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<blockquote data-quote="Dire Bare" data-source="post: 7905830" data-attributes="member: 18182">You are deliberately being hyperbolic and that doesn't add to the conversation.It's reasonable to open the Player's Handbook, get excited about playing a dragonborn, tiefling, or elf, and then be bummed when your overly cranky &quot;old school&quot; DM says &quot;No&quot; to maintain a false sense of setting purity. At least, in a &quot;standard&quot; D&amp;D game.If a player has a character concept of playing a &quot;Wookie&quot; or an &quot;Andorian&quot; in a pseudo-medieval game of D&amp;D? Why not? Easily done and not really much stranger than a dragonborn or even an elf. Use the racial stats of an elf, but give them blue skin and antennae. Player wants to build a Roland-style gunslinger? Swap out the guns for crossbows or wands . . . . use the Goliath racial stats, but make him super hairy and communicates in growls that everybody seems to understand, boom &quot;Wookie&quot;!Now, as DM, if you are trying to create a certain tone and feel and want the party to be mostly human and/or &quot;demihuman&quot; . . . . then doing so thoughtfully is fine. This can model certain styles of storytelling that you might want to emulate in your game. But doing so thoughtfully and in concert with the players during a session zero will go a long way to making a fun game for everyone without gaining the rep of a cranky DM who always says &quot;No&quot; due to &quot;reasons&quot; . . . and even then you can probably find ways for players to create Wookies, Andorians, and gunslingers without breaking the tone/theme you're going for . . . What irritates me when I'm joining a new group is when I ask the DM about the tone/feel/theme of the campaign and for guidelines for character creation . . . . and they can't really explain it but have a list of restrictions with arbitrary justifications. No dragonborn in my campaign! Why? Um, well, because? Gygax didn't invent them?</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Dire Bare, post: 7905830, member: 18182"] You are deliberately being hyperbolic and that doesn't add to the conversation. It's reasonable to open the Player's Handbook, get excited about playing a dragonborn, tiefling, or elf, and then be bummed when your overly cranky "old school" DM says "No" to maintain a false sense of setting purity. At least, in a "standard" D&D game. If a player has a character concept of playing a "Wookie" or an "Andorian" in a pseudo-medieval game of D&D? Why not? Easily done and not really much stranger than a dragonborn or even an elf. Use the racial stats of an elf, but give them blue skin and antennae. Player wants to build a Roland-style gunslinger? Swap out the guns for crossbows or wands . . . . use the Goliath racial stats, but make him super hairy and communicates in growls that everybody seems to understand, boom "Wookie"! Now, as DM, if you are trying to create a certain tone and feel and want the party to be mostly human and/or "demihuman" . . . . then doing so thoughtfully is fine. This can model certain styles of storytelling that you might want to emulate in your game. But doing so thoughtfully and in concert with the players during a session zero will go a long way to making a fun game for everyone without gaining the rep of a cranky DM who always says "No" due to "reasons" . . . and even then you can probably find ways for players to create Wookies, Andorians, and gunslingers without breaking the tone/theme you're going for . . . What irritates me when I'm joining a new group is when I ask the DM about the tone/feel/theme of the campaign and for guidelines for character creation . . . . and they can't really explain it but have a list of restrictions with arbitrary justifications. No dragonborn in my campaign! Why? Um, well, because? Gygax didn't invent them? [/QUOTE]

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