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

[Dire Bare]

Funny, I had a tiefling paladin in one of my prior 3.5 campaigns, but he took a bit of a journey to get there. My son's PC was a human paladin who got himself killed in the middle of an adventure and got reincarnated as an elf. Years later, he met up with his great-great-great-grandfather, a nalfeshnee demon who "jump-started" his weakened fiendish heritage and basically turned him into a tiefling. Despite all of the race makeovers, he retained his paladin status throughout...at least, until he was betrayed to Orcus cultists and turned into a self-loathing vampire (at which point he was retired from PC status and became an NPC).

Johnathan

Wow, sometimes fantasy life just keeps giving you lemons . . . .

 

[doctorbadwolf]

The game was designed with a goal: to simulate picaresque pulp-fantasy adventures wherein each player controls one miniature figure, representing an adventurous treasure-hunter exploring the dungeons underneath the proverbial "huge ruined pile, a vast castle built by generations of mad wizards and insane geniuses," until said character either dies ignobly or can amass enough wealth to carve a dominion out of the wilderness, finance and field a private army, and go to war with the other high-level player characters' private armies. Certain later editions do rather a poor job of it, but it's what D&D was invented for.

The idea that D&D can't have a good crafting system does give me a bit of a chuckle, though. Can't help it. My preferred milieu when I play is Victorian steampunk, and you can't properly do steampunk D&D without a technologist class designed around building gadgets and inventions. So… yeah, as with your "gods & galaxies" example, been there, done that. Keep throwing ideas at the wall, though, and maybe you'll hit upon something that D&D really can't do. (You might have a rough go of it, though, given the fact that both the 3rd edition d20 System and the OSR have already gone hog-wild adapting one or another of D&D's rules engines to every genre under the sun.)


Uff da. Keep the day job, because that comedy career is not going to work out.

What was the point of this tangent? I missed the origin of this line of discussion, but I’m quite interested in it.

Not least because it’s the only thing so far that I’ve seen where I agree with you.

D&D is definitely able to be adapted to just about anything.

 

[Jack Daniel]

What was the point of this tangent?

You know, I have no idea.

Let's take a fond look back down memory lane…

I guess as a gamer I should bring golf clubs to the Football game so I can make a three point shot? Recognizing that a game has limits, and that if you want to play something past those limits you should play something else is not unbecoming of a gamer. Just like recognizing that a jack hammer might not be the best tool for cleaning the sink. You can do it, but there are far easier ways to accomplish what you want.

Heck, I know that DnD can't be anything I want without a ton of work, because I've beaten my head against economics and crafting systems repeatedly. And, on this very forum, the very idea of wanting a crafting system was met with skepticism by some, who didn't understand why you wanted to do something so out of line with what DnD was made to do. I believe the common refrain was "Your characters are adventurers, not laborers"

The game was designed with a goal, and the farther you get from that goal, the harder it is to run the game.

Ah, yes. Chaosmancer believes that D&D is more limited in scope than I'm willing to concede. He is arguing for this rather untenable position as a response to my continued insistence that a game of D&D which bans a core element (e.g. elves) is functionally equivalent to an RPG that lacks that element entirely (Call of Cthulhu and Vampire being among the examples brought up previously). I can make this argument on the grounds that there's no such thing as an "official" D&D in any meaningful sense: that the so-called "RAW" have no special status that sets them above any Joe Schmoe's homebrew franken-game house-rule bonanza. This, incidentally, is also why Chaosmancer's various sportsball analogies fail: sportsballs do have widely accepted official rules, often with regulatory bodies to enforce them. Golf and football and baseball and basketball will never be Calvinball. D&D already is the tabletop equivalent of Calvinball and has been since 1974. There is no way to enforce any one person's according-to-Hoyle interpretation of the One True D&D™.

 

[prabe]

There is no way to enforce any one person's according-to-Hoyle interpretation of the One True D&D™.

While this is at least mostly true, if you tell your players that you're going to be running a published game I think they have a reasonable expectation that you'll be using the rules of that published game. Experienced gamers will plausibly keep in mind the possibility of houserules, but new gamers (such as at your FLGS) might not even know of the concept. So, I think there's at least an argument that table expectations can be a constraint.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

As I said I would allow travel down it as part of the campaign.

I wouldn't allow someone to start as a Samurai in Europe. Aztec maybe once they're found and can get on a ship.

I don’t understand this. Probably we run games very differently. It’s very rare that players make new characters partway through a campaign unless a character dies, in my games. For the most part, “Aztecs might become available later” is the same as “Aztecs don’t exist as a playable option in this setting”. Im

But also, this reads to me as one of two things, as a player.

1. The world is “smaller” than the real world. People travel less than IRL, there are no intrepid explorers making journeys that pessimistic people assume are impossible, etc. As a result, You also can’t play one of the Samurai mercenaries that were in Mexico at the same time that the Spanish Inquisition was happening, because that kind of travel isn’t a thing.
2. The PCs aren’t allowed to be special at level 1. You can’t play a Marco Polo or even one of his crew, traveling to a place that hasn’t seen outsiders in generations, if ever. You can’t be a stranger from a strange land.

That would bum me out, because if I’m not inspired by any Egyptian character concepts, even tho I love ancient Egyptian history and myth, I might be inspired by the idea of playing a character from a land that is far off and different in a way that the interplay will be especially interesting. A Viking in a Fuedal Japan game, exploring issues of honor, frith, orlog, etc, in a place that has a lot of similar concepts, but where those concepts also have aspects that are wildly different and alien, is a hook that would get me jacked as hell to play, and if you look at some of the really wild foreigner becomes a Samurai stories from actual historical Japan, including during times where Japan was very isolationist, there is a lot of history to draw inspiration from.

