| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I limit myself to playing conceivable entities.
I already replied to the points you brought up. They didn't convince me.
You know, just accuse me of "badwrongfun" like you want to and move on.
No. You aren't having "bad wrong fun". Engrave that on a stone tablet and set it up on high, alright?
I just think you are unnecessarily limiting yourself. And you haven't answered why you can't create a human that isn't an extremist.
Because adventurers are almost always extreme people in some manner.
Normal people don't go on adventures, regardless of their race. They stay home.
And I find that the narrow-minded DM who obsessively loves humanity* is the thing limiting me.
* = Said DM could also just be a speciesist. Since that attitude reminds me of racism, I find it distasteful.
I already replied to the points you brought up. They didn't convince me.
You know, just accuse me of "badwrongfun" like you want to and move on.
No. You aren't having "bad wrong fun". Engrave that on a stone tablet and set it up on high, alright?
I just think you are unnecessarily limiting yourself. And you haven't answered why you can't create a human that isn't an extremist.
Because adventurers are almost always extreme people in some manner.
Normal people don't go on adventures, regardless of their race. They stay home.
And I find that the narrow-minded DM who obsessively loves humanity* is the thing limiting me.
* = Said DM could also just be a speciesist. Since that attitude reminds me of racism, I find it distasteful.
To repeat "I would be making the same arguments to someone who insists on playing only humans"?
Are you required to be a martyr? And an abnormal person doesn't have to be an extremist. They could be well adjusted willing to consider to hear people's points of view, but have limits, for example, those who tend to oppress others, and feel the need to correct such things.
Just because someone is active doesn't make them an activist.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Wooo hooo I just found out I am a racist to kitsunes and twice-half-dragon magma slurks!!!
... Honestly, I can live with that.
Isn't 'normal person forced to adapt to abnormal circumstances' a popular trope?
Arssanguinus, I am honestly curious about one thing.
How is my preference for playing non-humans a limitation?
I also forgot to mention that I do have a few human characters.
Arssanguinus, I am honestly curious about one thing.
How is my preference for playing non-humans a limitation?
I also forgot to mention that I do have a few human characters.
Ok then. You do play some human characters now and again. Useful data point. End of discussion, yah?
A preference is much much different than an ironclad rule.
Like I said earlier in this thread, I tend to visualize a certain character concept and stick to it.
One character only works for me as a human, another only works for me when it's an elf and so on.
I just think you are unnecessarily limiting yourself. And you haven't answered why you can't create a human that isn't an extremist.
Because I have done non-extremist humans to death... (hence my "mercenary 273" and "scoundrel 395").
I'm out of new concepts/ideas that I'd like to try and I don't recycle old ones, the remaining ones don't look fun/interesting to me. I don't mind if others play them... but I won't have fun playing them myself, so I'd rather not play at all to not spoil the fun of my friends.Again: I'm only frowning about this have-to-be-all-humans campaign-talk...
I can work with only-CRB-races allowed, or only-X/Y/Z-allowed.
Like I said earlier in this thread, I tend to visualize a certain character concept and stick to it.
One character only works for me as a human, another only works for me when it's an elf and so on.
Totally agree.
Race choice for me usually goes like this...
Non-Core Race > Core Race other than Human > Human
...though certain concepts fit certain races, like I already said.
I like the abnormal. Playing an aasimar oracle of bones is very against the grain for your "average" aasimar. That's part of the reason it is an interesting concept. The character becomes memorable. It evokes backstory just because of the race and class picked. That said, I have played a human wizard that was your standard Gandalfian archetype, but added enough flavor to make him my own and create a play style that was his own. I play humans when it suits the character, but the character concept comes first.
I also don't really plan a whole character progression, but instead just look a few levels beyond and jot down a few ideas. The reason is that sometimes you don't see where the character's niche is going to be until you start to play it and interact with the party as a whole. If you pay attention to the group tactics you can find opportunities to allow your character to grow a bit more organically.
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
Admission: I like humans. My favorite campaigns to be a player in, and to DM, were human-only. If all furries and tieflings and dwarves and half-orcs instantly disappeared from everyone's imagination, I'd be perfectly content.
But I also have to accept that I'm also only one person out of 4-6 at the table. If the others are all gung-ho to play fox-headed anime girls and half-dog amoebas, I understand that I'm not going to suddenly convince them all that they're "wrong" by issuing ultimatums or whatever. I can accept the trend or bow out.
