D&D General The Tyranny of Rarity

[Yora]

There's nothing wrong with funky races. My mostly human setting still has goliaths and tabaxi as PC races, with derro and chitines as common monsters.
But if you want a halfway believable setting, you have to make a choice which humanoids you want to include in the setting and incorporate into the worldbuilding. If you build a world from scratch where everything is build around the assumption that there are six types of humanoids, you can't just throw in 20 more and expect the world to still make any sense.
The issue here is players wanting the GM to rebuild the setting just because they like the ability score bonuses of a new character race they found in some book.

 

[hawkeyefan]

That's one way of doing it. It's completely valid. On the other hand having a pre-established world has other benefits as long as the DM carves out room for the PCs to have influence on that world is also valid.

I don't think that anyone is saying that approach is invalid. It's more that it is very often the default approach to have the Gm build the world ahead of time, and it makes sense to question why one would use the default approach.

There may be compelling reasons to do so at times. At others, it may just be because that's how it's been done in the past.

So if the GM has done that, and a player offers some idea that conflicts with that.....the GM should not dismiss the player idea out of hand. They should think about why that idea may or may not work for that game, and they should discuss it with the player.

 

[DND_Reborn]

I don't think that anyone is saying that approach is invalid.

In fairness to @Oofta, in some of the responses it certainly seems like some people are saying it... even if unintentionally.

 

[Oofta]

I don't think that anyone is saying that approach is invalid. It's more that it is very often the default approach to have the Gm build the world ahead of time, and it makes sense to question why one would use the default approach.

There may be compelling reasons to do so at times. At others, it may just be because that's how it's been done in the past.

So if the GM has done that, and a player offers some idea that conflicts with that.....the GM should not dismiss the player idea out of hand. They should think about why that idea may or may not work for that game, and they should discuss it with the player.

Maybe it's just me, but when you have people equating limiting races to tyranny and call it "outdated" it sure does sound like they're saying the approach is, if not invalid, an inferior choice.

I agree that people should be open about expectations and open to discussion. I have a caveat to my "these are the allowed races" that we can discuss other options to see if we can get something to fit. For example if someone wanted to play a goliath, I would have no problem with them coming from some human mountain barbarian tribe and let them use the goliath stats. They just won't have gray skin. Admittedly something like a drow is just not going to work because of world mythology and the reaction people would have, but I have allowed things like a deva which I mentioned somewhere up thread.

Funny thing is, I can think of only 2 times someone has taken me up on it. One was the deva, the other was a guy that wanted to play a drow. I explained that drow (who are not native to the prime material plane in my campaign) are effectively the bogeyman and I didn't want to deal with it. They played an elf instead and had a lot of fun.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

There's nothing wrong with funky races. My mostly human setting still has goliaths and tabaxi as PC races, with derro and chitines as common monsters.
But if you want a halfway believable setting, you have to make a choice which humanoids you want to include in the setting and incorporate into the worldbuilding. If you build a world from scratch where everything is build around the assumption that there are six types of humanoids, you can't just throw in 20 more and expect the world to still make any sense.
The issue here is players wanting the GM to rebuild the setting just because they like the ability score bonuses of a new character race they found in some book.

Question: Let's say you go buy a new monster book and it has some new creature, let's say a Brimgoat (it's like a hellhound but a goat). Are you able to look at your world, figure out where a brimgoat might exist (I'd say a volcano) and plop them down in a way that makes sense?

Or do you only use a specific list of monsters all having pre-curated home locations in a setting manual that you have typed up?

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I have a question what makes exotic races such a contention point? people fight lizard folk all the time so letting one join the group would be equally likely, also who other than the dm says what is mundane to begin with?

At least to me, that is not the issue. Sure. if lizardfolk exist, then it probably could make sense for a player to play one.* It is not about Tolkien races vs 'exotic' races or anything like that. It is about the GMs prerogative to create a coherent setting. Not everything someone at WotC decided to print in a book needs to exist in every setting. The GM can, and I might even suggest should, curate things.

* Now if the campaign has more narrow thematic scope, it still might make sense to limit PC options. If the campaign is to be about bunch of halflings venturing in to the world of 'big folks' then the theme is that, and and it limits PC choices even though other things in theory exist in the setting.

For my current campaign I reworked the character creation rules, and as a result, the rules for species, all of which didn't have direct D&D equivalents in the first place. I told the players for which species I had written rules for, and I think I briefly mentioned that there are other intelligent species in the setting and if they really want I might do rules for some of them too. But all players seemed to be content to choose from the ones I had provided.

 

[Micah Sweet]

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.

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

Again, as soon as you do add sapient nonhuman races, especially rare or unique ones, to an all-human community (even one with a lot of human cultures), things change imo. Most people aren't going to shrug off the world's only lizard man as no big deal, at least not for a long while.

 

[Arilyn]

When I GM, I let the players choose whatever race they want and the world builds out collaboratively from there. The game world my players are in now doesn't even have a name. I used to create worlds or use published ones but it never really worked all that well for me. Starting small and letting the world unfold with lots of player input has resulted in less prep work for me and lots of creativity flowing. My games are not shallow, surreal or cartoony.

Having said this, I have no problem with other GMs creating campaign worlds, and if I joined Oofta's table, for example, I would respect his list and I'm sure I'd have a great time adventuring and exploring in his world. I would find a player insisting on being a tortle annoying and disruptive.
If I was in a game where the GM said "We're doing a typical D&D game but no halflings, dragonborn or sorcerers because I think they're stupid," then I'd reconsider staying with the game because I'd be concerned with GM tyranny.

 

[Micah Sweet]

But...that's just the GM's side. What about the players? The more complete question is more like, "What's better, a setting the DM believes in, but players who bear up with restrictions, or a setting the DM feels is fundamentally goofy, but the players get to revel in their cool ideas?"



You apparently play in a place in which you don't have to worry about this. Please stop using the emotionally loaded language as if you are personally put upon here, when you are not.

You aren't personally being asked to do a darned thing here Oofta. Accept that as a given.

I have a player or two who regularly play the most unusual, "look at me" characters they can get away with, and it annoys the heck out of me. Am I allowed to use emotionally loaded language to express my frustration?

 

[Mannahnin]

I have a player or two who regularly play the most unusual, "look at me" characters they can get away with, and it annoys the heck out of me. Am I allowed to use emotionally loaded language to express my frustration?

I think we'd all be sympathetic to you expressing your emotions about those particular players. If you generalized from them to cast negative aspersions on the people here in this discussion, that would seem to be unreasonable.

As Oofta misinterpreted Stormanu's title as some sort of slight against or attack on Oofta's game, seemingly based in part on old bad feelings Oofta has toward unreasonable players he has had in the past.

There are multiple valid ways to make a game world. Limiting player character options CAN be a reasonable part of building a world and conveying an atmosphere. Of making a given campaign distinct. But you need player buy-in. While the GM is important, everyone's happiness and enjoyment is the objective. Stormanu is sharing his experiences of having opened up his style and approach to be better able to incorporate his players' concepts, and has found himself happy with the results. YMMV.