D&D 5E Should Published Settings Limit Classes and Races Allowed?

[Sunseeker]

I like compromising with my players too.
But the catch is... both parties need to compromise. It can't always be the DM making allowances for the players.

No argument there.

A book isn't going to say "you're not allowed to play X". That's not how they're written.
They will say things like "there are no orcs native to Krynn" or "all gnomes in Athas were killed centuries ago." They set the baseline and DMs can stick to the baseline or ignore as they choose.

If you say so. I admit to rarely being interested in published campaign settings.

But if the publisher doesn't say the races don't *normally* exist, how do you know you need to come up with a unique origin?

Shouldn't it be obvious from the context of the writing? If we have a chapter that talks about all the societies and civilizations and peoples of a world and doesn't mention dragonborn, tieflings shouldn't it be understood that, since they are not mentioned, they probably don't exist. I don't really see the need to even say "X race doesn't exist in this world by default." Well...duh! If it did it would have been written about.

I'm playing a zombie apocalypse game right now, and that's a ton of fun. And there are lots of options for modern games. Like Tales From the Loop.

I think there's some context missing here in that we're trying to talk about too many different genres of games. D&D lends itsself to certain types of settings better than others. A retro-future-sci-fi-that-never-was? I think we're talking about a different game system.

If that's the world the GM wants to play in, why not? That's the story they want to tell, and you'll have more fun working with than fighting.

If the DM says we're going to play D&D, I have certain expectations. If the DM says we're going to play Star Trek, I have certain expectations. If the DM says we're going to play CoC I have certain expectations. I don't believe that those are unreasonable given the typical content provided by those games. If the DM says we're going to play D&D but that it's going to be set in space and the only playable race is humans and there's no magic and instead of swords we all have guns and there's no magic classes but now there's special "gun mage" classes I'm going to seriously ask why the high-diddly-ho are we playing D&D? Because I'm pretty sure he just described some cross between Warhammer and Iron Kingdoms.

You wouldn't expect to be allowed to play a Vulcan in Star Wars or a Ewok in Star Trek. Why should the players expect to be a half-orc in Dragonlance?

I wouldn't expect to make ridiculous arguments that are completely lacking in context in order to create a false argument. So no, I wouldn't straw-man.

 

[Greg K]

I mean, if you're going to tell me about a setting that has no magic, no dragons, no demons, only humans and no other dimensions I'm going to ask you: why's all the fun gone?

Well, different tastes and all that. As a player, my curiosity would be piqued and I would ask the DM for more information. As a DM, I would tell you, "Well, you don't need to play, but I wish you luck in finding a table that better suits your taste in fantasy." Then again, my long held belief is that, just because a DM should runs a campaign, the campaign need not be of interest to all players (including friends). The DM, first and foremost, should should run a campaign and style that excites him or her and try to find players with similar playstyles and tastes in fantasy who will enjoy the campaign.

 

[Sunseeker]

Well, different tastes and all that. As a player, my curiosity would be piqued and I would ask the DM for more information. As a DM, I would tell you, "Well, you don't need to play, but I wish you luck in finding a table that better suits your taste in fantasy." Then again, my long held belief is that, just because a DM should runs a campaign, the campaign need not be of interest to all players (including friends). The DM, first and foremost, should should run a campaign and style that excites him or her and try to find players with similar playstyles and tastes in fantasy who will enjoy the campaign.

And I believe there are certain implications from running certain systems. So I feel that comments like these are a little bit false.

If I'm invited over to play D&D and the DM is running a campaign that is basically Star Trek, I'm going to ask why he told me we were playing D&D.

 

[cbwjm]

I put in normally yes. Maybe I don't quite understand the question but I don't think that every setting should restrict race/class but I find that settings can be just as interesting based on the restrictions as well as the additions. A setting which replaces orcs with organised hobgoblin armies will feel a lot different to me. No more chaotic orcs hammering away at your party, instead you have to deal with squads of hobgoblins with good weaponry and tactics. Take out humans and suddenly you have a very different world, what is the dominant race? It might be the goblins and orcs with the elves, dwarves, gnomes, and halflings in decline. A world cut off from the planes might remove anything with an extra planar origin. No aasimar, tieflings, or genasi. Eladrin might not exist due to being stuck in the Feywild, elves might still exist but are descended from those elves who migrated from the Feywild before the planes were locked away from them. This could also remove/alter many conjuration spells. If you can't access the planes then you can't summon elementals.

