Or with the DM for letting the players get away with it. If I announce I want to run a campaign with only X races, and a player says he wants to play Y race that is totally at odds with the concept of the campaign world, I shrug and say, "Sorry. Not in this campaign." Players who can't live with that are welcome to run their own games.
Who Else likes the Cantina?
- Thread starter Rechan
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Or with the DM for letting the players get away with it. If I announce I want to run a campaign with only X races, and a player says he wants to play Y race that is totally at odds with the concept of the campaign world, I shrug and say, "Sorry. Not in this campaign." Players who can't live with that are welcome to run their own games.
Psion
Adventurer
Cantina as a element meant to highlight the cosmopolitan nature of a setting like Planescapes' Sigil? Absolutely.
Cantina as implicit element of the D&D metasetting? Thumbs down. This is the one thing that vexed me about setting stuff in 3e, where they would write up city setting, and throw half-elves, halfings, and dwarves here and there just like it was an NPC trait like "blond hair" or "barrel chested". Which to me really showed a bit of laziness on the part of the writers while devaluing the utility of different races in the game.
Cantina as implicit element of the D&D metasetting? Thumbs down. This is the one thing that vexed me about setting stuff in 3e, where they would write up city setting, and throw half-elves, halfings, and dwarves here and there just like it was an NPC trait like "blond hair" or "barrel chested". Which to me really showed a bit of laziness on the part of the writers while devaluing the utility of different races in the game.
Antithetist
First Post
In a setting that has been designed with all kinds of weird racial cocktails in mind (like Planescape, and to a somewhat lesser extent Eberron), the cantina effect is awesome. It's got its own unique aesthetic and atmosphere. Planescape has always been dear to my heart for exactly that reason.
In other settings, I prefer to exercise some restraint. D&D has always been very racially eclectic compared to other fantasy settings which largely remain human-centric, and that's fine - but the 4E assumption that tieflings and funny-looking lizardmen are commonplace in the default setting is a little rich for my blood. Maybe I'm just behind the times, because by the end of 3.5 I got the impression a lot of gamers around the world would have been hacked off if the DM had told them they couldn't play a Feral Half-Celestial Insectile Minotaur in their game.
My own experience was pretty removed from that, since my players never expressed the least bit of interest in playing anything outside the core books even when I tried to run a Planescape game. Maybe that's why I find it odd that WotC are now incorporating more of the 'anything goes' attitude into the core material; I guess maybe I'll get used to it.
In other settings, I prefer to exercise some restraint. D&D has always been very racially eclectic compared to other fantasy settings which largely remain human-centric, and that's fine - but the 4E assumption that tieflings and funny-looking lizardmen are commonplace in the default setting is a little rich for my blood. Maybe I'm just behind the times, because by the end of 3.5 I got the impression a lot of gamers around the world would have been hacked off if the DM had told them they couldn't play a Feral Half-Celestial Insectile Minotaur in their game.
My own experience was pretty removed from that, since my players never expressed the least bit of interest in playing anything outside the core books even when I tried to run a Planescape game. Maybe that's why I find it odd that WotC are now incorporating more of the 'anything goes' attitude into the core material; I guess maybe I'll get used to it.
BryonD
Hero
If that message is present in a homogeneous manner, then I'd find it to be an overly simplistic presentation of the theme.
Barastrondo
First Post
I agree with this, with the slight variation that when you start restricting palettes, some diversity can frequently better than very little diversity, at least for long-term play. Xenophobic settings are neat and compelling, but they often don't stand up to intriguing long-term play as well as cosmopolitan places do.
That said, I'm a big fan of limiting palettes and will do it whenever I can get away with it. I'm a sucker for tightly-themed fantasy, be it Gothic stylings, pseudo-Renaissance Italy or based in mythic China. I generally don't implement "warforged" as a general concept within a setting, but if someone asks to play a clockwork man in an Al-Qadim style game or a terra cotta soldier in a Chinese-style game, I'll absolutely embrace it even if there aren't lots of warforged known to the populace.
In response to the "Cantina Everywhere means Cantina Nowhere":
Just because the world is full of all those races, and you have the "Cantina" effect in many places, means it must be everywhere and therefore not special.
You're going to likely see less of that diversity in "Race X's Homeland", where the population is Primarily race X with token others. Rural or small areas are likely going to be less diverse (purely because there's little REASON or Likelihood for a representative of every race to be in every small town everywhere). As are specialist places - a Mining town is going to have few people who aren't the mining sort (thus Halflings and elves and non-"Strong backed, enjoy tunnels" races aren't fit for it).
Look at our world. WITHIN a country, the places with the biggest cosmopolitan effects are: 1) Large Cities and 2) Places where most of the immigrants go. This can be due to geographical location, or it can be where a community of X nationality has gathered, thus it's a magnet for like people. Other countries THEMSELVES are often cosmopolitan because of their location (such as places along the Middle East, which are traditional crossroads between Europe, Asia and Africa).
