Kitchen Sink vs. Parsimony?

[Traveller From Afar]

Parsimony I think. It helps keep a campaign focused, many rulebooks cast the net far and wide to appeal to as many people as possible, but only you know what your group really wants.

 

[Dausuul]

Since polls always seem to leave out the more nuanced positions, I'm posting this question for discussion only.

When you create a campaign world, do you prefer a "kitchen sink" approach (if it's in the rulebook, it's in the campaign setting; creates a world that looks like the Mos Eisley cantina or the 80s D&D cartoon) or a more restrictive paradigm where you pick and choose what exists in the game world? The latter approach would be more like your typical fantasy novel: in Middle-Earth, there's no need for gnomes because hobbits fill the "little hero" niche, and the variety of monsters in Middle-Earth certainly wouldn't fill a Monster Manual.

I prefer the restricted approach: I pick and choose. For monsters, it's a mix. There are generally a number of monstrous species, but there are also plenty of unique beasts.

 

[Ariosto]

On the second point, unique monsters (and magics, too) figured more in my old Holmes Edition D&D game. Characters went only up to third level, and as a consequence the game took on a very different character than common D&D.

As to more usual D&D, T&T, etc., I am of an early generation (started 1976) influenced by examples of inclusion of many worlds in the typical compass of pioneering campaigns -- even to the point of cross-campaign communication of characters and other elements.

The World of Greyhawk folio received some criticism in the pages of The Dragon for being too prosaic, for failing to convey the fantastic as vividly as accounts from the seminal game. Barsoom and Wonderland were certainly departures from the norm and clearly "different worlds" from the main one -- but the dungeons were nonetheless pretty indiscriminately packed with wonders relative to later, more thoroughly "rationalized" efforts.

To me, it is other games that I associate with parsimony, and very pleasantly so. I don't want dragons rampaging through Paris in Flashing Blades or cyborg sorcerers intriguing in the Lakeside City of Gangbusters.

Gamma World and Lords of Creation and Villains & Vigilantes, though, like D&D and T&T, feel to me like games in which one cannot count out anything as impossible.

 

[Thunderfoot]

What Danny said...On both counts.

 

[Wednesday Boy]

As a player I like to have options open to me, so I like the kitchen sink approach. But I've also found that limiting the races available to the major races inherrently connects the characters to events that will happen in the campaign setting.

If the dwarves and elves are at war with the humans and all of the PCs are dwarves, elves, or humans each character is automatically tied to the major drama in the campaign. Whereas if you allowed any race and got a dwarf, a goliath, and a gnome two of the PCs wouldn't have that natural connection.

Maybe the best solution is to meet halfway. The GM's plot may start as the war between the dwarves, elves, and humans and they could keep a kitchen sink policy. But then shift the races to suit the campaign. If they get a human, a goliath, and a gnome PC they could morph their campaign so now it's a goliath/gnome/human war. The players have all of the options available to them and the PCs are all intimately tied to the campaign.

(Of course this won't work if the GM or plot can't accomodate a race change.)

 

[Theo R Cwithin]

It depends on the campaign, but generally I prefer to DM with a restricted approach. When a player wants something outside the norm for the setting, it's easy enough to create a justification for it in the world. Heck, I make the player do most of that himself, and get some free world-building out of it.

It's also easier, imho, to add something to a restricted world than to remove something (for example, a broken class, ill-fitting race, or problematic item) from an unrestricted world.

 

[Corathon]

In my game world, most everything in the standard books exists somewhere - but not everything exists everywhere. For example, in one part of the world there might be hill, stone, and mountain giants - but no frost, fire, cloud or storm giants. Or there might be no orcs or dwarves in one part of the world. Really weird (and dangerous) monsters might be restricted to remote areas (or deep dungeon levels).

 

[Doug McCrae]

I like kitchen sink and unique monsters. For pretty much the same reasons - my low boredom threshold and love of the new, the strange and the unknown.

<- Neophiliac


EDIT: That said, parsimonious worlds can also work, though they have a shorter shelf life. They're more consistent, the colours match. Dark Sun, Birthright and Al-Qadim are more aesthetically pleasing, imo, than Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk.

 

[Sepulchrave II]

Typically, I'm frugal with races (often entirely humanocentric) and prefer a very limited palette of monsters to begin with.

Then things go wahoo and completely out of control.

 

[d2OKC]

I'm in the middle of DMing a long-running campaign (at least, long running for our group - almost two years straight now!), and I started it fairly parsimoniously. I told them they could use any race or class from the main books, but to stay away from monstrous humanoids and strange races like genasi, bladelings, etc.

Since then, I've learned I'm much more in favor of a kitchen sink approach. Giving the players more freedom is just more fun to me as a DM and the players seem to invest more in those characters than they do when they're restricted.

I'm already plotting out a campaign for when this one ends. The current one is homebrew, based around a city I created specifically so the players could fill in the gaps. Next I want to try something more polished so I decided on either Eberron (very kitchen sinkish) or Dark Sun (very limited in its options) and just couldn't talk myself into wanting to play Dark Sun as a player, even though it is probably more appealing as a DM. So, I'm going with Eberron, and I'm basically going to tell them to create any character they can imagine, and see what kind of story comes out of them. I'm pretty excited about it.

As for monsters, I go either way with them, just depending on the story. Dragons, obviously, are more unique, but I get bored pretty easily using the same monsters over and over, so I will usually just create fun encounters, regardless of how it really affects the world around them, and justify it later. It's more fun for me that way.