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

[Argyle King]

Absolutely NO ONE in this thread has disagreed with that.

Adding a single race (or one race for each player at the furthest extreme) does not mean that the setting has zero limits.

Which is part of what I was saying.

Yet, somehow, the other position seems to be that virtually anything should be allowed and that having a limit somehow means the DM (or worldbuilder) is somehow in the wrong.

I would agree that most DMs should make some effort to accommodate something, but I also believe that there are justifiable reasons for saying something does not fit.


edit: Anything could be allowed in a fictional world, but whether or not it should be is a different question. In my mind, before arriving at that question, it needed to be first verified that the lines did exist (as I assumed, but had not been solidly established) and secondly established how the people involve view the give and take associated with where those lines might be.

Further (as a few others have mentioned,) where those lines are for a person may change depending upon setting, genre, or other factors. But the lines still (typically exist).

Why doesn't Bilbo have a machine gun?
Why are orcs universally evil in one setting but it's viewed as wrong (in the real world) to say the same thing in a different setting?
Do warforged exist in a setting without the technology to build them?
Why did the DM say no to an idea for a paladin who prays to Dale Earnhardt?

 

[Hussar]

/snip

I have a problem with this. The conclusion doesn't follow from the premise. "An all-evil campaign worked well this one time" does not lead to a broader conclusion like "evil campaigns can always work" or "evil characters can always work", so I fail to see how it can lead to the conclusion that @Hussar actually draws, namely that DMs should "trust your players over your own preferences." If Hussar learned a lesson about being more flexible that works for his own group and his own table, well and groovy, but there's no good reason to believe that that holds for all groups and all tables.

There can be practical DMing advice in there—"Hey, if you want to run an all-evil campaign, help the players to figure out for themselves that cooperation is better than backstabbing!"—but it's just not the case that every group wants or needs every great new DMing tip'n'trick to run their table.

[/QUOTE]

Well, you ignore the fact that I no longer restrict alignment in my games, regardless of the players. Note, the group that I did this with originally have long since faded into the ether. This was ten, fifteen years ago. I've cycled through several groups since that time. And, it's been universally true that "trusting players over my own preferences" have resulted in better games. You say that there's "no good reason to believe that that holds for all groups and tables", yet, provide no actual counter evidence. Just your gut feeling. The common wisdom has always been that evil groups don't work. I've realized that that's not true. It's an unexamined truism that has been repeated so often that it's no longer questioned. And, when I did actually DO it, it turned out not to be true.

Good, because misrepresentation of the opposite side's positions has been one area endemic to everyone in this conversation, and I'd like to avoid it if I can. I'm going to respond to you and @EzekielRaiden together, because what you're saying is fundamentally pretty similar, but Ezekiel wrote a lot more, so it's going to take me a moment here to comb over all the relevant quotes.

To sum up:

The question was, why is it a bad thing for a DM to ban an option (like a race) for pure whim or personal preference (absent concerns like setting cohesion, campaign theme, practicality, mechanics, and all the other common excuses that make banning a race "okay")? As an example, I don't include dwarves in most of my settings for no good reason other than "I don't like dwarves."

Hussar contends, in brief, that this is the DM (a) attacking the player's imagination, (b) being unimaginative, (c) being distrustful, and (d) being selfish.

[/QUOTE]

Yes, I'd say that this is right. I'm going to cut out your responses to @EzekielRaident because I don't want to speak for anyone else.

/snip
, why in the world do you both connect something like "the selection of playable races in a campaign" to the DM being controlling, selfish, rude, petty, distrustful, etc. if that selection is tampered with?

To me, the various conclusions (rude, petty, disrespectful, etc.) all reek of psychologizing the DM, and I'm inherently skeptical of psychoanalytic explanations in situations like this. Maybe it's just my personal bias, I have more background in anthropology and sociology, so I put more stock in systemic, cultural explanations for widely-occurring interpersonal phenomena. Psychological explanations are too situational and idiosyncratic; cultural explanations have broad explanatory power. Just my perspective. In this case, though, I'd argue that it's a valid move, because psychologizing is useless here. The "DM authority" side in this discussion has no more right to accuse the "player freedom" side of "wanting to just play whatever without limits" than the "player freedom" side has a right to accuse the "DM authority" side of "just wanting to be a bunch of tyrannical control-freaks." And saying that "a DM who bans a race due to personal preference is just being X" is exactly the same thing. It doesn't follow.

