Kitchen Sink or Limits, Which for You?

[Lwaxy]

If you like kitchen sink settings, feel free to answer any or all of these follow-ups:

How far is too far? When does it go from a kitchen sink to “What are we playing, again?”

Is the kitchen sink any less acceptable if someone plays a character that went Too Far? (“Dude you’re playing a...pixie?”)

Do you homebrew even more options, or beg your DM to? (“I want to play an X, but it’s not published!”)

Basically, kitchen sink, or as we call it, bathtub drain

My big but(t):

Common sense. No Klingons in Faerun, No Vulcans on Athas. No elves on Corellia. No warforged on Golarion. No magic characters in non-magic worlds. No losers in a heroic campaign. It must make sense in the theme and setting.

I do have someone playing a pixie in my main campaign. Can easily hold up.

And yeah, when needed we work in new ideas - again, as long as they make sense in the setting. And in my experience, it works to the satisfaction of everyone if you work together on stuff.

 

[Lord Mhoram]

a game using Changelings, Dragonborn, Drow, Elans, Githzerai, Illumians, Genasi, Kalashtar (outside of Eberron), Revenants, Shades, Shardminds, Vampires, Warforged (out of Eberron) Tieflings or a host of other things as PC races.

We should never play at the same table then.
Which works, because we each know what we like.

I have all of those - minus the gith and the undead type races - but adding in a humanoid cat, dog/wolf race among lots of others.

This is exactly what I mean when I say that I want a busy port pub to look like the Cantina from Star Wars- everything you listed in one room for the PCs to interact with.

 

[kitsune9]

Themes.


The Auld Grump

This is me too. I'm running a gothic horror Carrion Crown AP that's on the verge of a Renaissance. Even though it's set in Golarion which is Forgotten Realmsianishlike and has all sorts of cultures and classes, I actually did limit them to ensure the feel of the campaign.

My own personal preference was that there wasn't any half-orcs (too monstrous for the closed-minded humans), players can't be barbarians, no samarai, ninja, gunslingers, no Tian humans, and no monks. Anyone who wasn't a Varisian human had penalties to their Diplomacy skill checks because they were outsiders.

I also strongly encouraged players to create characters to enhance the mood and theme.

 

[the Jester]

Do you typically DM and/or play in kitchen sink settings, or limited settings? That is, is your group’s setting one where any PC race and class is pre-approved or are certain options just not available? Which do you prefer?*

I am our group's primary dm; I run a limited setting, but one that is fairly open.

Best example: There are no Drow pcs in my campaign. Once in a while I'll have someone play an npc Drow or something, but Drow are monsters, not pcs.

If you like limited settings, feel free to answer any or all of these follow-ups:

Does it matter whether the restrictions stem from DM fiat (“I just don’t like sorcerers”), from setting themes (“The gods have abandoned Athas, so no divine PCs”), or from print origin (“Nothing from the Essentials books”)?

Not in practical terms; they are there, and that's that. (As a player I feel the same; it is the dm's game.)

Personally, I line-item ban for balance or setting reasons (Drow, for instance, are a highly mysterious, almost-never-seen race in my game, similar to how they were in their first appearance as monsters in G3).

I also have a philosophy of trying to let players do what they want, so many things I restrict are under what you might call a 'soft restriction,' where the first player who wants to play one gets to and then it's banned due to rarity. (The shardmind from the 4e PH3 is a great example; the racial flavor doesn't match my campaign setting, so I rewrote them as ancient constructs from an old empire known to use weird crystal technology; any surviving shardminds are either ancient, or were 'off' or in stasis for tens or hundreds of thousands of years. Thus, they are very rare, and I'm not letting anyone else other than the guy currently playing one play one for quite a while unless they somehow come into a place or time where it makes sense for there to be another one. A lot of the (IMHO) extraneous races from 3e fit in this category for me.)

If you like strongly thematic settings, is such a setting any less acceptable if your favorite races or classes aren’t part of the theme?

If there's nothing I'm interested in playing, I'm not interested in playing. That said, I'm not generally too hard to please on this score.

What about strongly thematic settings that naturally foster a kitchen sink attitude, like Planescape?

Nothing wrong with them, or with kitchen sink settings in general, and I'm happy to play in them. (Over the years, I've integrated more and more Planescape with my regular campaign, but still at mid and higher levels; I'm not a huge fan of 1st level planar stuff.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Player "I want to play a dragonborn fighter."

DM "Well a fighter is fine, but I don't allow dragonborn in my game."

Player "Why not, I really think they're cool?"

DM "Reptiles shouldn't have boobz!" or "It wasn't in the Hobbit!" or "Give me Draconians or give me death!"

Player "... yeah i think I'll go play WoW or something."

What's your point?

Like I said, I prefer limitations based on campaign reasons, not personal dislikes. That gives me a coherent, understandable world-based reason for why I as a player cannot play a PC concept I have in mind.

