D&D General The Tyranny of Rarity

[Minigiant]

Have you ever excluded monsters because they simply don't fit your vision of the game world, especially if it was something the players wanted to see included for some reason?

Personally, I've only excluded races because either

1. They go against the preconceived nature of the setting. (no fiends then no tieflings)
2. They go against the prconceived theme of the setting (No European races in a Asian theme game)
3. Their absence is part of the setting (the giants all died in the Chaos Wars. Only half-giants and giant blooded goliaths remain)

When I create a setting, at least for the PHB and free races, I always ponder how they could fit. Even if I don't plan to include them or highlight them.

Schrodinger's Race
The race is neither banned nor exists until someone mentions them

 

[Smackpixi]

But the players are playing in the DM's world, so they have to accept his rules and his design

I know it’s been addressed sort of but I wonder why it’s ever adversarial. Most DMs I suspect know who their players are going to be, so BEFORE designing a world, discuss with players what they want to do in next adventure. They want to be an elf sailor, ok, adventure won’t be in a desert. I’m not into tyranny of the players, but it really is a partnership and before you invest time into world building, make sure you know 4 someones that want to play in it. Let’s all figure out together so we’re all happy. Not a session zero thing, more like three months before let’s all agree on what we want to do so DM can work on building Out this world. Right?

 

[SkidAce]

I'm may be a bit unusual in that I run all my campaigns in the same world and always have. What happens in one campaign carries on to the next, some things that happened (or didn't happened) long ago in a campaign far far away can still have an impact. So, no, I don't want to have a singleton race or monster because eventually it adds up. A warforged here, a kenku there, a tabaxi over yonder and suddenly the exceptions become the rule. How many "unique" creatures can you have before "unique" becomes "Oh, it's a Tuesday again?"

That, and I want my PCs and NPCs to be more grounded. I know where they come from and while I don't always tie in a PC's origin into the overall story it's more likely that I'm going to than not.

There's nothing wrong with having every race under the sun. There's also nothing wrong with having a limited list.

I also have always used the same world in a similar fashion.

 

[Mordhau]

I know it’s been addressed sort of but I wonder why it’s ever adversarial. Most DMs I suspect know who their players are going to be, so BEFORE designing a world, discuss with players what they want to do in next adventure. They want to be an elf sailor, ok, adventure won’t be in a desert. I’m not into tyranny of the players, but it really is a partnership and before you invest time into world building, make sure you know 4 someones that want to play in it. Let’s all figure out together so we’re all happy. Not a session zero thing, more like three months before let’s all agree on what we want to do so DM can work on building Out this world. Right?

You have remarkably constant players if the one who wanted to be an elf sailor 3 months ago is still into that idea 3 months later.

 

[SkidAce]

...
I, personally, used to have very strong opinions about what I allowed for my campaigns. That’s changed a lot, and more rapidly of late. My eldest son often boggles my mind with the things he comes up with, and having such a different interaction with the fantasy he’s grown up with than I had has really made me reconsider my approach to my 80’s-borne campaign world, and the critters upon it - as well as other things about the world.

Quoted for Truth!

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I like building coherent settings where everything has a place and I appreciate playing in games where the GM does this. Deciding what sort of creatures live in the setting is an important part of the world building. Not being able to play an elf in an Asian themed setting is no more unreasonable restriction than not being able to play a Klingon in a Star Wars game. It is not a part of that setting.

And yeah, unique character can work sometimes. I played in a long campaign where the world was basically human only, and all other characters were humans... except we had one tiefling. And they were literally the only tiefling in the setting, a child of a human mother and devil father. It worked fine with the themes of the game. But if every or even several characters are some sort super unique special exceptions, then it can easily get silly. Also, tiefling, warforged and perhaps genasi can work well as unique one offs, but many species kinda are pretty meaningless if they don't have whole established species and related culture as part of the setting.

