long run, but for a one campaign with four or five players it would work just fine.

 

[Maxperson]

then it's not monoculture, is it?
However if you are going for Fairytale Not!England, you likely only have one religion and one church.

Hence why I don't run Single Country campaigns. Before certain points in histoty, there isn't that much internal diversity. And when it is, it takes up all the air of the game's tone and becomes the game.

There's no such thing as monoculture. It doesn't exist. Even within a single city there will be multiple cultures. The rich will have one culture, the middle class another, and the poor a third, and it gets more diverse from there.