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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 7821784" data-attributes="member: 29398">There's two different types of restrictions involved here, and I wonder if you're somehow combining them.One is setting restrictions.  The setting doesn't have Gnomes, for example, and nothing resembling the Monk class exists; thus, none such can be played.  These are fine, provided they're communicated up front. (this covers the Jedi example as well)The other is playstyle restrictions.  Not everybody in the setting is a 'hero' or is possessed of a heroic and-or altruistic personality, thus a restriction saying a player is only able to play a 'hero' is arbitrary and IMO poor.If, for example, on learning about the setting the players discover their main goal and reason for adventuring (as intended by the DM, anyway) is to work for and support the Royal House; to say that I-as-player am thus banned from bringing in a PC whose end goal is in fact to overthrow said Royal House is poor.Again, you're conflating restriction types.  "Play a character who is facing execution, you decide the reason" is an excellent jumping-off point for a campaign.  But restricting my choices of reasons then and actions later by saying I have to be a heroic type is wrong: it should be perfectly valid for me to decide I'm facing execution because I really am a hard-ass criminal and last week I tried to shoot the Queen because someone paid me to, and I got caught.This is cool, but seems to be exactly the sort of thing some here would like to ban; and that's my point.Yet again, these are different types of restrictions.  Setting-based restrictions such as "Gnomes don't exist here" (hard-line) or "everyone's first character must be Human as that's all there are around where the campaign will begin; other races can come in later once the party broadens its horizons" are fine.The "too-silly" restriction can be handled by simple dice rolling - sometimes the silly really does happen, but most of the time not.But the one about the plans not being able to come to fruition and so the GM doesn't allow the story arc to even begin - that's controversial IMO.  For my part it's the GM's job to roll with what they're given, even if said GM knows ahead of time that the story is doomed: if the PCs don't know it's doomed from the start then they should be allowed to start it and let the chips fall where they may.I'm going to hopefully assuming you're using small-S and small-N on simulation and narrative here, as otherwise you're drifting into Forge-speak which is where I'll get off the bus.As for [USER=177]@Umbran[/USER] 's point about available time, ask yourself this: are you going to still be running games in 10 years anyway?  20 years?  50 years? If yes, then you've got that many years to put to use - might as well design one campaign to fill 'em up; and an extra few sessions spent within said campaign on party conflict is, in the long run, a meaningless amount of time.  That said, it's time that the players will probably remember (often in a good way!) long after most other memories of the campaign have faded away.</blockquote>

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