D&D General The Tyranny of Rarity

[Lanefan]

what makes a race an oddball to you anyway?

If it's a PC and not one of Human, Dwarf, Elf, Gnome, Hobbit, Part-Elf or Part-Orc it's an oddball.

And oddballs there have been, over the years: I've DMed as PCs two Leprechauns, a Dryad, a couple of Drow, a Centaur, a Gnoll, a Part-Deity(!), a minor Devil, and a small boatload of strange and varied inter-species crossbreeds e.g. a character who has both Orc and Elf in its recent ancestry and is thus a Part-Elf and Part-Orc at the same time, a Human-YuanTi cross, etc.

The most bizarre of all was a character who ended up being a cross between a Skulk and a Frostman. The player here got into the oddball charts and for a while I thought she was never going to stop; the dice just kept taking her from one table to another, each less likely than the last.

 

[Lanefan]

Definitely my biggest failing/hurdle as a DM is being obsessed with internal consistency that the player's just don't care or even think about.

Thing is, in order to help figure out how things work in the setting I focus on internal consistency more as a player. As a DM I just try to make things consistent enough to keep me-as-player happy.

 

[Lyxen]

And once more, as a balance, we are left with the actual tyranny of the player, who wants to play whatever he wants, despite the DM maybe having prepared a very consistent world with some restrictions because they fit his cosmology, history, myth, cultures or whatever. Some worlds are created with the principle of "whatever exists in D&D exists in that world" and that's fine too. But the players are playing in the DM's world, so they have to accept his rules and his design. And if, for example, he does not want flying creatures because they are unbalanced compared to what he has prepared (and please don't server me the BS about "it's easy to adjust", first it's not true especially at low level and second, a DM has enough work as it is with all his players, why should he expend specific effort to cater just for my whims ?), then sorry, that's the way it is. We are just starting a new campaign in an interesting world, the types of tieflings there are different, so I'm choosing one of them. And I won't be an entitled little wangrod and insist that my DM allows me to play a winged tiefling just because they have to exist somewhere in the universe. Simply put, in that universe, they don't, and I accept that to be able to play in a consistent campaigns where tieflings are descendant of specific creatures, with a history and consistency, and I will enjoy that.

All of this goes with a trend that started with 3e of not respecting the work the DM does for his players enjoyment. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for the players having fun, but there are limits to it, respect needs to flow both ways, and respect for work and preparation is very important for me.

 

[cbwjm]

Sometimes I'll say "PHB" only, perhaps with some additions, rather than allowing everything. I don't use any of the bloodlines from ravenloft in any of my games, though they'd be options in ravenloft.

If I was going to play an established setting like dragonlance, I'd likely restrict races to what's already there, though that does mean that there are a fair few monstrous races that could possibly be available as well half-orc as a substitution for half-ogre.

If I'm just playing a bunch h of one shots like my thunder rift games, I just don't care what people use. It's not a serious campaign, I haven't crafted the world, so the races don't matter.

 

[Mordhau]

I can understand it, but it indicates an issue - the GM having an intent for the game (say, human dominated with a small number of others) that the players haven't embraced - a Session Zero problem, if you will.

It is an indication that intent doesn't seem valuable to the players. So, one should ask - what value should it give to the players? Did the GM actually make it valuable to them? Were they given a reason to embrace it beyond, "I, the GM, want it this way?"

There should be some things the player accept because the GM wants it that way, and vice versa, in the name of compromise and mutual fun. But the GM ought to ask themselves if this is one that really matters.

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

Eg. The DM may think that "PHB races only and non-human species are very rare" indicates the intention for a human centred game, but to players since it's a very specific set of guidelines it may well suggest that anything within that sphere is perfectly ok. So you get 3 Drow and a rock gnome. And then the DM is pulling their hair out because they now have a party that has no reason to care about the human kingdom whose fate they wanted to centre the game on (and which priority they did nothing really to communicate).

 

[Stormonu]

@Lyxen - yes, there is that aspect that does come up, where a player wants something that just isn’t appropriate, mechanically or thematically. I believe the DM does have the right to shoot it down or to put in qualifiers (such as “everyone is going to stop and stare at your character”), but I also feel the player should have the option to make their case. If the foot goes down, though, drop it and don’t belabour the point.

However - and I am guilty of this myself - I’ve seen too many instances where the knee-jerk reaction is a hard “No!”, with no consideration of how it might be made to work, and what sort of benefit it might add to the game arc by including it in one way or another. A lot of times we, as DMs, forget we can offload the workload to the player, or that the campaign world isn’t an ivory tower of our creation - the players are usually more interested in participation if they have buy-in on some of the imaginary real estate as well.

 

[Maxperson]

I’ve run the same campaign world for years as well (well, actually two - one Greyhawk, one Amberos - with planar travel between the two). It can be done, races fading in and out over time (especially if between groups years have passed since the last campaign).

It’s a point for consideration, not a hill to die on.

For some examples, I’ve had one-off Warforged in Greyhawk, the one-off Kenku on Greyhawk (from Amberos), a one-off Minotaur (a former human, in fact - on Amberos), the D&D gorgon being unique in Amberos and a few others over the years. Both worlds have pretty established backgrounds, but I made allowances so the players (or me as a DM) could have a bit of fun, even if it meant expanding the gate a bit more than I was comfortable.

You don't even need them to be full races in the setting. A Tabaxi PC from The Beastlands where his race resides somehow ends up in Greyhawk. A Tortle coming out of hibernation as the glacier above him melts, his people dead for a thousand years. And so on. Even if four campaigns later another Tabaxi or Tortle comes into play, it still won't trigger some change to the racial make-up of the world. It will just be another semi-unique circumstance allowing a second one to be played.

 

[Maxperson]

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

Eg. The DM may think that "PHB races only and non-human species are very rare" indicates the intention for a human centred game, but to players since it's a very specific set of guidelines it may well suggest that anything within that sphere is perfectly ok. So you get 3 Drow and a rock gnome. And then the DM is pulling their hair out because they now have a party that has no reason to care about the human kingdom whose fate they wanted to centre the game on (and which priority they did nothing really to communicate).

If I'm going to have a human centric game, I will let the players know that during session 0 or even before. A DM that ends up with 3 drow and a gnome in a human centric game didn't talk to the players about it before hand.

 

[Stormonu]

If I'm going to have a human centric game, I will let the players know that during session 0 or even before. A DM that ends up with 3 drow and a gnome in a human centric game didn't talk to the players about it before hand.

Or somehow wanted the “danger to the human kingdom” to be an (early) surprise in game.

 

[billd91]

If I'm going to have a human centric game, I will let the players know that during session 0 or even before. A DM that ends up with 3 drow and a gnome in a human centric game didn't talk to the players about it before hand.

Or doesn't get the respect he or she deserves. It may be that they said they wanted a human-centric game, but the players all showed up with the Mos Eisley weirdos anyway assuming that the DM would let them play anyway.