D&D 5E What is the appeal of the weird fantasy races?

[Minigiant]

If you want to play a fantastical character, and the campaign on offer is gritty realism then you aren't going to enjoy that campaign. Find a different game, don't try and spoil it for everyone else.

It's not a case of "shutting down" it's a case of defining the parameters of the campaign. If the player is incapable of creating a character they want to play that fits within the parameters of the campaign then they won't like the campaign. Take your toys and go play somewhere else.

That's um what I am saying.

My point in that post is many are saying that a player can find an interesting character that they want to play.

"Can play" and "Want to play" are different things.

Again it comes off as DMs saying "Play by my restrictions or leave" then being hurt when people say "So I'll leave".

 

[Paul Farquhar]

That's um what I am saying.

My point in that post is many are saying that a player can find an interesting character that they want to play.

"Can play" and "Want to play" are different things.

Again it comes off ass DMs saying "Play by my restrictions or leave" then being hurt when people say "So I'll leave".

No one has said anything about the DM being hurt. The DM says "this is the campaign" and the players say "in" or "out". I wouldn't be hurt - I would rather someone didn't play if they don't like the premise.

 

[Neonchameleon]

If you want to play a fantastical character, and the campaign on offer is gritty realism then you aren't going to enjoy that campaign. Find a different game, don't try and spoil it for everyone else.

D&D does not and has never done gritty realism. Every PHB except 4e is something like 40% spells. Every version of D&D has hit point loss and recovery being on stamina recovery timescales (with the most extreme matching marathon recovery times) and the loss of hit points being more or less consequence free until you hit 0hp. Every edition of D&D has had fantastical races as well as spells baked in, and the majority of the classes being spellcasters. Every version of D&D has an absurd power gradient between low and high level.

If the campaign on offer is D&D then the campaign on offer is not gritty realism. To get anything even vaguely approaching gritty realism you need to tear out the entire combat, magic, and levelling systems from D&D - and after that there's not much left.

It's not a case of "shutting down" it's a case of defining the parameters of the campaign. If the player is incapable of creating a character they want to play that fits within the parameters of the campaign then they won't like the campaign. Take your toys and go play somewhere else.

And "defining the parameters of the campaign" includes which system to use. If a DM is incapable of matching a game to the campaign they want to run then they are going to run into serious problems and it is going to be very hard to create a likeable campaign. The second the DM chose D&D they chose to run a fantastical campaign, with the grit being largely Sfx make-up.

 

[Minigiant]

No one has said anything about the DM being hurt. The DM says "this is the campaign" and the players say "in" or "out". I wouldn't be hurt - I would rather someone didn't play if the don't like the premise.

That's what it comes off as with the "just choose another character" or "there are tons of interesting characters in my world".

It looks like a person not understanding the appeal or preference of something and feeling offended or upset that someone doesn't like their preferences.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

That's what it comes off as with the "just choose another character" or "there are tons of interesting characters in my world".

It looks like a person not understanding the appeal or preference of something and feeling offended or upset that someone doesn't like their preferences.

Then that is your failure to understand other people.

I have run several different campaigns, in several different sub-genres (e.g. epic fantasy, pulp-noir science fantasy, horror) and they have all had different parameters with regards to player characters.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

D&D does not and has never done gritty realism.

I wouldn't know, I've never tried, but I am not arrogant enough to tell people they are having bad-wrong-fun if they try and play D&D differently to me. And if they are trying to do something radically different then they deserve praise, not criticism.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Because there is insane amount of stuff. You can easily cut swathes of it and still have perfectly functioning game.

You know, between you now and Max before, I really feel like this needs to be stated.

You can also easily keep most of the things in the game, and have a perfectly functioning game. Functionality is not only a product of subtraction. Heck, I've ADDED things to the game, and it is still a perfectly functioning game.

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Again. For maybe the hundredth time, there is not one DM on here that has ever said anything remotely close to that. Not even in the slightest. Not even a little. Not even a microscopic cell's worth. Not even an atom's worth.

Really? Because I know for a fact that at the very least @Oofta has said that they have been running the same DnD world since, I believe it was second edition and that they will not change it to accommodate the player's wishes. You either run it as is, or you shouldn't sit down.

That sounds like the slightest, a bit, a microscopic cell, maybe even an atom's worth of saying that you wouldn't allow a new tribe of people to be added to an area and a new type of magical power added to the game. Since I would imagine if that player wanted to add a new tribe with a vastly different culture to the area... that is identical to adding a new race to the area, for all of the world building complications that could ensue. And when you look at it that way... seems like a lot of people have been saying you can't add new people to their worlds.

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Then make a different interesting character that fits the game the DM has created. There is an infinite number of potential interesting characters, if you can only think of one you have a serious problem.

If the DM has created a historical campaign set during the Hundred Years War you do not get to play a Tortle. If the DM has created a campaign set in the world of The Dark Crystal you do not get to play as a human.

I seriously don't understand why this keeps coming up as some sort of point, that players can potentially make more than one character.

