Five years ago I started GMing with a firm belief that I would never stifle player creativity and allow pretty much any character concept that wasn't blatant fetishism or minmaxing. Boy have five years ground this notion down into fine powder.
Now, I have run the gamut of usual red flags most other DMs would have tossed right out without much issue. I've had samurai and ninja that turned out to be great characters played by sane people who just wanted to try something different. I've had edgy inquisitors that managed to not cause any party infighting. Evil PCs that didn't dirk the entire party in their sleep. I even had a catfolk that avoided any sort of magical realm nonsense. The only thing that has consistently proven to be a universal red flag, is kitsune PCs.
Now, I've allowed kitsune into the party, on some minute hope that maybe I'll get something interesting. But no. Literally every kitsune character concept I have ever gotten is the same. A naive teenage female caster. It always boils down to that. Not even half caster, some full tier-1 caster. Its not like its even just the same person pitching the character. It's always a new player we've invited to the table, and every time I've okayed a kitsune character, it has been met with disaster. Whether the player is a cancerous snowflake that shifts the tone of every session with the grace of a record scratch, or the player is just a flake that misses sessions for weeks on end without so much as a text, kitsune players are always game-ruining fuckheads. Always.
No other race or class has given me problems like this. Just once I'd love for someone to ask if they could play a kitsune martial. But no, because then they couldn't be cutsey little clueless anime shits at every goddamn turn.
tl;dr fuck kitsune players. >have you tried not playing D&D Yes, and it was terrible. not really though, I just like high fantasy
I feel this way about minotaurs. It's not even the race itself, it's just that people who play them are always, always ALWAYS That Guys. I'm not even sure why. I'm not even joking when I say the only time I've had a player pull the whole "I attack the king" thing was with a Minotaur player.
Leo Moore
I suppose I'm lucky I've never had a player ask to play a minotuar. I'll have to be wary if someone asks me to play one, lol.
Xavier Myers
Play anima, slap them with your BIG LA when they pay daimah or between world kitsune. Now they wont. daimah players are oddly OK
Evan Ward
I have no problem with my group and they have played a variety of monster characters over the years. I had a player do a kitsune. he ran it as a monk-druid crossover basically (mind you this was before there was an official kitsune) and it worked great in the asian-themed campaign we ran. Slightly devious, capable of interacting with spirits and had some mild control over elements (basic elemental spells) and combined that with some of the abilities of a monk. It was balanced, low hp, decent attack, decent magic. tl;dr its not the character, its the player.
Asher Hughes
I've seen two kitsune in my games (both had good reasons for the race being there so that wasn't the issue with either).
>first guy >great roleplayer >liked complicated and suboptimal classes so he could be challenged >was a delight to gm for
>second player >full tsundere ranger/wizard kitsune >bitched and moaned about adventuring >wanted to stay inside and study "her" spellbook >Player realized he was playing her as an autist >told me he triggered himself and dropped out of the game >too few people to run game anymore since his character had accidently become central to plot
It takes all kinds.
Jeremiah Wright
>Be me >Get invited to a game by a friend cos a player dropped out >First session I show up, minotaur player isn't there >Eh, whatever, work with everyone else to make a character who fits into the current plot arc >Decide to make a wizard from the setting's big Magic Academy city because the party both needs an arcane caster and wants an alliance with the city >Next game happens, minotaur player is there >Minotaur player proceeds to throw a bitch fit in like the first 10 minutes as the DM introduces my character and lets me show the rest of the party around the city, because it's taking spotlight off him and his min-maxed melee smashing (he was using a broken homebrew berserker class). >Minotaur player decides he hates me, hates mages, hates the city the party was previously trying to make an alliance with >When we meet with the city representatives to has out an alliance he basically challenges them all to combat, saying the victor decides the terms and says it will mean war if they decline >Promptly gets arrested for basically threatening a bunch of politicians in broad daylight >Party bails him out a few hours later with some great charisma checks, chalking his outburst up to the stresses of adventuring and travel and such. >Minotaur player still takes the whole incident personally and bitches at all of us for not backing him up and fighting the guards when they were arresting him. Like literally bitches for the entire rest of the 3 hour session at every chance he got. >DM just sits there like a total beta and doesn't tell him to knock it off even though most of the players have.
Minotaur players man, not even once. Needless to say, I didn't show up to that game ever again.
Chase Phillips
>>told me he triggered himself and dropped out of the game Why were you even playing with someone like this?
John Jackson
>Five years ago I started GMing with a firm belief that I would never stifle player creativity and allow pretty much any character concept that wasn't blatant fetishism or minmaxing. How is a kitsune not blatant fetishism?
Matthew Gutierrez
How do you even play a kitsune right? I'm not sure I could really do it justice as a player.
