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

[doctorbadwolf]

Sure, but there is a loss there. Things that existed, and now do not exist, and it lessens the structure that was there.

Just like you can simply erase Moradin from the Dwarven Pantheon, but if you don't replace him, things feel more shallow than they did before.

Of course, but that's fine for a lot of groups and campaigns.

And...also, the work of replacing them might be genuinely negligble and/or already mostly done by other world-buidling work I was already gonna do with or without elves and moradin.

For instance, taking the tenets of Moradin worship and taking out the mentions of the God himself, fixing any resulting grammatical errors, and presenting it as a philosophy, or as a religion with no gods as such, where one honors your house gods and ancestors like most ancient Roman religion was, works just fine, and takes about ten minutes.

Likewise, taking the text of the formation of Bladesinging, the stuff about the schools, etcs, and adding a paragraph about how the different schools popped up independent of eachother in my world's ancient multi-racial multi-cultural Persian-esque empire, and eventually solidified as the best techniques and ritual technology was shared by masters and students alike into a "mixed martial arts" of magical swordplay, takes about ten minutes.

And I'm not sure my world has lost anything by doing so. In fact, it may be more interesting, and I may do the second one even though my world does have elves.

 

[Jack Daniel]

The poster who was talking about the hobby "growing out of" was, if memory serves me, speaking about the hobby growing out of solely being Tolkien.

Back in the early days, a Tolkien pastiche with a few elements from here and there was DnD to a lot of people.

Now, DnD is much bigger than that.

I would also hope the game could grow out of the model of "DM as King" but this idea of having ultimate authority seems to appeal to people to the point where they want to insist they have it in theory, even if they never exercise it in practice.

Everybody here agrees that D&D is bigger than just Tolkien. That's why the pro-kitbashing side has repeatedly pointed out the viability of e.g. low or no magic, no demihumans, historical- and historical-fiction-type campaigns. D&D can do King Arthur and Robin Hood and Bronze Age swords & sandals just fine.

But anyway, here are the relevant quotes. They are most definitely not about Tolkien.

The GM's sole authority over the game world was an important thing, but the hobby has grown out of it. Now it's widely accepted that worldbuilding is everyone's job -- players can and should introduce details, factions and locations, GMs can and should ask their players for input -- it's their game and their world too, after all.

Having operated under such a model, and even with the best DMs, what you inaccurately call anarchic just works better, I can reasonably reject that assertion out of hand.

This is not a celebration of the variety of play-styles and table dynamics, or a "you do you, whatever works!" attitude.

 

[Zardnaar]

So unbeleivable, and yet people don't seem to clarify that they agree with our side about having discussions and being willing to compromise until we've dragged the conversation on for dozens of posts. With their initial posts... pretty much sounding like this. The boot problem players, players who question the DMs decisions are problem players, so why isn't this situation falling under that?

Simply because no one means it when they lay out those groundwork arguments, or because you can't imagine someone actually going through with it.



The poster who was talking about the hobby "growing out of" was, if memory serves me, speaking about the hobby growing out of solely being Tolkien.

Back in the early days, a Tolkien pastiche with a few elements from here and there was DnD to a lot of people.

Now, DnD is much bigger than that.



I would also hope the game could grow out of the model of "DM as King" but this idea of having ultimate authority seems to appeal to people to the point where they want to insist they have it in theory, even if they never exercise it in practice.

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Addressing none of the points... sounds about how this thread keeps going.

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Maybe I have three. Maybe one is a Dragonborn Knight, the other is a Firbolg Druid and the last one is a Changeling Warlock.

And the DM rejects all three.

Maybe I do have a dozen ideas, but the first 10 are banned before I even get a chance to put them forth as options. So I'm on choice #11. Which, I'm not as excited about as choices 1 thru 10. I mean, how could I be, I'm not going to put the options I'm least excited to try out on the bottom of the list.

I mean, there has been claims that there are an infinite number of characters, hundreds of options per race, banning a single race cuts all of those options out. And most people here have been proposing banning the majority of races.

That is a lot of character concepts I could potentially have

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Sure, but there is a loss there. Things that existed, and now do not exist, and it lessens the structure that was there.

Just like you can simply erase Moradin from the Dwarven Pantheon, but if you don't replace him, things feel more shallow than they did before.

Generally I use around 10-15 races. If none of them appeal oh well shrugs.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Yep.

Who cares. It could just as easily been any other race for reasons. Humans like to experiment with magic and weapons. Just look at War Wizards of Cormyr. Dwarves could be experimenting with magic and how to make it more warlike. Just because elves also have a reason doesn't mean that their some sort of sacred connection.

There are in inherent implications. You are inventing fluff that doesn't actually exist to support your position. I posted all that exists and it can be replaced with literally any other race.

The style is irrelevant, though. They are a nimble race that would be well suited to both dancing and combining magic with their nimbleness and weaponry

I just looked at Tabaxi and they have no racial ability to cast with both hands full, so they would in fact need hand free, just like the elves. Elves can also alter their hands at will, because D&D does not possess the concept of right and left handed.

So, I guess you don't really care about fluff.

And you completely missed the point about the Tabaxi. They have built in weapons on each hand, so they would not need to have one hand free, both hands would be magic and weapon.

But, again, you don't care. Wonder why it is so hard to add races when you just ignore anything you don't care to change?

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Of course, but that's fine for a lot of groups and campaigns.

