D&D General The Monsters Know What They're Doing ... Are Unsure on 5e24

[Dire Bare]

I had one-on-one "interviews" with all my players, and gave them the background, races, cultures and the like. It's very old-school races - gnome, dwarf, two flavours of elf, half-elves, elf interbreeds, and four different human cultures. That's it. But folks are having fun after a year despite those 'restrictions.'

Okay.

Sounds very classic and OSR, which is something a decent number of folks are looking for. Glad y'all are having a good time!

 

[Xenolith234]

No. I'm saying that many of them would have abilities that fall outside of combat or optimal combat, but which are usable and should be present for roleplaying.

A unique individual is different.

I will give an example from the 5e MM since I don't have the 5.5e one. The Pixie has innate spellcasting. On the list of spells is Detect Evil and Good. This is not of much, if any worth in combat vs. PCs, but it is an ability that could come in handy if the PCs make a Pixie ally. Some folks are asking that all abilities that aren't combat optimal combat abilities be stricken from the stat block. Those sorts of abilities need to be there. They can be marked non-combat or even moved to a different area on the page.

I definitely miss ribbon abilities for classes.

 

[Moving Pictures]

If your setting doesn't have firbolgs, long time legacy giant-kin, or yuan-ti, long time threats with entire D&D video games based around them, both of who've been around since Monster Manual 2 and have stats in every edition as monsters, I gotta once again bring up that 'why are you using Dungeons and Dragons in particular' because like. These aren't exactly rare creatures. Monster Manual 2 gave us Driders, Duergar, some of the more regular re-occuring devils and demons, and, once again, Krakens. Does your setting not have those either? What's the cut off for when you stop using the monster manuals?

Methinks you are forgetting where D&D started from - modelling Tolkien. None of those critters existed in OD&D. But races/classes and creatures were added because that's what people wanted.

Part of fantasy is creating what we - as creators (ie: DMs) want to experience. If I want to experience a ... frig, what was that stupid movie with the blue elves ... Avatar universe, I can do that. If I want to go full-bore Tolkien, I can go there. It's up to me to tell people that I'm loading up the planet with tree-hugging blue elves, or bitchy dwarves and immortal elves. They don't wanna play in that world, there are two options: change the world, or change the players.

Hell in my last campaign, I had Sea Giants because damnit, I liked Stephen Donaldson's work.

I read another novel where horse-mounted plainspeople - Cagmae? - existed. I had those in my last setting. I also had Vulcans of a sort....

This time, I have only retained the horsemounted plainspeople, treating them as expelled Scottish/Irish elements who adapted to a different climate.

This time around, my Sylvan elves are essentially Japanese. I had a general rule that PCs could not be Ronin Samurai without a damned good reason, and one of my players created a ronin Sylvan elf Samurai with a damned fine backstory... but a backstory that fit into the world. The player compromised, but so did I.

 

[Mecheon]

You're assuming the multiverse exists. As far as I'm concerned it doesn't. LOL ... I don't play the game exactly like you do, have never told you that you're playing wrong or that what other people do at their table matters to me one way or another. All I've ever said is that I have certain preferences and if that doesn't work for you I may not be the DM for you. But you turn that into I shouldn't be playing D&D because I don't allow every option that has ever been allowed in the history of the game? Really?

I mean. You're playing Dungeons and Dragons. People are going to assume some things exist in the setting simply because that's D&D stock knowledge and is such D&D stock knowledge it even transfers to D&D adjacent properties like Pathfinder or Warcraft. "There is an elemental plane where elementals that you can summon come from" and "There's multiple heavens and hells where various things can be summoned/come from who try to help or cause problems in the world". This has been kicking since Advance Player's Handbook in 1978, I think its a fair assessment anyone who joins a Dungeons and Dragons game is going to assume 'there are planes'

You don't seem to be using a lot of what the game has to offer so, genuinely, yeah, I reckon why you use D&D and not just some OSR system that'll only have your specifics

You don't seem to understand the meaning of compromise when it means "The player gets whatever they want and ignores the DM." I gave an example of someone that has all the characteristics of a tortle except for the physical form. It was rejected out of hand.

