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

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

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

That might be true, but if no one else asked for this, why worry that more would do it then and it sets a bad precedent? Maybe the topic is really too hypothetical, too much assuming "it's just some random dude on the internet asking, not one of my actual players"? I don't know.

What's also fun that we're talking a lot about something that might genuinely feel "oddball" to some, when one of the original premises (which is still not the original topic of the thread) was mentioning that AD&D era settings were often defined by taking standard stuff away, without giving anything back, and that this is also something that DMs sometimes do, and players would simply have less options than the core rules would allow.

That doesn't align at all with my experience of players wanting to play some edge case not currently/typically found in whatever setting in running. Those characters almost universally fall into one of two camps and both are generally easy to deal with.

The first group sees a thing they think is interesting in a newly released or recently purchased supplement/splatbook and says "this seems cool because xxx, can I play one?". If it's reasonably balanced and could be adapted to fit the world in some way like saying "oh he's from Droaam[or whatever]" I'll probably allow it assuming there is no major conflict like a race needing large bodies of water in a darksun game where the player wants to be unhindered by that.

The second group may or may not be pointing to a recent release & will oftey be pointing at a very old very obscure edge case thing saying "if my character is one of these stardust elves who live around the base of Mount Tai it would let me start with x y and z so I could play [this cool thing] starting at level P instead of level Q, can I can I?" These requests are absolutely trivial and it's usually no big deal to work out some compromise involving an item past ritual or whatever. The only time it becomes a sticking point is when the player is trying to hide their character optimization goal by dressing it up as a RoLePlAyInG choice in the hope of invoking roleplay vrs rollplay if the gm says no.

Since the vast majority of those two tend to occur shortly after a new supplement that includes the desired edge case and never really come up all that often after a bit there is no reason to consider carving out a bigger place in the world for those edge case options.

I definitely know that sometimes I find the available options boring, because I've played some variant, or have seen it played, before. Especially when we play published adventures and they won't have that many personal story arcs anyway.
And I've seen this with other players.

Sometimes that also requires a new supplement/splatbook to be triggered, too, because otherwise you already have all the options available to you, but they still feel "old".

 

[tetrasodium]

I actually agree with the bulk of your post, but I wanted to point this out as a classic example of "Hey, as a GM, maybe I should come up with ideas that don't make it actively harder for the players to make characters."

The "xenophobic culture" is a super-common trope, but really is kind of problematic for D&D.

It's not problematic at all players who want to play a PC that happens to be the target of that trope. I've ever brought up examples∆ of multiple PCs in this thread that personally ate both the costs/benefits of it too. One of those PCs was even a PC I played rather than gm'd for, all three repeatedly did a solid job of involving the party as part of the world rather than some weird group of alien transplants that somehow exists between Schrodinger's cat and the quantum ogre throughout their respective campaigns.

∆ a kobold in Fr and a warforged+ vaelenar elf in eberron games

 

[dave2008]

@Scott Christian You asked for quotes. I cannot quote the most virulent voices in the thread, so you'll have to settle for secondhand stuff in some of these. Some quotes are for contrast; not all of these are from the "I as GM get to do whatever I want and players just have to lump it" crowd.

@EzekielRaiden, I am not sure what point you are trying to make to Scott, but I don't think it is cool to quote people out of context. For example, taking my quote out of context complete obfuscates the point I was trying to make in the exchange (that being absolutist on either side gets us nowhere). Which implies to me you didn't understand my point at all (if you even cared, IDK you might have just been quote mining).

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

As an example - If you use D&D to play a low-fantasy world, and disallow or restrict people to no or half-spellcaster classes and only humans are playable races, I understand the rationale for it, but I think you'd lose a lot of variety in the game that is needed to make it feel as rich as players would expect from D&D (regardless of edition).

It's easy to style the races as cultural traits and you can use elf (or tortle even?) stats as some human culture, so you might ban the races in their looks and style, but you could map them to specific cultures or places and you still have a lot of variety here (and also tie it to your setting fluff.). Alternatively, you create a new subsystem for that (Doesn't Level Up have something for that?)

For example, I like the game to have some decent combat tactics in battle, and I already find D&D 5 subpar here, 4E was much more my jam. The pure fighter/rogue/ranger/barbarian/Paladin style combat would be just a bit too shallow for my taste in the long run, I need more. I probably would try to find a different system than D&D 5, but maybe there is 3PP content that has a bit more meat on its bones and could help such a campaign out. I'd probably be interested in such a setting, but not with D&D5, barring some expansion.

 

[dave2008]

Except that the moment Session Zero begins, the player is expected to already be on board with 100% of everything simply because they accepted the pitch. That's a massive disconnect--and it really, really is the GM not getting the player buy-in. But the players are embarked; they already agreed, so now the GM has "absolute power" over them within the game, right?

That is not true in how we run games. I am sure everyone does it differently, but at our session zero we decided what kind of game we want to play (setting, theme, etc.) and its broad parameters. Then the players go make characters based on that discussion and the DM works on the campaign world.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I agree, it needs to be discussed, that was the whole point, but the answer frequently enough was ‘it needs to be a tortle, nothing else will do’

How frequently? Because it’s not a behaviour I’ve ever witnessed. This sounds like a strawman to me. But as I said before, anyone who absolutely insists on anything, is not a reasonable person, and you should not be playing with than person full stop.

 

[AlViking]

It seems like the desire for consistency would hamper your ability to add new monsters or even provide variants of them. For example, you declare the only types of dragons are the 10 chromatic/metallic, then you would never be able to use any other type (say, gem or moonstone) because that would be inconsistent with your world lore.

I am getting the distinct feeling your world's list of "monsters" is smaller than the Monster Manual...

Its purely academic at this point. I want to see where your boundaries actually lie.

I don't want dozens of intelligent humanoid "monsters" running around for the same reason I don't want dozens of playable species. As far as beasts, monstrosities and what not that's a bit of a different story. If I want to use a monster that doesn't suit the theme of a specific scenario I just describe it as creature that makes sense.

Creativity doesn't come from using a variety of monsters from a book. It comes from how you use those monsters and, for me, figuring out how they fit into my scenarios.

 

[AlViking]

How frequently? Because it’s not a behaviour I’ve ever witnessed. This sounds like a strawman to me. But as I said before, anyone who absolutely insists on anything, is not a reasonable person, and you should not be playing with than person full stop.

There have been multiple people on this forum stating that it must be a tortle or nothing. I've never hit it in real life.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

There have been multiple people on this forum stating that it must be a tortle or nothing. I've never hit it in real life.

That seems to be a misrepresentation of pretty much everyone’s position, but a comment on a forum is NOT a discussion.

 

[TwoSix]

That's simply untrue as well. Let's say I'm a DM who has created a game where the players have to play Tortles named Leonardo, Donatello, Michelangelo, and Raphael. Can I force you to play in that game? No, because I have no power over you. You can tell me you don't want to play a tortle or have that name, so you're not playing. The same with all the other players.

However, the game is still there. I still have the campaign setting with the PC race and name requirements. I can take that game and fish around until I find 4 players who WANT to play tortles with those names.

Is a game with no players actually a game? This seems like a "does a falling tree with no one to hear it make a sound?" kinda question.