Has anyone ever even seen a kitsune played really well, with the kistune part being integral to the character and not just a bolted on fluffy tail?
Sebastian Wright
Well, there's nothing particularly sexual about merely BEING a kitsune, is there?
Xavier Taylor
There's a cross-cultural tendency to sexualize foxes, similar to the cross-cultural tendency to sexualize cats.
The term for a female fox is vixen, which is also a colloquialism for a promiscuous woman.
The kitsune of Japanese folklore in specific is typically portrayed as either female or bishonen, and as a seduced of men.
And the most widely recognized furry gateway film, Disney's Robin Hood, features a tender love story between two anthropomorphic foxes.
Do you want to know more? Because I do know more, and man, I wish I didn't.
Liam Nelson
I mean, technically you could play a succubus and just not touch on their sex appeal.
But that's sort of missing the point.
Sebastian Richardson
Kitsune in at least some forms of authentic Japanese mythology can be summed up as "the original waifu."
Sexualization is inevitable.
Dylan Sanchez
You need to get off the internet.
Sebastian Carter
A weirdo blue-and-orange morality (as opposed to black-and-white) trickster more reminiscent of the celtic fae is the best suggestion I'd have.
Jackson Collins
>complains about the weebs who've ruined the idea of kitsune with their shitty monstergirl fetish >posts an actually cool kitsune and a style that rarely sees as much play in comparison So is OP just another baiter who is trying to blame the furry boogeyman, while ignoring the real cause of the problem being all the anime shitters and their waifus? Because you could have started this thread with a screen cap of /pfg/ and it would have been much more appropriate.
Carter Wood
Ahri from League of Legends is a pretty decent way of playing it straight, a player could play it well. Could.
Camden Watson
That sounds more like an issue with the players in question than the race. Trickster foxes are common in myth and folktales in many places across the world-if people can't do any more with them than "naive teenage female caster", that's pretty much their own fault.
Carson Davis
>Kitsune are now Kumiho
There. Now they're actually interesting instead of shallow waifus.
Liam Fisher
Have you tried GURPS dungeon fantasy?
It's very good for high fantasy
Nolan Ortiz
Tell me more, user
Isaiah Taylor
Also: Never in my life I've met anyone playing with kitsune. I'm in TTRPG for past 15 years.
Chase Russell
Don't worry user, we were all teenagers once.
Dylan Evans
teach your players about the mythological real thing, and its variations. Ask them how they'd make this a good character.
I once ran a game with a bunch of playable mythological races, where Kitsune were the sneaky ones and didnt open up to outsiders. they get autistic nervosity if someone they dont fully trust finds out what they are, as it breaks with their alignment to mystery and secret.
Carter Johnson
>kitsune >naive teenage female caster >kitsune >naive My fucking god.
Kevin Powell
I'm guessing it was the 'tee hee, I'm from a magical forest. What are these hoo-man doors for?' type of naive where they've never seen another person in their life.
Cameron Russell
Were you recruiting from /pfg/?
Jonathan Morris
>always naive teenage casters
Let's break this down a bit.
>Caster
Kitsune get bonuses to CHA and DEX, as I recall, which means they work very well with caster classes. If we are talking about PF they also get some racial spellcasting, so being a caster makes easy sense. It's like wondering why Orcs are so often martial classes.
>Teenage
The appeal of Kitsune to most people is that they are cute. Call it a fetish if you wish, but that's just the long and short of it. Even the old Japanese myth from which Kitsune come from describes them as attractive young women who flirt with men while trying to hide their nature as foxes. Pic related is basically the mythical Kitsune of Japanese lore except wolf instead of fox.
This doesn't apply just to Kitsune, either. Most players I've gamed with play 17-28 year olds because that is when people are youngest, healthiest, and most attractive. The odd guy out will make an elderly wizard or a grizzled retired militia captain or something, but the average age range is going to be lower than normal.
>Naive
This I agree I don't get. There's nothing stopping someone from playing a Kitsune who isn't a manipulative thief, or a hardened war vet, or nihilistic savant or something. Maybe people get so hung up on the cute that they figure a cute personality needs to match it, which just isn't true.
My own Kitsune was a diplomat who used every trick, skill bonus, and spell bonus she could find to talk people into compliance, and the ease with which she did it made her start thinking of other people as putty. I mean, if people are so easy to convince they are more like puppets than people, right? Made her almost a proto sociopath.
Juan Morris
>A naive teenage female caster.
What about a naive preteen caster foxgirl (male)?
Robert Johnson
Friendly reminder that this was a popular /pfg/ game:
>any character concept that wasn't blatant fetishism So why did you allow kitsune?
>not really though, I just like high fantasy Have you tried playing 2e?
Brody Price
I don't think it's kitsune players so much as the autistic furries, weebs, and weeb furries that always try to play them
Oliver Collins
ahem 2e
Andrew Powell
to be fair, it's Kamitani.
