DM Frustrations

First, just the fact that you assume that there's such a thing as a core race for any given setting is stupid
And as far as I'm concerned, adding depth to your world is actually something called "worldbuilding", maybe you haven't heard about it though

>by level four, a PC should pretty much be able to wipe out a town singlehandedly anyway
Oh, you're playing Dnd. I'll assume that you're just a player talking out of your ass then

>by level four, a PC should pretty much be able to wipe out a town singlehandedly
>he plays worstedition

>"Hey DM, I want to play as a tiefling!"
>"sure, but you might face some prejudice"
>"K, that's cool, the character is neutral evil."

DM is still legitimately confused as to why my character is helping the big bad person blow up the world.

You should make a campaign brief that tells them this stuff before they start making character concepts. If they just ignore your shit, then yeah, they're just being dumb. If you say "hey let's play a regular game of D&D" and then they say "OK I Wanna X" and then you give it baggage, then I think it's normal for them to get peeved.

Did I just read "how can orcs be evil ?" ?
Because aside from "how do I roll dice ?", this has to be the dumbest thing a player is able to say to his DM

Also, if you still want an answer, remember that grey mentality is not always the standard and that in a given setting, a given race could literally be entirely evil.

>Durr durr, how can something non-existant be different from my morality standards ?

>mfw I just pick half-orcs because I'm a barafag

>Hey GM, what's likely to happen if we did X?
>It's insanely dangerous. You'll probably all die
>LETS DO IT ANYWAY!
>HOLY SHIT? Why did you kill us all? No fun allowed, huh?

Then there's

>We want to play a political intrigue game!
>What do you mean, the NPC lied to us?
>How is he allowed to do that? You're fucking railroading us dude.
>No, we didn't' think we should put any sorts of points into social skills or anything that would help us figure out if someone is playing us for fools
>Don't you know that "intrigue game" means that we run around backstabbing everyone and get away with it because the entire planet besides us are retarded?

>D&D
>implying half-orcs don't come standard with baggage

I'm not sure how to tell you this, but in D&D, half-orc generally means "your father was a monster who raped your mother". Not saying every half-orc is going to be the product of this, but most of the dirt farming yokels you run into are going to be thinking it.

And that's going off of either the implied setting, published settings, or just straight up what it says in the rule books.

but WHY are they evil?
because you said so?
are they just that psychopatic, and if they are, how can they even exist as a society?

Whatever indiefag, when's the last time you actually played at the table instead of online?

While that was a D&D reference (which is what OP's post seems to be about, given the half-orc comment), and yes, in some ways I do actually agree with you that 3.5 and its descendant PF are the worst, a random town should not reasonably have the power to stop a somewhat-advanced adventurer in a setting with advancement by level. That would actually be somewhat immersion-breaking because level, by the way it functions, is inherently supposed to create large gaps in power. If you wanted slower advancement you'd use an xp system that's more like Shadowrun's or WoD's.

This guy, I can agree with.

I bet you're one of those people who has to point out how centaurs would break their spines, and has to argue about how dragons must have wingspans miles wide to stay aloft.

im just saying that having a race be entirely evil, makes them hard to form a society, and if they arent evil to each other, then they arent really objectively evil. Evil is just a subjective measure.

Assuming we're talking D&D and not say, Lord of the Rings, then:

They're evil because they're the creations of an objectively evil god, and while they might have the tiniest spark of free will that would let them abandon that path, they're still forever tainted by that divine creation.

As for how they have a society? Might makes right, everyone hates them, so they only have each other, and their evil god who made them.

And all of this is from the existing material for D&D's published/implied settings.

If you change it, you're playing a homebrew game, or one with house rules.

Not that that's bad/

yes

Nothing wrong with what you did, half-orcs should always be hated everywhere.

Ah, DnD.
Now black and white makes sense.

You should go create a forum for people like you, and take all the HEMA-fags with you.

How did you know I practice HEMA?
Are we really all that alike?

