D&D General The Tyranny of Rarity

[Jack Daniel]

I suspect that's because I came up on different Fantasy novels.

My preferred fantasy is about guile heroes fast-talking and manipulating through a cool world whose rules they also manipulate to their advantage. Magic and supernatural and fantastic elements aren't so much a cool set piece as interesting parts of the world the hero makes use of and even if new locations might be cool and awe-inspiring to me as the reader, it's a place the hero knows and inhabits and swims through like a fish in the ocean. Think Lies of Locke Lamorra (though Lynch has a worse output scheule than me at this point) or Sanderson's non-doorstoppers like Elantris or Warbreaker, or my most beloved Legend of Nightfall

And that's the kind of game I like: My PC is a person who lives in the world and is navigating it instead of exploring it (if that makes sense); solving the issues that matter to them rather than having things happen to them.

I still like traditional stories with chosen ones pulled from their farmboy life to discover the larger world... I just don't like them in the way where I want to play them out over the next two years.

Well said. Your preference does indeed make more sense when you explain it in those terms — still not my bag o' tea, but then, the fantasy I was raised on? Oz and Barsoom!

 

[MNblockhead]

For one thing, it pushes the bounds of credulity that species who in theory don't get along very well* are going to be able to adventure together without some PvP arising. Which is in fact fine with me, they can slaughter each other if that's what they want to do, but some here seem to frown on it.

Why? The human experience is thankfully full of individual members of groups who have done terrible things to each other still being able to develop strong personal bonds.

But, fine, we are talking about the same species when we speak of humans.

We also have cross-species bonds that develop, even among species that in many/most contexts and situations would be predators, prey, and/or otherwise in competition with each other.

Why would it push the bounds of credulity that sentient species, who for a variety of reasons "don't get along very well," would have individuals who cross those cultural barriers?

 

[Vaalingrade]

My friend pointed out something glorious at the party tonight: No matter how much the DM wants to block your fun when it comes to race choice based on asthetics, they can't limit your access to paper mache, die, bark, hides and fur. This means you can always fashion a crude costume of your race of choice, which you then absolutely refuse to acknowledge as a costume in-character.

 

[Lanefan]

But let’s say someone had an issue with this. Let’s say the players wanted to play a variety of PC races. Is their desire more important than some kind of setting fidelity?

When someone asks the player to make some kind of concession to “fit the setting”…allowing Goliath stats but reskinning to large tribal humans as was mentioned earlier in the thread….isn’t itjust as valid to instead ask the GM to make concessions? “Hey, loosen up on the racial restrictions” or maybe “how about this collection of freaks is the campaign concept”. GMs are supposed to be creative…some constraint or input from other sources would seem to be the kind of prompt to encourage the imagination.

If the campaign concept is a collection of freaks then fine, but I'll likely not enjoy DMing it for much longer than a one-off.

It's pretty clear in the online documentation for my game what species you can expect to be able to either choose (basically Humans plus one to three others, depending where in the game-world you're starting/joining) or randomly roll (the classic seven plus a low-odds "other" which gets sorted out if-when someone hits it).

Or you could just cut out that year long build up.

That may be a lot to ask. I know a lot of GMs truly enjoy that solo creative endeavor. I don’t know if many place the importance of that above the group’s enjoyment, or if some who do that even realize they do.

You kind of described the is element as work that you just want to get done, so I don’t know if this applies to you at all. But if you see this aspect of GMing as simply work to be done, then I don’t understand why you’re so resistant to any approach that would help mitigate that work.

Because without that work - and I speak from experience - it'll be a lesser game. So, I do it the one time it needs to be done.

Recently I've been putting some of my setting maps online, and given as I'm doing it all pretty much from scratch (scanning in the paper maps results in a hideous mess that has to be completely redone as coloured-pencil shading doesn't scan worth ship; all I can use the scans for is to trace the outlines) and almost pixel by pixel in some cases, it's tedious as all hell. I neither own nor know how to use mapping software.

Sure there can be. Just because a player has an idea and the GM or group find it interesting and decide to use it doesn't mean they know every detail about it. Or when and how it may come up in the game.

You may be interpreting "design" differently than I. If I'm told I get to design part of the game world I assume I'm getting carte blanche to do what I want with it. If I don't have carte blanche and I'm just adding to or augmenting your-as-DM's design then I'm just doing your work for you - no thanks.

I’ll say that I prefer characters who seem to actually exist in the world. Who know things and have heard things and have a base of knowledge. Much as people in the real world have.

As do I, which is where a solid foundation of game-world documentation comes in handy; and if they don't read it it's on them.

