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

[AlViking]

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.

I've tossed around ideas for a completely different campaign now and then, kind of a mashup of Spelljammer and a few other ideas to make it my own. Maybe someday.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Not many . . . I think even mine might have a pinch of it.

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.

 

[AlViking]

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.

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.

That was another thought of mine - use Zootopia as inspiration and everyone is an anthropomorphic animal. In that game there are no humans, dwarves or elves. Just tortles all they way down. I think it might be fun for a short term campaign, I don't see running for longer term though.

 

[Maxperson]

That was another thought of mine - use Zootopia as inspiration and everyone is an anthropomorphic animal. In that game there are no humans, dwarves or elves. Just tortles all they way down. I think it might be fun for a short term campaign, I don't see running for longer term though.

Yeah. Short campaigns and one shots are fine for silliness. I'm not one for long term humor/weird campaigns, but short term they can be really fun.

One DM I played with had us all roll ourselves up as if we were transferred into the D&D world. We picked our class, stats based on ourselves, and proficiencies(this was 2e). I chose ranger, since animals not only get along well with me, even animals that don't like people or men or whatever warning they want to give, walk up to me and crawl into my lap. I also have very rudimentary tracking skill.

Anyway, when it came to proficiencies I wrote spellcraft down on my sheet. When the DM got to that section of my sheet, he looked up at me and asked, "Why did you put spellcraft down on your sheet? This is you being transported into D&D." My response was simply, "You describe any spell effect to me and what components are being used, and I will tell you what spell it is." He stared at me for a few seconds, knowing that I could do just that, and then said, "You got it. Spellcraft it is."

 

[Bae'zel]

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."

It all goes back to the jerk premise. Is this unexpected character concept disruptive? Can things work out? Will the player be an ass regardless?

Twice in my years of DMing experience have I had players insist on being something unique and different from the setting, requiring some houserules to meet their needs. One person was great about it and it went with the flow swimmingly and it actually made the campaign richer. The other kept on making more and more demands for exceptions and rules changes that everything became about THEM.

It's a people thing, really.

 

[Belen]

That was another thought of mine - use Zootopia as inspiration and everyone is an anthropomorphic animal. In that game there are no humans, dwarves or elves. Just tortles all they way down. I think it might be fun for a short term campaign, I don't see running for longer term though.

I'd go with Redwall before Zootopia.

 

[TwoSix]

It all goes back to the jerk premise. Is this unexpected character concept disruptive? Can things work out? Will the player be an ass regardless?

Twice in my years of DMing experience have I had players insist on being something unique and different from the setting, requiring some houserules to meet their needs. One person was great about it and it went with the flow swimmingly and it actually made the campaign richer. The other kept on making more and more demands for exceptions and rules changes that everything became about THEM.

It's a people thing, really.

For sure. As I said towards the beginning of this thread, player empowerment goes along with player responsibility. The more I dictate as a player about what's included in the game, the more responsibility I have to make sure the game is functioning smoothly.

 

[AlViking]

I'd go with Redwall before Zootopia.

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.

 

[Pedantic]

I continue to be sad I mentioned tortles.

Setting that aside, there's clearly a norm at stake here that I don't think is reconcilable. This discussion really seems to be focused on a conflict about what GMs do.

If I'm completely honest, the whole appeal of the activity is the building out a fictional world. I like nitpicking the implications of tweaking magic to work just like so, or working out what a polity with a corrupt political system being run by two competing criminal organizations might look like day to day.

Fundamentally, I don't view the world as being in service to the players; it's art I'm putting together that they view through interaction (and has the fun property of changing emergently in response to their choices). If I cared a little more about narrative (or maybe characterization), I'm sure I would be writing novels, but that isn't what I'm here to do. Player input is directionally, but not collaboratively useful; I'll tailor the work to what they're interested in as consumers, but I'm not looking for co-designers.

The argument that's implicit in a lot of this is that conception of what a GM is for shouldn't be normative. It's not even a question of prerogatives over parts of the setting really, it's about what the goal of all the work is. I'm not convinced that should or does require the context of a particular set of players to determine.

 

[Zardnaar]

I was bored of Forgotten Realms for most of my life (yes, even as a teen reading Drizzt books) until I played Baldur's Gate 3. Suddenly I "got" it. Or, at least, Larian Studios' take on it.

Sometimes you just need the right writers, designers and interpretations to make a setting "sing".

3E had lots of good lore and was a bot more of an adult take on it.

Reading older FR material s lot of it isnt very well detailed outside of the Sword Coast and Dales.

I bought the Anauroch PDF and they never really followed up on it much in 30+ years. Shades appeared but they didnt do much to update the original book.

I think you need specific product.