What Creatures "Break" A Fantasy Game World For You?

[Wombat]

For me, I'd say most of the critters in the MM break fantasy for me.

Beholder? Illithid? Digester? Phantom Fungus (aka MechaMushroom)? Nope, never used 'em, never will, strike me as way, way too silly.

I actually have less problem with the Owlbear (strikes me as being as logical as a Minotaur)...

 

[Rpgraccoon]

Sci-fi stuff, mostly automatons. I don't mind clockworks per se, but stuff like the sheen (from Dragon magazine) turns me off.

The sheen were awesome Techno-mages are a cool kind of breed. However, they way the sheen were balanced in the campaign I played they were an outsider from Mechanus and the Techno-Mages acted as Incantrixes to seal portals and uses there odd magic to send them home.

P.S. Gun fulled by magical crystals and such are pretty cool. Never really played with Victorian guns just techno magic guns.

As for Dino's I love the idea of a Hollow World and of lost Islands and spots where they can live so they don't break the game for me either.

Thus, liking Planescape, Spelljammer, and Hollow World I guess leaves me open to anything.

O.h. There is one chatch for me if a PC is plays a pixie I will not play. Bad experiences kills the fun for everyone.

 

[Olaf the Stout]

Not to stray into politics or religion territory...but is it possible that the player doesn't 'believe' in dinosaurs or the use of dinosaurs somehow offended him?

As the DM of the group in question, no I almost certainly believe that wasn't the case. I think it was simply the fact that dinosaurs didn't fit into his vision of a fantasy world, unless it was some sort of lost world situation. I think he reacted to that in the same way that I would have expected if another PC had joined the group and was playing Luke Skywalker, for example.

Olaf the Stout

 

[Griffith Dragonlake]

I"m ok with a druid summoning a dinosaur in the middle of a Lost World. I'm not ok with being in the middle of a Mediæval European village and the druid summons a dinosaur. Likewise, I expect to encounter totally weird creatures in a dungeon and I'm ok with a wizard summoning abberations or fiendish creatures. But when the weird or anachronistic becomes the norm, it just breaks my suspension of disbelief.

I’ve thought about this some more and remembered that in High School sometimes I snuck in some wild and wooly anything goes stuff. I created cat-folk, lion-folk, dinosaur-folk, and winged humans as PCs. One time someone found a light saber in a hoarde. And one time a time-cop came to their time to kill them before they did something in the future (this was in the late '70s before Terminator). By the time I got to college I had gotten all the wahoo anything but the kitchen sink fantasy out of my system.

After my experience in the SCA some things about D&D combat breaks my fantasy for me. For example the fact that helms play no role (except for an obscure rule in the AD&D DMG) and the proliferation of chainmail bikinis. And the armor doesn't provide DR.

I guess what I'm really saying is that D&D led me to explore history, literature, and Medieval semi-reenanctment. And those experience enriched my life but changed what I need out of D&D and refined what breaks fantasy for me. Kind of ironic but I don't think my experience is unique given the number of people who left D&D for Chivalry & Sorcery, MERP, etc.

Oh and I never left D&D, I just houseruled the hell out of it.

 

[TwinBahamut]

Aberrations, particularly the alien, tentacle-covered, Lovecraftian kind. I hate Lovecraftian influences on fantasy. I don't think they work together well at all, and I would never play in a campaign inspired by that genre.

Also, I just don't like magical cybernetics. Golem/undead/elemental graft stuff really annoys me.

Other than that, I am fairly open-minded. As long as it doesn't violate particular genre conventions and the basic premise of the setting, it will be believable.

But why do so many people in this thread hate guns? They are not very far out of place in the historical middle ages, let alone a somewhat more fantastic version of the middle ages. It is not like firearms are always going to be modern firearms...

 

[Fallen Seraph]

In general, I am fine with most things if it fits with the coherent and noticeable theme/outlook/feel of the setting. So a game dealing with desert-tribes and Egyptian ruins, etc. It would break the game to face Frost Giants.