All of these ideas provide a memorable hook that might make for a good setting, even one which was official.

 

[Greg K]

And I believe there are certain implications from running certain systems. So I feel that comments like these are a little bit false.

If I'm invited over to play D&D and the DM is running a campaign that is basically Star Trek, I'm going to ask why he told me we were playing D&D.

It is not false. It is your own assumptions on what D&D is that maybe needs re-examination. There have always been different ways that D&D has been officially covered in various supplements and settings. Some examples include the following:

• Single Race
• Single Class
• more "historical" (e.g., 2e A Mighty Fortress)
• "Medieval" Fantasy
• edit: African Fantasy (Hollow World)
• edit: Arabian Nights Fantasy (Al Qadim)
• edit: Aztec Fantasy (Hollow World)
• Greece Fantasy (HR Series)
• Roman Fantasy (HR Series)
• Vikings (HR Series, Gaz Series)
• more toward Sword and Sorcery (Greyhawk)
• High Fantasy (Forgotten Realms)
• Asian Fantasy (Oriental Adventures)
• Universal Gothic Horror (2e Ravenloft)
• Post- Apocalyptic Fanasy (Dark Sun)
• Pulp Noir Fantasy (Eberron)
• Spacejammer
• Planescape

Now, you don't have to like all of those different varieties of D&D. I know of people that don't view Al Qadim, Dark Sun, or Ravenloft to be D&D. Personally, I have a strong dislike Eberron, Spacejammer, or Planescape. However, I am not going to claim that they are not D&D. They are just a type of D&D from which I will excuse myself (as a DM, I will excise all reference to Spacejammer and Planescape (including the latter's Blood War which seems to have become canon) in any campaign that I run. Also, knowing that there are many varieties of D&D, as a player, I talk to DM's to find out more about the campaign that they are running to make an informed decision as to whether to join their campaign.

 

[Jester David]

Shouldn't it be obvious from the context of the writing? If we have a chapter that talks about all the societies and civilizations and peoples of a world and doesn't mention dragonborn, tieflings shouldn't it be understood that, since they are not mentioned, they probably don't exist. I don't really see the need to even say "X race doesn't exist in this world by default." Well...duh! If it did it would have been written about.

Not necessarily. Not being mentioned doesn't mean something doesn't exist, it just means it wasn't explicitly mentioned. Dragonborn and tieflings in Greyhawk for example. Do they exist? Tieflings were in D&D during 2nd Edition when Greyhawk was published: do they exist on Oerth?

And this assumes someone is going to fully read the entire book and notice the absence. Are goblins mentioned in Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide? How about Mind Flayers? Even if you read the book cover-to-cover you might be unaware if a monster was mentioned or not.
But if you explicitly say "there are no Mind Flayers native to Ansalon" then you actually know.

I think there's some context missing here in that we're trying to talk about too many different genres of games. D&D lends itsself to certain types of settings better than others. A retro-future-sci-fi-that-never-was? I think we're talking about a different game system.

Okay then. Masque of the Red Death. Victorian gothic horror game using the 2nd Edition D&D rules.

There's no shortage of examples people using D&D and the d20 system as a generic roleplaying game. Just because you're using it for kitchen sink fantasy games doesn't mean everyone is.
While you're playing Curse of Strahd and Ravenloft with outsiders, I prefer to use natives to the demiplane. So I prefer the humanocentric characters with no half-orcs, dragonborn, and the like. Because they don't fit the Gothic horror type of game that I really want to play.

