D&D General The Tyranny of Rarity

[Yora]

As GM, I want to build the world, and have the players explore and discover it.

I really don't need players bringing in content from other settings, even though they don't even know the world the campaign will take place in. If they would rather play a dragonborn artificier than playing in my campaign, nobody is forcing them to join my game.

 

[Lyxen]

I never got why it's still seems unacceptable for DMs to ask a player why they want to play a particular race or class and not suggest options that exist in the DM's setting.
I mean. If you are going to artificially upkeep rarity, then it is up to you to make that rarity seem fun.

I'm not sure I'm getting the gist of your post here, as I have trouble reconciliating the two sentences. I think I agree with the first one very strongly, my personal history of it is that this is something that is very D&D and actually fairly recent. I don't recall having any trouble with this in a game other than D&D, and I don't recall having any trouble with it prior to 3e, which started a phase of builds and player entitlement.

I mean, for example there are tons of races in Runequest, some technically extremely interesting (for example the Elf has Int 3d6+6 / Dex 3d6+3 and Pow 2d6+6 compared to humans with Int 2d6+6 and 3d6 for other stats for humans), but players never complain when told that they can only play human.

Ad for the second sentence, I agree with it, just want to point out that having fewer races makes social interactions easier, people know how to react. Also, it's really hard for a DM to continuously ostracise a character because he looks weird, although, in terms of verisimilitude, it's what should happen even/especially in fantasy worlds, unless weirdness is really common. But if you have created a rich world, with a rich history of interaction between people, cultures and races, and where these have effect on roleplaying and relations, for me it definitely makes rarity worth it.

 

[Minigiant]

As GM, I want to build the world, and have the players explore and discover it.

I really don't need players bringing in content from other settings, even though they don't even know the world the campaign will take place in. If they would rather play a dragonborn artificier than playing in my campaign, nobody is forcing them to join my game.

That begs the questions

Why doesn't the player know what campaign they are playing in?

Why aren't you suggesting an alternative to the dragonborn artificer that matches what the player wants but fits your campaign?

 

[Yora]

Because it's a new setting that the players have not seen yet, and exploring it to become familiar with it is what playing the campaign is all about. You could of course write a small tome of setting information, but you can't make any players actually read it.

And fantasy is a very broad field. There's a huge range of possible settings in which there wouldn't be anything remotely resembling either a dragonborn, or an artificier.

If some people want to play game in the huge kitchen sink of generic Fantasyland, they are absolutely free to do so. But it holds zero appeal to me and I just don't have any interest to bother with that. People who want to run such a campaign can do that themselves. They don't need me to do it for them.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I don't consider that a failing. Worldbuilding is a large part of my fun as a GM, and I want my world to have internal consistency. PCs don't have to care about the world, but I do.

If my PCs don't care about the part of the world that they are in then I consider myself to have failed as a DM. If I wanted to do abstract world building unsullied by what others thought then I'd do that by myself. A DM isn't a novelist and the world at the table is for everyone.

How cosmopolitan can an area be with a short list of non-human races?

New York City is pretty cosmopolitan and it doesn't have, as far as I know, any sapient non-human races.

 

[Oofta]

An avian character dealing with the curse of having broken wings was one of the NPCs from Baldurs Gate II. Maybe the idea of a character with that loss of freedom would be interesting to explore for someone. What does somebody get out of playing a blind human or a one armed dwarf?

If a GM had a world that contained avian NPCs but limited choice of avian PCs because of balance issues, a player having a clipped wing version of that race would fulfill the GMs request AND allow them to play what they wanted.

I'm not going to relitegate the old "Why can't you just do what the GM asks you to do?" discussion ive already had 10+ times in other threads. It's as useless an argument as "Why can't you just alter your vision to let the player choose X?".

Why is the DM allowing any race a good thing? I don't see it as good or bad, but every time this comes up it's the DM being the big nasty meanie tyrant destroying people's fun not the player being a petulant child who demands they get their way.

Everybody probably has some line, some acceptable concept of how a fantasy world works. If a player's favorite movie was Who Framed Roger Rabbit and they wanted to literally play Bugs Bunny as a toon, that could be fun in a world were toons are a thing. Fun for a Toon game, silly for a serious D&D game.