Yeah, I think you're right about that, but I just meant I generally find it good practice to let potential players know what they're getting themselves into before they start dreaming up shit that could deviate from the norm of the setting and style of the game.

Like, a 1 page handout that includes races and has a line of "Half-Orcs are universally treated like shit" etc. Even if it's typical, good reminder IMO. Otherwise the player might just figure it never comes up because it's not really what the DM wants to focus on.

But I dunno, that's just what I've seen to work best.

You missed the point. He was probably trying to tell you that evil is not always subjective and that not everyone goes for the grey mentality

>Oh, you're playing Dnd. I'll assume that you're just a player talking out of your ass then
Not that user, but what the fuck, man? Over half the D&D editions are solid-ass games!

OD&D, B/X, BECMI, AD&D, AD&D 2e...

Players whose actions are entirely anti-party in their goals are the worst

Did you bother talking to your players beforehand, explaining what kind of game you wanted to run, listening to what kind of game they wanted to play in, and working out a happy compromise?

By the sounds of things, no, you didn't. So you ended up arguing with your players about what they can and can't do, and what kind of tone the game should and shouldn't have; an argument which will never get anywhere, because you're all arguing the objective merits of of your personal, subjective taste.

Good job.

Of course you are. Most people join roleplaying games to have awesome adventures doing fantastical things, and there's that one faggot in the corner going "ACHTUALLY" and pushing his glasses who just *incapable* of not correcting every single thing everyone else does, because it's anachronistic, or they're hitting people in platemail with their greatsword without using the mordheim grip and studded leather armor isn't actually something that exists and you need tremendous strength to operate a bow etc etc etc basically just shitting all over the place while other people try to have fun.

it is always subjective
like i said, nazis thought they were the good guys
the orcs prolly think they are the shit as well

Oh, fuck you, Orcaboo...

If the GM tells you that orcs are considered outcasts and looked segregated (at best) or persecuted or maybe even worse and he tells you why, you stop being the self-serving piece of shit your participation trophies have fooled you into thinking is acceptable and you accept it and play it or you play something else.

You are not smart enough to offer even a retarded argument to the contrary. Your moronic post makes me want to invent a time machine so I can shoot your fucking mother in the head before your dad blows his load in her.

>Be DM
>Player makes a knuckleheaded move because he forgets the rules
>I get angry at him because I'm mentally tired for outside reasons
>We get in a short argument
>I realize I'm being a dick and apologize
>He apologizes for also being a dick
>We talk it out like regular human beans
>Everything goes back to normal
Maybe when you initially pitch the campaign you should say, 'Hey, I'm expecting people to be a human or non-orc because of X reasons and we should talk about it if you want to be something else'.
Just saying.

*mordhau
and actually i dont, i just play with sperglords like me

Did OP state what system they were playing in? If their reasoning was "no, that would unbalance things", then yeah, that'd be a good reason to outright ban it, or allow it w/ the aforementioned penalties.

I think that, if the OP felt that this would unnecessarily distract from the game, that would be a fair reason to disallow orc characters. That's a fair alternative to "you can play a character I don't want, but I will punish you for it (even while making you thus the center of attention)". Or like, in other words, the half-orc is necessarily gonna be the center of attention if they're prevented from doing normal shit. You can make that fun or not fun, but you can't blame the player for you allowing that to be the situation.

This poster is pretty much spot-on, nobody sets out to be an out-and-out villain and anything can be spun. As an anecdotal example, I know someone who plays a Dunmer in a MUSH and has her entire circle of friends (who mostly don't play TES) convinced that the devil-worshipping slavers are the good guys, or at least misunderstood.

>taking the bait

you messerschmidts always think you're so smart.

That was my only problem with OP, like I sad, they are evil to everyone else, but come on, inherently evil? Its not a cartoon.

Oi faggot. DMs who don't even try to worldbuild in conjunction with their players to build a cooperative game everyone can enjoy are double-shitters, almost as bad as you.

Your inability to understand shared-world concepts and cooperation between all members of the game show that you cannot possibly construct a relevant counter-argument. Your idiocy makes me want to invent a time machine so I can club you in the head, drag you along to the past, and make you watch as I chemically castrate your grandfathers then observe the outcome of time paradox.

