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3 years ago ::
Dec 19, 2009 - 1:26PM
#501
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Date Joined:
Jun 20, 2009
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At the moment there is a lengthy and now crazy thread about an inconsistent GM in one of the sub forums who bans a great deal of the player races. In 3.5 it wasn't uncommon that half the GMs I played with just outright didn't allow any thing beyond the core books or psionics. So how much "I don't allow "x"" is too much? (In my own game Dragonborn eventually were not allowed and replaced with large bear like people)
I know a DM who takes the middle ground pretty well. His "homebrew" setting is basically humans only, but allows most other races to be used as ethnic traits. Goliaths, foe example, are a tall, strong, tough tribe of humans. Others like tieflings and genasi have "sorcery in their blood" or something, but are still totally human.
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3 years ago ::
Dec 19, 2009 - 1:38PM
#502
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Date Joined:
Jun 10, 2009
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This is a point of disagreement that I don't think the two sides of this arguement will ever agree on. One side thinks that's a legitimate reason, one doesn't think that it is acceptable or legitimate as a reason.
Which truly boggles my mind. Basically, those that do no think so are saying "you can't play the game the way you want to". No, disclaimers, no "buts" - just you have to play it the way others want you to, not the way you want to. If that's the case, no thanks. DS pointed out the bottom line - no one is being forced to play with restrictions. They all have the option of opting out (including the DM). You don't like the restrictions, find another DM or DM yourself. For those who insist, however, that the "DM doesn't have the right", well - they are welcome to think so, but they'd be wrong. The reasoning, as said, is the full phrase isn't "DM doesn't have the right", but rather "DM doesn't have the right to play the game the way (s)he prefers".
Through the ages, many would wonder "Does art imitate life or does life imitate art?"
I wonder "Does the art of discourse on the internet imitate the art of discourse in life or does the art of discourse in life imitate the art of discourse on the internet?"
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3 years ago ::
Dec 19, 2009 - 1:51PM
#503
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Date Joined:
Oct 26, 2009
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DarkSpartan makes some good points. As I've said either here of elsewhere, specialty campaigns aren't always going to have the same options, and you're obviously willing to find creative ways to work with players who really, really want to play a certain thing, which is good.
My only problem is with your Eberron decisions. When playing, I would be rather frustrated with a DM who made decisions like that, that both limit player options and run against the published material of the setting. To me, it seems that if it's allowed in the Eberron by RAW, as it were, it should nearly always be allowed a given groups iteration of Eberron.
First, thank you for agreeing on the points for custom campaigns.
Let me take just ten seconds(okay, maybe a tad more) to answer you on the other. The Deva did not exist for the original version of Eberron(neither did the Dragonborn, but a solid effort was made to include them in the world-fluff, so they're okay.)
The Deva was tacked on as an afterthought, and looked the part. So I went with the strictest interpretation of the statement the book made on them (two whole paragraphs), and ran with it. I put in a little logic to see what kind of population would be required to establish their claims, and then worked out what roles they might play in society as it is now. At best, you might find one or two per major Nation or other significant landmass (I left the entire continent of Xen'drick seven overall). From the Fluff, they don't breed, so that pretty much solves that. Those that die on Eberron are removed, and sent to the next PoL campaign I decide to run, since that is where they were designed to fit. By concept, they come out short of an uncountable number of available plothooks, and that's more than a little disturbing.
There was an attempt when assembling an Eberron campaign previously, wherein the party consisted five Deva, and a Shifter.
The Shifter might as well have been named Teflon. Nothing in a plot hook even remotely worked. The Deva can't be called upon to have any connections to homeland, loves or desires. They're effectively Angels, and as such, I find them rather less than believable, and certainly entirely too alien to work in most standard campaigns.
I may consider it, if the Player is willing to go the extra mile and actually play the character from it's fluff-induced alien mindset, and at least lend a paw as far as workable plothooks.
Short version: It would take a Most Excellent Player with a proven dedication to Role-Playing before I will even consider approving such a character.
Caveat on the Shifter: First person starts quoting Werewolf the Apocalypse tripe as valid Shifter behavior, or makes any attempt at similar metagaming, I will drop the biggest Khyber Dragonshard Evah on said character, and they can make a new, non-shifter toon.
That goes double for the Revenant and V:tm or Ann Rice, or Steffy.
If they don't like that, they were warned in advance(and they were), and they are certainly welcome to go find a WoD game to play in. They were introduced specific to Eberron, along with the Changeling and the Kalashtar, and as such they shall not be excluded except case by case.
However, there's a new PHB coming up, and if I cannot find a way to include the Wilden, Genasi, and any others appearing, they simply will not be included. That said, I think I have a spot for the Wilden, but they would be pretty much restricted to Xen'drik as a starting point. If they were present in Q'barra, someone would have heard about them long before now.
-Sarena
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3 years ago ::
Dec 19, 2009 - 2:52PM
#504
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Date Joined:
Mar 21, 2005
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I'm just going to throw this out here.