Kevin Murphy
...
Ryan Smith
>Now they're actually interesting Yeah, sure.
Cooper Garcia
catboy or GTFO
Cameron Harris
...
Austin Kelly
This'll be fun, then. A PF game I'm in that's just starting up, everyone is a newbie except me and the GM. And one of the newbies wants to play as a kitsune.
A fire-wizard pyromaniac kitsune though, so we'll see how it goes.
The other players are a dragon and a catfolk, unsure of their classes yet. I'm playing a gnome alchemist.
And I'm the furry of the group
Ayden Turner
>dude just play it as a fetish lmao
user that's what we're trying to avoid.
Luke Lee
>My own Kitsune was a diplomat who used every trick, skill bonus, and spell bonus she could find to talk people into compliance, and the ease with which she
Hey, guess how I identified that you're just defending your magical realm here?
Jace Smith
Not that user, but my family's old clan symbol was the fox so I've had a bit of research of fox mythology both inside and outside of the furry community.
The word Kitsune itself refers to all foxes in Japanese (as all foxes were believed to be varying ranks of such trickster spirits.) Japanese fox legends are generally far more positive than Chinese fox legends in which the fox was a seductive shapeshifting spirit who would 'drain the essence' of young vital men. Such chinese legends often had a lot in common with the Rakshasha in that illusion/shapeshifting and cannibalism were common traits.
Japanese legends of foxes tended to still involve deception, but the target was either being taught humility (and usually deserved it) or was simply part of a playful game with the fox. The earliest Japanese Kitsune legend actually has the fox as a loving and beautiful waifu of the unknowing protagonist only for her to flee when her nature was discovered. A number of other legends follow the same basic outline with the fox either fleeing with their children, leaving their children, returning on the night of the full moon, returning after a quest, ext.
One of the most interesting variations a poor peasant woodsman spared a fox caught in a trap and she aided him in a hilarious con in which he sold her as his 'most beautious pure virginal daughter' and then she used her shapeshifting to escape by appear to drown herself in shame, the peasant returning the next morning to purchase her back and the brothel was forced to pay him EVEN MORE cash. The fox then visited the now wealthy peasant and tested his character a final time by offering herself to him as his lover, he refused though trembling in temptation, a test which he only barely passed and actually freed the fox from a sort of earthly bondage preventing her from ascending to the next stage of enlightenment.
Andrew Ortiz
>Player realized he was playing her as an autist >told me he triggered himself and dropped out of the game
I actually burst out laughing at this. What the fuck.
Carter Young
I dunno user, some players are cancer.
But sometimes you find the one player whom plays that race without being cancer.
to this day I feel proud of playing a really well roleplayed LE Kobold and proving my first online group wrong that some players with non normal characters actually play to have fun and not to start senseless pvp or to endorse a fetish.
Jason Thompson
The few times I played one his background was that his parents were killed for some unknown reason and he was adopted by a retired officer. He didn't even know he was a Kitsune until his powers began to manifest in his teenage years. He had trouble controlling his powers because he was never taught how to use them, and he had very poor social skills when dealing with Kitsune because he was never properly socialized with them. After his adopted father died, he left to find out why his parents were killed, and if possible, bring the perpetrator to justice. He was neutral good, because as I said, his father was a former legion officer. I never got beyond a few sessions with him because two people sperged out over something unrelated (One of the players, a rogue, killed two other players, a paladin and an archer, when they were fighting a spider boss) and we stopped playing.
Ayden Sullivan
>not playing an honorable minotaur knight who comes clad in armor and makes bad beef puns.
Nathaniel Jones
.Cont
Meanwhile the most recognized and foundational fox character in Western mythology is probably Reynard (his stories were so popular they replaced the previous french word for fox with the word 'renard'.) Reynard was again a trickster hero representing wit overcoming the raw strength of his rival the wolf Isengrim. Reynard is not exactly a 'nice' person as he tends to be a thief and a real player (despite being married with a family in many of his tales) however he also frequently represents the peasantry in their struggles with the more powerful nobility and clergy in the medieval age. Icengrim is almost always outwitted at the end of each tale and eventually ends his life skinned and thrown to fodder (for pigs I think.)
Reynard here serves as a pretty clear inspiration for a foundational figure in the furry community. Disney's animated Robin Hood (1973) even his main rival the Sherrif takes the form of a big wolf. As a bit of an early creative sideline, the film robin hood was initially supposed to be a cowboy western retelling and not straight medieval, the opening tune 'Whistle Stop' is one of the few remnants of that earlier theme.
Brandon Robinson
would that count if I always wanted to play a half Minotaur half Goliath ?
never happend though and now since 3.5 is mostly dead will probably never happen but I wanted to play him as a CN dude whom is kind of sad about his life and always wanted more to it on account of being bred by some dark elfs as a monster for the fighting pits and later escaping and becoming a merc since that is the only thing he can do.