 

[Stormonu]

@Crimson Longinus , just to note with your example - doing something like denying a elf in an Asian campaign depends on the world itself. For example, you could drop an elf in Karu-Tur, as that's based on the eastern half of Faerun - so they could be either native to, say Shou Lung or have traveled/migrated there. Rokugan? Maybe not so much.

Sometimes, it can be an issue if the the DM has defined the world narrowly before they've invited players to discuss the campaign - the world is set before the players have a chance to put in their input. It may be that the campaign world has been around for a while from previous games or they've just done a lot of prep before adding in the PCs. If everyone's on board with any restrictions, there (probably) won't be any friction. The keeping Klingons out of a Star Trek game because everyone wants to stay true to the source material makes sense in that example.

But if the DM comes at the players as "this is the way it will be", they're possibly cutting themselves off from some possibly interesting story ideas or creating friction with the players by limiting their imagination. The Millenium Falcon flies out of the Borg Cube in First Contact (ala escaping the Death Star II from RotJ), so some groups might find it fun to slip a Klingon in as a Hutt bodyguard and run with it.

As before, I'm not immune to being somewhat rigid - before my homebrew Amberos was ever introduced to my play group, I'd done a whole continent map, written a book(let) on all the various countries and even gone through the MM and chosen areas where certain monsters/races could be found.

It caused me a lot of strife in later editions as new races and monsters sometimes hadn't even been considered and thus had "no place" if I stuck to my guns, even if I overall liked the new content (case in point: Dragonborn - luckily, in the end I had a similar monstrous race I could riff off of, allowing me to slot the race in for PC use).

The main point is, sometimes let your guard down and try something out of the ordinary. You might like the results.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Is, "standing out in a way the GM thinks is successful," the player's goal, though?

This is my question, as well.

As a DM or a player, I don't care about how much a race "stands out".

My Islands World setting has no humans for the same reason some video games don't have humans. If I have elves, halflings, gnomes, goliaths, firbolgs, changelings, dwarves, etc, why bother with humans? I also don't have high elves and the dwarf subraces are purely mechanical.

Instead, vanishingly few large cultures are monoracial, but most of them were founded primarily by a race, and that people's idiosyncrasies inform the core of that culture, alongside the real world elements that are part of the process.

But my sister's cajun frog-man knight isn't cool because of how different he is from a human knight from a cajun-influenced brackish coastal swampland. He's cool because he's a little frog knight with a sword and a leaf shaped shield. "Standing out" has nothing to do with it.

 

[Mordhau]

How would you do that in basic 5e? They are designed to be the least interesting race, and the Tasha's add-on just made it worse.

You could offer a mechanical carrot. One way would be to take the half-feats and offer half of one of those based on what kind of human they pick.

But it doesn't really need to be mechanical. You just need to be clear about what is cool about your game and different to other games. For example, if you want your game to be about defending a human nation from invasion and you want the characters to be invested in that nation then give them ways to be invested from the beginning that get their creative juices flowing.

Offer them a noble title and a lot of wealth, or some kind of political position. Maybe the Cleric has an actually important position in the church rather than just some kind of itinerant friar. Maybe the character with the scholar background is tutor to the crown prince. Just something to get the characters thinking about how the game you're offering them is cool and unique. Ideally they should be focusing on what they can do in the game and getting excited about that, rather than what they can't.

With any luck they then come up with concepts that inspire you as DM rather than ones you can simply tolerate.

 

[Seramus]

I explicitly allow characters to be from other settings entirely. Not that everyone is plane shifting from one dimension to the next like an episode of Sliders. But if someone wants to be a lost Knight of Solamnia? Sure. A player wants to be a Warforged from Eberron wandered through an ancient ruin and can't find their way back? Absolutely. Foreigner in a Strange Land is a familiar trope, and one that often comes with more cons than pros (mostly not having as much justification for knowledge rolls). It's all perfectly fine by me.