[/QUOTE]

Ok, this I don't frankly understand. When you state, "X is not playable in this game because I don't like it", there's no psychoanalyzing going on here. You have just flat out told me that you do not think that my imagination is good enough to use X and still make the game enjoyable for the table. You cannot imagine a situation where having X would be a good thing at the table, despite the fact that the player is telling you the opposite. But, your own biases are so strongly ingrained that you don't even see it as possible. So, yeah, it's pretty obviously distrustful of the player.

Now phrases like "tyrannical control freaks" is what posters like @Oofta have repeatedly claimed they've been called, without a single shred of evidence throughout this thread. Do you really need to keep repeating claims that have already been repeatedly shown to be false?

A cultural explanation, on the other hand, seems to offer something worth saying.
/snip
I do not believe that players ought to be able to play what they want to play. This is not a value that I hold. It's not present in my sub-culture. It's not present in my table-culture. For me, it's not a thing. I have other values: other ways that I demonstrate my respect for those who play at my table, other freedoms of theirs that I refuse to impinge upon. Chief among these is that I run an open-world sandbox where the players are free to go anywhere and do anything—I am a player freedom absolutist when it comes to in-game action. Another value I hold is that for all the authority I have over the campaign setting prior to the start of a campaign, I will never alter it on a whim once the game has begin: I will not fudge dice, I will not fudge monster hp, I will not ever say something like "a random encounter wouldn't be fun right now, so let's ignore that wandering monster check." That would be a high crime at my table: that would be me overstepping my (slef-circumscribed) authority as the DM; cheating, even.

(And this isn't because I respect the players. This isn't because I want the players to trust me. It's because I hold to a particular philosophy for how I want my games to work, and the respect and the trust follow from that. DMing philosophy —> how I run my games —> earning the players' respect and trust. To start with respect and trust as a prior predicate is, to me, to get the order of operations precisely backwards. But that's neither here nor there, unless we want to start a spinoff thread.)

The point is, I do not expect other tables to share my values. I fully expect that most tables do treat dice-fudging (for example) far more nonchalantly than I do, and I can't judge them for that. They're holding to an entirely different set of norms.

[/QUOTE]

Well, obviously you don't hold this as a value. That's the point isn't it? The fact that we're pointing out that by not holding this as a value, you are disrespecting your players. I do judge a table that routinely fudges, for example. I think they are doing a disservice to the group and to the game and those games would be a lot more fun if they didn't fudge. I see nothing inherently wrong in judging a table. If you describe a table to me and I think, "Hrm, yeah, wouldn't it be better if you did this?" I'm judging the table. And there is nothing wrong with that.

To me, trust and respect in the sense that matters for a game of D&D (which is to say, not the basic respect we're supposed to give our peers in all social situations) is something that must be earned first. Any player who sits down at my table starts with a score of "0" in both categories, and I have no expectation that I rate any higher in their eyes until they've actually played my game.

[/QUOTE]

And, generally this is how a lot of tables work. My point is, it's largely unnecessary, sucks a great deal of fun out of the table and is a bad practice. In the same way that people should be giving their DM's the benefit of the doubt, so should the DM's equally treat their players the same way.

/snip (From what I can tell, most of the rest of this was directed at @EzekielRaiden

So, to sum up.

It is a much better practice at the table to allow the players some, limited ability to write sections of the setting if they want to and are willing to do the work. Is a DM expected to allow everything the players bring to the table? No, of course not. There are lots of perfectly reasonable reasons to veto a concept. We've outlined them repeatedly, so, I won't bother repeating them yet again. However, if the only reason the DM is vetoing something is because the DM happens not to like that thing, not because it doesn't fit with the setting or the campaign or would cause all sorts of issues in play or anything like that, but, simply because the DM doesn't like it, then, AT THAT POINT , not before, only after that point, should the DM take a step back and let the player run with the player's idea. It results in better tables, less friction between the player and the DM; it demonstrates that the DM is willing to respect the player's abilities at the table and give him or her enough rope to possibly hang themselves.

After all, the player might make this character and it completely flops. It happens. I've certainly made characters that seemed really fun in my head only to have them be a giant fun suck at the table. And I've seen players do it too. At that point, then, maybe the DM can, with a certain degree of smugness, suggest a different character.

