D&D General Do you like LOTS of races/ancestries/whatever? If so, why?

[Aldarc]

There is no way to "prove" that adding a race would be an issue other than a DM deciding that it is. Which just takes us back around. The DM makes the decision.

I've given you plenty of reasons I wouldn't allow a yuan-ti. Did I "prove" it to you? Is my justification good enough? Who gets to decide what's good enough other than the DM? That's why this goes round-and-round. Either the DM makes the final call or they don't.

There is mistake in thinking that I am asking you to "prove" anything about the setting. I'm asking whether you feel that you can't make concessions to the setting to accomodate the player option. Obviously the DM gets to decide, but they should also earnestly reflect about whether the setting can handle compromises and if they can't work with the players' requests. The DM makes the final call, but there are a lot of steps in between as part of the dialogue. "Final call" does not inherently mean "the one and only call." Talking things out first with an open mind should always be an option for everyone involved, including the DM.

 

[Oofta]

There is mistake in thinking that I am asking you to "prove" anything about the setting. I'm asking whether you feel that you can't make concessions to the setting to accomodate the player option. Obviously the DM gets to decide, but they should also earnestly reflect about whether the setting can handle compromises and if they can't work with the players' requests. The DM makes the final call, but there are a lot of steps in between as part of the dialogue. "Final call" does not inherently mean "the one and only call." Talking things out first with an open mind should always be an option for everyone involved, including the DM.

I'm not seeing your point. I listen to my players, I think DMs should. If no is not acceptable, then it's allow anything the player wants. If no is acceptable, then we agree that the DM makes the final call.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

Then the group is incapable of gaming together and, realistically, shouldn't have been allowed to get to the point where this became a dealbreaker.

D&D is a group setting. If the group all decides that they want to make the next campaign Mr Toad the Bullywug and Mr Frog the Grippli and they're all excited for that, then if the DM is against it, the DM will very quickly find themselves not a DM any more because the group will just, leave and find another one

I don't think there is necessarily a lot of drama around that. It's not that they are "incapable of gaming together". Simply, the GM is proposing something (it may be absolutely disastrous, like a campaign of Jedis meet Batman in Eberron, or something like "a campaign I designed which will necessitate a very curated list of character, or, horresco referens pregens"), the players say they are not interested and would like to play Mr Frog and Mr Bullywug, the GM answers it's not his cup of tea to run it but would like to play if someone is willing to GM and that's it. If the players don't want to play the campaign the GM want and no one want to GM the campaign the players want, it's boardgame night, no drama needed.

 

[Aldarc]

I'm not seeing your point. I listen to my players, I think DMs should. If no is not acceptable, then it's allow anything the player wants. If no is acceptable, then we agree that the DM makes the final call.

Let's be clear. I am not saying that "no is not acceptable." I am saying that there is room between the two extremes of "allow the players nothing" and "allow the player the everything."

I think that the GM should be open to compromising their vision of the setting, whether a homebrew or official setting, for the player's play desires. I know from personal experience that there were times that if I had said "no, I'm not willing to budge on my setting's vision," then I would have lost out on seeing some truly memorable and fantastic player characters.

Likewise, I think that the player should be open to compromising their vision for their character so that it fits the setting.

But this is not an either/or. It's both the GM and the player here. Both should be open to talking things out and compromising. There should be a conversation that amounts to more than the GM autocratically saying "no." I think that most tables do not exist in the aforementioned extremes, but (thankfully) somewhere reasonably in the middle.

 

[Oofta]

Let's be clear. I am not saying that "no is not acceptable." I am saying that there is room between the two extremes of "allow the players nothing" and "allow the player the everything."

I think that the GM should be open to compromising their vision of the setting, whether a homebrew or official setting, for the player's play desires. I know from personal experience that there were times that if I had said "no, I'm not willing to budge on my setting's vision," then I would have lost out on seeing some truly memorable and fantastic player characters.

Likewise, I think that the player should be open to compromising their vision for their character so that it fits the setting.

