D&D General The Importance of Page 33

[cbwjm]

This just popped into my head. I think it would be a bit of a laugh if player played a tabaxi and got booted out of the inn because the innkeep is allergic to cats.

Maybe he has a sign on the entrance of the door which reads "NO CATS!" and his wife is constantly berating him to get a cat to hunt mice but he's adamant they don't need one.

 

[Azuresun]

Again, should we just assume that is the case? I'm not saying such people don't exist, but it seems like every time this topic comes up it is the player who doesn't want to play a human/dwarf/elf/halfling that is the problem. They are attention hogs who don't care or min-maxxers who don't care or.... it is endless.

I never said "doesn't want to play a human/dwarf/elf/halfling", that was you inferring. If I pitched a setting that didn't have those four race where they were wiped out in a primeval war with the gods and haven't been seen for thousands of years, those players would immediately slap down their human and dwarf characters before the sentence had finished.

And like I said before, approach matters. If the player makes an effort to describe how their unusual character could fit into the setting and the sort of game I pitched, that's far more likely to get me to say yes. For example, if I wanted to play a tiefling in Primeval Thule (a swords-and-sorcery setting that doesn't have them by default), I might link it to the suggested origin of sorcerers, where they gain innate magic by transforming themselves into a being not entirely human, or have them be a servant of the demons who live up north, whose ancestors were twisted into a more pleasing form by the fiends. Things that make them part of the world rather than "I just want to play a devil-man and didn't bother reading anything about the setting." And I'd also make it clear that if this guy doesn't work for them, I'm fine with playing a more standard character.

That's the difference for me. Not the desire to play a weird character in itself, but the attitude towards the game that I get from how any given request is phrased. Wanting a wacky character doesn't mean they're an attention hog or min-maxer.....but I've seen some correlation. Notably from one player early on in my gaming career, who just had to play whatever the wacky non-standard option was for every given campaign, and then milk it for drama and "every scene is about me". He was the embodiment of a line from an old White Wolf book--"Don't confuse having an interesting character sheet with having an interesting character."

 

[Rdm]

They'd also react to a person with strange eyes and pointy ears, a squat and strangely shaped man, a child-sized adult or a green-grey skinned tusked gentleman.

Yup. They would. Although not as much because at least in broad outlines some of those exist.

 

[Rdm]

It depends what you mean by "extremely". Curiously, certainly. Some slightly worried, probably. Kids following him in the street, entirely likely.

But a gentleman like that (and he is an obvious gentleman) wouldn't get the immediate panic implied. Unlike e.g. an orc dressed as if they are looking for a fight. And this is a setting without magic where you expect things to be more varied.

Are you even trying to be serious? Claiming a walking cat person would just provoke ‘curiosity’ in a non magical Victorian London? Seriously?

 

[Neonchameleon]

Are you even trying to be serious? Claiming a walking cat person would just provoke ‘curiosity’ in a non magical Victorian London? Seriously?

I didn't say just curiosity. Some curiosity, some worry. He'd be weird. But yes I'm absolutely serious that just looking odd wouldn't provoke panic or violence in a city that considered itself the center of the world. Just as the same would happen in London or New York today. The larger and more cosmopolitan the place the less the reaction.

Now if he were to rip someone open with his claws that would be a whole different story.

 

[Hussar]

The funny thing is, the more these old locations in the real world get studied, the more cosmopolitan they get shown to be. People mixing from various parts of the world is less strange than was once thought. The myth of the mono-cultural middle ages is slowly getting eroded.

I just find it funny that people figure that seeing an Elf, which is way down deep in Uncanny Valley territory, knowing that that thing is virtually immortal, won't provoke strong reactions, but, a hairy human (Tabaxi) would be so shocking that he or she would be attacked on sight.

 

[QuentinGeorge]

Most books about places distant from the Mediterranean shores often claimed that the inhabitants were dog-headed, or with feet on their head and faces in their chest and other weird things. Compared to that, your average D&D character is relatively normal. "Man with a cat head? So what, St Christopher had a dog head." or "Just as Ratramnus said, we must preach the gospel to him."

 

[Rdm]

I didn't say just curiosity. Some curiosity, some worry. He'd be weird. But yes I'm absolutely serious that just looking odd wouldn't provoke panic or violence in a city that considered itself the center of the world. Just as the same would happen in London or New York today. The larger and more cosmopolitan the place the less the reaction.

Now if he were to rip someone open with his claws that would be a whole different story.

You are seriously putting forth that. Ok. Sure.

 

[jasper]

This just popped into my head. I think it would be a bit of a laugh if player played a tabaxi and got booted out of the inn because the innkeep is allergic to cats.

Maybe he has a sign on the entrance of the door which reads "NO CATS!" and his wife is constantly berating him to get a cat to hunt mice but he's adamant they don't need one.

I could see a comedy bit. the Tabaxi is always trying to sneak in because the inn has the best cream de mint (he uses mint and catnip in the mix) but is always discovered due to the inn keeper sneezing.

 

[Oofta]

I don't think there's a lot of comparison between an elf and a tabaxi. An elf is an unusually lithe human with funny ears, something people would note as different but not that different.

A tabaxi? Based on the art they're obviously not human, not someone with prosthetic ears or in a costume. It also depends on the world. Are there newspaper articles about pieces of gnawed on sewer worker and that the mayor has called for an end to the wererat threat once and for all? A world where a war was just fought at great cost against an army of gnolls?

Ultimately it's up to the DM to make a decision on how people would react in their campaign world. So it's going to vary from campaign to campaign, DM to DM. When I say not to tabaxi or drow PCs it's not because I'm a control freak. It's because I want the campaign world to be logical and allowing PC's that a large chunk of the world would view as monsters is something I don't think would be fun for the group or the player.