Argument with the players

[Delta]

Am I right? Am I wrong? Should I fight this? Should I just create a campaign setting that allows this so I don't start loosing players? Is normal D&D already set up for this? Please help

You're right. But, you shouldn't fight this. Historically, AD&D was definitely not set up for this; it may be changing over time.

 

[fusangite]

Anyways, I play D&D through yahoo messenger (via conference) and tabletop. My tabletop game is mostly a new group, only 1 person other than myself has had previous experience but the online group is substantially larger and everybody has had their own experiences. There are about 5 or 6 GM's total who run regularly and close to 30 players. Naturally there is a lot of intermingling in games. Many of the games are overrun with monster races and min-maxing. As somebody who started with AD&D (only 5 years ago, my group was behind the trend) I have always had a bit of a thing against the monster races and min/maxing that seems so common. For a game that hits level 10 its not uncommon to see 5 base classes and/or prestige classes on one character. Many people have been playing for years and are experimenting, which I can understand. But the thing that torks me off most is that it seems that I'm becoming a minority in the fact that if you play a drow, expect to be run out of town with spears being poked into your hindquarters, if you play a tiefling, expect to be distrusted if not outright hated because you have horns and goats feet.

Well, if you were not playing in a giant online kitchen sink clown car, you would find your views would be treated as perfectly normal.

But clearly the people who are attracted to games in which everybody is some kind of Undead Half-Nixie, has a level or two in Llama Slayer or Radiant Sodomite and is firing Japanese throwing stars and muskets at their adversaries are not the kind of people who are going to be interested in some kind of anthropological fidelity.

Problem is, I'm the only DM out of the group who enforces this.

I recommend that you either give up co-GMing or co-GM with people who are on the same page as you are.

The players say that the commoners shouldn't act that way and that they would know about such races and how they CAN be good. I respond by saying that all the commoners and guards know is stories told by a gleeman at the local fair or a wandering minstrel about evil dark skinned elves and fiends with horns, fiery eyes and hooves who destroy towns.

Your reasoning is sound but it is not consistent with the social contract of the game in which you are participating. What you need to do is find players who actually like your style. You can't force people to want different things from the game than what you are interested in providing.

They seem to think that such creatures are fairly common while I say that they aren't. Unfortunately, its about a 20 to 1 fight and I'm not egotistical enough to believe I can't be wrong (though acording to society the fact that I'm 18 makes me naturally egotistical). Am I right? Am I wrong?

Both:
You are RIGHT that in a socially realistic D&D society, common people would tend to discriminate against tieflings, drow, etc.
You are WRONG that the people for whom you are GMing want a socially realistic D&D society.

Should I fight this?

No. Put your energy into finding people who share your tastes and gaming with them.

Should I just create a campaign setting that allows this so I don't start loosing players?

You want different things than your players do. There is no in-game solution to this problem. The solution is to game with people who want similar things to you.

 

[0bsolete]

I've made a decision finally in regards to this subject. I am going to develop a high-magic campaign setting where the logic the players use also applies to the rest of the world, explain this to them clearly, and then see if they like it that way or would prefer it to revert back to the original. Basically, the other GM's of the group allow players such as that, but NPC's are fairly normal, mainstream gygaxian type NPC's. I figure it might be interesting for the party to see a group of drow in the street armed to the teeth, have the party attack them because drow NPC's are always evil, and then get thrown in jail for racism and murder of innocents.

Now, I do note I am not doing this to get back at the players. They are used to a Forgotten Realms-esque world, with high fantasy characters which grates on me. I tried doing a fairly by the DMG setting and forcing that one the players which they fought back against. Now I'm going to try the alternative and see if they actually enjoy a high-fantasy world where racism is light at best and those with celestial and demonic and dragonic blood walk into the market and buy some beef and bread for patty melts and where half-fiends are just mistrusted instead of feared.

 

[Vegepygmy]

Now I'm going to try the alternative and see if they actually enjoy a high-fantasy world where racism is light at best and those with celestial and demonic and dragonic blood walk into the market and buy some beef and bread for patty melts and where half-fiends are just mistrusted instead of feared.

