D&D General The Tyranny of Rarity

[Filthy Lucre]

Which begs the question...

Just as a fun fact, people almost never use this expression in it's correct/technical/formal sense. "Begging the question" is when someone assumes the thing about which people are actively debating/disagreeing.

 

[jmartkdr2]

Just as a fun fact, people almost never use this expression in it's correct/technical/formal sense. "Begging the question" is when someone assumes the thing about which people are actively debating/disagreeing.

I'm aware, but I was employing the modern, inverted usage.

 

[Thomas Shey]

true but why for example keep the mainstream races if you may not care nor do the players I have seen a dm do this which seemed of even to me?

Sometimes because the lore you had about how things worked out was dependent on them or something pretty close to them for your history to make sense; you can probably find things kind of elf-like or dwarf-like if you've set it up with those in mind, but at that point you're going to also ask yourself why to bother, when elves and dwarves do the job.

Never underestimate the benefit for the simple fact the traditional races are, honestly, kind of bland.

 

[Cadence]

WeIf people are trying to play Toons in D&D they may be rejecting the premise of the game. At which point we need to step back and ask why. Have I not sold things properly or do they not want to play in the game? And where did they get the rules for toons in D&D? For that matter what level are toons? If they (a) managed to follow the published rules of D&D and (b) managed to work with the setting I'd be good with one. But if they can't fit the published rules they're probably SOL.

What defines the setting seems to be key.

What exactly counts as published rules? Do 3rd party things counts as fitting the published rules?

 

[Thomas Shey]

The “player who demands to play a weird race and will not compromise” is such a specific case that always comes up in these threads but to me seems a bit of a straw man. Has anyone actually encountered one in the wild? Most of the posts here seem hypothetical.

I don't know that I've ever seen that one, but I've absolutely seen people who aren't really happy unless they're playing some race well beyond the normal range of available species, whatever that list is. Some of it is that they're just fixated on being the odd man out, sometimes they're bored with the old standards, sometimes its less benign reasons.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I could be wrong, but I think the Toons reference was to characters like this:
View attachment 149131
But hey, now that I think of it I stand corrected:
View attachment 149132

Looks pretty DNDish to me.

In fact, this is rather inspirational considering the topic...

Though not quite that cartoonish, the whole setting for Pugmire could be argued to not look too far from that...and its otherwise pretty D&Dish.

 

[jmartkdr2]

My overall opinions on this:

As a dm, I try to design worlds with room for as many racial options as possible unless I want to run an all-one-race game. Therefore, I almost always try to come up with a generic origin for beastfolk since that covers a lot of official options. I then work with what the players bring - partly because I like character-driven stories, and to get that in DnD I need players who are really into their pc's. Race restrictions work against that. (usually)

As a player - I accept that a dm has the right to restrict races. But I will always ask why, and I will use the answer to gain insight into your dming style. I have found this to be a really good way to open a conversation about dming/game style in practice.

 

[Oofta]

@Oofta, you mentioned you'd allow a Goliath as a reskinned human from a northern tribe. Has me thinking. If a player approached you and said, "I'd like to play a bird-man of sorts - can we reskin an aarakocra as a human whose made some alchemical/magical wings or an elf with a fey blessing that gives them flight" - would this be something you would consider to allow in play if the player was sincere? If not, would it be of mechanics such as innate flight, or that it doesn't mesh with something in the campaign world in some way?

Also, you mentioned "goblins are everywhere" - would you allow a player to play a goblin (I see you do allow half-orcs, maybe half-goblin?), or are they restricted like the drow as a sort of "bogeyman" you wouldn't want watered down by PC access?

This isn't meant as a trap of any sort, but sort of a question/curiousity of how far you would let reskinning and repurposing creatures in your campaign you would allow.

Having played a PC that had boots of flying at a very low level in my first 5E campaign my wife and I have vowed to never allow easy flying at low levels. So, no. I get that some people that don't see it as an issue, but it changes the nature of the game in ways we didn't enjoy.

Goblins ... goblins are weird. Add to the list of other campaigns I'd like to run some day and a feywild campaign is also on my list. Goblins originate from the feywild where they're more like Harry Potter goblins. So if I did a feywild campaign they would be an option.

In a standard campaign it's more difficult. Long ago when the feywild goblins came to the prime material plane the group split into two. One embraced the cruel side of their mischievousness nature and became goblins. The other embraced the joyful side and became gnomes. There are some neutral and good-aligned goblins in the world but nobody has ever asked to play one. It would have to be in a very specific region of the world (where the Nug-Nug tribe of goblins live) and everyone would have to be okay with it.

But again a goblin would hit many of the issues a drow would hit. In most places the only ones anyone has come across are evil conniving little bastards. Honestly not sure how I would deal with it, my campaign world can be very harsh in a shoot first ask questions later sort of way. That happens when people fear for their very survival.

 

[Cadence]

Do y'all (on both sides) view choice of character class the same as race? Sub-classes? Alignment? Deities?

 

[Thomas Shey]

It's not always "play a weird race" but I have run into players who will not take no for an answer no matter how many times you say it. They will wheedle and complain and constantly connive to get what they want hoping to wear you down like Bart and Lisa shouting "Will you take us to Mount Splashmore" at Homer until he caves.
They are best booted once identified.

More common, IME, are the people who don't make a direct complaint after a certain point but do various passive-aggressive things to show how much they don't appreciate they didn't get to do what they wanted to. To describe them as a massive drag on a campaign is an understatement.