If the DM says we're going to play D&D, I have certain expectations. If the DM says we're going to play Star Trek, I have certain expectations. If the DM says we're going to play CoC I have certain expectations. I don't believe that those are unreasonable given the typical content provided by those games. If the DM says we're going to play D&D but that it's going to be set in space and the only playable race is humans and there's no magic and instead of swords we all have guns and there's no magic classes but now there's special "gun mage" classes I'm going to seriously ask why the high-diddly-ho are we playing D&D? Because I'm pretty sure he just described some cross between Warhammer and Iron Kingdoms.

Just because people have certain expectationes doesn't mean the DM is obligated to meet those expectations. My players came to 5e right out of Pathfinder and had expectations for the amount of gold gained and magic items acquired. That didn't mean I had to break the game system giving them exactly what they expected. Neither did it mean I had to change how I viewed magic in my campaign setting to conform with their expectations.

This is why the DM needs to have a conversation with the players and set out the expectations first. It's uncool to surprise players with a homebrew world without elves. And reading a 300-page campaign document is also out. Any special restrictions and changes that impact character creation need to be outlined ahead of time. Preferably aloud or in a one-page character creation guide.
(Ideally, the DM should propose a couple different campaigns and let the players pick they one they want. But most players just want to play. And if the DM is excited to do a game in their homebrew world, the players are incentived to play along because the DM is going to give it their all rather than phoning it in. You work with what the DM is excited to run.)

I wouldn't expect to make ridiculous arguments that are completely lacking in context in order to create a false argument. So no, I wouldn't straw-man.

Just because you can't counter the argument doesn't make it a straw-man.

Dragonlance, Star Trek, and Star Wars are all established franchises with their own rules. If you can handwave bringing in an orc into Dragonlance or a gnome into Dark Sun, then why not a Wookie into Star Trek? What is the difference? Temporal anomaly. Science genetic experiment. Alternate dimension. Previously unknown life form. It's actually probably easier to just have a Chewbacca in Trek than an orc in Dragonlance.
But the difference is really entitlement. Because certain races are in the rulebook, people just feel they're expected. And because the fantasy world - especially a DM's homeworld - isn't a multimillion dollar franchise, it's somehow less worthy of respect and adherence to canon. The DM running their D&D homebrew world is just expected to say "yes" when you ask to bring in a Tabaxi while the GM running Star Trek doesn't have that same obligation. Even if it's part of the canon: like allowing a Ferengi on a Federation vessel during Kirk's era, or an Ewok in the Old Republic.

But that's BS. The DM is the storyteller. They're the one putting in the work and prep into the campaign. Their effort matters, and they should be allowed some latitude to tell stories in the setting they want.

 

[Li Shenron]

Of course to some degree every version of D&D is its own setting, but the trap is making every setting into edition specific kitchen sinks.

That's exactly the problem.

IMHO too many publishers are worried to lose potential customers if they don't put let's say Paladins or Half-Orcs in their settings. I guess their logic is "a Paladin or Half-Orc fan would not buy my setting". I don't think gamer are that stupid to always wanting to play the same character and refuse to play anything that doesn't include the option.

On the contrary, both as a DM and player, why should I buy another setting that is no different from vanilla D&D? Additions, modifications and subtractions all help towards making a setting more unique.

As for the specific topic of republishing old settings, I have a strong opinion that all a setting needs is rules updates, and no narrative change. Unfortunately classes and races comes with rules, so it's almost impossible not to touch the story while updating the ruleset. For example, IF a setting made a big deal about clerics using only blunt weapons or elves having infravision, as much I welcomed the 3ed change to the core rules about those, I wouldn't change the story of the setting just to conform to the new rules: I'd expect the republished setting to override the new edition's default instead. Again, IF this was a big deal in that setting, because if it was just a minor detail, then there's no problem changing it, as long as it feels transparent.

 

[Morrus]

IMHO too many publishers are worried to lose potential customers if they don't put let's say Paladins or Half-Orcs in their settings. I guess their logic is "a Paladin or Half-Orc fan would not buy my setting". I don't think gamer are that stupid to always wanting to play the same character and refuse to play anything that doesn't include the option.

Is that true? I mean, there aren't really all that many published third party 5E settings (it would be cool to have a list, actually - that's an article idea!), but of those, is that actually the case?

