Do highly unique characters still get a bad rep; and: how to give them room to exist?

[MGibster]

For instance, an elf in my setting that's an adventurer? You're not a typical elf- elves don't want to gamble their incredibly long lives on daily adventures and treading through sewage and monster teeth.

To some degree, every PC is special. At least in most games. In most fantasy settings, your average person is a farmer, tradesman, or merchant rather than an adventurer no matter if they're an elf, halfling, or tortle. Even in a game like Call of Cthulhu, most people just don't investigate eldritch horrors, in Star Trek most people aren't in the Federation having adventures, and in Shadowrun most people aren't running with the shadows of the night.

 

[Thomas Shey]

In my many years of playing and running games I have only rarely seen behaviour that even comes close to this.

Forget it Jake, its Bloodtide.

 

[TiQuinn]

The classic is they want to be some sort of "monster" with claws, flames or whatever.

Like a dragonborn, or a genasi, or a tiefling? How dare a player come to a table expecting to play a PC race that they've heard others are playing!

 

[John Dallman]

It depends on the setting, and the premise. The last time I had to be firm about this was with a campaign within the great big meta-campaign, where the characters were a newly formed squad within a city's police force. One of the players was immediately thinking in terms of exotic cross-breeds with bizarre motives, and was unwilling to believe that fairly mundane characters were most appropriate for the premise. But it was that or not play.

The character calls himself "Librus X" and all the players soon realised that he wanted to be addressed as "Mr X." They have never done so, regarding it as pretension on his part, and having grasped the idea that just being people was what the campaign needed.

 

[John Dallman]

Like a dragonborn, or a genasi, or a tiefling? How dare a player come to a table expecting to play a PC race that they've heard others are playing!

"There's none of them round here, lad. Dragons and elementals in this world aren't interested in breeding with humans, and half-demons are treated as demons."

 

[Lord Shark]

I play 13th Age, where player characters are literally required to have One Unique Thing about them. Miraculously, the world does not collapse.

 

[Swanosaurus]

I play 13th Age, where player characters are literally required to have One Unique Thing about them. Miraculously, the world does not collapse.

I love that about 13th Age, and it's something that I definitely plan to use in whatever fantasy campaign I start next (sadly, apart from that, 13th Age isn't my thing at all, I hate the hard disconnect between combat and everything else ...).

 

[CleverNickName]

Like a dragonborn, or a genasi, or a tiefling? How dare a player come to a table expecting to play a PC race that they've heard others are playing!

Expectations can be managed, though. That's the purpose of having a Session Zero: to square the DMs expectations for their campaign with the players' expectations for their character. You want to play a dragonborn, your DM doesn't want to include dragonborn in the campaign...so who is "wrong"?

Nobody. There is no "wrong" here, just a need for compromise. The player and the DM need to talk about why the dragonborn is so important to the player, and why dragonborn aren't included in the campaign, and find a way for both to get what they need. The DM needs to be ready to present viable alternatives, and the player needs to be ready to accept substitutions.

In my experience, nobody likes to play D&D with anyone who takes the "my way or the highway!" approach to compromise, on either side of the DM screen.

 

[MGibster]

In my many years of playing and running games I have only rarely seen behaviour that even comes close to this.

Ditto. I've seen it happen a few times, but most of the times I really feel as though players are engaged in a good faith effort to create a character. Sometimes it's as simple as having different ideas of what's appropriate for the campaign.

 

[bloodtide]

In my many years of playing and running games I have only rarely seen behaviour that even comes close to this.

It is all too common.

For a while drow were the popular ruin a game race to play. The player would get one in a game with some fast talking like saying "oh I'll keep the character wrapped up so no one can see this race (wink wink)". Until they...surprise...wanted to ruin the game.