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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Raven Crowking" data-source="post: 2578078" data-attributes="member: 18280">Since you asked, thus far I have generally allowed just about every request that's been made, except when one player wanted to make a half-ogre and when another player wanted to make a dragon.  The player who wanted to make a half-ogre was allowed to make an anthropomorphic bear instead (his second choice), because the campaign world supported the idea of humanoid animals (part of the cosmology).  The player who wanted to make a dragon decided previously to give each of his characters a heretofore unknown draconic deity (one outside the campaign workbook, of his own design) who (among other things) the player claimed created the world.  Hrm.  I didn't disallow what the player thought, but worked it into the world.  The campaign workbook brought racial restrictions on class back into the game.  He wanted to play a vetoed race/class combination as his initial character.  I allowed it (making him the first half-orc chosen by the Gods to be a paladin in the history of the world).  His third character, a barbarian, ended up talking about yet another new dragon deity that had an anti-matter breath weapon.  I had to remind that player that (a) there was no anti-matter within the context of the world (nor cellular biology, nor the germ theory of disease, etc) and (b) his barbarian was not a 21st Century physicist.When the dragon request came, I pointed out (again) that within the context of the campaign world, dragons were considered to be the embodiement of evil and greed, much as they were in the Western Middle Ages.  He still wanted to play a dragon.  I pointed out that almost everyone he met would flee or try to kill him.  He still wanted to play a dragon.Eventually, the group got a polymorph wand.  They used all of its few remaining charges....turning him into a dragon.Thereafter, he was surprised to learn that almost everyone he met fled from him, and a few braver souls fired arrows.  Somehow, in a world where the only dragons anyone had ever met were evil, individual, folkloric dragons, he thought everything would be fine when he became a dragon.Now, you might see this as punishing him for getting what he wanted.  I view it as a roadblock.  Part of the DM's job, in my view, is to make sure that the PCs encounter believable roadblocks.The PC decided to try to get the polymorph dispelled at a place called Rookhaven.  Heading there, he flew over the (known) lair of a (known) villian who calls himself the Dragon.  The PC was surprised when the villain took this as sort of a challenge.Currently, he's still a dragon.  With work, he might be able to get what he wants (acceptance in that form), but I am not going to hand it to him on a plate.Every other request was accepted thus far.Hope that answers your question.Did you know that that was actually brought up in the 1st Edition DMG?  The PCs of players found reading the DMG were only worthy of a sudden death, or something like that.  The current version is much better in that regard.Heck, from a ruleset standpoint, or a game design standpoint, it is light years ahead of the old stuff (sorry, Diaglo).  However, to create the type of game I personally prefer, it requires tinkering.  Some of that tinkering is, admittedly, designed to restore elements from previous editions.RCEDIT:  Forgot another request that I recently denied:  essentially, "Can't we just say my dead character got out of death for good behaviour?"</blockquote>

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