I'm not sure why its so complicated.
Our GM decided to start up a new game. He said 20 point buy and any race under 14 RP. He disallowed Master Summoners. Pretty straightforward.
Also, every character had to write up a backstory of how they came to be here, have a connection to at least one other character, and a goal.
We had a lot of fun creating characters, fitting our backstories to his world and to each other. No one is OP compared to anyone else.
The 3 power players took human, and then we have a tiefling, a half-orc, and a sylph (me at 6 RP). The core half-orc is probably the weirdest looking.
I can certainly understand disallowing monster templates, unless the GM wants to run a high-level/mythic campaign.
Just state your RP limit and be done. But that will still allow a lot of cool races and allow a lot of creativity.
A GM has the right to play in any milieu they like. And players have the right to say whether or not that milieu and its guidelines appeal to them. I still don't see how its that complicated. GMs-- recruit for the game you want to play, and the players that enjoy it will come.
As for me, after 35 years of playing Tolkien-esqe characters, I will pass on any recruitment that says "Core Races Only." Others may have tons of fun, but I like my (EDIT:)tabula a little more rasa.
I'm not sure why its so complicated.
Our GM decided to start up a new game. He said 20 point buy and any race under 14 RP. He disallowed Master Summoners. Pretty straightforward.
Also, every character had to write up a backstory of how they came to be here, have a connection to at least one other character, and a goal.
We had a lot of fun creating characters, fitting our backstories to his world and to each other. No one is OP compared to anyone else.
The 3 power players took human, and then we have a tiefling, a half-orc, and a sylph (me at 6 RP). The core half-orc is probably the weirdest looking.
I can certainly understand disallowing monster templates, unless the GM wants to run a high-level/mythic campaign.
Just state your RP limit and be done. But that will still allow a lot of cool races and allow a lot of creativity.
A GM has the right to play in any milieu they like. And players have the right to say whether or not that milieu and its guidelines appeal to them. I still don't see how its that complicated. GMs-- recruit for the game you want to play, and the players that enjoy it will come.
As for me, after 35 years of playing Tolkien-esqe characters, I will pass on any recruitment that says "Core Races Only." Others may have tons of fun, but I like my tabla a little more rasa.
Tabula.
Also I agree.
Well, it isn't every day you're told to stop GMing. Heh.
Let me describe my process for creating. Perhaps that should clarify some things.
I first decide on a focus. For one campaign I made, I wanted elementals, the inner planes of the Great Wheel cosmology, and such things. This suggests several things. Survival is a central aspect, alien cultures that are barely comprehensible as well as adaptation of the more familiar ways of life. Philosophical principles of purity, dilution, contamination, unavoidable struggle, and massive scales of things. But these things can't all be plopped down on some poor players. To let them ease into it gradually, there will need to be a home to start from. I decided to make a normal setting that was being tainted by various elemental forces. This became new terrains and hazards.
So, if the homeworld is being invaded by elemental forces, which ones? If there were several, the world would become an important battlefield. The native forces of that world would struggle against these incursions, leading to various things such as ivory tower sages that wanted to find out more and study the enemy forces, to knightly orders devoted to the struggle, to conclaves of druids and others who wanted to protect their natural world against the threat. Druids... considering that the elements are the basis for the natural world, it isn't such a stretch to think that some druids would see the new elemental forces as equally valid, giving me some people who might serve as villains, at least for a time. I decide to add in all sorts of elementals I can find, various elemental races such as genasi, and such... but I also find that this leaves me with a number of holes. Fact is, most elementals aren't sentient. So, taking a cue from 4th edition, I decide that I need to break things down a bit more. An elemental is an animating force acting on a clump of elemental matter. This animating force should be related to that animating golems and animated objects, plus, why could there not be other types of animating forces? Say, more intelligent ones. This would give us elementals with character, and intelligent golems.
