el-remmen
Moderator Emeritus
"It depends" does a lot of the work.
It depends on the player. It depends on specific campaign. It depends on the make up of the group and the context in which we are playing.
And of course it depends on the game! I use D&D in the examples below because we play that most, but different games have different expectations of setting, genre, and accomodation.
However, taking my home games over the years as the default, I would say:
I try to be accommodating. Or at least, I use it as an opportunity to begin the conversation I make sure to have with every player about their proposed character.
I am very much one of those "world-building DMs" for whom building the world for the players to explore is a large part of my enjoyment, so something way out of the sense of that setting is gonna lean towards "No, but. . ." In other words, making counter offers that try to adhere are closely to what the player wants and still fits the setting and the specific campaign theme.
Or, I might say "Yes, but. . ." and explain, as I did to the same player in two back to back campaigns, "You can play that lineage if you want, but you will be an outlier in this place and that will have in-game effects which could be good, bad, or neutral depending on the specific scenario."
So for example, that player wanted to play a tabaxi with snow leopard coloration in a setting with no tabaxi as an allowed species or even much a part of the general lore. But does that mean, that there aren't secluded communities of tabaxi in the mountains or on an island somewhere? No it doesn't. So as long as the player is okay with being a curiosity wherever they go and being mistrusted by some and perhaps over-loved by others ("OMG! CAT! CUTE!") then we can proceed. And we did and its been fine, in fact the player has complained more than once that perhaps people aren't reacting to her as much as I'd made it sound and we came to an agreement that she can assume people are giving her a wide berth and/or staring or whispering, when she comes to town - but that unless it has a direct effect on players actions, I am not going to constantly narrate it.
In other words, we talk it through and come up with a compromise or alternative.
Furthermore, for me players contribute to the setting through their backstory (however, brief or involved it might be) and through their in-game inquiry. I.E. show me what you are interested in doing through your character's actions/choices.
However, my current (and foreseeable future) setting has a built in mechanism to allow players a very wide field for what they want to come up with: Characters come from one part of the world that I will never detail beyond some basic notions (it is a land of constant fighting between many empires and large kingdoms, most monsters there have been wiped out, there is very little to no "frontier" left, and so-called "monstrous humanoids" have been genocided by the so-called "Free Peoples") and will go adventuring in a very distant different part of the world their characters know little about beyond it is out of the decadent and turbulent sphere of what we call "the Inchoate Empires" and allows them to escape it. There is a base understanding in these games, "We will never be going back to where you came from in-game."
As such, I let them come up with basically anything they want about where they came from and I make up the stuff about where they are going. This does not mean that their backstory and land of origin has no effect on the game. For example, in the last campaign, the druid was looking for his estranged husband who had fled to this part of the world after getting into legal/political trouble, and the orc-born* barbarian was seeking signs that his people aren't actually wiped out, and the bard/wizard was looking for lore and magic that had been lost from the Empires, and so on. . .)
You can read some more about the setting here: About MAKRINOS or on my campaign wikis, like this one: Makrinos Campaigns - Ghosts of Saltmarsh
It depends on the player. It depends on specific campaign. It depends on the make up of the group and the context in which we are playing.
And of course it depends on the game! I use D&D in the examples below because we play that most, but different games have different expectations of setting, genre, and accomodation.
However, taking my home games over the years as the default, I would say:
I try to be accommodating. Or at least, I use it as an opportunity to begin the conversation I make sure to have with every player about their proposed character.
I am very much one of those "world-building DMs" for whom building the world for the players to explore is a large part of my enjoyment, so something way out of the sense of that setting is gonna lean towards "No, but. . ." In other words, making counter offers that try to adhere are closely to what the player wants and still fits the setting and the specific campaign theme.
Or, I might say "Yes, but. . ." and explain, as I did to the same player in two back to back campaigns, "You can play that lineage if you want, but you will be an outlier in this place and that will have in-game effects which could be good, bad, or neutral depending on the specific scenario."
So for example, that player wanted to play a tabaxi with snow leopard coloration in a setting with no tabaxi as an allowed species or even much a part of the general lore. But does that mean, that there aren't secluded communities of tabaxi in the mountains or on an island somewhere? No it doesn't. So as long as the player is okay with being a curiosity wherever they go and being mistrusted by some and perhaps over-loved by others ("OMG! CAT! CUTE!") then we can proceed. And we did and its been fine, in fact the player has complained more than once that perhaps people aren't reacting to her as much as I'd made it sound and we came to an agreement that she can assume people are giving her a wide berth and/or staring or whispering, when she comes to town - but that unless it has a direct effect on players actions, I am not going to constantly narrate it.
In other words, we talk it through and come up with a compromise or alternative.
Furthermore, for me players contribute to the setting through their backstory (however, brief or involved it might be) and through their in-game inquiry. I.E. show me what you are interested in doing through your character's actions/choices.
However, my current (and foreseeable future) setting has a built in mechanism to allow players a very wide field for what they want to come up with: Characters come from one part of the world that I will never detail beyond some basic notions (it is a land of constant fighting between many empires and large kingdoms, most monsters there have been wiped out, there is very little to no "frontier" left, and so-called "monstrous humanoids" have been genocided by the so-called "Free Peoples") and will go adventuring in a very distant different part of the world their characters know little about beyond it is out of the decadent and turbulent sphere of what we call "the Inchoate Empires" and allows them to escape it. There is a base understanding in these games, "We will never be going back to where you came from in-game."
As such, I let them come up with basically anything they want about where they came from and I make up the stuff about where they are going. This does not mean that their backstory and land of origin has no effect on the game. For example, in the last campaign, the druid was looking for his estranged husband who had fled to this part of the world after getting into legal/political trouble, and the orc-born* barbarian was seeking signs that his people aren't actually wiped out, and the bard/wizard was looking for lore and magic that had been lost from the Empires, and so on. . .)
You can read some more about the setting here: About MAKRINOS or on my campaign wikis, like this one: Makrinos Campaigns - Ghosts of Saltmarsh
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