 

[Hussar]

Which is part of what I was saying.

Yet, somehow, the other position seems to be that virtually anything should be allowed and that having a limit somehow means the DM (or worldbuilder) is somehow in the wrong.

I would agree that most DMs should make some effort to accommodate something, but I also believe that there are justifiable reasons for saying something does not fit.



edit: Anything could be allowed in a fictional world, but whether or not it should be is a different question. In my mind, before arriving at that question, it needed to be first verified that the lines did exist (as I assumed, but had not been solidly established) and secondly established how the people involve view the give and take associated with where those lines might be.

Further (as a few others have mentioned,) where those lines are for a person may change depending upon setting, genre, or other factors. But the lines still (typically exist).

Why doesn't Bilbo have a machine gun?
Why are orcs universally evil in one setting but it's viewed as wrong (in the real world) to say the same thing in a different setting?
Do warforged exist in a setting without the technology to build them?
Why did the DM say no to an idea for a paladin who prays to Dale Earnhardt?

If that's what you're taking from this thread, then, might I humbly suggest you maybe, just maybe, have missed a few points. No one is claiming that there aren't perfectly valid reasons to veto an idea. There are. There's a bunch of them.

"I just don't like it" isn't one of them.

((And, note, the point about orcs isn't that it's a problem in one setting and not another. Again, I think you REALLY missed the point on that one.))

 

[Argyle King]

If that's what you're taking from this thread, then, might I humbly suggest you maybe, just maybe, have missed a few points. No one is claiming that there aren't perfectly valid reasons to veto an idea. There are. There's a bunch of them.

"I just don't like it" isn't one of them.

((And, note, the point about orcs isn't that it's a problem in one setting and not another. Again, I think you REALLY missed the point on that one.))

That suggestion is noted. I disagree with it. When things were brought up, I asked questions.

I would feel that "I just don't like it" may be a poor reason. However, it may simply be that it's not liked because it doesn't fit the perceived aesthetic, story, or a variety of other things.

Personally, I'll admit to having some bias against Changelings. That's based on little more than feeling that over-use of shapeshifting becomes lazy writing in a lot of things (ah-ha! You didn't really kill the BBEG because it was actually his cousin Ned in disguise OR everybody you thought died was actually Skrulls). I think a game in which the players (and NPCs) can never be sure that who they are talking to is actually who they are talking to as a general rule (as opposed to being specific to a certain story arc or perhaps a special villain) tends to lead to a style of play in which the players tend to disengage from interacting with NPCs. Alternatively, I've also see it turn into one in which a problematic player uses their innate ability to disrupt play. Neither is something which I typically feel like dealing with, so I tend to write settings without them.

For different reasons, I also often swap out either halflings or gnomes for something else. I don't feel that they both have enough of an identity to be included. In one of my home games, they're both viewed by the rest of the world around them as simply being two branches of the same race. I wouldn't say I dislike either, but I find their presentation a bit bland. I then tend to sub in grippli, woem (homebrew catfolk of small size,) or something else as a player option.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Changlings are interesting because of the effect there existence has on the world around them. Guards in Eberron have to consider that anyone could potentially be a changeling, and therefore have countermeasures in place. Physical appearance simply cannot be used as a way to confirm identity. This is also likely to make people paranoid, and treat all changelings with extreme suspicion.

 

[Argyle King]

Changlings are interesting because of the effect there existence has on the world around them. Guards in Eberron have to consider that anyone could potentially be a changeling, and therefore have countermeasures in place. Physical appearance simply cannot be used as a way to confirm identity. This is also likely to make people paranoid, and treat all changelings with extreme suspicion.

I get that as a concept. For me (personally,) having them as a common occurrence in the setting is a bit much.

I'm unclear on how some of the political aspects of the setting could feasibly work with that constant paranoia.

Mechanically, the way in which their ability is defined in the game has (unfortunately) been something I've seen both players and DMs abuse. Tbh, my first experience as a player in an Eberron game was with a DM used it so much as an "ah-ha moment" and a way to screw over players, that it soured my views on the concept, and it's a negative experience which ruined how I see the setting overall.

I think many aspects of the setting are cool. I own some of the 3E books for it, but I typically take the elements I like and leave the rest behind. I imagine there are plenty of games out there in which people are having a blast with Eberron and Changelings.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Mundane in this case being not a magical creature, as the context clearly indicated. Context is your friend.

