Wow.
I can't believe I read this entire thread.
Well, I did skip several of the sidetreks to discuss how to adjudicate
levitation, the efficiency (or lack-thereof) of authoritarianism, some other stuff I have already forgotten, and various opinions on smurfs (side note: I forgot twi'leks were a Star Wars species and my mind filled in Twiki from Buck Rogers
). I also browsed past all the snarky replies when I could identify them fast enough (but some of ya'll are pithy AF).
I stuck with the thread because this is a topic I have given some thoughts in relation to my tendencies as a DM and worldbuilder. Not that long ago, I probably would have had responses a lot more like
@Lanefan and
@Oofta but part of the reason I stopped running games in my 30-year old homebrew when I took up 5E was so I could have more freedom as a DM and incorporate stuff new players may want to include and stuff I want to include but did not fit. As it turned out, I was immediately tested when two players ignored my no tieflings and no half-orc notes in my two sides of one-page handout. The former, as an "old school purist" I was just not down with, and the latter I had eliminated - making orcs the equivalent of Neanderthals, a competitor with the other Free Peoples who went extinct through genocide 40,000 years ago.
Rather than say no (and not having he baggage of 30 years of precedent anymore it was harder to make an excuse for doing so), I talked with the first player about what it'd mean to be a tiefling, hiding her identity, assumptions people might make about her, etc. . . and she was down with it. In fact, just two days ago in our last session we touched based on it again, modifying our understanding of this to make it clear
for her that most of the NPCs the players have had private or intimate interactions with know what she looks like and seem to accept it without concern. On the other hand, they had a rival try to make trouble for the party by spreading rumors about her "clearly demonic heritage." When she has met other tieflings (has happened three times now), it a cause for role-playing and plot developments and discussions on navigating a world that assumes they are evil - and I have no regrets about that exception. Nor does she for asking for it.
For the half-orc, we decided that they are basically humans who have whatever the fantasy equivalent of a recessive gene coming to the forefront after countless generations because humans and orcs once intermingled quite regularly before the former genocided the latter. These "orcish" people are complex figures who run the gamut from being treated like second hand citizens to using the rumors of their heritage as part of the fearsome reputation. But also explains why there aren't very many around. In fact, where the PCs come from all goblinoids are basically extinct, as are most monsters and humanoids that are not "The Free Peoples" (humans, dwarves, halflings, gnomes, and elves) - but now the PCs are exploring the parts of the world where there are remaining pockets of these assumed extinct people (including a hobgoblin empire - though in my world hobgoblins and goblins are the female and male version respectively of that lineage and at some point I plan to open both goblins and hobgoblins as PC races now that they have been "discovered"). If a player had wanted from the outset to play one of those, I might have tried to talk them out of it, or hepped them to what I had in mind and see if that still appealed to them, and if not work on other possibilities that would work for them.
Still no dragonborn though (I replaced them with Lizardfolk since I am running a variation on Ghosts of Saltmarsh). I just don't like the idea of dragon-people and feels it cheapens dragons. Even in Dragonlance the appearance of dragon-people was a shock and tied closely to setting lore and the central theme. If they want someone can play a lizardfolk and make the common lizardfolk claim that they are descended from dragons and we could or could not explore that possibility as a campaign theme.
The player of the tiefling always jokes that if her character dies she is going to make a Tabaxi because she loves cats and knows it'd annoy me. But the fact is, while I probably would prefer she didn't, if she really wanted to - well, I designed this setting as a bunch of islands for a reason - so an island kingdom of cat people could still be out there undiscovered, perhaps under the yoke of the hobgoblin empire. Who knows?
On the opposite end, I am occasionally playing in a West Marches style remote game that I am having a hard time getting into because it is a kitchensink by design and there are a wide range of "weird" character types some of which bring with them certain assumed things about the game and setting tone that interferes with my fun. I could imagine another setting where different sets of limited choices would work (I have long had an idea for a setting of anthropomorphic animal people), but have a hard time with settings that includes them all because I think just tonally different races (and classes and monsters) can clash. The other folks seem to be having fun and I would not going to complain about it or try to get them to stop, I may just have to bow out from playing - but when I
am playing I do my best to make it work. And none of this is not a knock against the DMs who run that game, they do a great job, and the successful community they've built around the game is a clear result of that.
I guess I am a weirdo D&Der who finds that "being in the world" trumps story beats and emulating the cinematic as a goal for my games, both as player and DM (which is not to say that story beats are totally unimportant) and curating what is included is the way to get there for me.
EDIT:
The above is brought to you by philosophy and the slogan for my D&D zine and forthcoming newsletter,
HOW I RUN IT:
"I can't tell you how to run your game, but I can tell you how I run mine."