And so on, and so forth. By now, I have the core races of a pretty standard world to provide a baseline (the early campaign is probably going to be about how the status quo in that world is disrupted), I have half-elemental races like genasi/oreads/ifrits etc, and I want to think about adding warforged and some sort of half-golems. Since the natural forces will be a relevant factor, I decide that so will the fey-themed races. As for classes, I decide that sorcerers with elemental bloodlines will be quite common, but that there is a struggle among the more organized wizard guilds between those who focus on elemental power and those who see it as a threat. Alchemy and artifice need something to integrate them, and will be a fun thing given the new and alien terrains and planes available. And... it is likely that the reason for the elemental invasion had something to do with said wizards. I hunt down design elements that give other classes an edge against elemental beasts and constructs. Deities... Since I am going to deal with a setting with very distant deities, the Inner Planes, I am going to make the ones in the home world very personal and a bit more active. They have active recruiting, they have saints, and they are strong political forces in the world. The campaign will also feature genies strongly enough to be noticeable.
But, alas, not everything CAN ever go in a single setting. Since I was building this in 3.5, I decided not to use psionics (better to do that in an aberration-themed graftpunk campaign), incarnum, binders, truename magic, the book of nine swords, all to reduce complexity and broken options. To further simplify, perhaps I should simply rework dragons to be huge elementals, or elemental-tainted beings? Or remove them altogether? The world likely doesn't need any half-elemental half-dragons. I decide to remove dragons, saying they were exterminated long ago by the churches in a great war. Some bloodlines may still remain, but no half-dragons or the like. How about undead? The elementals have been summoned for a long time, and perhaps that has taken much of the space for animating skeletons and zombies? I decide to leave in animated dead, but deemphasize them strongly. Most clerics today could have powers to turn or command elementals, perhaps? Demons and other outer-planars then? Same there, I deemphasize them. There is enough going on already. The campaign will have no shortage of usable enemies, there will be variation, with elementals, humanoids, tainted animals and beasts, oozes (animating forces on gloop), constructs, fey, and others.
So, given this setup, I am ready to let people play any of dozens of races, including many weird ones. I will, however, not let them play half-dragons. And if all of them decide they want to play aasimar and other outer-planar races, or only "eastern" races, I would feel that they did not adapt their character concepts to my setting. Every setting requires some kind of reinterpretation of existing elements, and flat out removal of others. I do not kick people out lightly if at all, but I will draw some lines. Those are the lines beyond which I am not interested in GMing. I am all for communication, but people are people, and make odd choices sometimes. At the end of the day, I am ready to offer something I hope is spectacular, but not at any cost.
I think what we have is a fundamental difference of opinion on how to go about world and campaign building.
Some of us use a scalpel to carefully remove bits and pieces that are disruptive. The default assumption is to allow it, but the willingness to remove it if necessary.
There appear others of us here that instead place items we want carefully with tweezers. The default assumption is to disallow it, but the willingness to consider adding it if desirable enough.
I agree completely. So I ask again this time removing the oddly unpopular gaming ideology, Why do the first group feel the need to call the second group wrong/bad?
Okay, sorry for Wall of Text above. Should have spoilered.
But that followed the One Wookie Rule.
And if the GM would use psionics and the psionic classes/races IN PLACE OF arcane magic and some of the regular races, would that be okay?
On the same note, how many would throw a fit if the DM banned all Core races?
And yet, again, I end up at the same place: Effectively, I am banning every dwarven, elven, half-elven, halfling, gnome and half-orc character concept - which would get many to call me a "BAD GM".
You forgot to mention Human on that list of yours, Sissyl. ;D
No reason to remove them if I am doing psionics, Icyshadow. It is typically a good idea to have them, if only because it's complicated to remove them, given they exist in almost every published adventure you might want to run. Other races, not so much.
Oh, I thought you were answering my question.
It has nothing to do with the question Andrew presented.
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Please give a concrete example of what you mean by this.The setting is what makes an idea idiotic or not.
If I am running a pre-generated setting with history, background, etc. and a certain class or race doesn't make sense within it - then it is not going to be there. Period.
I have a campaign world, Bastion Unraveled, where there are no Orcs or Half Orcs. There is a very important reason why orcs don't exist. If a single drop of living orc blood were to ever appear on the scene the world itself would be unmade.
The campaign involves the party discovering the ruins of an orc civilization and then puzzling out why they all disappeared. I won't spoil the solution to the puzzle because my players read this board.
But suffice to say that I will say "no" to any player who asks to play a half orc or orc PC.
This is a single concrete example. I have many campaigns that I've run where there are restrictions on race and/or class - and for very good reason. With just a little imagination, I'm sure anyone on this thread can think of more.