Please, please, please don't forget to come back and tell us how that turns out!

 

[robertliguori]

I've made a decision finally in regards to this subject. I am going to develop a high-magic campaign setting where the logic the players use also applies to the rest of the world, explain this to them clearly, and then see if they like it that way or would prefer it to revert back to the original. Basically, the other GM's of the group allow players such as that, but NPC's are fairly normal, mainstream gygaxian type NPC's. I figure it might be interesting for the party to see a group of drow in the street armed to the teeth, have the party attack them because drow NPC's are always evil, and then complete the hat trick by murdering the town watch, burning the town to the ground, looting the non-flammable and least melty of the wreakage, and framing the whole deal on the original group of drow.

I fixed that for you. PCs that react with violence often keep reacting with violence. Just FTR.

Actually, I do find the idea of a world that had been burned by too many assumptions about who was good and who was evil to trust preconceived notions on a racial scale interesting. Don't kill the drow because they're black-skinned and trecharous; kill them because that's Ka'nazi the Merciless, who stabbed a mayor's daughter because she heard it said that the daughter had prettier hair than Ka'nazi did.

This assumes players who will assume that NPCs are all unique and beautiful snowflakes with their own histories, desires, and motivations, and not walking bundles of XP and loot, of course.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

Hm... those screens have no internal speakers. So why are they (or at least the one with opera on it) shouting "PLANESCAPE" right now? Makes no sense!


Well, of course, the DM is always right, and the players always have the right not to play, and some interplay between the two is required, but the players should not be able to order the DM around any more than he should call all the shots all the time with the players being mere spectators.

I think the idea of going Discworld* on the campaign and the players' assumptions is a good one. What's sauce for the goose and so on! If it turns out that they want the world to be open-minded about them while being allowed to be prejudiced against everything else, it's your responsibility to educate them a bit!


*For those who don't know the Discworld, one of the best things about it is that Terry Pratchett took all those staples of fantasy - its stereotypes, its assumptions, the big stories, and so on - and shamelessly applied some Real World to it: Thinking it all through and looking where something like that would lead if actual people were involved. Not logical or consistent, because the Real World isn't logical or consistent, but just like you could imagine things going if they happened here and now.

Some examples:

The Discworld has the stereotypical dwarf - a short fella about 4 feet high, as well as wide, wearing heavy armour, carrying an axe, drinking, looking for fights, thinking about gold all the time (they don't love gold, mind you - they only said that to get it into bed!).
But that's just the "city dwarf": The dwarves who decide to leave the ancestral mines to go to the Big City Ankh-Morpork. Sensible guys and gels who were the very image of politeness back home start acting like drunken thugs as soon as they go away from home and into the big city.

You also have "blue ribbon" vampires who swear off blood, meet every week to tell the Group about how they fought against their addiction.

Magic isn't the mystical fire-and-forget force you know from other worlds: Due to the universal law that to do something you have to put a specific amount of effort into it, no matter how you do it, it takes about the same amount of time and effort to memorize a spell to levitate a rock 10 feet up onto a ledge than it would take to get the stone up there the old way (it used to be different, back when Sourcery, the source of magic, was about, but after that nearlly ripped apart time and space, the laws of magic were changed).

Also, just because it's magic doesn't mean that you can ignore all the natural laws. If you teleport something from one place to another, you'll have to take something of about equal weight back. And, of course, the calculations have to be correct, or the subject will be history - or, rather, geography. Those calculations include different rotational speeds depending on how far away from the hub you are. If you teleport from the rim to the hub, you better land running!)

 

[Slapzilla]

But clearly the people who are attracted to games in which everybody is some kind of Undead Half-Nixie, has a level or two in Llama Slayer or Radiant Sodomite and is firing Japanese throwing stars and muskets at their adversaries are not the kind of people who are going to be interested in some kind of anthropological fidelity.

If you are in the minority and don't want to adjust, finding a better fit would be a great solution.

Nothing wrong with going all literalist on them but you run the risk of pettiness.