What makes you so special that you get to play your snowflake anyway?

[Sissyl]

Seems Umbriere was all for a Kyonin-based intrigue campaign with only elves and sylvan races. Apparently, then, some limitations are okay?

[Orthos]

I guess I should just consider myself fortunate that I've never had this problem. My group - regardless of what side of the screen I'm on - has generally been very good about "play what you want, I/we will find a way to make it work with whatever".

That and nobody's a jerk about it. And we all like our exotic, weird races/classes and have a setting designed around nonstandard creatures.

[Josh M.]

Players already are the "special snowflakes" of a campaign setting. They are the only ones who aren't controlled by the DM(mostof the time). They are already at odds with literally every (un)living thing in the entire setting. Being a "special snowflake" is a baseline requirement of being a PC.

Now, if we're talking about players wanting to play oddball, crazy concepts that may not fit within the scope of a setting, that's another thing. The simple answer is because playing an everyday Joe Schmoe is boring for most people. They want to be something different, exciting, unique.

Some players can do it simply through role-play, and race/class isn't an issue. Other like to where their individuality on their sleeve for all to see, so to speak.

My basic rule is that as long as it could possibly exist in the setting, go for it. But, if the thing simply does not exist in the setting, then chances are good that it probably shouldn't be allowed. For example, if a setting has no dragons, then playing a half-dragon is probably not going to be an option.

[Sissyl]

To which a good number of posters on this board would say "It must be a pathetic setting and/or GM if a Pathfinder game setting doesn't include dragons". Sadly.

[Josh M.]

Orthos wrote:

I guess I should just consider myself fortunate that I've never had this problem. My group - regardless of what side of the screen I'm on - has generally been very good about "play what you want, I/we will find a way to make it work with whatever".

That and nobody's a jerk about it. And we all like our exotic, weird races/classes and have a setting designed around nonstandard creatures.

Same here. We like our crazy, out there classes and races. In our current 6-player group, the most "normal" character is a Gnome Bard. The rest of the party include a half-golem Incarnate/Totemist(Robocop), a Drow Antipaladin, a Strix Ranger who doesn't speak common, a Tiefling Wizard, and a Shifter Barbarian.

We get lots of stares when we walk into town, and we love it.

[Josh M.]

Sissyl wrote:

To which a good number of posters on this board would say "It must be a pathetic setting and/or GM if a Pathfinder game setting doesn't include dragons". Sadly.

Some settings don't have dragons, or they are at least rare enough that playing a halfbreed is unlikely. Ravenloft, for example, is said to have exactly one dragon. Scarred Lands has no true dragons outside of one secluded area, if I recall correctly(haven't played that setting in 8+ years).

[Sissyl]

Which patently doesn't matter. If a player wants to play a half-dragon, then every kind of argument for not letting him play one ends up at "then the campaign and the GM is crap", according to this regrettable school of "thought".

It's as if their Rule 0 is "Every player must always be allowed to play whatever misbegotten heap of special abilities they want".

[Drejk]

Sissyl wrote:

What player wouldn't jump at the chance to play a twice-half-dragon gelatinous cube nymph zen archer/vivisectionist/synthesist summoner?

I don't like synthesist... Could I play twice-half-dragon gelatinous cube nymph zen archer/vivisectionist/regular summoner instead?

[Alzrius]

Sissyl wrote:

It's as if their Rule 0 is "Every player must always be allowed to play whatever misbegotten heap of special abilities they want".

It's worth noting that this discussion isn't limited to how "appropriate" a given race is, or point-whoring special abilities. Just a character idea can be enough to disrupt a campaign for everyone in the name of that player's personal enjoyment.

Our previous campaign (set in the GM's homebrew world) was set to be a Gothic Horror-style campaign. The GM told us this with plenty of advance notice, and otherwise didn't care what sort of characters we made.

After hearing that, two of our group decided that they wanted to play tag-team luchador wrestlers. One spoke just like Hulk Hogan, and the other kept using faux-Spanish. This very much broke the immersion regarding the feel of the campaign; the GM didn't say anything, simply trying to make things work around the characters, but the damage was done.