>tfw my DM runs another game for 'all anthropomorphic PCs'
>tfw my DM is a closet furry
>uwotm8.jpg

Are you sure it's not just Mouse Guard or something?

>It's not a cartoon
>Fantasy roleplaying
It's a sort of anthropic principle of fantasy games of the same type. They're inherently evil or we wouldn't be able to go around slaughtering little murderous goblin goons for loot and XP.
It's sort of a shaped like itself things, or why pseudoscience is used to explain why mecha work- if they didn't work, there would be no story of that type.

oh well, not to be a complete fagwad, i have a story too
>PC is planning a terrorist attack on cyborg district
>go to school
>scouting the school
>finds his way to cafeteria
>learns that lunches are served at set times
>"I know, ill start a food fight, and when they all drop from the fight, ill kill them"

should have let him find out the hard way hes not in a high school musical
sadly his char had average int

I realized I wasted trips on a bad explanation, so I'll just summarize it as follows:
It just works that way because that's the sort of game they want to play.

Yes, you would, and the characters would have to deal with knowing they are committing genocide for material wealth. it would inspire them to actually think instead of doing combat every time. And if they want combat, hey, video games.

I remember "winning" a game at a small con. The game was Ironclaw. I remember opening the book and seeing pics of these anthropomorphs.... getting to the pic of some female horse sitting and trying to look sexy.

My friend, just seeing my face, could tell something was wrong. I had actually never heard of furries! "Who'd want to play this???"

I actually still have the book on my shelf... with the other oddball games I've never or barely touched. Living Steel, Reichstar, Palladium's Ninjas and Superspies, Bunnies & Burrows... basically, it's my litmus shelf. I've told my friends and family that if they ever see me leafing through those books, I've been replaced by aliens and they should shoot me.

>Why would you build a setting that's inherently working against a core race?
Because he's the DM you shitstain if you don't wanna play his lore then fuck off

>by level four, a PC should pretty much be able to wipe out a town singlehandedly anyway
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

>me: "hey, lets play a setting with giant robots?"
>players: "nah, it's too complicated"
>me: "how about a cyberpunk?"
>players: "nah, lets play medieval!!!"
>me: "okay, okay. better this than nothing."
>player1:"I'll be generic rogue with cleptomaniac and maximum skill score"
>player2:"I'll be an elf with maximum skilll score."
>player3:"I'll be a swordsman with a curse"
>me:"but that's the same character sheet you used on our past campaigns!"
>players:"so what?"

>I'll be generic rogue with cleptomaniac and maximum skill score

so just a rogue?

>it would inspire them to actually think instead of doing combat every time
I'm inclined to disbelieve you, but that's not the point.
It's like buying into the existence of finger-waving magic in fantasy games. The goblins are inherently evil because, in the setting, the goblins are IN FACT inherently evil. Besides, some people just enjoy playing tabletop games to playing video games, or want to take a break from hard philosophic, political, and moral decisions to just bust heads and level up.

>I didn't plan for you to fight him
that feeling when in my run one of the players killed 2 main npcs instead of incapping them or just taking to them

that feel when me and the dm that is following me just got a big section of our stories canned

No. It's simple, really, so I'll even re-use an exemple presentin this thread.
Evil god makes race
They know nothing of free spirit and don't have a choice, but enjoy being evil nonetheless
They know it is evil, and that's the reason they're doing it. Because it's their purpose
They don't do it because it's their standard of society (which, let's be honest, isn't really developped) but because it's the only thing they exist for.