The Diamond Throne setting had some kind of demon dragon hybrids that if they returned, would make the dominant civilization, that of the giants, go into a sort of collective ritual war frenzy as soon as they heard of it. Would also be a pretty good reason to disallow.
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I've come to the conclusion that this debate has no right answer.
Elaborations will come later, since I still have work to do at the moment.
Oh, I thought you were answering my question.
It has nothing to do with the question Andrew presented.
Okay, got it. As I said, more or less, people would complain just as much about that. More, perhaps, claiming that "everything core MUST BE ALLOWED".
Which just points to the epiphany I had a moment ago. There is no right or wrong to this topic.
@Sissyl
My statements were not about not allowing X race or Y class. I restrict race/class combinations in my games based on which continent in my world the game is taking place. I tell my players up front.
My statements were based on your stated mindset that it's you vs your players, and that any player who wanted to play something you weren't ok with was trying to disrupt your game.
How you decide on a game and setting is irrelevant to that mind set. You could have a game where the entire planet is nothing but purple worms and orange crabs. The point is, if you honestly believe that any request from any player is an attempt to undermine your authority and disrupt your game, you need to stop running, because your head is not in the right place. These were statements you made earlier in the thread.
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Which just points to the epiphany I had a moment ago. There is no right or wrong to this topic.
I suppose the answer is "whatever works for your table is the best way to go".
Somehow I feel that argument with the freedom-of-race-choice is not whether it's wrong or right to allow some race...
But rather at what point do DMs/player draw the line? Compromise would be a middle point between a "human-only" group vs a "very-rare-and-weird-races" group.
In that example from Sissly about the elemental invasion: you say no halfdragons/undead/whatnot/... I'd be fine with that, but not allowing elves/dwarves/... or catfolk? how does it break your campaign if the party is not mostly-humans?
As for tieflings/aasimar, I'd reflavor then to be representatives of positive/negative energy, while I'm at it... as most D&D/Pathfinder planar concepts put these energies right next to those 4 elements: picture
Somebody said something about opening up races further down the road: I _hate_ that idea... I don't want to plan my character's death right at creation, because I know I'll get to play what I truly want when we'll be level 3... 5... or whatever. Player races should be right from the start or never in that campaign... no "will be allowed later on".
So to those DMs wanting to restrict the amount of races available to players: how many races did you allow right from the start and would you allow an extra race if that player came up with a concept that fits perfectly and you just never thought of it that way?
that way, everybody is on the same page about how restrictive you are, or not, because maybe you are not that restrictive and everybody is going with extremes here (human-only vs everything-works)?
Which just points to the epiphany I had a moment ago. There is no right or wrong to this topic.
The only right or wrong on this topic is the reason why something isn't allowed. If the reason is integrity of the setting, or GM is too tired to deal with it, or doesn't have time, or just doesn't like X, then everything is valid, and none of those are wrong.
If the GM is disallowing things as a way of 'controling' the Players, of controling the battlefield (which a game should not be), then the GMs head is in a very wrong place, and they need to stop GMing for awhile and rethink.
Somehow I feel that argument with the freedom-of-race-choice is not whether it's wrong or right to allow some race...
But rather at what point do DMs/player draw the line? Compromise would be a middle point between a "human-only" group vs a "very-rare-and-weird-races" group.
In that example from Sissly about the elemental invasion: you say no halfdragons/undead/whatnot/... I'd be fine with that, but not allowing elves/dwarves/... or even catfolk? how does it break your campaign if the party is not mostly-humans?
As for tieflings/aasimar, I'd reflavor then to be representatives of posiive/negative energy, while I'm at it... as most D&D/Pathfinder planar concepts put these energies right next to those 4 elements: pictureSomebody said something about opening up races further down the road: I _hate_ that idea... I don't want to plan my character's death right at creation, because I know I'll get to play what I truly want when we'll be level 3... 5... or whatever. Player races should be right from the start or never in that campaign... no "will be allowed later on".
So to those DMs wanting to restrict the amount of races available to players: how many races did you allow right from the start and would you allow an extra race if that player came up with a concept that fits perfectly and you just never thought of it that way?
that way, everybody is on the same page about how restrictive you are, or not, because maybe you are not that restrictive and everybody is going with extremes here (human-only vs everything-works)?
See my previous "red light, yellow light, green light" post.
