D&D 5E We Would Hate A BG3 Campaign

[Remathilis]

Others might feel more comfortable about making requests, which is fine, and other DMs (as hosts) might want to be more accomodating to players' requests, but that simply isn't my style. I don't even consider it power dynamics.
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On the other hand, you do have to take into consideration your dinner guests preferences. You can't serve the same menu to a vegan, a Muslim, or someone with food allergies and expect them all to have a good time. The "take it or leave" attitude only works when you don't care if people don't attend.

 

[Oofta]

On the other hand, you do have to take into consideration your dinner guests preferences. You can't serve the same menu to a vegan, a Muslim, or someone with food allergies and expect them all to have a good time. The "take it or leave" attitude only works when you don't care if people don't attend.

On the other hand, if I just posted "Free food, come and get whatever you want!" I'd have a flood of people. In addition I'd have a hard time providing the variety they want without it being mediocre.

There's a reason most restaurants have a specific theme and style of food they primarily serve. There may be exceptions here and there, gluten free and vegan options are pretty common, but don't expect to get a good Tex-Mex burrito at a Sushi restaurant.

 

[mamba]

On the other hand, you do have to take into consideration your dinner guests preferences. You can't serve the same menu to a vegan, a Muslim, or someone with food allergies and expect them all to have a good time. The "take it or leave" attitude only works when you don't care if people don't attend.

that analogy doesn’t work, the players weren’t all asked to play dwarf fighters. There are six or more dishes to choose from available, the guest is insisting on a specific one that isn’t

 

[Remathilis]

I really don't think this is an issue which usually exists in the real world. People tend to understand that games have premises and be fine with it. They don't try to play jedis in Star Trek, tortles in an Arthurian game or norse dwarves in a wuxia game, and they don't think that accepting the premise is some sort of unfair imposition.

That does beg the question of what the expectation of D&D actually is.

No one expects Jedi in Star Trek because Jedi aren't a part of the Trek franchise. However, dragonborn are a part of the D&D franchise. It's not unreasonable to expect that they exist. The problem exists when D&D is used to play games other than D&D with them and is used as a Generic d20 Fantasy RPG. When people mean to say "I'm using the 5e rules to play an Arthurian game" but end up saying "I'm playing D&D" instead.

To me, the closer equivalent is running Star Trek but not having Vulcans as a playable option. You might have some interesting idea cf the Kelvin timeline where Vulcan was destroyed, but for a lot of people Vulcans are intrinsic to Trek and people will expect them to be there.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

That does beg the question of what the expectation of D&D actually is.

No one expects Jedi in Star Trek because Jedi aren't a part of the Trek franchise. However, dragonborn are a part of the D&D franchise. It's not unreasonable to expect that they exist. The problem exists when D&D is used to play games other than D&D with them and is used as a Generic d20 Fantasy RPG. When people mean to say "I'm using the 5e rules to play an Arthurian game" but end up saying "I'm playing D&D" instead.

D&D does not have a default setting, it is a toolkit. There is a lot about customising the game in the DMG. And not every official setting has everything. It is perfectly expected for the GM to create a custom setting and that to affect what is available.

 

[FrozenNorth]

Doesn’t that cut both ways? The race has so little impact on the overall character, why not compromise?

Definitely, I am all for compromise. But compromise goes both ways.

Compromise can’t be “I’ve created this world, play something else, deal with it!” Because that’s not a compromise.

An earlier post has a good example: tortles weren’t a good fit for the DM’s campaign, but a lake elf with tortle mechanics was. Or maybe tortles are a species of dragonborn descended from dragon turtles.

 

[NotAYakk]

So a computer game has to make assumptions about what it develops and what it does not before any given player touches it.

The thing is a tabletop DM does not have to. They can adapt and focus on the parts of the world and the game that the players are them are mutually interested in.

This means that if a player really wants to play a Kuo-Toa, the DM could take the tiny part of the Cult of Booal and extend its focus instead of having a static world that the players must adapt to.

That is the beauty of a table top experience - DM and Players can riff off each other, including at character creation time.

 

[Maxperson]

But D&D dragons don't all kill people: some are quite nice to people. And nor are D&D dragons particularly unknown. This was part of @Mecheon's point.

Dragonborn do not look like dragons, so the coloration isn't going to mean much of anything.

 

[FrozenNorth]

they went way beyond this repeatedly, you cannot claim one thing and then argue a completely different one each time and still have me believe your claim



which really is a long way of saying ‘no, never’

So, anyone else taking such an extreme position? It’s just really easy to attack the most extreme form of an argument.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Oh and furthermore, even if the mechanics come with a default setting, it is still perfectly fine to use the mechanics for some other setting. In the past I've used White Wolf's Storyteller system for all sort of things. Never did people insist that they should be allowed to play a vampire or a solar exalted in a game that was not about those things, even though we used the same system.