I'm not super-familiar with Kobold Press' Midgard setting - what are the races of that one? Or Primeval Thule? (I don't actually know enough about other to say one way or the other).

Certainly Adventures in Middle Earth limits classes and races.

 

[Mephista]

My homebrew setting doesn't have any humans in it (and, by extension, no half-elves either; half-orcs are rebranded as playable full orcs). I like having a non-standard, humans-in-power-everywhere type world. Makes things a bit more curious about all the different places and cultures that show up.

Now, there are people that hate not having humans or playing as a human, and I've had to deal with some people who wanted to bring in a human character from outside for various reasons, including power gmaing and a thinly veiled (white, euro-centric) human superiority complex*. But that's not the kind of story I want to explore, so, I make things a bit differently. If people don't wnat to play it, sure. That's fine. But I'm still going to be running the setting without humans.


* That was an actual discussion with someone. They seemed to identify with their PC to a very uncomfortable level, and had some very unusual views.

 

[Remathilis]

I've gone rounds on this topic before, so I'll sum up my points.

I believe Wizards of the Coast, when creating or adapting a setting from its past, should attempt to invalidate a little as possible as far as choices in from the PHB/DMG/MM. A setting like Ravenloft, Greyhawk, or Dark Sun should FLAVOR the rule-set, not replace it. While there can be additions (psionics/mystic, warforged and kender) alterations (such as new subraces and fluff to cover Dark Sun elves, dwarves, and halflings) and a few removals (gnomes replaced by muls) or even some retooled options (paladins can double for knights of Solomnia) the core of game should not change radically.

A setting should EXPAND the game, not limit it. It should take it new places and possibilities, not be slave to old cannon or narrow genre emulation. The 3e versions of Ravenloft (by Arthaus), Dragonlance (by Weiss), and the 4e Dark Sun all showed that settings can adapt to new options and yet remain true to the spirit of the world. Any setting that cannot absorb dragonborn, warlocks, sorcerers, monks, or tieflings should seriously be considered as unworthy of adaptation.

Now, the following is true only of Dungeons & Dragons (TM) branded settings; third party settings are fair game, as are licensed settings. Put another way, Dark Sun should attempt to present D&D tropes in a S&S light, whereas a Conan-branded 5e-compatible setting OR a setting like Primeval Thule has a lot more latitude to remove, re-write, or whatever.

Likewise, this is mostly for the consideration of Publication. An individual DM can, as always, adapt the setting and ban, remove, or change anything he doesn't like. WotC's default setting should be as inclusive as possible and individual DMs can decide how "pure" they want their version to be. It should be spelled out in the beginning of "X" book that the DM is free to tighten or loosen the available options as he so chooses (a "Making X setting your own" - like sidebar).

If WotC REALLY wants to deviate from the D&D established tropes, let them make a new compatible game. Gamma World is a good example of something loosely based off D&D that isn't D&D and doesn't need to adhere to D&D's tropes. A setting for D&D is first-and-foremost still D&D, its not a new game which references the PHB combat chapter.

Lastly, I just want to define what I mean by "D&D tropes" that D&D settings should adhere to. They are pretty generic, but I think its worth restating.
1.) At least some version of the dwarf, elf, halfling, and human races. Ideally, they should find places for uncommon races (or suitible replacements) even if it requires some reskinning (dragonborn = dray).
2.) Fighter, Rogue, Wizard and Cleric classes. Like races, they should attempt to carve out places for the other 8 classes as well through some new subclasses or refluffing.
3.) Magic works like magic. While you can color it differently (such as Defiling or Ravenloft's prohibitions on certain types) magic should still be in the PC's hands and spells like Magic Missile, Cure Wounds, Fireball, or Raise Dead should be assumed.
4.) A world with a variety of monsters, trying to use as many of them as possible (again, changing the fluff as needed; such as Eberron's orcs).
5.) It should connect to the Great Wheel/Multiverse model of 5e.

Again this is for WOTC-DESIGNED OFFICIAL D&D SETTINGS ONLY. 3PP, other games WotC wants to make, or what an individual DM wants to do with his/her game adhere to none of this.