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

[doctorbadwolf]

If you do not mind a group of players with no elves in their Cthulhu game and you do not mind a group of players with no dwarves in their Vampire game, you do not have any grounds on which to take issue with a group of players with no elves or dwarves in their D&D game.

That doesn’t follow. The actually valid comparison to elves or dwarves in D&D would be to ask how folks feel about not allowing Bruja in an Anarchs VtM game.

The comparison to later additions in D&D like Tabaxi would be not allowing obscure Bloodlines that come from a splat book.

Trying to compare it to not allowing creatures that don’t normally even exist in the game is just ridiculous. The two cases aren’t comparable.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Right now I am running D&D in a silk road setting. The game began in parallel world Tang Dynasty China. I have a human, two Ogre Magi*, a Kenku and a Warforged made from Terracotta. No one complained about there being no elves or dwarves.

And it does include homebrew content. I would personally think that homebrewing content is more an essential feature of D&D then elves are.

*These are the Ogre Magi from Yoon Suin rather than Japanese Oni.

Silk Road is a really fun campaign premise.

Makes sense though for that type of game though. No elves or tolkeinesque stuff.

I probably wouldn't play not because those races are banned OA doesn't do anything for me.

Why does that make sense? Silk Road, so Italian city states, Constantinople with its Varangian Guards, etc.

More to the point, if D&D is "about" any one thing, it's kicking down doors, killing monsters, and taking their stuff.

Nope. Most folks I know haven’t played D&D like that since they were kids, if ever.

 

[prabe]

Most folks I know haven’t played D&D like that since they were kids, if ever.

This. At this point, I find dungeons to be the worst kind of adventures.

 

[Jack Daniel]

There are so many examples swirling around my head, but perhaps this one really helps drive the point home.

I went to Origins, and I sat down to play my first ever game of Warhammer Fantasy. The guy running the game was excited, and it was just the two of us, so we got to chatting. He said something about why Warhammer was one of his favorite systems.

"No matter how strong your PC is, you can still be killed by a rabid dog in an alleyway."

DnD doesn't do that. It doesn't deliver that experience. It really can't. I don't fully buy the position I saw some time ago that every character in 5e is a regenerating Demigod, but if a DnD character encounters a monster, there is an expectation that they will survive and the monster won't.

And I know, "well in my game..." I know people use the gritty rest variant, and run with half hp, and send monsters of double the normal CR and all that, but when run in the standard manner, with the normal rules, a DnD party finding a werewolf or a zombie or a vampire is going to likely end up killing the monster. That is the experience DnD promises. And as part of that experience, your character is defined by two things, three in this edition, but since second edition at least, it has been two things.

Your Race
Your Class


Just like no one is complaining that you can't get a touchdown in baseball, no one is complaining that the game designed to be about Vampires and their political machinations focuses on Vampires. Just like no one is complaining that the Skip card can't be used in Poker, no one is complaining that a game about human's encountering knowledge man is not meant to know, in a desperate stop gap measure to take one more breath of air before we are dragged under by an uncaring universe, focuses on that story.

Because that would be to go against the very design of the game.

But DnD?

DnD is a game about a group of adventurers going on adventures, and those adventurers come from a wide variety of backgrounds and skills, and they encounter other races and creatures and fight them.

And the game has always, in every edition, offered a wide variety of playable races. You can say that there are more ways to play DnD, and you may be technically correct, I could make DnD a game about political intrigue and land management and run an entire campaign with not a single sword swung or spell cast. But at that point, I've thrown out everything except a handful of skills and the d20, and if I'm not using 85% of the rules, am I playing DnD?

What is the point of playing DnD to run an Arthurian, humans only, land management game? Or to run a miniatures mass combat game? I can imagine doing it, but why? There are other tools that serve that story far better than DnD, and you've thrown out everything that makes DnD DnD.

Entirely setting aside the fact that half the stuff you say D&D is bad at (characters who die easily, land management, mass minis combat) are things that some editions of D&D do not just well but exceedingly well, your argument still just boils down to "play the game this way and not that way, or else you're doing it wrong." Screw that noise. I can't be kind about this: screw that noise, it's a pernicious attitude unbecoming of any gamer.