But this is not an either/or. It's both the GM and the player here. Both should be open to talking things out and compromising. There should be a conversation that amounts to more than the GM autocratically saying "no." I think that most tables do not exist in the aforementioned extremes, but (thankfully) somewhere reasonably in the middle.

Of course the DM should be open to new ideas. But if the answer is sometimes or even frequently "no" then it still just goes back to the DM making the final call. A DM is not an autocrat because they don't allow some, or even most, proposed changes.

This is going nowhere. Either the DM makes the final call or they don't. If my always saying "no" to a racial options that can't pass as an existing allowed race makes me an autocrat then it just goes back to you, as a player, deciding based on whether or not you feel like my decisions are "justified".

There are some things I've decided are flexible, there are some things that are not. If I made a new world for every campaign, I'd likely be more flexible on some aspects, but not all. For example I will never run (or play for that matter) a game where people are running truly evil PCs. It's just not my thing, I'm not a fan of anti-heroes in fiction or play. I don't see race as being any different, as a DM I've made certain decisions that I will let you know when I invite you to my game.

 

[Reynard]

The player entitlement in this thread is astounding.

If the GM does not provide the game you want, your freedom as a player is to decline and join or start another game. Full stop.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

Same with the player wanting a specific input. It is not limited to race "I want to play a sea elf" is simply a player preference that can be as disruptive, or as harmless, depending on the campaign, as any other background proposal. "I want to be the crown prince" isn't different from "I want to be a bullywug" or "I want to experience being the victim of racism and nazism in 1930's Germany in your Indy-punches-Nazis campaign". The GM has something in mind, can, in good faith, try to accomodate player input, but there is some point where it will change the core of the game too much to his liking, so he'll say no. No doesn't mean "I hate you" or "bow before me", just "I don't want to go that far in this particular campaign, because it wouldn't be fun for me to do that". If it is established that the depth dwellers are all sahuagin, then the first sea elf to appear in the setting will, if not killed on sight, be a strange and unique creature that will gather the interest of every academic institution in the world, much like a sea elf arriving in our world, and it is becoming a main theme of the campaign much like the crown prince player would. If it's a world with 60 races and no special care about their relationships between each other, then sure, it's not very disruptive to have an until-now ignored sea elf appearing...

I can't see any amount of consensus force a player to play a character he doesn't want, and force the GM to run a campaign he doesn't want. Both have the right to have the fun they want. So as a player, if you want to play a bullywug to have fun (and can't have fun with the constrained list that is offered), you need to find a campaign where having a bullywug PC is possible, and as a GM, if you want to run bullywug-free campaign to have fun, you need to find players willing to play it.

 

[Micah Sweet]

These two arguments are in contradiction of each other.

On the one hand, world-building is their favorite part of the game, and PC-centric posters shouldn’t “yuck another person’s yum” by asking to include a non-standard race.

On the other hand, the reason GM are entitled to enforce their decisions against players is because they put in so much more work than the players, work that is their favorite part of the game.

You do realize that @Reynard and I are two different people?

I love worldbuilding, its fun for me. I do listen to my players, and if they want a heritage in the game I didn't plan for, most of the time I will allow it. I have only two points here:

1. While I will always try to work with my players, and can accommodate a player's request most of the time, what exists in the world I made is my call, and if I have a real problem with a player request I have the right to refuse it.

2. I prefer that someone in any given group play a human, or at least an easily relatable heritage, and am uncomfortable running games where every PC is decidedly nonhuman, as I have a hard time visualizing the group's interactions with the largely traditional worlds I tend to run. That's not even a dealbreaker; it's just my preference.

 

[Reynard]

You do realize that @Reynard and I are two different people?

We are?!?

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

GM: "I want to run a campaign based on historical France in the 13th Century".
Player 1: "Cool. Can I be a cleric of Lathander?"
Player 2: "Cool. I'll play a Force-sensitive Twi'lek".
GM: "Err, I think you might want to fit the premise better..."
Enworld crowd: "booo, bad GM".