@Sissyl
My statements were not about not allowing X race or Y class. I restrict race/class combinations in my games based on which continent in my world the game is taking place. I tell my players up front.
My statements were based on your stated mindset that it's you vs your players, and that any player who wanted to play something you weren't ok with was trying to disrupt your game.
How you decide on a game and setting is irrelevant to that mind set. You could have a game where the entire planet is nothing but purple worms and orange crabs. The point is, if you honestly believe that any request from any player is an attempt to undermine your authority and disrupt your game, you need to stop running, because your head is not in the right place. These were statements you made earlier in the thread.
Um, no. I am not sure where you got this. My beef throughout this thread has been that some players get whiny or angry if I say no to their freak character concepts. Some nag for literally hours. Some try to rabble-rouse and get other players to support their right to play a magma half-tauric imp/nymph. Now, it takes A LOT for me to kick someone out, a policy I do not regret, but it is quite frustrating to deal with. Worst of all is the very idea that if I don't allow something, there is something wrong with my setting that must change to allow whatever moron concept any player has. No. I do try to be flexible. I include things that are not too far off. Sometimes a pretty oddball character is okay - just not all the time, and not all the players, see? It is my job as a GM to provide a good, entertaining campaign, and that gets far easier if I don't have to wrestle with making a moron concept fit. And even though some players would love to play out "being not accepted by the locals" all the time, every single session, *I* would not like that, nor would the other players. In general, I find a solution with them that they can accept, but if that twice-half-dragon gelatinous cube nymph is so important to them that they won't change it, it will pain me, but no thanks. Usually, we eventually find another concept we can both accept, and from time to time, these are really good ones.
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I agree completely. So I ask again this time removing the oddly unpopular gaming ideology, Why do the first group feel the need to call the second group wrong/bad?I think what we have is a fundamental difference of opinion on how to go about world and campaign building.
Some of us use a scalpel to carefully remove bits and pieces that are disruptive. The default assumption is to allow it, but the willingness to remove it if necessary.
There appear others of us here that instead place items we want carefully with tweezers. The default assumption is to disallow it, but the willingness to consider adding it if desirable enough.
Well part of the problem is some people have not been describing their role as a GM as the second case but instead as something more like:
There appear others of us here that instead place items we want carefully with tweezers. Anything they have not carefully places is never allowed and any person wanting to play should be grateful to be in their presence and should never assume that they have any idea of how to improve on the setting.
(You leave the thread for two days and it just explodes... yeesh)
As far as Gunslingers go, if my player just wanted to use guns I would push them toward a wizard or alchemist with the archetype for it or just with the feat, because guns are not rare but they aren't cheap or very common, and it would be *more likely* that a character uses guns built it himself, so he would need to have reasonable Int anyway.
If they really anted to play gunslinger it would just take a little more convincing.
Somehow I feel that argument with the freedom-of-race-choice is not whether it's wrong or right to allow some race...
But rather at what point do DMs/player draw the line? Compromise would be a middle point between a "human-only" group vs a "very-rare-and-weird-races" group.
In that example from Sissly about the elemental invasion: you say no halfdragons/undead/whatnot/... I'd be fine with that, but not allowing elves/dwarves/... or catfolk? how does it break your campaign if the party is not mostly-humans?
As for tieflings/aasimar, I'd reflavor then to be representatives of positive/negative energy, while I'm at it... as most D&D/Pathfinder planar concepts put these energies right next to those 4 elements: picture
My goal when making that campaign world was to make an intensely familiar setting, which makes it easiest to go with vaguely European medieval/Tolkienesque setting, including the core races, and adding alien elements from the elemental invasion. Much of the plotline would likely deal with the contrast between the two, and also the underlying similarity/structure.
As such, given the fey/nature theme, I could certainly make room for a tribe or two of catfolk. Elves would feature strongly from the start. Gnolls, sure, why not? However, I did choose the "classical" fantasy setting for a specific reason, and I would NOT accept vanara, wayang, spirit folk, kitsune or the like, because they would muddle the primary conflict in the game by introducing other "alien" elements.
Regarding aasimar/tieflings, your positive/negative idea is great, but I would probably make new ones, but keep them as plot points/extremely rare NPCs. I WOULD let someone play an aasimar or tiefling, but as I said, not the entire bunch.
