D&D 5E Which played-out D&D trope needs to die?

[CleverNickName]

Every human town is massively racist because the DM secretly resents you for not playing a Tolkien race.

Yep, I've seen this happen before. But "the DM secretly resents you" might be a strong choice of phrasing...the player should share at least some of the blame for that.

DM: Sure, you can play a tiefling but remember, demons destroyed this world three generations ago. Folks aren't going to be very friendly to tieflings.
PLAYER: I understand, and that's fine. This will be fun!
(later)
PLAYER: Why does everyone in town hate my character? Is it because I'm a tiefling?! This isn't fun!

Obviously a good DM should now make some changes to the character and/or the setting, because the player is uncomfortable with the tone of the game and everyone should be able to have fun. But the player shouldn't act surprised or mistreated, either.

 

[Vaalingrade]

I've never been 'warned' that NPCs will be horrible and begging to be on fire.

And yes, they all deserve to be on fire. I am tired of backward, hateful, ignorant peasants in general in D&D

 

[VelvetViolet]

I've never been 'warned' that NPCs will be horrible and begging to be on fire.

And yes, they all deserve to be on fire. I am tired of backward, hateful, ignorant peasants in general in D&D

Do you want an exotic theme park or a setting with consistent world building? You can’t have nice peasants and a pseudo-medieval hellscape full of bandits and monsters with a bazillion horrible modus operandi centered on killing and eating said peasants.

Realistically, the peasants should all be 40k Catachans.

 

[Mind of tempest]

I think Dungeons & Delvers-style orcs can work fine. They avoid issues like “what do we do with the baby orcs?” by being a form of self-replicating demonic possession rather than an actual race. After they sacrifice their victims to Orcus, they summon more orcs to inhabit the remains. So there’s also zombie apocalypse parallels.



If I design a humanocentric setting, then I use planetouched, dragontouched, and the like to replace fantasy races so players can feel special. They can generally pass for regular human, prejudice will vary by circumstances, and they still get their racial cool powers. This also avoids the monolithic rubber forehead problem of fantasy races, which is one of my personal persistent bugbears

yeah and that is not what people think orcs are anymore, and there is no way to reverse it.

it was a fairly none plane centric setting which meant that would still feel out of places, I would rather he was just honest with me as that is better.

 

[theCourier]

I've parted ways with the trope of "Low level adventurers start out taking care of small threats" very recently and it's been very fun. No more killing rats in basements or dealing with goblin/kobold warrens for me!

 

[Mind of tempest]

I've parted ways with the trope of "Low level adventurers start out taking care of small threats" very recently and it's been very fun. No more killing rats in basements or dealing with goblin/kobold warrens for me!

so what have you got them doing instead, wise frog on top of troll thing that my sister cares about?

 

[tetrasodium]

Yep, I've seen this happen before. But "the DM secretly resents you" might be a strong choice of phrasing...the player should share at least some of the blame for that.

DM: Sure, you can play a tiefling but remember, demons destroyed this world three generations ago. Folks aren't going to be very friendly to tieflings.
PLAYER: I understand, and that's fine. This will be fun!
(later)
PLAYER: Why does everyone in town hate my character? Is it because I'm a tiefling?! This isn't fun!

Obviously a good DM should now make some changes to the character and/or the setting, because the player is uncomfortable with the tone of the game and everyone should be able to have fun. But the player shouldn't be surprised, either.

To be fair, a not insignificant chunk of the time the GM is still enforcing the monstrous race tropes of past edition FR/GH 5e books walk a thing line trying to kinda sorta move on while not being willing to drop the old

 

[Vaalingrade]

Do you want an exotic theme park or a setting with consistent world building?

If the other option is obnoxious racists, theme park all the way, baby.

Also, inherent racism isn't necessary for good worldbuilding. Or even all that compatible for a game that has races as literal separate species players are supposed to be able to choose freely. The DM getting to be a jackass at you is not included in any of the stat blocks as far as I can see.

 

[Oofta]

If the other option is obnoxious racists, theme park all the way, baby.

Also, inherent racism isn't necessary for good worldbuilding. Or even all that compatible for a game that has races as literal separate species players are supposed to be able to choose freely. The DM getting to be a jackass at you is not included in any of the stat blocks as far as I can see.

In a world with literal monsters, if a monster walks into town it's not racist to be wary. It's called "survival".

Which leads to the trope that I think needs to die : if I have some aspect of my game that you don't approve of that works for me and my group that we're engaging in bad-wrong-fun.

Be up front about what kind of game you run when inviting players and accept that not all games are right for you and vice versa.

 

[VelvetViolet]

yeah and that is not what people think orcs are anymore, and there is no way to reverse it.

Orcs are whatever people want them to be at the time. Always chaotic evil, walking fungus, an oppressed minority... We can do whatever we want in our games, and "people" can go cry badwrongfun in the timeout corner forever. I couldn't care less what "people" think, and neither should you.

it was a fairly none plane centric setting which meant that would still feel out of places, I would rather he was just honest with me as that is better.

I didn't say to play an extraplanar setting. I said when designing humanocentric settings, where boring old humans are the only option, then I use magical bloodlines to replace fantasy races. Just as much special snowflakes, but cheaper makeup budget.