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

[Maxperson]

Having lived in Iowa for a couple of years I certainly have my own thoughts on the subject.

It's the birth place of James Tiberius Kirk. How bad can it be?

 

[Maxperson]

Did Drizzt and Elminster ambush you in Des Moines?

No, but I'm pretty sure Elminster asked me for some money and a picture with him in Hollywood.

 

[Maxperson]

Two words: corn golems

Three words: scarred for life.

 

[Maxperson]

Corn golems? Bah. Try living downwind of a factory farm for pigs. Stinking cloud has nothing on it.

Driving through central California and the cattle ranches is like that.

 

[Belen]

It's never been that I hate tortles, it's that I want a limited number of intelligent humanoid running around. For what it's worth that includes monsters.

We are on the same page. I try to limit intelligent humanoids in my settings too. For me, it is about resources and scarcity. I want it to make internal sense to me.

I have a somewhat larger number of species for my games but only because my settings have very close ties to Faerie (FeyWild for the new kids). In that sense, they may live on both planes. I also have the Aethyrial plane that is close to the Prime. I pulled that concept from the excellent Deverry novels by Katharine Kerr.

I still have limits and I do not run kitchen sink games.

Sometimes I do incorporate Planescape into my cosmology as well. It just depends on the theme I am running as sometimes the settings have been completely cut off from the planes.

I really do get the need for limitations to make internal sense. Unlike you, my settings are mainly background consistency and are not completely formed and a living setting.

 

[Maxperson]

Do they have a miniature giant space loxodans on their back, and a miniature giant disc on their backs, with a miniature small sun circling around it?

You WOULD be the one to make that comment, Archchancellor.

 

[Maxperson]

You joke, but . . .

There are actually giant space turtles in the Spelljammer setting . . . gammaroids! The name sounds like a medical problem, but they are canon!

I remember those. There were also Kaiju(Gargantuas) in the 2e Kara-Tur setting.

 

[Maxperson]

The DM shouldn't not have fun just because a player is running a concept he isn't a fan of.

Sometimes those things do impact the DM's fun, though. People can stretch their suspension of disbelief only so far. For some, fantasy elves, orcs, etc. are fine, but when it comes to walking humanoid animals, that's just a step too far and they don't have fun with those in the game. They aren't wrong or bad for feeling that way.

Personally, in most settings I would never play a tortle, loxodon, rabbit person, etc., because they are just too far in that direction for me to enjoy playing. I don't have an issue running a game with PCs of that type, but it's not my thing to play. In most settings.

If I were playing in an Alice and Wonderland setting, I'd have no problem playing a humanoid rabbit. Animal people fit right in and feel right as an option to play. The same with Spelljammer, because it is much more cosmopolitan with races from all over the multiverse......and hippo people.

No one is telling a GM what to do. What I'm trying to do is give GMs a little advice. "Stop being so picky. The player has one character, you have the rest of the world."

And what I'm trying to do is point out that it isn't all pickiness. Sometimes it's about the feel and enjoyment of the game being run. My example above is me being picky, and so it only extends to me and not the players.

 

[Thomas Shey]

You don’t need to “get it right”. Every table’s version of a setting is unique to that table. The point is to avoid the sense of exclusive ownership, and wasting time creating stuff that the players aren’t interested in.

I think its optimistic to think that no player or players will get fussy about extent settings "being right". That's enough of a known thing you can't shrug it off completely.

 

[AlViking]

The DM shouldn't not have fun just because a player is running a concept he isn't a fan of.

No one is telling a GM what to do. What I'm trying to do is give GMs a little advice. "Stop being so picky. The player has one character, you have the rest of the world."

My advice to a GM is to do what works for you and don't pay attention to people who are telling you you're doing it wrong. If you don't like the world you won't be as effective at running games as you can be.