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

[Oofta]

Straight-up: I wish you would apply this logic to your own posts. Calling my style of DMing "design by committee" wasn't exactly "having a preference without insulting people."

I did not say that you or any specific poster did design by committee. Design by committee is one end of the range of options. The DM may make decisions on the setting without input or at the other extreme design by committee and anywhere in between.

I think any and all extremes are perfectly fine as long as the group enjoys it. That's different from people describing DMs that wouldn't allow an aquatic race as adventurers because they see limitations to how long an aquatic race can survive out of water (or specifically, in a desert) as "crazy control freak".

EDIT: to be clear I'm talking about world design here - the DM sets the stage with little or no input or the group does a group session world design that other people have mentioned in other threads. Design by committee is not a bad thing.

 

[Oofta]

This is an amazing response to something I did not say (not that you've demonstrated a particular care for what folks actually say when you reply to them). I appreciate your defense of the honor of this hypothetical DM/author though.

This, again, hypothetical DM, has taken it upon themselves to try and invent both a fantasy world and all the fantasy science to go with it..and that's not really a problem.. until you expect your players to internalize both the world and the science, in order to act realistically within that fantasy world.

This particular set of expectations invites constant DM intervention in a way that's unhealthy.

The particular set of expectations? That a DM can justify how their world works in a way that you don't agree with makes them a crazy control freak?

Because I reread the post you were responding to and it sounds reasonable to me. Even sahugin are limited to aquatic or the coasts, it's reasonable to assume that like lungfish they can survive out of water for a period of time but not days on end. Makes sense to me, I would probably make the same ruling. Sea elves are not a playable race but if I did introduce them at some point it sounds like a cool idea with possible plot twist - rescue the sea elf princess only to find out that the real challenge is to get her back to the ocean because she's been out of the ocean too long (it needs to be salt water). Now that it's not hypothetical, am I also a crazy control freak?

It's the DM's world. If a player is second guessing every ruling they make, I would not consider the DM the "crazy" one. If a DM said "no" to any specific race I wouldn't question. There are some rulings I might ask about to clarify, but the DM runs the game.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Being fair to the opposition: if that literally were the only premise I'm pretty sure all of us would find it boring. I sincerely doubt that would be the long and short of it, especially given the level of detail alleged by the pro-restriction folks. remainder omitted

Perhaps you wouldn't need to make such long posts if you didn't think that other people were the "opposition" and called them the "pro-restriction" folks?

We are just discussing preferences for running our unicorns and fireballs games, after all.

 

[Gammadoodler]

The particular set of expectations? That a DM can justify how their world works in a way that you don't agree with makes them a crazy control freak?

Because I reread the post you were responding to and it sounds reasonable to me. Even sahugin are limited to aquatic or the coasts, it's reasonable to assume that like lungfish they can survive out of water for a period of time but not days on end. Makes sense to me, I would probably make the same ruling. Sea elves are not a playable race but if I did introduce them at some point it sounds like a cool idea with possible plot twist - rescue the sea elf princess only to find out that the real challenge is to get her back to the ocean because she's been out of the ocean too long (it needs to be salt water). Now that it's not hypothetical, am I also a crazy control freak?

It's the DM's world. If a player is second guessing every ruling they make, I would not consider the DM the "crazy" one. If a DM said "no" to any specific race I wouldn't question. There are some rulings I might ask about to clarify, but the DM runs the game.

Your contention was that I was saying this was true of any world the DM put thought into. It wasn't. It was you misstating and exaggerating my position.

And this particular hypothetical DM appears to want to play the 'is it realistic?' game. Frequently, the 'is it realistic game' includes bonus rules, unmentioned in any book, known only to the DM, where anything can be vetoed if it doesn't meet the DMs standards of fantasy realism.

The DM certainly can present any justification they like for things existing or not existing or how the world behaves. I find "scientific" justifications suspicious. Thus, 'in this particular' example.

--------

I just prefer games where I don't have to constantly play mother-may-I with the DM to do normal D&D stuff, but hey, if you like being in a game where that much DM intrusion happens all the time, more power to you.

(See how this is a blatant misstatement of your position, and how it's kind of annoying?)

 

[doctorbadwolf]

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.

I just...can’t imagine building a world without player input on what they’d want to play in such a world, and room to add stuff as character concepts develop.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I just...can’t imagine building a world without player input on what they’d want to play in such a world, and room to add stuff as character concepts develop.

So how do you imagine professionally written setting books that are sold to people come about?

 

[Oofta]

Your contention was that I was saying this was true of any world the DM put thought into. It wasn't. It was you misstating and exaggerating my position.

And this particular hypothetical DM appears to want to play the 'is it realistic?' game. Frequently, the 'is it realistic game' includes bonus rules, unmentioned in any book, known only to the DM, where anything can be vetoed if it doesn't meet the DMs standards of fantasy realism.

The DM certainly can present any justification they like for things existing or not existing or how the world beha. I find "scientific" justifications suspicious. Thus, in this particular example.

Different people have different preferences and run their games differently. We are not talking about a hypothetical DM here: many DMs would make the same ruling. You went from "I don't like the logic" to "therefore this is a horrible DM with a bunch of bad house rules".

You are associating a curated world with bad DM house rules based on nothing other than the logic of why the DM would not allow sea elves. The two are completely unrelated.

 

[Oofta]

I just...can’t imagine building a world without player input on what they’d want to play in such a world, and room to add stuff as character concepts develop.

Well, I can't imagine why it would matter all that much. Race is just one small part of who my PC is at creation.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

There was earlier discussion about how the GM must 'explain their decisions' and whilst discussing things is good, there is certain limits how much 'explaining reasoning' will accomplish, like this aquatic races example demonstrates. GM can explain their reasoning and the player can think that the explanation is stupid. Now what?

These are ultimately very much preference issues, and no amount of explanation will bridge certain gaps. Like to be honest, I just kinda think that centaurs and nagas look rather stupid and anatomically implausible and thus I tend not to include them into my settings. It's just how it is. Other people are perfectly free to like them, but that's not gonna affect my opinion.

 

[Gammadoodler]

Different people have different preferences and run their games differently. We are not talking about a hypothetical DM here: many DMs would make the same ruling. You went from "I don't like the logic" to "therefore this is a horrible DM with a bunch of bad house rules".

You are associating a curated world with bad DM house rules based on nothing other than the logic of why the DM would not allow sea elves. The two are completely unrelated.

I'm not. I went from, this hypothetical DM behavior raises red flags for me and this is why, to this raises more red flags, and this is why.

I guess I'm not sure what curated world is intended to mean here. If you're meaning 'with limited racial choices', I never said anything about that either for or against.

But when I hear 'oh, that's not realistic' followed by b.s. fantasy science (frequently based on poorly understood IRL science), it's a warning sign for me. Maybe it stops at character creation and the game plays great the rest of the way, or, maybe we spend an hour debating whether my lvl 15 barbarian can survive jumping off a cliff or other such nonsense.