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

[Remathilis]

they might all be false though…

Not sure what races they have or what their ranking of weirdness is, but yeah, you select from what is allowed

I believe it's stated the Classic PHB races are it. No monster races, no Planetouched, nothing newer than 2000. That's a pretty large swath of nos.

Characters can steal, they cannot be evil. Robin Hood fits that.

But stealing from unacceptable targets labels you a Kleptomaniac.

Not having a halfling empire you can be the king of is miles away from not allowing the Noble background.

I was under the impression that halflings have no ruling class to be a noble of. Though to my fair, I barely paid attention to that exchange.

 

[TwoSix]

I think that I'm just incompatible with the stance that "D&D campaigns are instrinsically intended to be kitchen-sink fantasy worlds, and DMs should not be restricting any player choices for characters".

This seems particularly absurd to me as I read Dolmenwood, which is classic OSR D&D, with clear changes from "default" D&D with the intention of creating a very specific tone and feel. Or Brancalonia, Adventures in Middle Earth, Obojima, or even Dark Souls.

As one of the main advocates for the "D&D is intrinsically kitchen-sink" position, I will say I think games like Dolmenwood and Brancalonia, or any other 3pp games that's essentially a well-curated D&D-type fantasy, are great.

But I believe there's a world of difference between presenting a player a published campaign setting and saying "We're going to be running this", and a GM typing up a bunch of notes and saying "You can't play drow because they're evil, and you can't play these particular races because I didn't include them in my campaign documents."

The core tension with worldbuilding is that worldbuilding is great fun for the GM. But outside of games where the worldbuilding is the point of play, like Microscope and Worldwizard, players (in general, not every player, I'm giving the legal caveats some people want) aren't interested in downloading a bunch of setting specific info to make characters. You can also notice how some more modern OSR games (like Dolmenwood and Mork Borg) also give a bunch of handy random tables so that players don't have to absrob as much setting info to make characters.

 

[Bae'zel]

they might all be false though…

Not sure what races they have or what their ranking of weirdness is, but yeah, you select from what is allowed

Characters can steal, they cannot be evil. Robin Hood fits that.

Not having a halfling empire you can be the king of is miles away from not allowing the Noble background.

There are plenty of RPGs out there with unique themes or pitches. You play Blades in the Dark accepting that your character is some kind of underworld criminal. You play Pirate Borg knowing that your character will be... a pirate. You play Household knowing that your character is one of the "little people" of the House.

Why is D&D considered a player free-for-all while other RPGs don't? Why can't I run a D&D campaign with a pitch like "you're all dwarves on an expedition to reclaim a mine from orcs and demons"? Hint, I have and the players loved it.

 

[AlViking]

Handful as in:

• No species weirder than an elf
• No characters who steal or commit any sort of crime
• No characters tied to nobility or do not fit the established political order.

And that's what I know about from this thread. I don't even know about how you handle classes. Frankly, I would be too terrified to consider a cleric, warlock or any other class where my power source was removable by GM fiat.

Handful as in

• The standard classes and subclasses are all allowed, if it's not from the PHB ask.
• No evil characters
  • If you state that your character is committing an evil act I'll let you know I consider it an evil act. About the only time it's ever come up was regarding torture, which I consider evil.
• I do limit patrons for warlocks for a variety of reasons.
  • If you select one from the list the patron is not going away.
  • I don't allow making a deal with a devil because you will eventually be asked to do something evil. Why else would the devil make the deal?
• I give you a list of standard deities but you are not limited to those, there are multiple religious beliefs in my world we can discuss. If you pick something else don't expect anyone else to share your beliefs.
• A list of species.
• Many places don't rely on a feudal system so kings and queens don't exist for every country.
  • The nobility thing? That was specific to halflings but may have also apply depending on where your character comes from.
  • I don't use the PHB backgrounds any more, we use custom backgrounds and the player just decides on proficiencies and modifiers. If they want more detail on backstory we'll discuss.

Why you insist on making these assumptions on how I run my game is beyond me.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

In my game where tortles don't exist? None. Which the player knew before we ever got together as a group to figure out what each player was going to be running. If they really wanted to run a tortle they should have joined a different game.

What if I said:
"I want to play a partially botched wizard experiment. The Wizard basically tried to get a longer-living human by magically combining a human with a turtle. I am the only experiment that lived, but I wasn't supposed to look like a bipedal turtle, and apparently, he realized that I will age like a normal human, so I was still a failured experiment to him and he anbonded me in the wilderness, basically, but some nomad tribe found me and took me in! We could use the Tortle stats, because they seem fun, and I really just like the visuals of a tortle character, after having played so many of the standard races like humans, elves, dwarves and what not. A Tortle seem like a fun change of pace, and maybe you can even use the background of the tribe or the wizard for the campaign. His search for longevity and immortality could be dangerous. I am not sure if he's avoiding the standard wizard immortiality route to become a lich, maybe he just isn't that talented, or he fears becoming undead? And the tribe could be in trouble and I owe them... or they cause trouble?"

 

[EzekielRaiden]

that cuts both ways

I'm not the one claiming anyone's preferences are more important than anyone else's.

There are several people here claiming that one particular participant's preferences are always more important.

As my recent trawl demonstrated, there are a handful of people who have taken a much more nuanced, much more conciliatory take. More than one of them has recognized that I, too, have called for sincerely meeting in the middle.

Whatever is cutting here, I do not see how it cuts the position I've consistently taken, across every single one of these threads: Consensus-building is nearly always possible, so long as everyone is participating in good faith; exceptions are fantastically rare, and generally indicate an incompatibility so fundamental, it probably should've been spotted earlier....again, unless someone wasn't actually participating in good faith.