Or also, the DM can just say "they're pure evil"
And he'll be right

>Not informing players before the game what kind of setting it is
>Gets pissy when player point out arbitrary decision is arbitrary
Next time - explain people your imaginative setting, instead of assuming everyone is a mind reader and don't need any explaination about the incoming game

uhh
yeah

but the one most annoying rogue in the world
>a tall man stands by the doors, holding a sword in each hand[long description]... and asks why you've come to the temple
"I'll steal this guy"
>a rather skinny orc(at least for their race standards) starts lecturing on you about the jewel of sharrais'rimur
"I'll steal this guy"
>the drag-
"I'll steal this guy"
>
"I'll steal this guy"

"I'll steal this guy"

and this is how I was driven mad. twentysomething campaigns and one-shot adventures playing with the same characters.

Yeah, theres no point in arguing. People have different concepts of fun. Just in my exp, giving PCs moral dilemmas, and various decisions that dont include fighting as the best option, results in a less railroaded game.

At this point, the discussion has looped
Remember that someone already told you that grey mentality isn't present in every setting

The mongols or other historic hoard. Bam that's how you evil race. Evil is subjective. To the average outside observer they are scary and evil. By the actions of their people and culture they're brought up in they fit the poorly defined alignment for evil.

Shut the fuck up and move on.

Man, how does an evil god even come into existence?

>words of wisdom

OP, the conversation should have gone like this:
>Hey user I want to be a half orc!
>I'm not allowing half-orc PCs in this game right now

You can still give your explanation if you want, but the issue has already been resolved with a tactful refusal. You want make it clear that this is not negotiable, that half-orcs are not a suitable PC race for this campaign.

Remember this: The game-master, along with his many other jobs, is also a gatekeeper. He gets the final say on what gets into the game-world. If you, the GM, do not approve of a player's choice about his PC, then you have the power to refuse that, or set conditions on which you might allow it (i.e. "I will allow you to use this feature, but you are not allowed to use it for this thing that I don't like").

I did this several times last week when prepping for a game. A player came to me wanting to name his PC "God", I told him no, he can't do that. I didn't want lizardmen or robot-crafter PCs in my game, so I said "you may not play a lizardman or machinist in this campaign".

However, you must learn not to abuse your GM-veto-power. I have seen too many GMs who are far too eager to veto anything that seems slightly off without explanation or further investigation (you can absolutely say "I need some time to figure out whether or not I should allow this"). Before you ban anything, you should be quite certain as to whether or not the ban is appropriate, and you should be respectful whenever possible.

>but WHY are they evil?
>because you said so?

No because the system did. Or yes. Because I'm the gm and am literally playing the fucking world. If I say they're evil...you'll never guess this. But that means they're fucking evil. Are there exceptions? Yeah probably, but guess what. Nobody is playing a dire sociology major so fuck off.

>man, how does true bait even come into existence

Dunmer are the good guys in TES though.

Fuck off. Your dumb assumptions aside, this was during character creation so the GM was explaining things ahead of time.

I hope I will never have you as a player or a GM in my life. Everything you just said is so utter garbage.

Dude, keeping slaves could be defined as evil to us, but to them it was normal. Killing wasnt evil, it was normal. No culture would do things they teach are "evil"

I read one of the Ironclaw books when I was a kid. Went to my FLGS to pick up some magic cards and saw it, figured it looked like Redwall (I was 10 or 12) and bought it. It wasn't half bad and the worldbuilding was pretty interesting iirc, furry shit aside. No idea how the actual system works though.

Hey man, why so hostile? Im just pointing out sociological flaws in your setting. Im just hoping your PCs know they are playing with a "i fucking said so thats why!!1!!" guy.

Boring.

Do you not know how stereotypes and racism work?

Generally speaking you don't do those things TO YOURSELF. It doesn't matter what they teach or how they feel about any of this shit. It matters how everyone else does.

And people generally aren't to fond of being enslaved, killed, raided, raped, pillaged, etc etc.

Than you gm so I can pick apart every single thing in your setting that wouldn't make sense outside of a fucking fantasy make believe game. It's a conceit of d&d. Racial alignments are a thing. Fucking get over it. I'm not defending the system, I'm calling you a cunt for playing something and bitching about having to play it.

In D&D, Good and Evil are not the same thing as right and wrong. Right and wrong are subjective, Good and Evil are objective. Good and Evil can both be detected and measured (to a limited extent), and the rules regarding them are consistently applied across all people and races.

