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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sword of Spirit" data-source="post: 6558501" data-attributes="member: 6677017">No problem. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Sure. That's within the parameters. That's like saying they want to be the wizard, or even (in the games I run and play in) asking if you can include a custom spell or feat that you designed yourself. I'm completely willing to entertain those ideas.The issue can come in regarding what sort of work the DM has put into it. Take my current example. We're just finishing up the LMoP adventure. I made a small list of house rules (most of which never even came up), and told players they could play anything in the PHB (except I disallowed the Healer feat, because it rubs me the wrong way). I also told them this would likely be the last campaign I ran where that was the case, so take advantage of it now. Consequently, we have a dragonborn and a tiefling in the party.The point is that I didn't put anything into that adventure or world. It is a published adventure that is in what for me is an alternate version of the Forgotten Realms that will never come to be in my normal D&D multiverse.On the other hand, a lot of DMs (including me) create our own worlds and spend dozens or hundred of unpaid hours crafting cultures, pantheons, nations, histories, calendars, etc. If someone comes to that game and asks if they can play a race that isn't a part of my world, it would be like asking if you can play a Vulcan or Klingon in a game set in Middle-Earth. No, you can't. Maybe you can be an aloof elf, or a strangely honorable orc, but that's as close as you can get without taking a crap on the world's integrity. If you allow a Vulcan or Klingon you are no longer playing in Middle-Earth. It might work if you are playing some sort of multi-dimensional game where you hop around from fictional realities to other fictional realities all posited to exist in the same multiversal arrangement or something. But that is hardly a shift in your campaign idea that a player who has put little work on designing it has any right to even seriously ask you to do, much less expect it to happen.Now, if player asks, "can I be a member of an order of knighthood that is kind of like..." I can accommodate that, and am usually happy to do so. Unless the world is built around a few specific orders of knighthood being the only ones on the block, it doesn't mess with anything. It's like saying you want to be from a seaside village. I'd ask the player what they want the village to be like in general terms, or maybe even let them design it! But if they say, I want to play a cleric of Thor, when Thor isn't known on the world, the answer is straight up no. I'll give them alternatives that are present, but I'm not going to bend what has already been established about the nature of the world to accommodate it. When we get into races that is just as fundamental a part of what the world is all about as the pantheons, history, or nations. Maybe that's where I differ from some people. If you see races as just a variety of nationalities, it might not be a big deal to throw in a country of race x here or there. But fantasy species are as big of deal as anything else in my essential world definitions, and you just can't add your Vulcan to my Middle-Earth.Exactly this. I always want to talk with my players before they make a character. I get no pleasure out of them showing up with a developed character and then be disappointed that it has to be disallowed.</blockquote>

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