I did NOT say that restrictions based on personal dislikes ever prevented me from playing in some campaign...because none ever has. I've been told countless times that Monks or Paladins were not permitted in a game due to DM preference. In no case did those restrictions prevent me from playing in the game.

Sometimes, it didn't even prevent me from playing the same concept using another class (or classes). Don't want me to play a Monk? Fine, I'll play a Shaman (if they're allowed), a Cleric or Favored Soul (both with IUC) and the Metamagic Touch Spell feat.

Or, more commonly, I'll simply play something else- I've got thousands of PC concepts that just need to be dug out to be ready to play...

or it could be:

DM: I have a Middle Earth based game I want to run

Player: I want to play a dragonborn fighter

DM: This is a Middle-Earth based game.

Player: I want to play a dragonborn fighter!

DM: There are no dragonborn in Middle Earth!

Player: I want to play a dragonborn fighter

DM: Yeah, I think I will go play WoW or something....

In one of these situations, the game still happens, in the other, it dosent.

If I were really intent on playing a Dragonborn fighter, but Dragonborn were not permitted, I might then ask if feats like Draconic Heritage were available, and if so, go from there.

If it were strictly a M-E campaign, I'd design a warrior PC with scale mail (spiked?) and some kind of suitably "Draconic" weapon (Greatspear?)...and the skillset/multiclassing (whichever it took) to make & use alchemist's fire. He'd be a member of the "Dragonborn" mercenary company (which may or may not be extant at the time of the campaign).

 

[TheAuldGrump]

Player "I want to play a dragonborn fighter."

DM "Well a fighter is fine, but I don't allow dragonborn in my game."

Player "Why not, I really think they're cool?"

DM "Reptiles shouldn't have boobz!" or "It wasn't in the Hobbit!" or "Give me Draconians or give me death!"

Player "... yeah i think I'll go play WoW or something."

DM "Bye bye, we already filled your seat."

If you have a player making demands that don't fit the game and would rather play WoW than follow the guidelines? Let him go, he is not worth the trouble.

The Auld Grump

Dragonborn are 'kewl' not 'cool'.

The

 

[TheAuldGrump]

This is me too. I'm running a gothic horror Carrion Crown AP that's on the verge of a Renaissance. Even though it's set in Golarion which is Forgotten Realmsianishlike and has all sorts of cultures and classes, I actually did limit them to ensure the feel of the campaign.

My own personal preference was that there wasn't any half-orcs (too monstrous for the closed-minded humans), players can't be barbarians, no samarai, ninja, gunslingers, no Tian humans, and no monks. Anyone who wasn't a Varisian human had penalties to their Diplomacy skill checks because they were outsiders.

I also strongly encouraged players to create characters to enhance the mood and theme.

Exactly. Carrion Crown would also be fun in a Victorian style setting, most likely in Bavaria or the like.

The Auld Grump

 

[The Human Target]

or it could be:

DM: I have a Middle Earth based game I want to run

Player: I want to play a dragonborn fighter

DM: This is a Middle-Earth based game.

Player: I want to play a dragonborn fighter!

DM: There are no dragonborn in Middle Earth!

Player: I want to play a dragonborn fighter

DM: Yeah, I think I will go play WoW or something....

In one of these situations, the game still happens, in the other, it dosent.

Well to be fair, I'm fine with DMs limiting things for reasons of theme or flavour. Playing a Middle Earth game is a lot different than banning things just because of personal dislike.

And also to be fair, you need happy players to run a game just as much as a happy DM.

But my theoretical rply to the above scenario would probably be...

Player "Why are we using 4e to play a Middle Earth game when it presents rules and a default setting for a very un-Middle Earth like game? I spent money on PHBs and Martial Power and the Dragonborn splat book under the impression thats what we we're going to be playing."

 

[The Human Target]

DM "Bye bye, we already filled your seat."

If you have a player making demands that don't fit the game and would rather play WoW than follow the guidelines? Let him go, he is not worth the trouble.

The Auld Grump

Dragonborn are 'kewl' not 'cool'.

The

I'm just saying, keeping everyone happy is a good thing. Not just the DM.

 

[Ahnehnois]

What do you mean by forcibly? Like a FR type setting where every half-breed and oddball race and class has a defined origin?

I'm referring to statements I see about some settings like "if it's in D&D, it has a place in [X]!". Like Eberron (which sort of works because it's explicitly a riff on the D&D milieu) and Golarion (which seems like it's pandering to try and catch as much of the D&D fanbase as possible). I don't like it when designers explicitly say that they're taking a bunch of existing ideas, throwing them in a blender, and slapping a new label on whatever comes out. Worlds that are meaningfully different than 'base D&D' (whatever that is, Greyhawk maybe?) are more to my taste.

FR grates on me a bit, but there's so much good and unique stuff and so much history associated with it that I ignore what I don't like and enjoy the Baldur's Gate games for what they are.