D&D assumes "standard" western morality. Of course there's still room for interpretation for a particular GM, but in D&D the mongols are "Evil" though they would still consider themselves "right".

Of course in practice the mongols might still say "good", but that's dealing more with semantics.

Oh, no, I dont play DnD. That thing is too simple and morally ill defined. I already said I play with spergs like me, so im coo man. And If you try to tell me something like "well go play with them then blah blah", remember, it is YOU who started this thread, and wanted to bitch about stuff. Did you really expect only positive comments? Welcome to life, my niqqa, where things arent so simple like in DnD.

>No idea how the actual system works though.
It's pretty solid.

Don't be so cruel to garbage.

I can't help you. If I look at the book, I might get shot.

You're confused who you're talking to. I'm just an angry person who thought he'd join in.

>pointing out sociological flaws

And you have no idea just how hard you failed.

This is a game where Immortal Turtle Godzilla just fucking shows up sometimes. Do you hate fun?
In a setting with aforementioned Immortal Turtle Godzilla, "sociological flaws" are two words that should never, ever be brought up. Sometimes people just want to play something hack-and-slash with clear moral boundaries.

>D&D assumes "standard" western morality.
I wouldn't say so. For example, stealing is not considered an evil act in D&D, but it is considered an evil act in the West. Another example: Western morality is based on Christianity, which has it that everyone is inherently evil but can be redeemed. Meanwhile D&D morality instead has some things inherently evil while others not.

D&D has grown large enough and lasted long enough that its features are based on itself. D&D morality is unique to D&D, and corresponds with no morality from anywhere else.

>not playing dnd
>indiefag
Toppest kek

Eh, if that's the case then you're probably not someone I want in my games either.

When my group starts a new game, we take a lot of time discussing the kind of game we want; no-one goes in blind. Taking the spirit of the game and considering the assumptions that come with that, I like to build worlds together with my players, most of whom have DM'd as well; this lets us round-robin when one of us starts to get tired of DMing and gives us a setting we can all agree on. I'm not ForeverDM, even if I'm the most comfortable doing it and moderating discussions prior. Moreover, we hash out an accord on what is economically feasible in the setting, average expectations of villages/towns/cities, etc. and a lot of other logistical and economic worldbuilding details. We discuss what powerlevels mean, and expectations of what PCs should be capable of doing, socially, by leveraging their power.

But hey, if that level of cooperative worldbuilding and systemic understanding isn't for you, that's cool.

I didnt know I was dealing with a game that brakes logic and common sense on this level.
At this point, DnD sounds like less of a rpg system and more of a quick laugh type of thing. How can I be invested in a character if in the setting there exists a Turtle Godzilla?

>How can I be invested in a character if in the setting there exists a Turtle Godzilla?
The autism is real.

I would very much be interested in hearing why you say that. I think of them as the Klingons of the setting: so, so hardcore! And then they get chumped every time to show how hardcore the dragon lineage is.

You sound like a fun guy.
Unironically.

Mongols were more lawful than anything else.

Man, dude, broseph. When i want to rp, i want to experience a life of a medieval man, his toils, of a spacefarer, worrying about food and fuel. I dont want to be in a monty python sketch.

>when I play fantasy roleplaying games, I don't want there to be any fantasy in the
Back to DSA with you.

To each his own, man.

What's DSA?

It means Distinctively Slippery Anal.

Das Schwarze Auge. Translated, The Black Eye, a D&D-clone that comes from Germany. A German company couldn't secure rights to translate D&D to German, so they decided to build their own tabletop game, using D&D as an inspiration. Here's a review of an older edition; the game hasn't changed much since then, I'm told.

tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=56313

Sounds pretty good at a glance. I'll look into it since it was recommended to a sperg user I agree with.

>>Hey user I want to be a half orc!
People still calling them half-orcs?

Seriously. In my runs I run and play in, their just orcs. Who the fuck wants to just play the half breed?

Full orcs have a worse statblock.