And part of the issue of diversity isn't so much "Every race has a representation here", but you're likely going to find a large minority population of one or three races in one place. For instance, this large town/small city might be mostly race Y, but have a small community of X, and token few A B & C races.
And getting back to the notion of Races=Racism and such, it's very easy for races to - in game - be pigeonholed into certain classes (in a socio-economic status way), or caste system. For instance, halflings pushed into farming or domestic servitude, while goliaths and other "strong" races forced into manual labor. So you get the "Cantina" because of social class/work related things - "We're in a dive bar by the Docks, so it's full of +2 str races, with a few human/half-elven sailors". Same reason why your crafting quarter will likely be lots of dwarves and gnomes, and your Arts/Entertainment district with quite a few +dex and +Cha races.
Just because the world is full of all those races, and you have the "Cantina" effect in many places, means it must be everywhere and therefore not special.
You're going to likely see less of that diversity in "Race X's Homeland", where the population is Primarily race X with token others. Rural or small areas are likely going to be less diverse (purely because there's little REASON or Likelihood for a representative of every race to be in every small town everywhere). As are specialist places - a Mining town is going to have few people who aren't the mining sort (thus Halflings and elves and non-"Strong backed, enjoy tunnels" races aren't fit for it).
Look at our world. WITHIN a country, the places with the biggest cosmopolitan effects are: 1) Large Cities and 2) Places where most of the immigrants go. This can be due to geographical location, or it can be where a community of X nationality has gathered, thus it's a magnet for like people. Other countries THEMSELVES are often cosmopolitan because of their location (such as places along the Middle East, which are traditional crossroads between Europe, Asia and Africa).
And part of the issue of diversity isn't so much "Every race has a representation here", but you're likely going to find a large minority population of one or three races in one place. For instance, this large town/small city might be mostly race Y, but have a small community of X, and token few A B & C races.
And getting back to the notion of Races=Racism and such, it's very easy for races to - in game - be pigeonholed into certain classes (in a socio-economic status way), or caste system. For instance, halflings pushed into farming or domestic servitude, while goliaths and other "strong" races forced into manual labor. So you get the "Cantina" because of social class/work related things - "We're in a dive bar by the Docks, so it's full of +2 str races, with a few human/half-elven sailors". Same reason why your crafting quarter will likely be lots of dwarves and gnomes, and your Arts/Entertainment district with quite a few +dex and +Cha races.
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You find humanity, in it's infinite diversity, fascinating and a bit scary.
Yet in an RPG, humanity -- even with the traditional fantasy races along for the ride -- is too confining to hold any interest?
The reasons I'm not a fan of the cantina:
1) Humans are the most fascinating race of all, with so many options for culture and attitudes. The real world and all its history are your oyster if you play a human.
2) Traditional races have a ready-made background, history, and mythology to them, and fit into a "default" traditional game world. You can subvert the traditional roles and attitudes, or not, or mix and match, and get to interesting characters.
3) I don't like having too many rules. I think core works better and is eaiser to learn and manage. I don't play often enough that I've gotten bored of the rules or bored of the usual choices. I think the "jaded" once-or-twice a week playing cantina-ists and build-ists are the cause of rules bloat, and killed my beloved pre-4e game, decades before I ran out of things to do with it and happiness from buying new adventures.
4) My impression (possibly incorrect), is that people are getting in-game rules advantages from cantina-ing, but not getting penalties. Even in a "default" world, a cantina approach seems to mean its fine to be a drow, and no one really minds it or punishes you for it -- in other words, your race doesn't actually MATTER from a roleplaying perspective. Races become "skins" to put on builds, instead of actually having a roleplaying meaning in the reactions of NPCs and your role in the world, and the spectacular and extraordinary becomes the everyday and ignored.
One cantina character -- the one drow or dragonborn in a world where the other PC's are traditional, the world is traditional, and the world is surprised to see the extraordinary PC -- that's fairly interesting.
But when everyone is special, no one is.
Nod. Keep weirdness weird!
That's the reason to resist cantina-ing your world -- if everything is a jumble of incoherent weirdness, nothing is weirdly different and interesting anymore.
Turning the TV all the way to superbright just fades everything out . . . contrast is much more interesting.
qft.
Either we see it differently, or we actually agree on the degree of cantina that's good after all.
I LOVE it about B5 and Stargate that MOST of the races we ever see have real cultures, homelands, traditions, and roots in the setting. I think that's possible because there are so few of them -- 4 main races including humans in B5.
In SG1, there were three "main races" -- just Human, Goa'uld, and Jaffa, with infinite variety among the humans -- and it becomes very interesting when a new recurring race is discovered.
Contrast that with Star Trek, where nearly every planet has a new race, and crowd sees have to include cantina-ing (whose that blue ensign? what's with the furry guy we never saw before?). That, to me, is much, much less interesting than going deep on a few races.
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