D&D General The Monsters Know What They're Doing ... Are Unsure on 5e24

[TwoSix]

There are plenty of RPGs out there with unique themes or pitches. You play Blades in the Dark accepting that your character is some kind of underworld criminal. You play Pirate Borg knowing that your character will be... a pirate. You play Household knowing that your character is one of the "little people" of the House.

Why is D&D considered a player free-for-all while other RPGs don't? Why can't I run a D&D campaign with a pitch like "you're all dwarves on an expedition to reclaim a mine from orcs and demons"? Hint, I have and the players loved it.

It's simply a question of playing those games as they were designed. Blades in the Dark has a specific theme. D&D does not.

And that isn't holding D&D to a higher standard; I would also view a GM adding a lot of restrictions to PF1 or PF2, or 13th Age, or Draw Steel or Daggerheart as violating the feel of expansive optionality those games are all designed around.

 

[TwoSix]

You might be substituting your own personal preference a bit too hard for that bolded bit as a general broad brush generality. I've had multiple players who absolutely adore worldbuilding because it allows their actions to have a real visceral impact on the world & they can often see some hint of those actions they took in another game with different characters. There have been even more who think it's kinda cool to see it all come together in play to the point where I got to witness them pitch it to some other player as a thing to be excited about joining my table for.

But....that isn't worldbuilding. That's just, ya know, playing the game.

 

[mamba]

I'm not the one claiming anyone's preferences are more important than anyone else's.

you may not be claiming it outright, but I have a hard time seeing anything else in your responses. Even your proposed ‘compromise’ was to let the player be a turtle

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

If I allow one "special" species I have to allow every "special" species any other player wants to play. All because someone is not willing to give even an inch on their concept or actually just accept the restrictions I have in place that I made them aware of when I told them about my game.

I can always figure out to make an exception that's never been the point. I don't want to because I don't want species that cannot pass as one of the species on my curated list. If that doesn't work for you, if you are unwilling to work on a compromise, find a different DM.

One thing to consider: If the players really all start to want to play "special" species: Maybe they are actually tired of the setting limitations and want something new?
Maybe that doesn't have to mean you need to introduce countless new species to your setting, but it means something to talk about.

Creating a precedent is only dangerous if the players are feeling fatigue of the existing setting and want to experience something novel. It might not even be that playing tortles, dragonborn or warforged, Gythanki, Wildlings, Shardminds or Beholders is the solution, maybe that's just treating a sympton. On the other hand - maybe it's really this one player that is interested in this, and he'll be happy with playing the oddball character.

 

[TwoSix]

I would say tortles are not on my list of species, please pick one that is or we can talk about some compromise where you get just about everything but the physical form of an anthropomorphic tortoise.

If I allow one "botched wizard experiment" then I have no reason to disallow any other species as yet another "botched wizard experiment".

At a certain point, why not just be upfront and say "I'm trying to curate a specific aesthetic for this game?"

Because the fact that you're opposed to the look of the tortle more than anything tells me that maintaining the mental image of the setting is what's most important to you.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

you may not be claiming it outright, but I have a hard time seeing anything else in your responses. Even your proposed ‘compromise’ was to let the player be a turtle

Let me put it this way.

You--and several others--have held up "setting consistency" and GM vision and various other things as the thing that matters here. The thing that you're earnestly trying to pursue, for which all these other things are just steps on the road. Do we agree on that?

If so, then that is what I've been pursuing for compromise this whole time. You'll notice, every single one of the examples I gave preserves setting consistency. It ensures that the GM's vision remains utterly untouched. There are no tortles. There is just this one creature.

So. Are you telling me that setting consistency was never actually the goal? Are you telling me that all that rhetoric, all those pixels spilled, were just some kind of...smokescreen?

Because the only conclusion I can draw from what you have said here is that yes, it was a smokescreen, and the actual reason, the real root of these bans, is simply that the GM thinks tortles are stinky and therefore they shouldn't be played in this game. That it isn't a function of how much work the GM has done vs the player, nor of the intricacy and interconnectedness of the world-building, nor of preserving some kind of high-minded ideal. That it is, simply and exclusively, "I'm the GM, so my preferences are more important than yours."

If that isn't true, if the literal hundreds of posts talking about setting consistency were not a smokescreen and were in fact actually serious, then why do you reject massive efforts on the part of several other people to try to preserve that true goal, for which all the other things are just instrumental measures?

 

[AlViking]

At a certain point, why not just be upfront and say "I'm trying to curate a specific aesthetic for this game?"

Because the fact that you're opposed to the look of the tortle more than anything tells me that maintaining the mental image of the setting is what's most important to you.

I have been saying that even if I didn't use those specific words. I make it clear to anyone that joins my game what style I'm going for. Mental image is part of it but as I have stated many times lore, consistency, wanting characters that actually come from the world and have a place in it are a big part of it as well. My game simply isn't the kind of high fantasy world where a tortle would fit.

You may want a kitchen sink campaign, I don't. No player has ever asked to play a tortle, there have only been one or two that asked to play something not on the list. One of those was a player who wanted to play a werewolf, including immunity to normal weapons which I said no to.

 

[tetrasodium]

But....that isn't worldbuilding. That's just, ya know, playing the game.

Yes kinda... but still no. It is (imo) world building for the players.


Players can not engage in world building during character creation absent a system like the city & character creation in dfrpg, but players making changes in the world and building new things through their in game actions is still going to involve quite a bit of world building because doing so typically (ime) involves the GM managing NPCs/NPC factions and creating adventures for the players to play though. The difference is that the gm running and creating the shell for those NPCs/adventures doesn't know what the result will look like until the players have had their chance to interact with the GM's still wet paint.

By extension, any player insisting on the world build benefits of a system like dfrpg's city & character creation during d&d character creation is wildly off base

 

[TwoSix]

Because the only conclusion I can draw from what you have said here is that yes, it was a smokescreen, and the actual reason, the real root of these bans, is simply that the GM thinks tortles are stinky and therefore they shouldn't be played in this game. That it isn't a function of how much work the GM has done vs the player, nor of the intricacy and interconnectedness of the world-building, nor of preserving some kind of high-minded ideal. That it is, simply and exclusively, "I'm the GM, so my preferences are more important than yours."

Yea, that's pretty much it.

GMs who make homebrewed settings and then stay them in for years or decades are essentially making personal fantasy heartbreakers. They have a mental image of what D&D should look like, and their setting is where they get to assert the truth of that mental image.

I've used this analogy before, but it's essentially the same psychology that divides those who prefer prescriptivist grammar and those who are descriptivist. It's the desire for constancy and certainty, versus the desire for ambiguity and novelty.

 

[mamba]

One thing to consider: If the players really all start to want to play "special" species: Maybe they are actually tired of the setting limitations and want something new?

another thing to consider is that this is not actually happening, it was a fictional example while in real life apparently no one had any issues with @AlViking ’s restrictions