"Shinies!" "Didn't we ban kender?"

[Wormwood]

I thought you banned death.

Huh. I thought I was the only one.

 

[Jack99]

Huh. I thought I was the only one.

Hong's been preaching about that for a long time, have you missed all of his 3252 posts mentioning it?

Regarding the subject at hand, we have never had such lists. I suspect because my players don't care enough, and trust me to make the right calls. But if they wanted to make one, I would be all for it. In general, I try to get them involved (beyond at the table), but few of them want to give imputs. They are more of a "kill stuff and grab the loot"-kind off players.

 

[Cam Banks]

Unfortunately, these people are playing Kender as recommended by the setting books.

Not any setting book I had a part of.

Banishing painful stereotypes was one of the key aims for the 3.5 Dragonlance sourcebooks. Races of Ansalon, in particular, attempts to present all races, even so-called comic relief races, as viable and enjoyable members of a party. If you read our stuff and then turn around and say "I'm being an obnoxious kleptomaniac because it says so here" then I think that's an issue with the reader.

Cheers,
Cam

 

[Dragonbait]

I figured group "ban" lists were pretty normal.

My groups tend to be pretty liberal, but understand when a GM says "There are no (race, class, etc) in the setting we are going to be playing in." We don't normally ban races or classes because of an annoyance factor.

I've found that most annoying tropes, like the kleptomaniac kender, are due to annoying players rather than the race in itself.

Edit

...That was when I made a mighty vow that any character I ever played would kill any Kender who showed up, on the spot, regardless of the consequences....

This is something I'd ban.
..But I'd first make sure that the person playing a kender isn't planning on just trying to steal everyone's equipment to cause chaos and claim that it's part of the rules.

 

[Scribble]

Nothing is "outright banned." Everything is done on a case by case basis.

Banning evil characters is horrifying in my eyes.

Yeah I feel anything should be open at the games I run. I just let my players know that if they choose to run something, I expect them to do it right.

Like for the evil characters... It's not just a license to be an a-hole, and screw everyone over, try to start fights, steal all their stuff, or just try to wreak havoc on the adventure.

Also, I like to say "I'd preffer you didn't..." as oppopsed to I ban X...

Like "I'd preffer you didn't make evil characters for this campaign."

or: "Can I play a half dragon drow vampire?" "I'd preffer you didn't..."

This generally means, if you have a good reason for wanting to do so I'm open to it.

 

[Rechan]

Doublepost.

 

[Rechan]

A lot of podcasts actually talk about this as well. You can call it your "Session 0" where you have your pre-game talk. Pre-game talk might include what characters each one is going to play, setting expectations for everyone involved ("this is going to be a dungeon crawl", "this is going to be a politics/intrigue game"), what kind of game you're looking forward to or what direction the game will take, do's and don't of the gaming table, etc.

Aye. My main inspiration has been SotC and its derivatives, and listening to people giving thoughts about that. The Game Master Show even had an entire episode devoted to group vs. individual character creation.

I think the worst problem I have is that, I want to have a Session 0. But, two people can't make it (out of 6). Given that it's a 'once every two week' thing because people have stupid scheduling issues, I just don't want to skip. It's very frustrating.

 

[Mathew_Freeman]

I did this with my new group for the new 4e game.

I explained that my basic assumption about the game was that a) you were playing heroes and that b) you were proactive about seeking fame, fortune and adventure.

That pretty much covered it.

I love the idea of Session 0 and so on and I completely agree that it can save a lot of complications later on.

 

[DrunkonDuty]

I ban a few things. Party in-fighting is number one on the list. I just have no interest in running that sort of game. It usually leads to frayed tempers and people taking petty revenge on one another for issues within, and as often as not, outside of the game. It's this latter that bugs me, I don't want people bringing their real world/personality issues to the game and ruining everyone's fun.

The other thing I ban is Kender. I have never, since the first time I saw one played, seen one played as anything other than an irritating pain in the arse; the whole thing leading to party in-fighting. My personal experience suggests that people only play Kender so they have license to be pains in the proverbial.

 

[DeusExMachina]

Party infighting was banned in most of my games, because after a certain level of irritation, people just couldn't keep ic and ooc apart and it led to some horrifying situations. Fortunately we have gotten better with that...

Other times I banned specific races or classes, but that was always done for setting reasons. Wizards that could only be trained in certain wizard colleges and thus simply weren't around in areas without those colleges, races having gone extinct from disasters or wars, etc...

Okay, the 3.0 Forsaker was an exception. That class was banned from the start in all my games, because it was the most stupid, broken class I ever encountered...