I agree with you that "allowed later on" is pretty lame within a campaign, but if a setting is reused for a new campaign, I wouldn't mind it. For example, the positive/negative-touched could be such race options.
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Um, no. I am not sure where you got this. My beef throughout this thread has been that some players get whiny or angry if I say no to their freak character concepts. Some nag for literally hours. Some try to rabble-rouse and get other players to support their right to play a magma half-tauric imp/nymph.
To know where I got it, go back and reread your posts, at no point (until now) did you state the above, you just made blanket statements about anyone who wanted to play something you didn't like being a disruptive player. No caveats, no 'well, the 2 guys in my group that do this are always trying to be disruptive'.
I will go back to my earlier statement, and I'm completely serious, if you have a player or two that does this, get rid of them from the group. I put up with a guy for almost 2 years who cheated on his dice rolls. I finally quit GMing because I realized I was in a mentality of 'what do I need to do to rein in my players this week' due to stuff like this. A player that acts like this is a drain on the GM, and a drain on the group.
And you are not helping by allowing them to do it, and they are disrupting things even when you say no. Drop them from the group, and tell them why. When I decided to start GMing again, I flat out told the guy he was not invited back, and I told him why.
After 6 months, he sent word that he was sorry about what he'd been doing, and swore never to do it again if we gave him another chance. We let him back in, and he was a lot less disruptive from then on.
We aren't just talking about players, but friends. Things just aren't that simple. Show them what you mean. Explain. Eventually, they might understand. Sometimes, you get rewarded.
I'd been playing with this guy for 5 years when I banned him from games, and he was a life long friend of everyone else in the group, grew up with them.
Yes, it's very hard to say 'No, you cannot play anymore'. Battered Wife syndrome and all that. But some day you have to admit that the guy is a GM abuser, and get out of that relationship.
Not if the character creation event is the problematic one. I will survive that. I do get to where I want to. But I don't want to hear that I am a lousy GM for setting a few hard limits.
See my previous "red light, yellow light, green light" post.
Pretty much... but somehow I feel like in this thread people argue green-only DMs vs want-red players... I'm somehow missing the yellow middle ground people here.
My beef throughout this thread has been that some players get whiny or angry if I say no to their freak character concepts. Some nag for literally hours. Some try to rabble-rouse and get other players to support their right to play a magma half-tauric imp/nymph. Now, it takes A LOT for me to kick someone out, a policy I do not regret, but it is quite frustrating to deal with. Worst of all is the very idea that if I don't allow something, there is something wrong with my setting that must change to allow whatever moron concept any player has. No. I do try to be flexible. I include things that are not too far off. Sometimes a pretty oddball character is okay - just not all the time, and not all the players, see? It is my job as a GM to provide a good, entertaining campaign, and that gets far easier if I don't have to wrestle with making a moron concept fit. And even though some players would love to play out "being not accepted by the locals" all the time, every single session, *I* would not like that, nor would the other players. In general, I find a solution with them that they can accept, but if that twice-half-dragon gelatinous...
I guess a lot depends on the group(s) you DM/play with... (as many arguments on this forum)
many of us have played for a loooooong time... as such, playing a human fighter or an elven wizard for the 10th time gets really old.
I had this syndrom with one of my groups who like to stick to "the-core-rule-book-only":
so one of this group's DM tried to vary things by saying: "please all be red-headed humans or half-humans... you'll see... I have a cool new idea, you'll love it"...
the DM's idea was this: we found out during the 2nd session, that we all were were-tigers (hence the red-hair-fetish) and were-anythings were hunted down in this campaign... that's a +5(?) CL adjustment... so there is my 2nd level druid halfelf who finds out she is a weretiger, thus her wolf companion has run away and now she has to fight CR 8-9 encounters and patch up the party with cure light wounds... I left that game after the 3rd session, because I was not having fun (the party's sorcerer felt similarly useless). The 3rd session was mostly: who has the highest initiative and gets to stand in the front row to actually be useful and scratch/bite our enemies to death.
This is not to say the idea was not cool... but the idea was implemented in a "bad way" because of a big oversight on the DM's part (I love that DM's current running of Skulls'n'Shackles however!).
But since that DM intereferring incident, I've developped a paranoia about DMs interferring with my characters, and make sure the character I had in mind will work the way I want him to from the first session till the last session of that campaign. I don't like DMs messing with my character unless we talk about it first.