The physical form is the important part. You could remove all the stats and benefits and folks would still play a tortle just to be a turtle guy on pure aesthetics. Humans have only been anthropomorphising animals for, oh, 40,000 years at a minimum. Wanting to play a turtle guy, or going full khajiit as a tabaxi, or playing as a dragon guy, is but a continuation of that

Methinks you are forgetting where D&D started from - modelling Tolkien. None of those critters existed in OD&D. But races/classes and creatures were added because that's what people wanted.

Part of fantasy is creating what we - as creators (ie: DMs) want to experience. If I want to experience a ... frig, what was that stupid movie with the blue elves ... Avatar universe, I can do that. If I want to go full-bore Tolkien, I can go there. It's up to me to tell people that I'm loading up the planet with tree-hugging blue elves, or bitchy dwarves and immortal elves. They don't wanna play in that world, there are two options: change the world, or change the players.

Hell in my last campaign, I had Sea Giants because damnit, I liked Stephen Donaldson's work.

I read another novel where horse-mounted plainspeople - Cagmae? - existed. I had those in my last setting. I also had Vulcans of a sort....

This time, I have only retained the horsemounted plainspeople, treating them as expelled Scottish/Irish elements who adapted to a different climate.

This time around, my Sylvan elves are essentially Japanese. I had a general rule that PCs could not be Ronin Samurai without a damned good reason, and one of my players created a ronin Sylvan elf Samurai with a damned fine backstory... but a backstory that fit into the world. The player compromised, but so did I.

D&D does not come from Tolkein. It grabs the races but it is far more inspired by Swords and Sorcery stuff, where mysterious snake cults ala the Yuan-ti come from as well

There's a certain number of stereotypes and expectations that will come up if you say "Hey, let's go and play Dungeons and Dragons" and, like it or not, one of those is "There's a whole bunch of weird playable races" is a long standing one. This isn't even a new thing, Complete Book of Humanoids is old enough to drink

 

[saviirkad]

Why not? I had a list of allowed species. If I make an exception that make no sense in-world then what do I say to the next person that wants to play a rabbit person instead of a tortoise person?

You're adding unnecessary details to make the excuse for a full rejection to be the only solution. There was nothing presented within the hypothetical that "makes no sense" nor has any impact on non-Tortle additions. These are details you add to the hypothetical in order for there to be no room for compromise.

The player can get all the mechanical aspects of a tortle. We can figure out the "cultural" and world view of a tortle. The only thing we aren't doing is changing the physical appearance.

Based on this hypothetical presented, the mechanical aspect compromise is the tiniest step. It's a compromise, it's just the smallest one. Figuring out the culture and worldview of the character based around being a Tortle is a much bigger space for compromise. It's important to note that this is a space only, it doesn't say anything about whether or not there would be any.

Hardlining no on something as important as the Tortle appearance is a pretty big statement that a DM's control over PCs is prioritized above the Player's. There's nothing inherently wrong with that, table depending, that's just what it is.

Was I? I was trying to start a conversation on whether or not compromise is an option. Turns out it's not, it's tortles all the way down and if I say no to a request I'm a bad, evil power hungry DM who doesn't allow the players to impact the world in any way.

I truly don't think you're a bad, evil power hungry DM. I honestly don't know how you actually DM, but I'm fairly confident in saying that you're probably not that. You consider yourself a flexible and fair DM, and in practice, I can believe it.

Within the scope of this conversation, surrounding a simple hypothetical, what you've shown is a lot of inflexibility and a need for the player to concede without compromise. That's all. I don't think this makes you a bad DM at all.

This isn't the first time you've switched things around to make things more of an affront to you personally, so I do honestly wonder if that is a cause for the inflexibility presented.

 

[zakael19]

Fascinating: outside of the established, pre-defined fantasy kitchen settings, I always looked at D&D as a toolkit to “build up” your own settings, not as “shoehorn all of these options into your setting, no matter what”. Is a DM really considered a power hungry, narrow minded snowflake if their homebrewed setting doesn’t have orcs as a playable species? That’s hyperbolic but it seems to be the explicit opinion by some here.

This thread is like a microcosm of internet discussion. Everyone (including me) taking others’ statements in mostly bad faith and yelling past each other.

I’ve done the whole “collaborative world building, never say no to the players’ ideas” thing and it always ended up turning into the infamous Homer Simpson car. I had to give up all preplanning and just ended up improvising everything. That was fun for a session or two before I lost all interest or incentive to go on DMing it.