And...also, the work of replacing them might be genuinely negligble and/or already mostly done by other world-buidling work I was already gonna do with or without elves and moradin.

For instance, taking the tenets of Moradin worship and taking out the mentions of the God himself, fixing any resulting grammatical errors, and presenting it as a philosophy, or as a religion with no gods as such, where one honors your house gods and ancestors like most ancient Roman religion was, works just fine, and takes about ten minutes.

Likewise, taking the text of the formation of Bladesinging, the stuff about the schools, etcs, and adding a paragraph about how the different schools popped up independent of eachother in my world's ancient multi-racial multi-cultural Persian-esque empire, and eventually solidified as the best techniques and ritual technology was shared by masters and students alike into a "mixed martial arts" of magical swordplay, takes about ten minutes.

And I'm not sure my world has lost anything by doing so. In fact, it may be more interesting, and I may do the second one even though my world does have elves.

Sure, that can all work. But that is also the key word.

Work.

It isn't just "erase name", you have to do a bit of work. Maybe it is a lot of work, maybe it is a little work, but it is work. That was the point. There is work that is needed to remove things from the game without leaving gaping holes.

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Everybody here agrees that D&D is bigger than just Tolkien. That's why the pro-kitbashing side has repeatedly pointed out the viability of e.g. low or no magic, no demihumans, historical- and historical-fiction-type campaigns. D&D can do King Arthur and Robin Hood and Bronze Age swords & sandals just fine.

But anyway, here are the relevant quotes. They are most definitely not about Tolkien.




This is not a celebration of the variety of play-styles and table dynamics, or a "you do you, whatever works!" attitude.

Right, so it falls under the "DM as King" model. The idea that the DM is an absolute Authority who shall not be questioned, only appeased.

But, it seems the hobby really has grown out of that, because no one here believes in that anymore. Everyone in this thread says that they are fine with players questioning them and being more collaborative in the game space. So, not sure what your problem with it is.

 

[Maxperson]

So, I guess you don't really care about fluff.

Sure I do. I just don't accept your assumptions to be part of the subclass. Not one word of what you said is written or implied. All that is said is the one sentence I quoted. Yes, assuming that elves get it due to their ability with magic is reasonable, but then so is assuming that human war wizards developed it. Your reasonable assumptions are not superior to other reasonable assumptions.

And you completely missed the point about the Tabaxi. They have built in weapons on each hand, so they would not need to have one hand free, both hands would be magic and weapon.

Because 1d4 is better than 1d6 or 1d8?

 

[Jack Daniel]

Right, so it falls under the "DM as King" model. The idea that the DM is an absolute Authority who shall not be questioned, only appeased.

But, it seems the hobby really has grown out of that, because no one here believes in that anymore. Everyone in this thread says that they are fine with players questioning them and being more collaborative in the game space. So, not sure what your problem with it is.

Don't be obtuse. That is not an accurate picture of this discussion. Characterizing DMs who don't collaborate with players on questions of rules or lore as "absolutists" and "kings" who must be "appeased" is about as fair as calling DMs who do collaborate hippy-dippy drum-circle doormats. And not everybody here is open to players being "more collaborative in the game space" at their own table; they're (we're) merely fine with it as a matter of general principle, if that's how a group wants to operate. (And I certainly don't concede that it's the way most groups operate.)

My point here is that… no, wait. Instead of trying to explain this for the umpteenth time, I think I'll draw you a diagram. It can't get any clearer than this:

	"Pro-DM Authority" Side	"Pro-Collab" Side
Attitude Towards DM Authority	Good with it	Not at my table, and not at yours either! Stop oppressing me and my game with how you DM your game!
Attitude Towards Collab	Not at my table, but if it works for you, cool.	Good with it

I am, of course, being facetious here, but at this point, it's either go for broke or get ignored/misrepresented again.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Maybe I have three. Maybe one is a Dragonborn Knight, the other is a Firbolg Druid and the last one is a Changeling Warlock.

And the DM rejects all three.

Setting aside they are all obvious and boring ideas, you are being paranoid. The only one that would be likely to been banned is the changling from a non-Eberron game.

 

[Minigiant]

I think the real revelation is that many DMs don't realize that many other DMs are being both restrictive and uncreative and boring many players by both banning exotic races AND not displaying the exciting parts of their worlds.

It's one thing to say "Here's my world, take it or leave it".

It's another it 50% of DMs are displaying the same 5-6 settings and doing nothing interesting with it.

That will drive people to catfolk and metalmen very quickly

 

[Oofta]

I think the real revelation is that many DMs don't realize that many other DMs are being both restrictive and uncreative and boring many players by both banning exotic races AND not displaying the exciting parts of their worlds.

It's one thing to say "Here's my world, take it or leave it".

It's another it 50% of DMs are displaying the same 5-6 settings and doing nothing interesting with it.

That will drive people to catfolk and metalmen very quickly

What some people don't seem to realize is that while there are good DMs and bad it has very little to do with whether the DM runs a kitchen sink campaign or not.

Unless of course you're just saying that if a DM doesn't run the game just like you it's bad-wrong-fun? That there is only one true way?

 

[Minigiant]

What some people don't seem to realize is that while there are good DMs and bad it has very little to do with whether the DM runs a kitchen sink campaign or not.

Unless of course you're just saying that if a DM doesn't run the game just like you it's bad-wrong-fun? That there is only one true way?

Again.
Who said that?
Not me.