So, while I've been coming down hard on the side of the pro-exotics crowd in this thread, that's not my personal preference; it's my philosophical and pragmatic stance on the issue. Being able to separate the two is, I think, important to some degree -- for players and DMs.
I limit myself to playing conceivable entities.
Ha ha. I played an awakened snail once (genning was a breeze). Good times.
That was quite unexpected, but to each his/her own I say.
And yeah, the above applies to both Immortal Greed and Kirth.
Wooo hooo I just found out I am a racist to kitsunes and twice-half-dragon magma slurks!!!
... Honestly, I can live with that.
Kitsune make good bad guys.
Had one infiltrate a temple to become a monk, and start knocking people off and eating them while under disguise. This trickster was good, and the investigation was like an ep of Cadfael mixed with Hong Kong action at the end.
I just think you are unnecessarily limiting yourself. And you haven't answered why you can't create a human that isn't an extremist.Because I have done non-extremist humans to death... (hence my "mercenary 273" and "scoundrel 395").
I'm out of new concepts/ideas that I'd like to try and I don't recycle old ones, the remaining ones don't look fun/interesting to me. I don't mind if others play them... but I won't have fun playing them myself, so I'd rather not play at all to not spoil the fun of my friends.Again: I'm only frowning about this have-to-be-all-humans campaign-talk...
I can work with only-CRB-races allowed, or only-X/Y/Z-allowed.Totally agree.Like I said earlier in this thread, I tend to visualize a certain character concept and stick to it.
One character only works for me as a human, another only works for me when it's an elf and so on.
The deepest and most complex characters I have made, have always been humans. Once a woman and a few times men. Box standard can be a good place to start on a really great quest with a character, but it needn't be forced. As some have said, the issue with non humans can be the incredibly reductive essentialising that comes with the territory of being a dwarf, elf, orc etc. In more recent years this has been inverted (tough elf, non violent orc, trustworthy halfling), but that got old for me fast. With demihumans I often didn't find much depth, so I went new monster races to see if it was a bit different. I am talking centaurs, otyughs, lizardfolk, that sort of thing. Turns out it was, there was more there. As for the typical elves and dwarves and aasimars, they get old (played straight to theme or inverse) because there often is not much substance. A vet player can make them shine though.
For more power, you go races for a specific direction or monster races for massive starting bonuses.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Unless the campaign is railroaded start to finish, you are always co-creating the universe with your players (though usually they have much less influence).
I disagree. With a type 1 campaign the universe exists before the players make their characters and step into it. The characters can alter events that happen within the universe but they aren't creating it.
For a rather extreme example, in your orc blood campaign, the players could decide that their characters want to resurrect an orc, which would have a drastic impact on the setting. But of course they can influence the setting is less extreme ways (e.g. founding a religion, assassinating the king, forming an alliance with the settlement of kobolds, etc.). And the way high-level spellcasting works in Pathfinder, characters can have rather a lot of narrative control.
None of those are examples of creating the universe. They are just examples of things that can be done within it.
The DM creates the world. The players create the characters.
Together they create the campaign, which is a story about what the characters do in that world.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I once played a female elf looking for her half-elven daughter. Her human lover left her tribe of nomadic elves and took their young daughter with her. Her entire motivation for adventure was finding her daughter (and funneling the wealth she acquired into hiring various investigators and contacts and bribing authorities to help find her missing child).
When she finally tracked them down, her daughter was relatively a bit older, but her lover had aged poorly. She was half bent on killing him for kidnapping their child and leaving. She couldn't bring herself to do it though. Turns out he took her to meet his family, and to live among the humans for a while. But why? Because he knew that she would outlive him in a very real way, and that he couldn't have convinced the PC to take a hiatus from her clan's nomadic lifestyle for a time to travel outside of their desert homeland.
Said character was a PF-Beta Fighter played during the playtests (should have been a Ranger, really, because Fighter wasn't helping anything for the concept). The only thing that was really memorable about the character (even being the one playing her) was just the subplot.
A subplot that I would have had to jump through some hoops to have done with humans. Let's face it, "My daughter is going to be ninty-years old before she's around the age to leave her clan with her blessings, so deuces" is not really something that works so well with humans. The two-different worlds aspect was easier to set up with the difference races as well. The having pity and feeling sadness seeing your former lover withering away overshadowing all the anger you've felt for an apparent betrayal? Yeah, still probably better with the elves / humans thing.
