hawkeyefan
Legend
And an awful lot of arguments simply collapse when you acknowledge that people are just trying to find a game that's fun for them instead of attributing some other motivation to them.
So when you say this, you mean like acknowledge that someone just wants to play a certain character they had in mind, and they're not out to ruin anyone else's fun?
Or no?
I don't care about the difference between them in the context of this discussion. Whether a difference is jarring is up to the people involved in a game, it's not an objective matter that you get to sit back and arbitrate whether people jarred by it are wrong. I simply don't accept your contention that you are the arbiter of what is 'fundamentally disruptive' to games and that other players and DMs are not allowed to make the decision of what is disruptive for themselves. Some people enjoy playing "Dark Sun, but the PCs are all Star Fleet officers with light sabers", some people want to play only things supported by what's actually written, most people are in between those extremes.
I'm not arbitrating anything. I'm suggesting. Yes, it's very much a subjective thing. I'm giving my view, and suggesting that maybe more DMs allow themselves to consider what I'm saying. It helped my game, maybe it will help others.
Obviously, there are those that disagree, and that's fine....but I don't think what I'm suggesting is all that drastic.
And stop with the mismatched genre expectations like Starfleet officers on Dark Sun. No one's talking about that. We're talking about options that actually exist in the core game.
There's nothing weird about it; playing games is inherently a selfish act. The fundamental motive for gaming is enjoyment in some form, it's for the gamer's own benefit. Arguments criticizing someone for being 'selfish' fall apart when you acknoweldge that everyone involved is selfish, and you can then move on to real discussion. People make compromises because if you don't make any compromises, you end up with no one to game with.
No, it's not. Selfish means that you lack concern for others. Choosing to play a game is not "inherently selfish". This seems especially at odds with a cooperative game.
And if he doesn't choose another way to deal with it, then... what exactly? The only phrase you've used is that he's "messed up," or that it means that the setting is "fragile".
You're taking those comments out of context. I said that if I let one of my players walk away from a game, then "In my mind, I've messed up". That's my personal view about my game, which I explained was played with personal friends. Why wouldn't that be a mistake?
And the setting being fragile is more about if the only thing that makes it unique is the lack of race X, then it's not that unique. If there's a lot more to the setting, or if the theme of the setting is inherently designed around the racial restriction, then that's something different.
If you have one player who only wants to play if he can shoehorn in a gnome and another who doesn't want to play if gnomes are shoehorned in, then you're in a catch-22.
Most of the concerns that have been cited in this thread have come from DMs, not from fellow players. So that's what I've mostly been discussing. If you have a player who hates gnomes so much that he doesn't want to play in a game where they're an option, and one that insists on playing a gnome, then yeah, it's a situation and it will have to be worked out.
I don't see how the gnome hater is any better than the gnome lover, in your opinion, since most settings would allow gnomes. Seems far worse in my opinion to try and dictate what other players are allowed to play.
I guess all of those are examples that support my view that if there are players who find those changes off-putting, it doesn't mean that there is something wrong with those players or that the setting is 'fragile.' I'm not really sure what you're actually looking for examples of, since asking for examples doesn't make sense to me in this context.
I just mean examples of racial restrictions that are integral to a setting concept. Any homebrew ones? The ones I gave are in published settings....and for the most part, they don't seem that meaningful to me. None of them bother me, but none really seem so setting-defining that I feel they absolutely must be upheld.
Do you have any examples of something so central to the campaign theme that removing it would be a drastic change?