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

I’m pretty sure I didn’t miss your point, I just disagreed that the comparison was valid, or that the proposed logic followed.

 

[Zardnaar]

I don’t understand this. Probably we run games very differently. It’s very rare that players make new characters partway through a campaign unless a character dies, in my games. For the most part, “Aztecs might become available later” is the same as “Aztecs don’t exist as a playable option in this setting”. Im

But also, this reads to me as one of two things, as a player.

1. The world is “smaller” than the real world. People travel less than IRL, there are no intrepid explorers making journeys that pessimistic people assume are impossible, etc. As a result, You also can’t play one of the Samurai mercenaries that were in Mexico at the same time that the Spanish Inquisition was happening, because that kind of travel isn’t a thing.
2. The PCs aren’t allowed to be special at level 1. You can’t play a Marco Polo or even one of his crew, traveling to a place that hasn’t seen outsiders in generations, if ever. You can’t be a stranger from a strange land.

That would bum me out, because if I’m not inspired by any Egyptian character concepts, even tho I love ancient Egyptian history and myth, I might be inspired by the idea of playing a character from a land that is far off and different in a way that the interplay will be especially interesting. A Viking in a Fuedal Japan game, exploring issues of honor, frith, orlog, etc, in a place that has a lot of similar concepts, but where those concepts also have aspects that are wildly different and alien, is a hook that would get me jacked as hell to play, and if you look at some of the really wild foreigner becomes a Samurai stories from actual historical Japan, including during times where Japan was very isolationist, there is a lot of history to draw inspiration from.


I’m pretty sure I didn’t miss your point, I just disagreed that the comparison was valid, or that the proposed logic followed.

You could play marco polo, starting in Venice the adventure is traveling to China.

Such contacted were so rare though it only happened a few times not enough to justify a stranger in a strange land starting there.

I think s Chinese delegation left to met the Pope, not sure if they made it past Egypt. It's been a while since my silk road paper at uni.

Very few people traversed the full length of the silk road.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

You know, I have no idea.

Let's take a fond look back down memory lane…



Ah, yes. Chaosmancer believes that D&D is more limited in scope than I'm willing to concede. He is arguing for this rather untenable position as a response to my continued insistence that a game of D&D which bans a core element (e.g. elves) is functionally equivalent to an RPG that lacks that element entirely (Call of Cthulhu and Vampire being among the examples brought up previously). I can make this argument on the grounds that there's no such thing as an "official" D&D in any meaningful sense: that the so-called "RAW" have no special status that sets them above any Joe Schmoe's homebrew franken-game house-rule bonanza. This, incidentally, is also why Chaosmancer's various sportsball analogies fail: sportsballs do have widely accepted official rules, often with regulatory bodies to enforce them. Golf and football and baseball and basketball will never be Calvinball. D&D already is the tabletop equivalent of Calvinball and has been since 1974. There is no way to enforce any one person's according-to-Hoyle interpretation of the One True D&D™.

Ah, okay. I think the tangent may be more interesting than what it sprang from, maybe even deserving of its own thread, if I’m not the only one interested in digging into it further.

I think the malleability of D&D is actually orthogonal to the opposing point, though. The point is that D&D has expectations of included material. That doesn’t mean those things have to be included, but it does mean that deviations come with a reasonable expectation of explanation, and potential compromise. Nothing about D&D being a malleable game changes that.
Elves are part of the identity of D&D. I would go so far as to say that every person who plays D&D would expect elves to be an option in a campaign unless the bulletin board pitch for the campaign said otherwise.
The argument, I think, is that therefor it is reasonable for a player to ask for compromise or at least a good reason that they can’t play an elf

 

[doctorbadwolf]

You could play marco polo, starting in Venice the adventure is traveling to China.

Such contacted were so rare though it only happened a few times not enough to justify a stranger in a strange land starting there.

I think s Chinese delegation left to met the Pope, not sure if they made it past Egypt. It's been a while since my silk road paper at uni.

Very few people traversed the full length of the silk road.

PCs are the “very few people”, generally, is my point. How many people need to have done a thing IRL to “justify” a PC doing it? Why does that even come into it?

 

[Zardnaar]

PCs are the “very few people”, generally, is my point. How many people need to have done a thing IRL to “justify” a PC doing it? Why does that even come into it?

As I said I would let a PC attempt it. It's probably easier than irl.

I wouldn't let a PC be created from abland that far away though. Well highly unlikely.

I wouldn't let an Axtek in Europe either for obvious reasons unless said PC was generated in Aztec lands and made the effort to travel to Europe I suppose.

Similar idea with Polynesians or whatever.

A fantasy world where such cultures are closer or have some sort of plausible connection (gates etc) it depends. If gate travel is part of the setting sure, someone going "I'm a gate traveller I'm XYZ" probably not.

I would work it into the campaign vs yeah sure you can be XYZ.

 

[Jack Daniel]

While this is at least mostly true, if you tell your players that you're going to be running a published game I think they have a reasonable expectation that you'll be using the rules of that published game. Experienced gamers will plausibly keep in mind the possibility of houserules, but new gamers (such as at your FLGS) might not even know of the concept. So, I think there's at least an argument that table expectations can be a constraint.

Elves are part of the identity of D&D. I would go so far as to say that every person who plays D&D would expect elves to be an option in a campaign unless the bulletin board pitch for the campaign said otherwise.

I can see where you're both coming from. I don't agree, though, because anyone truly new to the game isn't going to have hard expectations of it, and anyone experienced with D&D has assuredly run into, well…