D&D 5E We Would Hate A BG3 Campaign

[mamba]

Catfolk have existed in one form or another since Isle of Dread and they were just people back then.

were they a playable race? Not every monster that exists in a setting is also available to the players

if something's been in the game over 40 years, I think its worth raising a few eyebrows at it being left out

not to me, I have no orcs in my setting You could make the same case for all gold dragons being good, and then Eberron came and changed a few core assumptions, and people were happy that it was not just more of the same...

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

How is the friend needing to play a cat person any less hard of a stance than the DM not wanting cat people in their game? Doesn't seem like a minor thing if their requirement to play at all is to play a cat person.

It isn't one or the other. Two people disagree on some matter of taste. There's no right or wrong about it.

 

[Maxperson]

So I went through the Monster Manual and asked "Does this exist?" you could answer yes or no for each and every monster? Because you can do so for the PC options I wager.

See, I don't believe many DMs actually care much about the internal consistency of their world. That's a front. If they did, they'd know what monsters (and spells and the like) exist in their worlds. Dragonlance, for example, is EXTREMELY specific about what doesn't exist (orcs, lycanthropes, etc) and I don't wager most DMs bother with that. Because they don't need to spell it out since it would be a list for one: the DM and if the DM decides xvarts are stupid, they don't need to say that they just don't use them ever. Instead, they spell out the PC options since that list is for more than just the DM and they must be careful in case someone actually says "Can I be a X?"

In short, I don't think artistic vision has much to do with it, I think it has a lot more to do with "rules for thee, not for me."

The artistic vision or personal reasons(like my dragonborn) are everything. It's not about rules for one and not the other. Virtually no one says to themself, "Hmm. I think I need to make rules for players to limit their options, just so that I make rules for them and not me! Muahahahahaha!"

 

[Ulorian - Agent of Chaos]

If we were talking about most other posters, I might agree with you, but attempting to say that about @pemerton ? Come on, he's almost surely the poster on EnWorld with the single most consistent and extensive record of all. His terms are rooted in long debate and discussion and are entirely consistent, both internally and with major recognized bodies of RPG scholarship.

Well, in this case... here's the response from the poster who used the term in the first place: https://www.enworld.org/threads/we-would-hate-a-bg3-campaign.701844/post-9236427

I have all sorts of respect for @pemerton. He made an error here though. Not an issue, we all do that from time to time. My opinion of him is not lessened whatsoever.

 

[Mecheon]

For sure. Has any DM posting here been in that situation though? Seems like you're arguing against a hypothetical scenario.

We're all in hypotheticals in this situation, let's be honest. Has anyone requested Dragonborn in the dragonborn-denying games, given that Dragonborn are a notoriously underpowered race that you only ever play for flavour?

were they a playable race? Not every monster that exists in a setting is also available to the players

Playable stats in every edition except Basic and 4E in some form of another

Rakasta and Tabaxi for the original two (plus the. many, many, many Rakasta variants in Dragon), Catfolk in 3E as a generic option, and Tabaxi/Leonin now (Plus an official unofficial Rakasta by the original Mystara crew)

Dragonborn are at least new enough (I'd. Personally argue they're the generic-fication of Dragonkin and Draconians) that I can see that restraint but Tabaxi are downright legacy

 

[Ulorian - Agent of Chaos]

We're all in hypotheticals in this situation, let's be honest. Has anyone requested Dragonborn in the dragonborn-denying games, given that Dragonborn are a notoriously underpowered race that you only ever play for flavour?

Forget about the Dragonborn for a minute. You seemed to be implying that a DM applying restrictions to a game world or campaign that they are running results in players not willing to play. That's the opinion I was countering.

 

[mamba]

Playable stats in every edition except Basic and 4E in some form of another

certainly not in the PHBs of 1e to 3e however, not sure where you found the player race versions, and technically Isle of Dread is D&D, not 1e

 

[Mecheon]

Forget about the Dragonborn for a minute. You seemed to be implying that a DM applying restrictions to a game world or campaign that they are running results in players not willing to play. That's the opinion I was countering.

Absolutely could. Same with class selection. If someone wants to play a warlock and gets told "Oh, we're playing a low magic so you can only pick from half the classes in the game" then, isn't that person entitled to go "Cool, good luck, game isn't for me" and leave?

Or, y'know, me being an abashed gnome fan, if I'm told I can't play a gnome and have to suffer halflings or worse, kender, I'm skeleton "Just walk out" meme out of that one

certainly not in the PHBs of 1e to 3e however, not sure where you found the player race versions

Not PHBs. Rakasta showed up in Dragon and Red Steel, Catfolk were Races of the Wild

 

[Remathilis]

The artistic vision or personal reasons(like my dragonborn) are everything. It's not about rules for one and not the other. Virtually no one says to themself, "Hmm. I think I need to make rules for players to limit their options, just so that I make rules for them and not me! Muahahahahaha!"

So hypothetically, would you accept a game where the players gave you a list of 100 monsters you could use and you can never use anything else? If not, why do you feel the same is fair in return?

Obviously, the question is absurd but most of this discussion is. The fact that DMs can define the parameters for the other players but are unrestricted themselves is a power dynamics issue masquerading as an aesthetic one. And that isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I think it's fair to be honest about it.

 

[Maxperson]

I don't even know what work the word "acceptable" is doing here.

I'm just saying that, to me, a world in which polymorphing wizards and wild-shaping druids raise no eyebrows, it doesn't seem obvious that Dragonborn would do so.

It makes sense to me. Do wizards turn into dragon people and walk around town? Very, very unlikely. Would a druid turn into a wolf in town or a domestic dog? Unlikely to just decide to waltz around as a wolf likely to be attacked. Same with the wizard as a dragon person. Just because folks can shapechange doesn't mean that everyone is just going to blithely ignore every monster that comes to town because it might possibly, maybe, sometimes be a shapechanged friend.

Dragon people look like monsters and would be attacked in towns in a setting that doesn't have them as a race, so a player wanting to play a unique dragonborn PC would just be causing disruption to the game if allowed to do so.