@Sissly:
I'm not sure what your players are like, but if you cannot talk to them the problem is not the weird ideas not fitting into your world, but the lack of communication to find a common ground: the yellow, as Arssanguinus said.
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Not if the character creation event is the problematic one. I will survive that. I do get to where I want to. But I don't want to hear that I am a lousy GM for setting a few hard limits.
I didn't say you were a lousy GM for setting a few hard limits. I said that if you were of the mindset that anyone who wanted to play something outside those limits and asked you about it, and you considered them a disruptive jerk for doing so, then you were a lousy GM. And I stand by that, if anyone that walks into your game and asks about something outside the norm is treated like a disruptive jerk, then you are a lousy GM and you need to stop running for awhile and get your head back on straight.
If your issue is with 1 or 2 specific people being disruptive, you need to evaluate why you allow these idiots in your game. They are draining you, and draining the energy from the game, whether you acknowledge it or not.
I repeat, it is always okay to ask. However, there are many reasons why the answer may be "no". Many, even most of these answers may be on the level of style, cohesion, plot, theme and mood, and those things are MY job as a GM, not the players'. These things are what make a campaign great, in my experience, but are not usually recognized as such by players, even though they react the same way to them. If a player comes with a suggestion for how their desired race can IMPROVE on these factors, I am quite willing to listen, but throwing other points out to fit the race into the campaign usually shoots this down, as when a player suggests "But hey, why couldn't a conclave of deities have transformed my normal human character into a <whatever> and sent me to avoid a dire prophecy???". If a character comes from another world entirely, that needs to be adressed somehow (visit there?), prophecies cast a huge shadow over a campaign and change all sorts of fiddly bits, and direct divine intervention just doesn't work very well in most settings.
I had a player demand that I let him play a Killoren in a game I ran. Somehow his people ended up creating a small town. When they had to visit the Dwarven kingdom in my game underground (where they all had to use Darkvision which is in black/white) all of the dwarves mistook him for a Drow and attacked him.I suppose they'd have also attacked an elf, a bralani, a ghaele, a half-elf or anything that remotely resembles an elf, right? This smacks of punishing the player for being forceful with unrealistic reactions by the NPCs.
The point of their contention with the Killoren was that he looked like an elf and had dark skin, if any race had those characteristics, then yes, they would have been attacked also.
using fluff or roleplay restrictions to balance the mechanics of an oddball race is a poor idea. many races are inferior to humans.That's all well and good, your players can have the best intentions of keeping the game and campaign running smooth as much as they want, but it isn't going to stop the city of regular humans who only know of other human looking things from going "DID THAT GIANT FROG JUST F*****G TALK!?!?!?!?" Players have to understand that the world has to react to your character's race, and if they have never seen something like you before, and they think you happen to be a monster because you look like an effing monster, then you have to deal with the consequences of that. If it means the village attacks you, then it means the village attacks you. If it means you get imprisoned or hunted down, then you have to cope. Don't go walking around as some random monster looking race that no one in this DM's world has ever seen and expect to be treated like a human all nonchalant like it's totally normal for you to be there, because if it was, you would immediately not want to play that race anymore.A 1000 times this! If a player buys into the in-world realities of playing a rare/monstrous character, ok, I'm more likely to go with it. However, in over 20 years of gaming, every player who has asked to play the oddball race wanted it strictly for the power/mechanical upside and resented not being treated like Joe Average Commoner when they were walking down the street.
It's not about limiting, it's about having the world interact properly to the racial choice, part of this discussion isn't about allowing or disallowing anything, it's about letting the player do it and not have to roleplay that race. That is the issue I have.
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Next time I play in a Mythos game, I'm going to play a Byakhee violinist whose goal in life is to provide the soundtrack for the party's investigations.
And be the first person to play a violin in space.
The first creature, anyway.
No meanie-pants GM will stop me!
I only have one friend that likes to play really weird stuff, whether it's a bizarre build that requires some class adjustment like a puppeteering bard or a weird monster/race. I like to accomodate him whenever I can because it challenges me as a game designer to balance things out, and everyone else is relatively tame with their choices.
I agree completely. So I ask again this time removing the oddly unpopular gaming ideology, Why do the first group feel the need to call the second group wrong/bad?I think what we have is a fundamental difference of opinion on how to go about world and campaign building.
