Kitchen Sink vs. Parsimony?

[Crazy Jerome]

While I agree with much of this post...how do you know what sand to leave out/which doesn't get used until the players have already traipsed through the sandbox?

I can't see hoe you could...so...all of the sand is necessary...until the players get their grubby lil mitts on it.

Precampaign discussions, which are then filled in and/or organized to make sense by the DM. It is not at all uncommon for us to start discussing such a campaign six months or more before the current one finishes.

If one players really wants to play a dwarven cleric and fight dragons--well, we know two pieces of sand right there, and it implies some more. The implications aren't fixed, but they are there. As more player and DM preferences are added into the pile, we find that those implications get fairly concrete.

And it is not as if we have to get everything right. There are things included that don't end up mattering. But roughly 80% of what we include will matter. We find that a lot better than having 30 odd races to pick from, and 10 of them matter.

 

[Barastrondo]

Speaking as someone who enjoys the idea of multiple cultures of gnolls more than multiple cultures of elves, but whose players don't all necessarily agree, I'd have to say I'm neither one nor the other. I could personally get rid of elves overall, but it'd be a heck of a retcon and too many players enjoy elves for that to be productive.

I tend to lean towards "parsimonious" per campaign, but kitchen sink for an overall world; so much as I love gnolls, they weren't recommended as an option for the urban swashbuckler campaign. Of course, they weren't banned, either -- if someone came up with an idea that fit, like a feared gnollish mercenary who'd been imported by a prince who wanted exotic and fearsome troops, that'd have been fine. But they weren't local, and wouldn't appear save as imports of that nature.

It really depends on what the campaign is. Players tend to run humanocentric, but if I were running a sorcerous Al-Qadim-style swashbuckler, I'd be kind of disappointed if nobody wanted to play a genasi, and genasi (and genies) would inevitably show up over the course of the game. Dwarves, on the other hand, might not show up -- or if they did, they certainly wouldn't be very Nordic.

 

[karlindel]

It depends on the campaign and setting. Generally, I am relatively kitchen sink with players options, and will try to work in what the players want to play. Of course, there are some things that I simply don't like and so tend to disallow (broken classes/abilities, races that don't fit in the setting I am using if I am using a published setting, evil characters, "neutral" characters that constantly do evil things, random characters, extremely antisocial loner characters who try not to interact with anyone, and the like).

However, I prefer for the campaign to be more focused, and so NPCs tend to be from the PHB races, with particular exceptions for the particular areas those races inhabit. In more cosmopolitan areas, the party will run into the occasional exotic race, but I don't work to constantly put members of exotic races into the plot, so they will only show up as color or if there is something in particular that I want to showcase (fey races when dealing with fey lands, for example).

I try to keep my world sufficiently open that anything the players want to play is around, while still being focused enough that it can provide a gaming experience that will focus on the PCs and the things that matter to them.

 

[Aus_Snow]

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.

Yeah, the latter is my pick. Always. I like that "mythic" feel, for want of a better term.

On a related note... monsters. Do you prefer to portray them as true races/species, or unique entities?

Yes. And yes, I do think (and have found) that it makes for better fantasy. Mileage, etc., natch.

 

[S'mon]

I tend towards kitchen sink, but I'll certainly limit PC races to whatever I'm comfy with, eg I can't see myself ever allowing shardminds. I'm more likely to say "PHB, PHB2 and these two other races". It's important as DM that I not get a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach whenever I think about a particular PC. But I still allow a broad range of options.

 

[KidSnide]

I think the key is to have enough variety that the players can play what they want, while also having enough editorial guidance that world elements make sense in the context of the game. So, you can have whatever races you want in a small town, but the races represented by the PCs are probably the only races in that small town (and some PCs may be unique, or members of the only family of their race).

As some have noted up thread, the real world can be quite varied. But, that having been said, most people run into a small subset of the world's cultures on a daily basis. And those of us who do run into a large number of the world's cultures on a daily basis do so because we've chosen to live in unusually diverse locations or have careers that expose us to a wide variety of people and places. Since adventurers tend to have that kind of career, a campaign could end up being quite kitchen sink, even if every location in that campaign is populated with a small number of races.

-KS

 

[Pheonix0114]

I agree with Kitchen-sink, but everything has its place. First, the only races with much power and many settlements are my worlds first races [Dragons (which have their own island maybe 1.5x Greenland's size), Elves, Dwarves, Giants, and Goblinoids], and Humans. Everything else is either a mix of human and something, or else are from other worlds or just new and rare. Most races are sequestered to their areas, except for my 3 major cities.

There is a huge forest where all the nature-centric races reside, but other than a large ancient road that runs through the center of it very few people go in. The elves protect the road and keep it safe, no one else messes with them.

So, I guess I work about like most everyone else.

 

[Lanefan]

PC options in my games are pretty much limited to Tolkein-isms (Humans, Elves, Dwarves, Hobbits, Part-Orcs, Part-Elves) - I keep Gnomes around mostly because I keep getting talked into it, but I've made them very rare. If you want anything else you'll have to do some very fancy rolling on the random race table and be prepared to get stuck with something you don't expect.

As for monsters, I pretty much never think of any of them as "the only one" with the exception of named demons, devils, and the like. Most common monsters have some sort of culture, reproduction, etc. just like the kindred races; only in some cases said elements might not be on this particular world or plane. And they're probably all out there somewhere, though about 90% of them will never get a chance to show up in the game as there are just too many!

Culturally, my worlds take the kitchen sink and then throw in the fridge, stove and microwave. If it has existed as a historical Human culture from before about 1650 you'll probably find it somewhere on the planet if you travel far enough; and to a much lesser extent I do the same sort of variances with Elves. One of these days I'll do some similar work on Dwarves...

Lan-"in the last session I played I fought a shark that had a frickin' laser beam - and then looted the laser"-efan

 

[Evilhalfling]

well I started with a restricted view of races, but we have had 2 goliaths, a fire genasi and a red haired pseudo-vampire. I have had a couple of warforged pitches, but when I explain the role of warforged, (individual creations of ratmen or mad-wizards) no one has taken me up on it. Just cause I didn't plan for it, doesn't mean it isn't out their somewhere.


Monsters have been a little better restricted. I have a list of legendary monsters :
1 kraken (recently killed taking out a major, well-liked NPC) 1 sphinx, one Storm Titian. a founding dracolich (has many lesser copies) a founding Wilden (11 years old).

My World is also much younger and more in flux than many, humanoids were created by a god 300 years ago, and demi-human races are less than 1000 years old. 1500 years back, men were still using bronze weapons

The current (god-driven) change is a blossoming of arcane power: sorcerers, warlocks, swordmages, artificers, hexblades, did not exist 110 years ago. Defilers did not exist 5 years ago.