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

[Maxperson]

I continue to be sad I mentioned tortles.

You totally should have known better. Once you tortle, everyone else will retortle.

 

[Scribe]

You totally should have known better. Once you tortle, everyone else will retortle.

 

[Dire Bare]

Why should a DM run a game he isn't going to enjoy running just so you can play a turtle person? Why shouldn't the DM also be able to have fun playing the game?

If as the DM, me playing a tortle would just ruin your fun . . . you're probably not the DM for me.

 

[Maxperson]

If as the DM, me playing a tortle would just ruin your fun . . . you're probably not the DM for me.

Why? If it's a one off thing, how does it impact literally anything else?

 

[Maxperson]

Never read those, are they any good? I ask because the only novels I remember with significant anthropomorphic animals were the Piers Anthony Xanth novels I read when I was a kid. I'd have to figure out stats for an anthropomorphic otter though and the books were a bit cringey looking back from what I remember.

Xanth wasn't so much anthropomorphic animals as it was animals that could talk. If you want anthropomorphic animals, you want to read the Spellsinger books.

 

[Dire Bare]

Why? If it's a one off thing, how does it impact literally anything else?

Right back atcha!

I can't really understand how me playing a tortle would just ruin your fun. It makes no sense to me. So, I see it as a red flag that our styles are not compatible.

 

[Dire Bare]

I diligently try to avoid it, because I think it damages discussion. Which doesn't mean I may not have slipped in while not paying attention on occasion, but that was error not deliberate choice if so.

It's easy to fall prey to with the limitations of internet discourse . . . and everybody else doing it!

The discussion gets heated, someone misrepresents your posts AGAIN, they restate something you felt you debunked AGAIN . . . then you find yourself making assumptions, overstating, etc, etc. That's when its time to step back, when you realize your posts aren't much better than the ones that are frustrating you. Even when you are RIGHT and they are WRONG!

 

[Maxperson]

Right back atcha!

I can't really understand how me playing a tortle would just ruin your fun. It makes no sense to me. So, I see it as a red flag that our styles are not compatible.

For some people anthropomorphic races are a step too far for them to enjoy. That doesn't mean that other areas of the game will be the same. I think it's a bit excessive for someone to have to have fun with absolutely everything in their D&D game in order for your styles to be compatible.

 

[tetrasodium]

Right back atcha!

I can't really understand how me playing a tortle would just ruin your fun. It makes no sense to me. So, I see it as a red flag that our styles are not compatible.

You say that as if it was not already answered many times by multiple posters. Adding a tortle to a world they do not fit into causes changes and disruptions that may not be as simple or localized as "sure you can play a kobold/goblin/gnoll/etc bud, but don't forget those are all considered a serious problem and most guards are likely to feel like you should be killed on sight".

An example of that kind of nonlocal wake might be forcing a tortle into darksun where many of the races having been exterminated is an important part of the setting in ways that would make a tortle into a serious disruption simply by existing and being seen. It might seem easy enough to deal with but now the gm needs to make the SKs & their forces decide how to react to the presence of a previously unknown race and what they should be doing about this unknown race evading taxes. Things don't end there though because the aquatic tortle would be in a setting that lacks oceans with a pretty important reason for the cause.... But desert turtles exist and this tortle could be a desert one right? Have you looked at the statblock for tortle race? It is not a desert race. Well what about if the tortle arrived on a crashed spell hammer? They certainly did not because athas is a sealed sphere with difficult planar travel at best on top of a unique planar structure, there is even an underground gith outpost that is trapped there ever since the sphere was sealed, kinda cool adventure... In order to spell hammer crash a tortle on athas your gm just needs to rewrite not one setting but two.

Problems never end there with these kinds of exception PCs though. inevitably the player starts forgetting any agreements or changes and slowly starts dripping in bits of incompatible setting stuff as the game progresses. Each little oopsy bit of flavor might seem innocent and too small to worry about, but they build upon each other over time and the gm winds up looking petty in an anal retentive controlling manner if they keep stopping all the game to correct Bob.

This is just one example of the many chains of reasons why exceptions violating lore themes and tone are bad. Most of the examples can be found earlier in the thread too (more than once in some cases). don't forget that giving Bob an exception makes it harder for the gm to look fair and impartial rejecting the next one when Alice asks for some other loophole that would cause a bunch of new problems on top of the ones Bob's created in a game where PC actions can change the world

 

[Thomas Shey]

It's easy to fall prey to with the limitations of internet discourse . . . and everybody else doing it!

Besides doing nothing good for the tone of the discussion, there's enough really--interesting--takes on things out in the world today that you never know if someone is being hyperbolic or seriously thinks things are what the other "side" is proposing or at least that the hyperbole is a serious risk.

The discussion gets heated, someone misrepresents your posts AGAIN, they restate something you felt you debunked AGAIN . . . then you find yourself making assumptions, overstating, etc, etc. That's when its time to step back, when you realize your posts aren't much better than the ones that are frustrating you. Even when you are RIGHT and they are WRONG!

Yup. I have the advantage such as it is that when someone seems to be making a pattern of either misrepresenting me or ignoring qualifier words (a particular sore point with me) that rather than dropping into hyperbole I'll either just stop responding or get blunter and blunter rather than drop into that (usually until either the other person bails on the exchange or one of Out Mods comes along and (rightfully) takes me behind the shed.