It's that sort of "this pleases me, and since games are meant to be fun, I don't need to consider anything else" attitude that's the root of the problem.

[Cintra Bristol]

In my experience, the players that try to push for outrageous character concepts (and create drama by challenging campaign norms) are often the same players who act out at the table (and create drama by trying to claim the spotlight at the expense of everyone else).

Honestly, whether I'll allow an off-beat character concept is often influenced by who is asking. If it's one of my steadier (i.e. good team-player) folks, they can get away with more. If it's one of my two or three troublemakers, I'm a lot more cautious in what I let them get away with. Sometimes limiting things because of them means limiting things for the whole group - but the result is less interpersonal drama, and more fun for the whole group while playing the actual game.

On the other hand, if it's a brand new player during open Encounters play, they can play almost anything they can come up with.

[Sissyl]

Yes. If all you are interested in is making your interesting builds/unique character concepts/whatever, then don't do so with others. Have that quality time with your books and pdfs instead, or write stories about your two-weapon-wielding drow called Draz'zt.

Not everyone else (not even every other PLAYER, nota bene) is all that interested in playing a vaguely point-of-lightish, largely undefined, semi-medieval setting that has no focus beyond "if it's in Pathfinder, it's in the setting". If that's what you want, GM it yourself or find someone else who agrees with you.

There are hundreds of different RPGs, and all have their own styles of play. In fact, each single one has myriads of different styles you can play. I have heard of enough Call of Cthulhu campaigns played as "kick-in-the-door". By the same token, saying that Pathfinder should only be an unfocused sandbox for testing out your latest builds is stupid. It is a game that allows for many different styles, not just that of a pretty vocal group here on the forums.

[Josh M.]

Sissyl wrote:

Which patently doesn't matter. If a player wants to play a half-dragon, then every kind of argument for not letting him play one ends up at "then the campaign and the GM is crap", according to this regrettable school of "thought".

It's as if their Rule 0 is "Every player must always be allowed to play whatever misbegotten heap of special abilities they want".

This has never been a problem for my group, I'm sorry if you've experienced this. My group is mature enough that "sorry, that creature doesn't exist/is so rare as to likely not happen" has been good enough reasoning for us.

If a player was seriously adamant about it, using the half-dragon example, and maybe in Scarred Lands where they exist but secluded, I'd maybe let it happen. But that half-dragon would be a pretty special one, probably the only one on the continent, so they can bet they'll be getting the lion's share of npc attention(good and bad).

The more special a character wants to be, then the more special they will be. My character is a half-golem, and in our PF game just last night, we entered an elf city in the middle of the forest, all naturey and secluded. No metal in sight. My half-machine character got all sorts of leers and second glances, which I knew would happen when I made the character. Even though my character behaved completely normal, was even courteous and polite at all times, I was leered at and untrusted, and as a player, I am 100% ok with this.

Be as special as you want, but don't expect to "blend in" unless you make a special effort to do so, via disguises, etc.

[Slaunyeh]

Sissyl wrote:

write stories about your two-weapon-wielding drow called Draz'zt.

I will! He'll have a Trandoshan sidekick named Han Solo.

Ah, the adventures Draz'zt and Han Solo will have on the mean streets of 1890's San Francisco.

[Sissyl]

Indeed...

[Immortal Greed]

Hama wrote:

I stopped allowing special snowflakes a while ago. To me it's just annoying.

I blame games giving way too many options, ever expanding, ever growing. Here is another book, here is another class.

I don't consider a character close to a really special snowflake until they have at least progressed through eight levels and done a lot through that character (rp, choices, that sort of thing). Every char before then has potential, but is pretending at being an actual special snowflake.

They know nothing of the crunch, they've never even been to the crunch.

As for some annoying mix of races and classes, it comes with the territory.

[DeciusNero]

Slaunyeh wrote:

Sissyl wrote:

write stories about your two-weapon-wielding drow called Draz'zt.

I will! He'll have a Trandoshan sidekick named Han Solo.

Ah, the adventures Draz'zt and Han Solo will have on the mean streets of 1890's San Francisco.