To each their own, but if the players tell me that they want to play a lore-adherent Witcher campaign using D&D, and someone still insists on being a Tortle, I’ll feel a tinge of annoyance. Yes this has happened to me (replace tortle with ninja cat furry).

When I built a little setting for my Daggerheart campaign, I simply situated each of the core Ancestries (basically all the core 5e ones and then a few extra, 18? total?) within the world - and suggested that some are pretty rare and we should work together to figure out how and why your character is out and about.

Nobody wanted to be the turtle person, but they could've been. One person is a cat, who I framed as the descendants of magery-created bound-warriors. She's been having a great time establishing fiction about how they relate to the world today.

Somebody else is a Faun, and built off my little tidbit (generally live around here, migratory, etc) to add a bunch more color.

The only species I lined out were the I Can't Believe They're Not Warforged (or whatever the Robot CR person was), and I think the Fungal folk, and I was upfront in the setting summary that everybody got to look through before session 0 as to why.

And I built all this off the very "old school" vibed D&D world of the Paksenerrion series. I just used the baseline to give interesting reasons why all these species existed, which honestly was some fun world building!

 

[Scribe]

"There's a whole bunch of weird playable races" is a long standing one.

For the supposed "new playerbase" that doesn't even know who Conan is, who may now are legal adults in North America, who only have the PHB at best?

 

[SableWyvern]

There's probably not much point in me even chiming in, but what I'm seeing is not an argument about DMs vs players.

I'm seeing arguments about DMs who prefer a particular playstyle vs players who want a different playstyle.

In reality, either these differences can be worked through (and I assume they often are), or they are are intractable. In the latter case, as with any strong difference in preferences, the remaining option is for people to walk away.

I can see only two reasons for the conversation still to be going on:

One is that differences of opinion are frequently being expressed in snide asides as signs of inferior moral standing or creative incompetence, which of course gets people's back's up. It's possible I contributed to this earlier in the conversation; if so, I offer my personal apologies. At the end of the day, though, there is nothing wrong with a player who wants strong control over some setting design elements (including a specific character) and there is nothing wrong with a GM who has a clear vision for the game they want to run and plans to stick this this vision. The only time either side is wrong is if they consider a difference in playstyle preferences as some kind of personal failing by the other party. I suppose a related sub-reason for the conversation to be continuing is that people want to "win", by proving that their preferred style is objectively superior.

The other reason is that "walking away" isn't treated as an acceptable outcome, despite the fact that it's almost always the best solution to truly incompatible styles. Framing it as one side winning and the other losing is part of this. If you feel you've lost, whether as a GM or a player, it's worth reassessing why you're participating at all. A situation where you have a group of friends, where simply walking away may not be an option, is also not a situation where I think an intractable stalemate is likely to rear it's head in the first place, so I don't see this as a concern.

I will add that, if anyone is struggling to find a group with a matching style, I can understand that is probably very frustrating, but it's not a reason to denigrate these other people just because they enjoy something different. I do wish these people the best in eventually finding a group that matches their preferences.

 

[Mecheon]

For the supposed "new playerbase" that doesn't even know who Conan is, who may now are legal adults in North America, who only have the PHB at best?

The most famous D&D things at the moment, absolute pathways to it, are Baldurs Gate 3 and Critical Role

BG3 features Githyanki who, let's be brutally honest, are not anywhere close to a stock simple race, very heavily in marketing and trailers, and Dragonborn especially have their whole thing with Durge as the stock character there

CR equally does use some obscurer options and it alone gave firbolg the biggest popularity boost they've ever had

That's what new people coming into the game will think. Those are the new player touchstones. The days of "Four human options, elves, dwarves and gnomes" are gone

Just saying, when popular streamer Ironmouse does the occasional D&D stream, she's not playing something that stock, she's playing a triton done up as a mermaid, and I think its pretty fair to say Ironmouse has more viewers than most D&D games have players.

 

[Moving Pictures]

You don't seem to understand the meaning of compromise when it means "The player gets whatever they want and ignores the DM." I gave an example of someone that has all the characteristics of a tortle except for the physical form. It was rejected out of hand.

Uh... that's not what a compromise is.