In before "Tolkien did it first"! (^.^)"
So, Ash, you finally got suckered into the Thread Unending? :)
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Tell me what aspect of that characters personality is reliant on them not being human?
I would suggest this question is just as relevant as the following question would be to a male player wanting to play a female character.
"Tell me what aspect of that characters personality is reliant on them not being male?"
The character while similar wouldn't be the same.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
So, while I've been coming down hard on the side of the pro-exotics crowd in this thread, that's not my personal preference; it's my philosophical and pragmatic stance on the issue. Being able to separate the two is, I think, important to some degree -- for players and DMs.
This whole discussion has been philosophical from the start.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
The DM creates the world. The players create the characters.
So long as we're all clear that these are your personal preferences, rather than universal laws. Issuing them as closed pronouncements doesn't help with that, which is I think the source of a lot of the argument in the thread: statements like "I prefer for the DM alone to create the world," vs. "The DM creates the world. Period."
The DM creates the world. The players create the characters.So long as we're all clear that these are your personal preferences, rather than universal laws. Issuing them as closed pronouncements doesn't help with that, which is I think the source of a lot of the argument in the thread: statements like "I prefer for the DM alone to create the world," vs. "The DM creates the world. Period."
Then do you think think e gm should create the character? Or does that wagon only point one direction.
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
So, Ash, you finally got suckered into the Thread Unending? :)
Yep. Been on hiatus from the forums for quite a while, and this seemed like a more interesting conversation than the monk thread. Which monk thread? It doesn't really matter. =P
Then do you think think e gm should create the character?Isn't that exactly what you're doing when you set the limits of character creation? Helping create the character?
No. Removing one or two choices out of that many has an infinitesimal at best effect on the available choices. Rewriting the game world so something which previously didnt exist does? Has substantially more effect.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Then do you think think e gm should create the character? Or does that wagon only point one direction.
Sigh. The whole freaking point of my post, if you even bothered to read it, is about personal preference vs. universal laws. Stop bringing all this other baggage you're carrying into places where it doesn't have any relevance.
You keep doing this, and it doesn't help anything.
If you mention that you happen to like strawberry ice cream, it would be totally uncool for me to keep jumping in and saying "HOW'S THAT 'HOPE AND CHANGE' WORKIN' OUT FOR YA?!" in reference to a previous topic that's no longer being discussed.
No. Removing one or two choices out of that many has an infinitesimal at best effect on the available choices. Rewriting the game world so something which previously didnt exist does? Has substantially more effect.Regardless of scope, it is still the same thing.
So a tank and a b&b gun? TOTALLY the same thing.
You claim scope doesn't matter. If scope is irrelevant, then there is no difference between to objects meant for causing injury and damaging things. Scope is completely relevant.
Races give a nationalistic or ethnicity alternative that includes elements and concepts alien to the psyche of a traditional human character.
RP a human who is still in his youthful adventuring days that has been alive studying, practicing, and seeing the world for over a hundred years with friendships that have lasted longer than most human lives.... Yeah, that only comes from being something beyond human regardless if you use another race to do it. Are you the only of your kind or are there many of you? If there are a lot of you, then you have some term for your society and outsiders also have a name. Let's call that term for your people "elf".
At this point you have races even though they are all technically human. So, why not use the existing rules for these races instead of trying to glue together your own?
Limiting certain races makes sense in certain settings, but a blanket "no non-humans" restricts the depth of the fantasy setting. If you want to make that choice, go ahead. However, if your players get frustrated with it, then bend a little. A game is meant to be fun and that means both sides need to be happy with the experience. Just because a certain play style is not your thing it doesn't mean that others don't enjoy it. If everyone enjoys it, then cool. If not, work with them and figure out how to tell the story they want to help build.
Well, if you want to hold that sort of position, I guess there isn't much common ground to find, if all changes are equivalent to each other regardless of scope or effect on the campaign.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
The DM creates the world. The players create the characters.So long as we're all clear that these are your personal preferences, rather than universal laws. Issuing them as closed pronouncements doesn't help with that, which is I think the source of a lot of the argument in the thread: statements like "I prefer for the DM alone to create the world," vs. "The DM creates the world. Period."
This is why I have "with a Type 1 campaign" at the top of that same post.