Not Hans Uno? :c

[Josh M.]

Hans Olo?

[Slaunyeh]

DeciusNero wrote:

Not Hans Uno? :c

No, Han Solo's private investigation business isn't doing well, but then Draz'zt lands a client that may turn things around for our intrepid investigators.

For the tv series, Draz'zt will be played by Michael Douglas.

[Immortal Greed]

I'll tell you what was not Tolkien, Gemmell was not Tolkien. Playing in some good games in days past in a Gemmellverse thrust upon and subverting Tolkien tropes was good times. Like my war criminal mage. Oh my sides.

Dark games, very dark games.

[Terquem]

Any character concept, regardless of complexity, cannot be considered a "special snowflake" unless the environment where the character occurs treats the character as a "special snowflake".

I had a game on these boards that failed; it was called “The Castaways”
The Castaways

The setting was a reimagining of 17th century Spanish Court Politics with a plot that revolved around an attempt to eliminate a large number of Nobles through a contrived ship wreck, only the Player Characters were supposed to be a small group of mixed Nobles and Non-Nobles (individual who were serving as waiters or entertainers on a party barge) who survived the wreck and found themselves shipwrecked on an island.

I set forth the various races available to the potential players in a seperate thread

The Checking Interest Thread

This thread grew to 170 posts and many of the post were an exchange with one player who had a “special snowflake” concept that seemed so very important to the player that I tried everything I could to acquiesce to the various request made even going so far as re inventing one of the races of the campaign world to accommodate the player even though there seemed no real reason to allow this unike race

I came to regret that decision not because the character was difficult to manage, but because, due to the nature of the scenario

(there were three NPC castaways, and no other NPCs for the characters to interact with, which immediately led to a stalled game because, as is the nature of strangers beginning a PbP game, no one seemed to want to talk to anyone else and many posts were a kind of “hey look at me” style of comment)

did not lend itself to any characters, special snowflakes included, being singled out by a host of non player characters as special for any reason.

And that is my point. If you create a special snowflake, and then through the course of play every interaction your character has is no different from other player’s character interactions (shop keepers, barmaids, local constables, farmers, children in the streets all treat your character the same way they treat the Halfling Rogue) then where is the harm? If the player is allowed to feel good about the game because their choice was respected, then that is great in my opinion, but if the player has as a goal the attitude of being a point of disruption every time there is an interaction with their character, then the concept of the special snowflake isn’t the problem, the player’s understanding of what the game is supposed to mean to everyone involved is the problem.

[Steve Geddes]

Physically Unfeasible wrote:

steve geddes wrote:

Well yeah, I can understand if the DM is running a campaign with some limitations. But in a general "ordinary fantasy" campaign, it wouldn't really matter, would it?

Firstly, I would like to preface this by saying it isn't personal but damn it all - are we so boring and dry a species that we can take fantasy, a genre that at its base - is about exploring other realities. A genre wherein your only challenge is to make something up, from the innumerable possibilities, and have a term "ordinary fantasy?" You'd think that the works of Tolkein were the sodding Core Rulebook for all fantasy stories ever written. Elves weren't Tolkein's Elves before him; nor Dwarves his Dwarves, so why is there this terrible term going round, as if to persist that any fantasy off from those themes is abnormal? That term is perhaps one of the most destructive things for the genre I meet at gaming tables.

Well our species may not be boring, but i am. i know what i like and its pointy eared elves in forests and grumpy dwarves in the mountains. I'm not really sorry about that.

However, dont let my destructive terminology confuse the point - I was saying that in an "ordinary fantasy" campaign it wouldn't matter if someone wanted to play a weirdo race. I can see it would be an issue if the DM wanted to run an "all underdark races" campaign or something, but in ordinary fantasy who cares if one PC has webbed feet instead of pointy ears?

[Immortal Greed]

If the race and class combination gets too long ___/___/____/____ I find I just turn off now. Enter hobgoblin hibernation. Especially if it is all new classes and none of the base classes are in there.