It's one thing to have a cursed aarakocra in a world where they already exist, another for it to be the singular example of it's species. I used to allow anything, but then I ended up with a 7 foot tall pacifist elf* that everyone was frightened of for no reason. Another player wanted to play a half dragon half vampire. With a cape that fluttered in the nonexistent wind. So I decided to have a list of established races that made sense to me for my world. I don't regret that decision no matter how often I'm lumped in with tyrants for making a world that works for me as a DM.

*Back when elves maxed out at 5'6".

 

[Neonchameleon]

I like building coherent settings where everything has a place and I appreciate playing in games where the GM does this.

Me? I have one of two names for settings where every person has a place, depending on whether it's an in-setting decision or an out of setting one. If it's in setting choice by the rulers of that setting the name is "totalitarian". If it's an out of setting choice by the designers of the setting it's "sterile".

There is no culture including my own that I can grasp the whole of - I'm a single person and there are a lot of interactions. And often the most interesting parts of a culture come from the fringes, those who are part of the setting but don't fit neatly into the little boxes on the hillside that all look just the same. And one of the places for people who don't fit is adventuring. I'd therefore expect by the very nature of basic worldbuilding groups of adventurers to be oddballs for the setting - and have universally found out that letting my players add parts to settings has made them deeper and richer.

 

[Lyxen]

Why is the DM allowing any race a good thing? I don't see it as good or bad, but every time this comes up it's the DM being the big nasty meanie tyrant destroying people's fun not the player being a petulant child who demands they get their way.

It's incredible (and sad) how few people around argue in favor of the DMs, these days. No wonder people have trouble finding games and DMs to run them...

I used to allow anything, but then I ended up with a 7 foot tall pacifist elf* that everyone was frightened of for no reason. Another player wanted to play a half dragon half vampire. With a cape that fluttered in the nonexistent wind.

OMG, I want to play that. Not !

So I decided to have a list of established races that made sense to me for my world. I don't regret that decision no matter how often I'm lumped in with tyrants for making a world that works for me as a DM.

*Back when elves maxed out at 5'6".

Ah, good times, good memories...

 

[Umbran]

A lot of these issues come about because the DM's excluding things doesn't actually convey much to the players.

Fair point. So, add to the Session Zero problem - Did you actually get player buy in for your intent, rather than just your table rules?

 

[DEFCON 1]

For me and my tables I run I've seen a few notable truths which have shaped how I run things. And I expect these truths are probably true at a lot of your tables too...

1) None of my players are artistically capable of roleplaying an actual alien species, nor do they want to. Every PC regardless of race ends up being portrayed as a "human in a rubber mask".

2) As far as roleplaying is concerned... Races aren't actual alien species, they are merely packages of human quirks bundled together to create a specific personality type. And when players want to select a non-human race, it's really because it is easier and more justifiable to play that personality type via that non-human Race, than it is to play a Human who has the same package of quirks. A player could play the "drunken, grumpy jerk" personality as a Human... but because it's a fantasy game they see that personality type as the Dwarf's domain, and thus want to play a Dwarf. Which explains quite well why all the Races have one dominating and stereotypical personality type for every member within it, because the Race is merely the shorthand for the personality package.

3) Players for the most part enjoy trying new things, but are also amenable to being restricted in certain places when they have had in the past and will eventually have again in the future the opportunity for trying those new things. Which is why I purposefully do not run all my games in one single setting-- every campaign jumps around to a new setting (or a new section of a previously-played setting) each time. Because each setting has its own specific dominate races/classes/backgrounds, there are always new things to choose that actually work well for where we are playing. And they know that if my current Theros game is humanocentric, they are okay with going along with it because they got to play whatever goofy-ass option they wanted for the Forgotten Realms game, and will have an entirely new set of options if/when we play the Feywild game down the line.

And finally 4)... Practically none of my large group of players wants to DM, so they all know that if they actually want to play in my game they go along with whatever it is I've set up this time around. Because they quite possibly could be on the outside looking in if they put up too much of a stink.

Mod Edit: Language use. ~Umbran