I'm being very careful to be clear with this, as I've discussed many a time before.
D - thanks for the clarification. I figured that a little redundancy never hurts, in a thread like this one.
You claim scope doesn't matter.On the topic of sharing the game world, yes.
And it is shared; the gm creates and sets the initial conditions, the the players create the character the starting gun goes off, and then its theirs to do with what they want within the limits of the abilities of their character.
Limiting certain races makes sense in certain settings, but a blanket "no non-humans" restricts the depth of the fantasy setting. If you want to make that choice, go ahead. However, if your players get frustrated with it, then bend a little. A game is meant to be fun and that means both sides need to be happy with the experience. Just because a certain play style is not your thing it doesn't mean that others don't enjoy it. If everyone enjoys it, then cool. If not, work with them and figure out how to tell the story they want to help build.
I agree in theory to what you are saying here, but in practice 'fun' can mean a lot of different things. There are people out there in gaming, and yes they may be outlying cases (but then we've been talking about extreme cases in Players and GMs anyway throughout the thread) that have fun by creating wacky game breaking characters or going against the grain just for the sake of it.
To answer Kirth's question, I usually run a 2 or 3 game. I've had few people that have wanted to go far astray over the years, although there are always a few that want to test the edges of the world with something.
Yes, a GM can always alter the world with handwaving to create a place for the weird or outlandish character idea. That said, a player can also bend a bit to try to work within the framework. I guess I've been blessed that the majority of people I've run across (with a few exceptions) are willing to listen to me and the other players in the group and try to limit their enthusiasm into something that works for the benefit of the game and everyone's fun rather than just their own.
|
And it is shared; the gm creates and sets the initial conditions, the the players create the character the starting gun goes off, and then its theirs to do with what they want within the limits of the abilities of their character.
Exactly. The GM is involved with character creation, however limited you may think it. So I see no reason not to involve the players in world creation, however limited.
This thread is still going? Holy crap....
And it is shared; the gm creates and sets the initial conditions, the the players create the character the starting gun goes off, and then its theirs to do with what they want within the limits of the abilities of their character.Exactly. The GM is involved with character creation, however limited you may think it. So I see no reason not to involve the players in world creation, however limited.
Inserting specifically removed races is not a limited involvement, however.
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
can we please stop saying that allowing all player races is the same as allowing players to play anything? this is the one thing that's been bugging the hell outta me this entire thread. allowing suli =/= allowing half-dragon magma slugs. One of these things was made with the intention that players can use them, the other is a blue in the face straw man. Count me in kirth's camp over all though. Although I have fallen love with geniekin after my players all independently decided to play them one campaign. So I guess my preference is to run campaigns just around them, a highly unlikely thing to happen again ;).
Where was that said? I am talking about excluding specific races; and nothing you are going to say is going to convince me that the only valid setting is the full smorgasbord.
Sorry. Computer glitch
And it is shared; the gm creates and sets the initial conditions, the the players create the character the starting gun goes off, and then its theirs to do with what they want within the limits of the abilities of their character.Exactly. The GM is involved with character creation, however limited you may think it. So I see no reason not to involve the players in world creation, however limited.Inserting specifically removed races is not a limited involvement, however.
Of course it is limited. How limited is another matter.
There may be an infinite number of numbers between 0 and 1, but there is a limit on the numbers, that being 0 on the bottom and 1 on the top.
can we please stop saying that allowing all player races is the same as allowing players to play anything? this is the one thing that's been bugging the hell outta me this entire thread. allowing suli =/= allowing half-dragon magma slugs. One of these things was made with the intention that players can use them, the other is a blue in the face straw man. Count me in kirth's camp over all though. Although I have fallen love with geniekin after my players all independently decided to play them one campaign. So I guess my preference is to run campaigns just around them, a highly unlikely thing to happen again ;).
Right. Not every race or idea is created evenly, and some are much easier to wrangle into a game without being disruptive and/or are less likely to cause bad feelings. From what I've seen on the boards here as well as in face to face games, there seems to be strong feelings for certain races deemed "too anime". This may play into the overall ill will towards Asian influenced weapons, classes and so forth given the amount of threads here that were fairly hostile.
Venal theme seems to be "you can have campaign restrictions as long as they don't actually restrict anything."
Edit :
Or to put it another way; "you are welcome to restrict people from playing anything they wouldn't have wantd to play anyway."