Yes, yes, another snowfl... zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

[Immortal Greed]

Terquem wrote:

Any character concept, regardless of complexity, cannot be considered a "special snowflake" unless the environment where the character occurs treats the character as a "special snowflake".

I had a game on these boards that failed; it was called “The Castaways”
The Castaways

The setting was a reimagining of 17th century Spanish Court Politics with a plot that revolved around an attempt to eliminate a large number of Nobles through a contrived ship wreck, only the Player Characters were supposed to be a small group of mixed Nobles and Non-Nobles (individual who were serving as waiters or entertainers on a party barge) who survived the wreck and found themselves shipwrecked on an island.

I set forth the various races available to the potential players in a seperate thread

The Checking Interest Thread

This thread grew to 170 posts and many of the post were an exchange with one player who had a “special snowflake” concept that seemed so very important to the player that I tried everything I could to acquiesce to the various request made even going so far as re inventing one of the races of the campaign world to accommodate the player even though there seemed no real reason to allow this unike race

I came to regret that decision not because the character was difficult to manage, but because, due to the nature of the scenario

(there were three NPC castaways, and no other NPCs for the characters to interact with, which immediately led to a stalled game because, as is the nature of strangers beginning a PbP game, no one seemed to want to talk to anyone else and many posts were a kind of “hey look at me” style of comment)

did not lend itself to any characters, special snowflakes included, being singled out by a host of non player characters as special for any reason.

And that is my point. If you create a special snowflake, and then through the course of play every...

You've got it. You have seen the snowflake yeti.

[ciretose]

The snowflake issues isn't about unusual.

It is about not fitting.

A Snowflake in the Sahara ain't gonna work, while a snowflake in Siberia is right at home.

The issue for me is, if your group is resistant to your plan, why are you forcing it?

[Sissyl]

Precisely, a player who is wasting time arguing about how he actually SO can play a twice-half-dragon gelatinous cube nymph in a way that it gives something to the campaign REALLY ought to get their priorities straight. It is the player wasting everyone's time for being an ass, not the GM wasting everyone's time because she won't "just let him play his character, it's better we get to start playing".

[Immortal Greed]

In Siberia we are all snowflakes now. Except during communism, then no snowflake survive gulag. Snowflake die in snow, with other snowflakes.

[Calybos1]

Snowflake Syndrome: The desperate and eternally unmet desire to make your Drizzt clone stand out from all the other Drizzt clones by calling him “Drazzt” and giving him a pet leopard instead of a panther. See CHARACTER STORY.

Special Snowflake: A unique, well-made, and interesting character that isn’t. See CHARACTER STORY, SNOWFLAKE SYNDROME.

Character Story: A deeply fascinating—-no, riveting—-bit of vital personal history which you feel obligated to share, even with those who were there at the time. Character stories may cause severe to acute boredom, blurred vision, drowsiness, numbness in the limbs, and a sense that both GAME TIME and REAL TIME have crawled to a standstill. None of these phenomena have ever been reported by the person telling the character story. (For a similar but non-PF-related phenomenon, consult any fisherman.)

[Hitdice]

You're not wrong, Sis, but that still strikes me as a player problem rather than a character problem.

[ciretose]

Hitdice wrote:

You're not wrong, Sis, but that still strikes me as a player problem rather than a character problem.

They aren't mutually exclusive.

There are people in our group who are allowed to play things other people in the group aren't allowed to play because they can pull it off.

[Sissyl]

Problem players tend to have problem characters. Problem characters tend to be played by problem players.

Heap big surprise.

[Terquem]

Okay, wonderfully stated, Sissyl, now here is my question

Do we reject, out of hand, all problem characters on the assumption that they will be played by problem players, and also do we reject all problem players because we assume they will create problem characters?

Or,

Is it our intention to find a way to dialog with the pressumed problem player for the purpose of avoiding both and help to improve our gaming experince by that dialog?

[ciretose]

Terquem wrote:

Okay, wonderfully stated, Sissyl, now here is my question

Do we reject, out of hand, all problem characters on the assumption that they will be played by problem players, and also do we reject all problem players because we assume they will create problem characters?