So I think almost any creature can work in the appropriate setting.

Now for creatures that I dislike using in my fantasy because they don't fit well with my games the big ones are: Dinosaurs, some of the ridiculous ones that are simply combinations of things, and those are the two big ones.

 

[DarkKestral]

I'd make a setting with firearms, repeater crossbows, dinos, weird aberrations, steampunk worlds, airships, golems, grafts, mech and all sorts of crazy stuff in a heartbeat. Don't get me wrong, I like more traditional fantasy, but I generally get my ideas by making images that immediately strike me as awesome then extrapolating from there. Kitchen sink-ish, but a lot of it is grounded in knowing that medievals had a lot more tech than we often give them credit for. The rest is that, given the presence of magic, I can see a lot of different things being around that would otherwise break people's assumptions.

However, it's not a given that I'd have 'em all. Given a tightly focused, themed campaign, I'll restrict my options down quite a bit. For example, for a Conan-themed game I'd probably limit things down a bit; a lot of stuff won't work in that specific type of setting, because it doesn't emulate the source material. That particular campaign would probably be a more aberration-, undead- and reptilian-focused campaign, with few casters present and what few there were high level enemy casters. I'm not sure what the mix would be, but for non-human, non-animal fights, those would be the monsters I'd probably pick. (Actually, 4th ed. might be good for having some conan-esque stuff going on, since the cleric won't be so much of a required class. Bring on the mighty thews and ophidian beast-men!)

In short, it's all campaign setting dependent, with a few exceptions. I kind of find "PC Killer" monsters which are only built to kill PCs and not built to be interesting annoying, as well as monsters which are obviously designed for the sole purpose of ticking off the players. (Rust Monsters, et al. Mearls's remakes might not tick off the players so much, but they annoy ME for bookkeeping reasons.) Obviously silly monsters, such as the Gelatinous Cube, I'm OK with, if they're easily rationalizable within the setting. I might change some of the fluff to make it slightly less non-sensical, but that'd be it.

Also: magical girls in Ravenloft? bizarre, not immediately sure how that'd work as a campaign, but... I suppose it'd work. Actually, never mind, i just remembered something that is totally on-concept that I've seen before. So now that I think about it I could probably DO it, given a group and a real desire to GM it. And it wouldn't even need Lovecraftian, tentacled horrors!

 

[Mavnn]

Also: magical girls in Ravenloft? bizarre, not immediately sure how that'd work as a campaign, but... I suppose it'd work. Actually, never mind, i just remembered something that is totally on-concept that I've seen before. So now that I think about it I could probably DO it, given a group and a real desire to GM it. And it wouldn't even need Lovecraftian, tentacled horrors!

http://www.pixelscapes.com/sailornothing/

Not quite Ravenloft, but the feel should work.

Careful: it's not very nice. But it is very clever, and very well written.

 

[Fallen Seraph]

Aberrations, particularly the alien, tentacle-covered, Lovecraftian kind. I hate Lovecraftian influences on fantasy. I don't think they work together well at all, and I would never play in a campaign inspired by that genre.

Just wondering though, how do you feel about Mind Flayers and Beholders, seeing how they are very classic D&D creatures but are aberrations?

Not a criticism, just curious.

 

[Greg K]

As the DM of the group in question, no I almost certainly believe that wasn't the case. I think it was simply the fact that dinosaurs didn't fit into his vision of a fantasy world, unless it was some sort of lost world situation. I think he reacted to that in the same way that I would have expected if another PC had joined the group and was playing Luke Skywalker, for example.

I'm not the person in question, but the above pretty much sums up my what my reaction would have been. It's possible that I might also be able to accept dinosaurs if they had otherwise been established as part of the world from the beginning (e..g, people riding horse sized dinosaur like beasts as mounts) and presented at character generation, but having a character suddenly show up with a dinosaur several levels into the game would ruin the playing experience for me.