That doesn’t follow. The actually valid comparison to elves or dwarves in D&D would be to ask how folks feel about not allowing Bruja in an Anarchs VtM game.

The comparison to later additions in D&D like Tabaxi would be not allowing obscure Bloodlines that come from a splat book.

Trying to compare it to not allowing creatures that don’t normally even exist in the game is just ridiculous. The two cases aren’t comparable.

How do you spell that airplane noise people make to accompany the "flying over your head" gesture?

 

[Jack Daniel]

So you can run a Bishouji Anime Dating Sim game, complete with various affection scores, in core DnD?

Or maybe a world builder where you are a god working your way through the evolutionary chains to build a space faring empire and conquer the galaxy?

After all, if DnD is a generic rule set that can do anything, then it can do that, right?

As much as I hate to admit it, the best way to do dating sim in D&D would be with 3rd edition. (I don't particularly care for 3rd edition, but hey, it's still better than 5th in a lot of ways.) The Reputation and Honor mechanics from UA would be fairly easy to adapt into affection scores. And pulling the classes over from BESM d20 would be trivial.

As for evolving gods out to conquer the galaxy… um… been there, done that. Capstoned a three-year-long campaign that I ran back in college. Though they player characters did only manage to make it up to the Temporal tier and had maybe two-dozen star systems under their control by the time we ended the campaign.

This. At this point, I find dungeons to be the worst kind of adventures.

And here I am, defending the position that we shouldn't expect something to be in the game just because it's in the title! Wondrous irony…

(Though to be fair, the editions after 2nd are all kind of crap for dungeons, because they excised all the rules that make dungeon-crawling fun.)

Suffice it to say, I wouldn't fault someone for not running a dungeon-crawler. But for my part, I wouldn't ever not run a dungeon-crawler if it's vanilla D&D that's on the menu!

 

[EzekielRaiden]

You’re assuming all sorts of context here. If we’re going to agree to discuss a specific situation with a specific relationship between players and gm rather then anyone bringing in assumptions then we can discuss that.

But this thread has remained focused on the general so only general things can be said.

Not gonna lie, "I won't engage because that common situation isn't universal, but I will totally talk about these OTHER specific situations" isn't really making me want to continue discussing either.

 

[billd91]

That's not a good option. That's a good for Jimmi option. There's a difference. For me it's a bad option. How bad depends on how much I dislike sushi.

Also, this analogy can really break down if you don’t envision the game as separate entrees at the table but see it as everyone bringing ingredients to the shared stew or casserole.

 

[Zardnaar]

Silk Road is a really fun campaign premise.

Why does that make sense? Silk Road, so Italian city states, Constantinople with its Varangian Guards, etc.

Nope. Most folks I know haven’t played D&D like that since they were kids, if ever.

Silk road was not a highway to travel from Europe to China. Goods did travel usually using local intermediarys.

Basically I wouldn't be allowing Samurai in Europe or Aztecs either for a campaign even if such things exist.

I would allow a Samurai or Knight to attempt the journey however they just wouldn't get to start there.

 

[Maxperson]

Also, this analogy can really break down if you don’t envision the game as separate entrees at the table but see it as everyone bringing ingredients to the shared stew or casserole.

Not really. I hate carrots, which go into many stews. Those are going to be bad options for me. I'm also allergic to poultry, so if chicken or turkey show up, I'm out.

 

[Don Durito]

Not gonna lie, "I won't engage because that common situation isn't universal, but I will totally talk about these OTHER specific situations" isn't really making me want to continue discussing either.

Ok. Whatever. Take what you want from it. I'm not sure what you what exactly you want me to engage with.

You describe how your group does things. What point are you making exactly - that every group should do things the same way? That in some group dynamics there are more specific things to say about how things need to be negotiated? Well, obviously so, I've been saying that throughout this thread - but people have just been ignoring it and talking past each other.