Or,

Is it our intention to find a way to dialog with the pressumed problem player for the purpose of avoiding both and help to improve our gaming experince by that dialog?

In home games we know our players.

In not home games, the evidence we have about the quality of the player before we play with them is what character they present.

[J-Bone]

So long as they are played for the story and not for some number crunching madness I don't care how special their snowflake may be. Tell me a good story and I'm in. Frankly after 30 years of running Tolkienian based games, the traditional races are a bit dull.

Reading through some of these posts are funny. You got people getting butt hurt about vitriol while defending the term "snowflake". Its a game y'all chill out and have fun.

[Hitdice]

Sissyl wrote:

Problem players tend to have problem characters. Problem characters tend to be played by problem players.

Heap big surprise.

Problem players needn't rely on snowflakes to ruin a game for everyone else at the table. One of the most disruptive players I've had my table never played anything more out there than a human cleric.

Ciretose's point about "not home games" is a good one, but I'd worry much less about someone with an exotic race than someone with a chaotic neutral alignment.

[Sissyl]

Also true. Problem players can f~&# up a game with any sort of character. It's just that a problem character is *almost* a dead giveaway about what kind the player is.

[Alzrius]

Hitdice wrote:

Problem players needn't rely on snowflakes to ruin a game for everyone else at the table.

I think that they do; it's just that we're wrongly defining "snowflake" to mean "character that's an exotic rules menagerie" rather than the more correct "character whose disruptive elements are claimed to be an integral part of the character itself and/or their player's fun."

[Sissyl]

Terquem wrote:

Okay, wonderfully stated, Sissyl, now here is my question

Do we reject, out of hand, all problem characters on the assumption that they will be played by problem players, and also do we reject all problem players because we assume they will create problem characters?

Or,

Is it our intention to find a way to dialog with the pressumed problem player for the purpose of avoiding both and help to improve our gaming experince by that dialog?

If the player's response to "I am sorry, you can't play a warforged in a prehistoric setting like this campaign we're making characters for" is "stupid GM who makes worthless campaigns, are you so retarded that you can't fit my character in???????", then no, I am not going to waste my time with that player. If I have an agreement that we're playing a prehistoric campaign, there will be limits to what can be played, and respecting that is VITAL to whether I want the player in my group.

If someone tries to discuss in a serious manner a way to include the character after adapting it SO THAT IT FITS THE CAMPAIGN, I am willing to listen. For a while. What is required is that I feel there will be something good for the campaign in having said character.

[Conman the Bardbarian]

Without snowflakes you can't make yellow snow.

[Sissyl]

Eat yellow snow. It could be punch.

[ciretose]

Sissyl wrote:

Eat yellow snow. It could be punch.

This is not good advice.

[Arssanguinus]

Sissyl wrote:

Terquem wrote:

Okay, wonderfully stated, Sissyl, now here is my question

Do we reject, out of hand, all problem characters on the assumption that they will be played by problem players, and also do we reject all problem players because we assume they will create problem characters?

Or,

Is it our intention to find a way to dialog with the pressumed problem player for the purpose of avoiding both and help to improve our gaming experince by that dialog?

If the player's response to "I am sorry, you can't play a warforged in a prehistoric setting like this campaign we're making characters for" is "stupid GM who makes worthless campaigns, are you so retarded that you can't fit my character in???????", then no, I am not going to waste my time with that player. If I have an agreement that we're playing a prehistoric campaign, there will be limits to what can be played, and respecting that is VITAL to whether I want the player in my group.

If someone tries to discuss in a serious manner a way to include the character after adapting it SO THAT IT FITS THE CAMPAIGN, I am willing to listen. For a while. What is required is that I feel there will be something good for the campaign in having said character.

Yup. I just happen to think that the onus is upon the person trying to bring the non fitting concept into the campaign to alter, reskin, or otherwise modify it make it fit rather than the onus being on the gm to warp the world to make it fit.

[Arssanguinus]

ciretose wrote:

Sissyl wrote:

Eat yellow snow. It could be punch.

This is not good advice.

Its a lemon snowcone.

Except, not really.