And people in the real world are surprised all the time. They discover things all the time.

You used the phrase “get tired real fast” earlier; doesn’t the idea of a fresh group of adventurers who only know about their immediate area and who go out into the world wide-eyed and amazed at everything….doesn’t that get old too?

Not for me. Then again, perhaps that's because in 40-odd years of doing this I've never yet as player started a new campaign* in a new previously-unknown setting. I've either a) joined into pre-existing games where one or more other players already knew lots of stuff, or b) the setting in use was a published one (e.g. Greyhawk) that's already more or less familiar.

* - that's lasted long enough for any real exploration to take place.

You got it. I definitely want there to be discovery in my games, and there is, but it’s not usually of the “oh look, a mountain” sort.

I'm a geographer by education, so of course geography and geo-exploration are going to be important to me.

 

[Thomas Shey]

why does what is standard important? if they are going to bluntly pick a disruptive option like a 40k space marine in a star game there is a problem but otherwise what is exactly the problem.

Because it tends to lead to one of two things: 1. The GM ignoring the fact that the character is unusual enough in an obvious way that it should be, at least, regularly attracting disproportionate attention, or 2. Allowing the player to, in practice, be a spotlight hog simply by his racial choice, even if its in a negative way (and if it is its about equally likely that the player either acts like they're being picked on, or even considers negative attention, still good).

 

[Thomas Shey]

If a player want wants to be a Drow to be an outcast and the setting lacks outcasts, the setting feels incomplete or overly restrictive.

I'll just note it may not be the setting, but the campaign constraints that prevent it. And that may be "overly restrictive" by some people's standards, but those standards essentially prohibit a rather large number of campaign types; taken far enough, they really only permit one.

 

[Mind of tempest]

Because it tends to lead to one of two things: 1. The GM ignoring the fact that the character is unusual enough in an obvious way that it should be, at least, regularly attracting disproportionate attention, or 2. Allowing the player to, in practice, be a spotlight hog simply by his racial choice, even if its in a negative way (and if it is its about equally likely that the player either acts like they're being picked on, or even considers negative attention, still good).

then just never mention it as if they want to be disruptive they will find a way to anyway?

 

[DND_Reborn]

My friend pointed out something glorious at the party tonight: No matter how much the DM wants to block your fun when it comes to race choice based on asthetics, they can't limit your access to paper mache, die, bark, hides and fur. This means you can always fashion a crude costume of your race of choice, which you then absolutely refuse to acknowledge as a costume in-character.

Was it a costume party?

 

[Minigiant]

Those are all things that come with one's class, not species.

Give those powers to a species carte blanche and you've just made the Rogue class redundant for anyone else; and I think the days of species-as-class have long passed us by.

We have races with Warrior aspects (Dwarf, Half Orc) and races with Wizard aspects (Elf)

There is no Traditional Old Schoool race with Thief (Goblin, Bugbear, Changeling) or Priest aspects (Aasimar).

And an ordinary Human is balanced against all this how, again? (and I usually don't care much about balance; this is over the top even for me)

Many editions of D&D and other RPGs manages it. We got Tabaxi and Dragonborn and Triton etc

Pretty easy to just give Part-Orcs a strength bonus and have done with it.

You say easy.
I say lazy.

#OrcsForThePHB
#PHBBugbears

Board games don't have to worry much about long-term balance as play in a board game is almost invariably one-and-done; there's no ongoing play, and the different roles/characters/etc. can be redistributed every time.

Video games should worry about this stuff but I'm in no position to say whether they do or not.

Well I'll just tell you.
Video games, board games, and war games worry about balance a lot.
More than D&D.
It can make edition wars look like pattycake.

 

[Panzeh]

In a larger group, i don't really fuss too much over racial restrictions, because no one's going to get that much spotlight time anyway, so it's more fitting to what D&D is, to me, to just be permissive about it because elves are a lot more of a part of the fantasy of the game than realistic peasant reactions or whatever. I find the game works better in big groups the more we focus on the actual hostile dungeon zones, etc.

With smaller groups, i actually do prefer to curate more but those are situations where I can sit down with players and work out stuff about what the player wants to play and their lore. In smaller groups, i can actually engage that stuff, whereas it would be fairly disruptive to engage most people's backstories in a big group. In that context, I do somewhat prefer if people pick a race, that they have a notion as to how they work in the world, and what the outlines of the lore is for them. Plenty of people struggle with that collaborative aspect, and that's okay, so I have pre-made stuff to pick. I do find it kinda weird that people would conflate a little bit of collaboration on the world about one people or another with not having any surprises to be had.