What D&Disms have you never liked?

[The Ghost]

Dark Sun's real roots lie in Jack Vance's Dying Earth, which was clearly a huge inspiration for the setting (apocalyptic swords-and-sorcery world beneath a bloated and dying crimson sun). It would have done better to cut its ties with Tolkien altogether.

Are you suggesting that Dark Sun would have been more popular had it not included Elves, Dwarves, Halflings, etc.? I'm not so sure that that is true.

 

[Dausuul]

Are you suggesting that Dark Sun would have been more popular had it not included Elves, Dwarves, Halflings, etc.? I'm not so sure that that is true.

More popular? Maybe, maybe not... hard to say. I know I would like it better if it swapped out those races for ones that better fit the setting.

 

[Dykstrav]

It isn't that I object to the new races or the old ones per se. My objection is to jamming every single freakin' one of them into every single freakin' published setting. Adding new races to the list makes the problem worse, not better.

If elves suit the theme and atmosphere of a setting, then by all means give it elves. Ditto tieflings, dragonborn, warforged, and the mighty Armadillo People. (Okay, so I probably wouldn't want to run a long-term campaign in a setting where that last one was a natural fit.)

But there are many settings in which elves and dwarves have no particular place, like a gritty, bloody, swords-and-sorcery world inspired by the works of Howard or Moorcock. They are entirely superfluous there. You can reskin them Dark Sun-style to make them fit in better, but you're still shackled to the idea that every world simply must have something called a "dwarf," that bears at least some resemblance to the short, stocky, iron-forging, tunnel-digging, mead-swilling, Scots-accent-mangling stereotype of dwarfdom; and players must be able to play one.

I'm 100% with you on this, Dausuul. In my own homebrew, there are no orcs (and hence, no half-orcs) and no halflings. I just got sick and tired of the constant perception that the forces of "good" are beautiful elves forever struggling to destroy the dumb, brutal orcs. That, and halflings annoy me. Since it's an ancient world type of place, I reskinned the elves to be "wood nymphs" and the dwarves are bronze-crafters that live beneath volcanoes. I found a way to make those races work, but I don't feel like my setting is "missing" anything by cutting out some of the core races.

Individual settings can be defined by what they exclude just as much as by what they include.

 

[Dausuul]

I'm 100% with you on this, Dausuul. In my own homebrew, there are no orcs (and hence, no half-orcs) and no halflings. I just got sick and tired of the constant perception that the forces of "good" are beautiful elves forever struggling to destroy the dumb, brutal orcs. That, and halflings annoy me. Since it's an ancient world type of place, I reskinned the elves to be "wood nymphs" and the dwarves are bronze-crafters that live beneath volcanoes. I found a way to make those races work, but I don't feel like my setting is "missing" anything by cutting out some of the core races.

Individual settings can be defined by what they exclude just as much as by what they include.

I recently decided that the way to build my settings was to come up with the core concept of the setting, then include whatever races flowed naturally from that.

I'm currently toying with a setting idea where the concept is "eladrin versus tiefling" - the eladrin are an ancient, decadent sorceror race who once reigned supreme (think Melniboneans), and the tieflings are humans who made a deal with the powers of Hell to throw off eladrin rule.

Obviously this setting would have eladrin, tieflings, and humans. Other races include goblins and hobgoblins (the devious and inventively cruel minions of the eladrin, created by them from humans); orcs and half-orcs (tiefling-created counterparts to goblins, made to be the perfect soldiers); minotaurs (results of botched attempts to re-create the transformation that led to the first tieflings); and half-elves (eladrin/human hybrids, mostly resulting from male eladrin sleeping with their female human slaves).

Currently undecided on including elves as the savage primitive precursors of the eladrin.

Dwarves, halflings, gnomes, et cetera, have no particular place in this setting and thus are out the window.

 

[Ariosto]

I don't know whether Dark Sun would have been more popular without the Dwarves, Elves and Hob - er - Halflings. I personally would have been more inclined to give it a look, as I was heartily tired of the Gothicvictoriancybersteamspacecowpunk (and Napoleonic, and so on) tweeness by then. Also, I encountered only a little of the Tekumel, and none of the Talislanta or Jorune, material coming out in the '90s -- so there was a bit of that "exotic" itch to scratch, and some of the Dark Sun products had beautifully evocative covers.

 

[Ariosto]

My own view of elves was shaped strongly by Moorcock. The Knight of the Swords was among the first books of "swords and sorcery" I read, and I went on from the Corum trilogy to devour the Elric saga and the Dancers at the End of Time series.

 

[Silvercat Moonpaw]

I personally tend to have the feeling that elves and dwarves can fit into any setting. But since I essentially view those two as basically "humans, but a little different" (and more fun than halflings and less niche than orcs) it's probably more that I can imagine setting where humans fit in and a couple of elven and dwarven stereotypes tag along.

 

[Kunimatyu]

Pet peeves:

Elves - They're just better than people, with few relevant flaws for a roleplaying game (as opposed to say, a beloved set of novels). I can do without fantasy British aristocracy in most settings. I don't hate dwarves and orcs as much because they have big obvious flaws, and flaws make things relatable and not just power trips. Generally, though, I prefer to just run all-human games - most of the classic archetypes associated with other races can be done just as well with a human character.

Clerics - Priests as NPC are great background, but I don't like the idea of adventuring clerics at all, and they have a tendency to overshadow other PCs story-wise thanks to their built-in social/political connections. I also find D&D's "monotheism in a polytheistic world" to just be really strange and hard to relate to anything real-world. I don't have as much hate for Paladins, inquisitors, vampire hunters, and the like - those guys really should be running around the world with adventuring parties.

 

[Glade Riven]

Hrm...D&Disms...

Forgotten Realms annoys me - well, specifically, people who nut over forgotten realms or any other campaign setting to the point where they have memorised 98% of the rule books that have come out for it. Had a similar problem with a SW: Saga campaign I ran, and it drains the fun out of DMing when a player knows more about the setting and can't keep their mouth shut about it.

Alignment abuse can get annoying (a fellow player has recently used his CN alignment as a reason to treat my own character as if he were lawful-stupid - which is NOT how I play a paladin).

Oh, yeah, the biggest "-ism" that annoys me: Players creating characters so they can treat other PCs like crap (so they can ruin the fun for others) and hide behind "Oh, I'm just playing the character."

 

[Mircoles]

I'm definitely in the Vancian magic hate club. It always drove me from D&D.

Race level/class limitations, especially since in many home games they were oftan ignored.

Level/stat drain effects. Such effects would oftan destroy my desire to play the character afterwards.

Save or die effects, they ruined several of my games.