"You will never get that thing you want, period" is not a position I consider to reflect participating in good faith. "There won't be <tortles/wemics/warforged/flumphs/etc.> in my world" is perfectly compatible with a character having some kind of related anatomy in many, many ways, as already noted:

• Traveller from another world
• Crashed alien
• Magical experiment
• Accidental contamination/mutation
• Awakened animal
• Unusual variant subgroup of something existing (e.g. lizardfolk for tortles, tabaxi for wemics, golems for warforged, etc.)
• Planar being of some kind (planes be weird, mang)
• A reincarnate spell went a little funky
• An inherited curse the character is trying to break (or a blessing they're trying to retain, if they like it)
• A transformation that has to be maintained--or possibly an addiction or the like
• A symptom of some (presumably magical) disease/infection/syndrome
• The product of a vengeful wish, a deity's (dis)favor, or otherwise an external imposition

That's a dozen reasons right there, and that's only if we're talking about someone whose primary goal is the aesthetic. If the primary goal is mechanical, refluffing can allow nearly any mechanic to work, so that's dead easy. Generally I don't pay much attention to this side of things because "refluff mechanic" is kind of a dead-end conversation, and the danger of "OH SO YOU'RE ONLY IN IT FOR POWERGAMING?!" is too great, even though the vast majority of kinda-weirdo races are, generally speaking, weak not strong. (Consider 2014 Dragonborn, which took two further iterations to finally get it right.)

"You simply will not get what you want" is not a matter of preserving setting consistency. At least one of the above things is surely compatible with the world-building in question--surely something among those twelve isn't going to wreck everything. I feel quite confident that this puts the "setting consistency" thing to rest. For the GM who actually wants to support player interest, even if it goes beyond the circles of the world they originally created, there is always a way. Which implies that, if the GM is saying there could not possibly be any way...well...

 

[mamba]

I believe it's stated the Classic PHB races are it. No monster races, no Planetouched, nothing newer than 2000.

which means what, Human, Dwarf, Elf, Halfling? Unsure about which ones exactly are in, but I agree that this is the only one where you may have a point about it being pretty limited. Still, ‘you’ knew this when joining / proposing the turtle

But stealing from unacceptable targets labels you a Kleptomaniac.

no, trying to drag a chest too heavy to carry out of a war camp you alerted, while ignoring all the warnings about the consequences does, and I assume that was not the only instance, just the one that got them killed

I was under the impression that halflings have no ruling class to be a noble of. Though to my fair, I barely paid attention to that exchange.

I am not even sure that was the same person, but it was about being the king of the halfling empire when there is none

 

[tetrasodium]

The core tension with worldbuilding is that worldbuilding is great fun for the GM. But outside of games where the worldbuilding is the point of play, like Microscope and Worldwizard, players (in general, not every player, I'm giving the legal caveats some people want) aren't interested in downloading a bunch of setting specific info to make characters. You can also notice how some more modern OSR games (like Dolmenwood and Mork Borg) also give a bunch of handy random tables so that players don't have to absrob as much setting info to make characters.

You might be substituting your own personal preference a bit too hard for that bolded bit as a general broad brush generality. I've had multiple players who absolutely adore worldbuilding because it allows their actions to have a real visceral impact on the world & they can often see some hint of those actions they took in another game with different characters. There have been even more who think it's kinda cool to see it all come together in play to the point where I got to witness them pitch it to some other player as a thing to be excited about joining my table for.

 

[AlViking]

What if I said:
"I want to play a partially botched wizard experiment. The Wizard basically tried to get a longer-living human by magically combining a human with a turtle. I am the only experiment that lived, but I wasn't supposed to look like a bipedal turtle, and apparently, he realized that I will age like a normal human, so I was still a failured experiment to him and he anbonded me in the wilderness, basically, but some nomad tribe found me and took me in! We could use the Tortle stats, because they seem fun, and I really just like the visuals of a tortle character, after having played so many of the standard races like humans, elves, dwarves and what not. A Tortle seem like a fun change of pace, and maybe you can even use the background of the tribe or the wizard for the campaign. His search for longevity and immortality could be dangerous. I am not sure if he's avoiding the standard wizard immortiality route to become a lich, maybe he just isn't that talented, or he fears becoming undead? And the tribe could be in trouble and I owe them... or they cause trouble?"

I would say tortles are not on my list of species, please pick one that is or we can talk about some compromise where you get just about everything but the physical form of an anthropomorphic tortoise.

If I allow one "botched wizard experiment" then I have no reason to disallow any other species as yet another "botched wizard experiment".

 

[EzekielRaiden]

What if I said:
"I want to play a partially botched wizard experiment. The Wizard basically tried to get a longer-living human by magically combining a human with a turtle. I am the only experiment that lived, but I wasn't supposed to look like a bipedal turtle, and apparently, he realized that I will age like a normal human, so I was still a failured experiment to him and he anbonded me in the wilderness, basically, but some nomad tribe found me and took me in! We could use the Tortle stats, because they seem fun, and I really just like the visuals of a tortle character, after having played so many of the standard races like humans, elves, dwarves and what not. A Tortle seem like a fun change of pace, and maybe you can even use the background of the tribe or the wizard for the campaign. His search for longevity and immortality could be dangerous. I am not sure if he's avoiding the standard wizard immortiality route to become a lich, maybe he just isn't that talented, or he fears becoming undead? And the tribe could be in trouble and I owe them... or they cause trouble?"

Absolutely loving all of these concepts for tortle characters. I don't think I will play one....but I must admit that this has inspired an interest in them I had not previously had.

I know--I'll include some the next time my players hit up the Ten-Thousand Isles of the Sapphire Sea. That area is pretty much explicitly my "Weird Stuff Origin Area" (if it's even remotely a compatible-with-other-sapient-life physiology), and I think some of my new players would enjoy turtle-people.