D&D General The Tyranny of Rarity

[Cadence]

DMs who play in each other's games with a few forever players due to their first few games resulting in us saying 'never again'. Mostly because of being too domineering.

Do any of the folks who still get to DM ever put restrictions on race, class, pantheon, or alignment in their campaigns? (Where restriction means they will listen to suggestions of players, but not necessarily take them?)

 

[Vaalingrade]

Do any of the folks who still get to DM ever put restrictions on race, class, pantheon, or alignment in their campaigns? (Where restriction means they will listen to suggestions of players, but not necessarily take them?)

Outside of focused playtests, themed oneshots and newbie DMs? Not really.

There's like two people who still use alignment and the ask is 'remember evil doesn't mean psychopath', which isn't at odds with the general agreement we have to play character that would actually be part of the group.

 

[Helldritch]

Because it's done in the context of the DM being some kind of authority

Then I don't know what you were asking.

I asked you

What would you, as a DM, do if one player wanted to impose a tolkienesque restricted racial on you and the other players happen agree with him?
I am very curious.

This assume that you would nit impose anything and that also means the world you build with hundreds of races is restricted to Tolkienesque races.

So what would you do?

 

[Helldritch]

Do any of the folks who still get to DM ever put restrictions on race, class, pantheon, or alignment in their campaigns? (Where restriction means they will listen to suggestions of players, but not necessarily take them?)

I raise my hand very high and scream:" Present! And guilty as charged!"

Now it happens that my players voted for that aspect in our campaign, yes. But I do impose these restrictions with utter ruhtlessness.

 

[Vaalingrade]

I asked you

This assume that you would nit impose anything and that also means the world you build with hundreds of races is restricted to Tolkienesque races.

So what would you do?

Didn't I say I'd jump to another setting because I'm not married to my setting for every game I play?

Ah yes:

If they don't want to play in my setting, we don't have to do that either.

It's right there in your quote. Answer. Bam.

 

[Faolyn]

Question for people who don't want a "cantina effect": do you also limit the number of intelligent monster species?

I have a world that has a PHB-only races (plus orcs, minus dragonborn) limitation, because when I made the world, we were teaching a newbie how to play and I didn't want to overwhelm him with choices. But I also made the choice of saying that there were only two other intelligent humanoids in the area (kobolds and bullywugs), and except for dragons, other intelligent beings are very much supernatural in origin (fey, elementals, undead, etc.). When we move into a different area of the world, the players will learn that there are different races there.

So I was just wondering what other DMs are doing. Do you have tons of intelligent beings but only a few are playable?

 

[Helldritch]

Didn't I say I'd jump to another setting because I'm not married to my setting for every game I play?

Ah yes:


It's right there in your quote. Answer. Bam.

Ok...
Then you would cave in no matter what and you really expect others to do the same?

Do you really DM? As DMing takes a lot of work, preparation and a lot of personal time. No one that I know of that DM more than just a bit, would be ready to throw that kind of investment to the garbage.

 

[Helldritch]

Question for people who don't want a "cantina effect": do you also limit the number of intelligent monster species?

I have a world that has a PHB-only races (plus orcs, minus dragonborn) limitation, because when I made the world, we were teaching a newbie how to play and I didn't want to overwhelm him with choices. But I also made the choice of saying that there were only two other intelligent humanoids in the area (kobolds and bullywugs), and except for dragons, other intelligent beings are very much supernatural in origin (fey, elementals, undead, etc.). When we move into a different area of the world, the players will learn that there are different races there.

So I was just wondering what other DMs are doing. Do you have tons of intelligent beings but only a few are playable?

The established races are listed in the MM. Everything else is either a planar lost example or simply do not exist.

 

[Cadence]

The PhB has rules for characters of all levels and offers that a character can start above 1st if the DM agrees, and the DMG has rules for starting at higher levels. Many posters on this board might have joined an ongoing game at 1st level where there were others at higher levels. (I remember one with a bunch of 1st levels and a pair in the double digits. And the higher level ones were good at not stealing the spotlight, but rather stopping TPKs). The DMG even has a suggestion of having lower level followers in case someone dies so a player can just grab one of them as the new character, so clearly parties of mixed levels can be a thing.

So, @hawkeyefan, @Vaalingrade, or anyone else who doesn't particularly like DMs to restrict things when they don't need to, if my character idea for your new game is an experienced 3rd level war-wizard, a 5th level former mercenary captain, or an exiled 9th level monk... are those all good to go in whatever game you're running? If not, why not?

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Question for people who don't want a "cantina effect": do you also limit the number of intelligent monster species?

Yes, definitely. And unintelligent ones too. D&D has a totally crazy number of creatures and putting them all into one setting easily just leads into incoherent mess. I also change and reskin creatures to make them better fit the feel of the setting.