Then of course there was the joke in there, since many people view pumpkin pie as a magical desert, but alas that one went unnoticed.

Except that they are magical creatures. That's my point. It doesn't matter if their magical-ness is pretty low level. They're still magical. I fundamentally reject your statement that "magic can create it and the situation that allows it to survive without it being a magical creature." That LITERALLY DOES mean that gorram bloody DRAGONS can be "mundane" creatures, because once you've written off the magic that creates them and which allows them to exist as they do (y'know, being able to fly with such huge bodies and such), there's nothing left to explain.

@Jack Daniel I don't really think there's much more to be said here, then. If you see the process of playing D&D as literally having no human-interaction component beyond the execution of the rules (in other words, no relationship between people, merely the procedural execution of defined roles), there's no possible space for us to discuss in. Because I absolutely would say that a "referee" behaving in the aforementioned way (absolute, unilateral, and obdurate refusal/denial/whatever) would be incredibly rude and, if they did so in any kind of professional establishment (something equivalent to an FLGS), I would be complaining to management about their behavior. I wouldn't make a scene about it, because I'm not a Karen-analogue, but yeah, this would be enough to overcome my strong aversion to complaining about anything. (Despite what my willingness to argue about minutiae online might imply, I'm actually hugely averse to "rocking the boat" IRL unless I'm pushed extremely hard.)

Guns and ammo exist in one of the core rulebooks of D&D.

Also, the knight is still limited to certain planes of movement. What those planes are is irrelevant to the ability to access them.

...so is the queen. The queen cannot move in any plane other than that of the chessboard. But only the knight has the ability to leap over enemy pieces to reach its destination, the closest analogue we have in a nominally 2D game to the three-dimensional movement of flight. As I said. And yet this special superpower--it can break enemy lines!--not only doesn't afford it a special position, it is actually tied for the second-worst piece on the board, only one step (3 points vs 1 point) above pawns.

Arguments by analogy hinge on the effectiveness of your analogy. The queen/piece-value analogy is bunk for what you want to argue. Don't use it. That's my entire point here.

And I specifically have been arguing about the Player's Handbook options. AKA, the options specifically offered to "Players," in the book specifically meant for "Players" to read in order to know how to play and--here's the kicker--what you CAN play. Options in the DMG are, by the very naming of the book, Dungeon Master's options. If the Dungeom Master doesn't use something in the book meant for Dungeon Masters, the Players don't have any standing to object.

It's an extremely simple distinction, and one I've been making this entire time, many pages before you showed up, and which I have repeatedly used. No matter what Maxperson thinks of the word "assume," it is reasonable to assume that PHB options are probably available unless and until the DM says otherwise. It is incumbent upon the DM to specify when and where their game deviates from that common baseline, and it is incumbent upon players to pay attention to what the DM specifies.

 

[Scott Christian]

According to the MM cats can’t see in the dark. The books are guidelines, not gospels.

Correct. We're on the same page here. That was my point about swim and climb speeds.

 

[Scott Christian]

Do we actually even care about RAW? By RAW they can also climb.

But to be fair it's been quite clear for awhile now that the RAW only matter when you believe they support your opinion.

That's not true. I don't believe centaurs should be able to climb (using climb as in ladders, cliff walls, etc.). But, if a player showed me the rule (someone in here brought it in), then I would accept that. I can think it is silly. I can roll my eyes when the centaur starts scaling the castle wall. Or I can laugh at the absurd and just move on.

According to the rules, centaurs can climb. DM's can see that and say, not in this case.

Look at it like this: a dwarf in plate walks up to a climb that is 500' and includes several vertical hangs. The DM says, "You need an athletics check of 40 and you're at disadvantage because you are wearing plate." I don't know very many players that would argue. They would say, "Oh, you mean it's impossible for me without rope or something." So if a DM imposed disadvantage, or made the DC harder or easier for a centaur to climb something specific, like a ladder or boulders, what table would throw a 30 page rant?

 

[Scott Christian]

Now phrases like "tyrannical control freaks" is what posters like @Oofta have repeatedly claimed they've been called, without a single shred of evidence throughout this thread. Do you really need to keep repeating claims that have already been repeatedly shown to be false?

Words have been used like this. Not from you. But they have. I know you don't hold that view, just like some of Max's views I might disagree with. However, they have been said.