Some of us use a scalpel to carefully remove bits and pieces that are disruptive. The default assumption is to allow it, but the willingness to remove it if necessary.
There appear others of us here that instead place items we want carefully with tweezers. The default assumption is to disallow it, but the willingness to consider adding it if desirable enough.
Well part of the problem is some people have not been describing their role as a GM as the second case but instead as something more like:
There appear others of us here that instead place items we want carefully with tweezers. Anything they have not carefully places is never allowed and any person wanting to play should be grateful to be in their presence and should never assume that they have any idea of how to improve on the setting.
While I partially disagree with the characterization I will set that aside for the moment and ask. Is it not likely... Highly Likely, that anyone trying to respond to someone calling them wrong/bad is going to come across as a little short with their players?
And. Does this somehow make it ok to have called them wrong/bad in the first place?
mdt... I agree with your position BUT I think it was fairly clear that Sissyl was NOT talking about players asking to try out weird stuff, as it would take a truly um... arrogant GM to refuse to even let his players ask questions. No he was talking about those players who demand to play a specific something odd or powerful. At least this was clear to me. Maybe I am just a bit more empathic?
mdt... I agree with your position BUT I think it was fairly clear that Sissyl was NOT talking about players asking to try out weird stuff, as it would take a truly um... arrogant GM to refuse to even let his players ask questions. No he was talking about those players who demand to play a specific something odd or powerful. At least this was clear to me. Maybe I am just a bit more empathic?
From where I'm standing, Sissyl sounded a lot like what MDT said he was saying, up until about 2-3 posts before he openly said what I had begun to feel he was saying, a la "players get whiny" etc etc. Earlier on in this little debacle it felt like Sissyl was just saying anyone who wants to use an uncommon race was trying to ruin his game.
I said it before. I'm not against uncommon (or even monstrous in some games) races, but by god I want to know why you want t play it. Hell, in the game that I'm playing the vampire, we literally have a person who is playing a Minotaur. He's overpowered as hell compared to most of the party, but the GM has managed to balance it with careful applications of stronger opponents in our encounters (Except for the very first one, where literally ONLY the minotaur could do anything, but he learned pretty quick), and the Minotaur player has a lot of fun roleplaying up how unusual he is. We're playing Zeitgeist, so Minotaurs aren't unheard of, and they've even fought alongside our country before, it's just most people on average very rarely see one. The player in question has also pretty much resigned himself to not levelling for a long ass time, but he still has fun.
And that whole section is headed by a 'optional' flag.
but Orcs and Drow, both show up in the Advanced Race Guide, which is a big compendium of Player races for the Pathfinder RPG.
the races in the Advanced Race Guide are no more an Optional Rule than the Classes in the Advanced Players Guide.
a Tiefling, Aasimaar, Drow or Orc is no more Optional than allowing a Cavalier, Witch, Monk, or Magus.
Also, not every setting has every race. Just like not every setting has every monster, every class, every piece of equipment. If there are no firearms in the setting, there's no guns and no gunslinger. If there's no gods, there are no clerics or inquisitors.
Featured Races
While the seven core races are the primary focus of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, they're not the only ones suitable to be played as characters. Other, even stranger races help populate the world, and—with the GM's permission—also work well as player character races, creating fun and exciting new roleplaying opportunities.
you don't need gods for clerics and inquisitors to exist. you merely need a cause and concept worthy of worship.
that cause and concept could be anything from a code of conduct to a set of ideals, or something along the lines of an Animistic Spirit Venerating Culture akin to Shintoism. you don't need god to allow clerics or inquisitors, unless you play PFS organized play
Plus, i find it Ridiculous to Allow Crossbows, but Not Firearms, when both came out around nearly the same Era, and in the Same time we had Full Plate in the West, we Had Repeating Firearms and Black Powder Rockets in the East. in fact, you can't have full plate without firearms because full plate was built as a response to firearms.
the races in the Advanced Race Guide are no more an Optional Rule than the Classes in the Advanced Players Guide.a Tiefling, Aasimaar, Drow or Orc is no more Optional than allowing a Cavalier, Witch, Monk, or Magus.
They are also no less optional, same with everything in the Core Rulebook. The games is really a toolkit for making D&D-esque fantasy campaigns.