Who here thinks it's in the best interests of the player to be agreeable to restrictions? If your GM really thinks druids and shamans are stupid you'll probably be cast as a third wheel with few adventures that emphasize primal/nature fluff.
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3 years ago ::
Dec 19, 2009 - 3:36PM
#505
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I'm just going to throw this out here.
Who here thinks it's in the best interests of the player to be agreeable to restrictions? If your GM really thinks druids and shamans are stupid you'll probably be cast as a third wheel with few adventures that emphasize primal/nature fluff.
Not necessarily. Just because you don't like something doesn't mean you're going to crap all over it. I hate elves, but I don't make them ostracized pariahs wherever they go.
Another day, another three or four entries to my Ignore List.
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3 years ago ::
Dec 19, 2009 - 4:02PM
#506
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I'm just going to throw this out here.
Who here thinks it's in the best interests of the player to be agreeable to restrictions? If your GM really thinks druids and shamans are stupid you'll probably be cast as a third wheel with few adventures that emphasize primal/nature fluff.
I think it's the responsibility of all players at the table to be agreeable. If the DM doesn't have a better reason than "I think they're dumb and weak and smell bad" then they shouldn't use their role in the game to leverage the player that wants to play one. It's the same the other way around, if the DM has a really good reason to disallow something then players shouldn't throw hissy fits and threaten to walk.
"The campaign takes place in a ruined, dying world. All the gods are dead or gone and a rift to the Far Realm is literally swallowing the planet bit by bit. Because of this aspect of the setting I'm disallowing Divine characters. This is also a way of encouraging you to try classes we haven't seen at the table, especially Primal and Psionic characters. If you have an idea that just cannot be done without the basis of one of the Divine classes then we'll see if we can re-work things to fit with the story."
Of course one of the central problems in the entire discussion is the inherent imbalance in the power relationship between DM and PCs. While they're all players their roles are different and disproportionate.
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3 years ago ::
Dec 20, 2009 - 6:22AM
#507
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I'm just going to throw this out here.
Who here thinks it's in the best interests of the player to be agreeable to restrictions? If your GM really thinks druids and shamans are stupid you'll probably be cast as a third wheel with few adventures that emphasize primal/nature fluff.
Even though it has been stated I think the best solution is when you can get that middle ground. In my current homebrew gnomes are extremely rare and for all intensive purposes endangered. They have isolated themselves and those that do venture out pretend to be halflings and after years became more of a myth to the other races. I made them this way to encourage a player to try something different then his typical gnome bard or gnome rogue. It ended up having an opposite effect (go figure), the other players worked it out during character development to want to search out gnomes, they decided they wanted to be like cryptohunters. I allowed the gnome as long as he wasn't a bard or rogue and the dynamics worked because he rped trying to act like a halfling and did a good job. That's one case where the middle ground worked well.
I also have a tendency to think that if the players are willing to work within the restrictions instead of focusing on what they can't do they will easily have a good time as the DM's story will be able to progress naturally. Unfortunately with me this rarely works in reverse, like I said I can't allow pcs to play evil pcs. As a side question slightly off topic, how many have made a restriction let's say "No tieflings for X reason" and out of nowhere one of your players decides that they only want to play a tiefling?
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3 years ago ::
Dec 20, 2009 - 8:40AM
#508
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Personally, I just feel that certain things should be off limits. A blatantly evil race like mindflayers shouldn't be pcs, but thats a personal choice. I would put good money that someone in this forum allows pcs like that.
Seems to me that a number of people in-thread would think us both horrible DMs for not allowing the Illithid(or the Drow, for that matter). Certainly they would, and he have to be agreeable, right?
-Sarena
Well he would have probably been a Mindflayer that only ate animal brains, and was trying to work past the terrible stereotypes that plague his race. Just like all droware now Chaotic Good that are trying to throw off the shackles of their tyrannical evil brethren. It definitely seems like we are horrible DMs Sarena.
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3 years ago ::
Dec 20, 2009 - 10:11AM
#509
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Date Joined:
Mar 21, 2005
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I'm just going to throw this out here.
Who here thinks it's in the best interests of the player to be agreeable to restrictions? If your GM really thinks druids and shamans are stupid you'll probably be cast as a third wheel with few adventures that emphasize primal/nature fluff.
Not necessarily. Just because you don't like something doesn't mean you're going to crap all over it. I hate elves, but I don't make them ostracized pariahs wherever they go.
I'm not thinking the GM will go out of their way to make the game experience crappy. I'm thinking it would be more passive than that. Simply put if the player is excited about playing a character that the GM finds uninteresting then I don't think it's too far out there to say that even the most agreeable GM will not be inspired to create interesting scenarios specific to that character.
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3 years ago ::
Dec 20, 2009 - 10:19AM
#510
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I agree with the appove. I am not the biggest fan of bards, and usually have a hard time trying to make things interesting for a bard. Scenerios that really put the bard to the test just do not occur to me, it might be because I have a hard time understanding a class that sings at monsters to defeat them though  . But yes, if a DM/GM has a specific problem with a race/class it might not be they crap on it only that they can't find ways to use them to the best of their ability like me and bards.
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