You know, here soon my house is going to bake Christmas cookies. If I wanted to make pumpkin cookies, and I went through the work of gathering the recipe and supplies to make it, got them in the oven and then had people tell me that that was unnacceptable, would it be a big deal? Probably not, we make a lot of different cookies this time of year, but I cna also make ginger- No they don't want that either. Okay, well I could make lemon- No, they don't want that either.

There are thousands of different types of cookies, but if I'm being told "Well, it is fine that people are shooting down the cookies you like and want to eat, because there are so many types of cookies, so why do you need more than chocolate chip and sugar cookies?" I've got to wonder if they even understand that the entire problem I have is that there are an infinite amount of interesting things I could have tried, and I wanted to try the pumpkin.

Just restating "But there are more options" doesn't make taking away an option not frustrating. Especially since if there are an infinite number of options, that means there must have been something pretty special about that idea I had to make me pick that one as my number one option.

No. If the player isn't raising an eyebrow, the DM is too predictable.

Player knowledge is limited, if they don't understand why something is happening it's because they aren't seeing the big picture. If they automatically assume the DM has done something wrong and start demanding explanations whenever something unexpected happens they are going to spoil the game for everyone.

Yeah, but sometimes the players not seeing the big picture because the DM won't tell them is also a problem.

A few months ago in a play-by-post game, our DM had us going through a wilderness exploration. There was a magic "forever blizzard" that we encountered and the they asked us what we did.

Our answer? We keep pushing forward.

The DM seemed shocked and almost dismayed at our choice, confirming with us that we understood that we could potentially be putting our characters lives at risk by trying to cut through the middle of the blizzard.

I asked "Wait, is this cutting through the middle?"

"You don't know"

And I ended up trying to explain to them that not knowing was exactly the problem. If we went left? We could potentially go through the Center of the Blizzard. Right? We could potentially go through the Center of the Blizzard. Straight ahead? We could potentially go through the Center of the Blizzard 45 degrees to the right then straight on thil morning? We could potentially go through the Center of the Blizzard

The only route we knew wasn't the Center of the Blizzard, was going back the way we had came and abandoning the mission, which no one wanted to do. So, we just pushed on and basically ignored the challenge, because we lacked so much information that we could not solve the challenge. Every choice was the same, so no choice actually mattered.

Correcting the DM when they make a mistake, or trying to get more information when you lack enough information to make informed decisions, is not trying to ruin the game. It is trying to make sure that you can actually play the game.

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Yes indeed, Thiefs soon followed suit. And whilst elves, dwarves, and halflings were present from the get-go, up until 3E they were limited in class-selection and advancement, which was arguably both done for balancing reasons and so that human PCs were "encouraged".
I'd say the theme was "the normal encountering the weird", and that is more compelling than "the weird encountering the weird."

No it isn't.

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I wouldn't know, I've never tried, but I am not arrogant enough to tell people they are having bad-wrong-fun if they try and play D&D differently to me. And if they are trying to do something radically different then they deserve praise, not criticism.

Huh, an odd position in a thread where so many of us who started out with "But what if we don't want to play a tolkien race" basically got told "Then take your weird stuff elsewhere, we think it is stupid, my game is my game, and I want to have only four races in a deeply curated world, because that is the superior way to play."

Almost like they were criticizing us for trying to do something different....

 

[Neonchameleon]

I wouldn't know, I've never tried, but I am not arrogant enough to tell people they are having bad-wrong-fun if they try and play D&D differently to me. And if they are trying to do something radically different then they deserve praise, not criticism.

Trying to play D&D as a gritty game isn't "trying to do something radically different". It's trying to reinvent the wheel. It's been done over and over again - and is a big part of why we have so many RPGs that aren't D&D. Gritty realism is something a lot of people have tried to do with D&D and have found that it is fundamentally a bad system for.

And this isn't calling it "bad wrong fun". It's calling it "a predictable trainwreck waiting to happen which a DM who almost certainly doesn't know what they are doing is trying to drag other people into". D&D isn't a universal system (and neither for that matter is GURPS). It's possible for a DM to fight against every single design decision made by D&D hard enough that you end up with a gritty game - but you have to fight the system hard at just about every turn because almost every design decision in oD&D except the one that says you're meant to bring hirelings in part as a source of replacement characters minimises grit, and later editions have minimised it even further. But a DM who fights the system that hard is basically running a fiat game anyway.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

You know, between you now and Max before, I really feel like this needs to be stated.

You can also easily keep most of the things in the game, and have a perfectly functioning game. Functionality is not only a product of subtraction. Heck, I've ADDED things to the game, and it is still a perfectly functioning game.

Yes.

(Not sure why it needed to be stated.)

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Huh, an odd position in a thread where so many of us who started out with "But what if we don't want to play a tolkien race" basically got told "Then take your weird stuff elsewhere, we think it is stupid, my game is my game, and I want to have only four races in a deeply curated world, because that is the superior way to play."

Almost like they were criticizing us for trying to do something different....

That was never my position. I have been saying all along, it's up to the DM to set the parameters. If the DM says "you can only play as zarfoodles, blezgongs and beedledims", "you can only play as humans" or "you can play anything you like, the wackier the better" they are all equally valid choices.