Still sad I can't play him
Luke Ramirez
"It was a misteak to mess with me." "Wait. Did you just say steak?" "No, you're just imagining things. Now moove aside." "Did he just..." "Let it go, man, just let it go."
James Reyes
"For whom the cowbell tolls" "Have a beef with my mage? Get ready for the horns" "I will not be cowed by a gaggle of orcs"
Lucas Edwards
>Gumiho >Kitsune no
Chase Gomez
this, honestly. I feel like as a Dm at some point you develop something i would call a sixth sense for lack of a better word. basically there are people whom i would let comfortably play anything they want, whereas with other players there are certain concepts that just raise an unignoble red flag.
Ethan Robinson
"You're lying to me." "No I'm not!" "Look at me. Look at me. Do you think I don't know bullshit when I see it?"
Cameron Howard
*unignorable and fuck my live thats a terrible word i dont know what i was thinking.
Angel Reyes
Now, because Robin Hood was (essentially) a love story between two foxes, and because of a broad culture meme in which foxes were seen as intelligent, clever and visually striking (a triumvirate of teenage OC traits) various recolored magical foxes are probably one of the more common OCs seen among furries. The fact that foxes populations are still wild, but also well able to subsist in the shadows of our modern civilizations on a global means that foxes are also quite recognizable, while also retaining an air of mystery unlike domestic cats or more servile dogs. This popularity of foxes as romantic characters yet not quite trustworthy combined with the furry community's tendency to have a larger number of 'sexually loose' people (a charactertic bleeding over into their OC drama) and somehow you end up with a modern meme of foxes being regular sluts.
Meanwhile, actual foxes are rather clannish, form stable family units and tend to have a rather high rate of mate fidelity over their lifespan as far as mammals go.
Carter Sullivan
...
Adam Baker
The one time I ever went full furry was in a TMNT planned session. I was playing a lynx ninja who wore a comically cliche moe cat mask.
Beast race players tend to be weirdos.
Aiden Lee
Man, you can tell she secretly wanted Kisuke's dick.
Kayden Evans
>allowing anyone who wants to play a furry character play in your game without previously knowing and trusting them Literally asking for autism
Matthew Clark
I tried to bring a chill Minotaur character to the table once but ran into problems with the size categories (on top of the 5 racial hit dice in D&D but y'know).
In retrospect, I should have made him a midget or something.
Michael Ramirez
>midget minotaur questing for a spell that'll give him the biggest horns of his tribe >repeatedly ties sticks to his horns to make him look taller
Julian Scott
I wanted to play a half minotaur paladin once in 3.5, a big brute who was trying his damndest to buck the trend and the odds and be the goddamn GOOD GUY. Then, this other player pissed the DM off and the DM cut Dragonmag content AFTER HE ALREADY OK'D MY PC. He was wrote up, completed, and given the stamp of approval, and I had to scrap him and make a new pc. I have never been more mad at a game ever.
Hudson Harris
>But no. Literally every kitsune character concept I have ever gotten is the same. A naive teenage female caster. >No other race or class has given me problems like this. Just once I'd love for someone to ask if they could play a kitsune martial. And here I was playing a 130 year old kitsune Blackguard in our last campaign.
Also had a secret society of Kitsune ninjas when I ran my Pathfinder campaign.
Colton Wright
brilliant
damn, i need to actually look at dragonmag, i didn't even know that was a thing.
Bentley Turner
It was SUPER busted, user, and clearly not for player use. The only reason I was allowed it was because 3.5 paladin's were shit anyway, and so playing a busted race with +12 to str and +6 to con (but massive mental penalties) wasn't gonna be a thing.
Brody Morales
Not much to add, just letting ya know op that I`ve had two Kitsunes in the past 3 years.
Booted both of their fucking asses. Nothing to do with the race or class they played, one unexpectedly was very anti weeb. Just the players themselves sucked.
Carson Morales
>Furries >+ to Charisma
Adam Ramirez
Just what sort of "anti weeb" plays a japanese fox person?
Robert Lopez
There used to be a great web comic called Fox Sister about a woman trying to kill her kumiho replacemrnt sister Too bad it's dead
William Turner
This is literally Naruto.
Jayden Miller
just dug up a transcript and goddamn, it sure is. LA +1 my ass! Well, back to the drawing board and/or midget plan.
Kevin Gray
reading manga/watching anime is not what makes a weeb,
having an interest in asian history/mythology is not what makes a weeb
traveling to asian countries is not what makes a weeb
,,,making a shapshifting fox trickster in a dnd game is what makes one a weeb?
Camden Hughes
Anyone who plays a non-human PC is cancer to be honest. It's part of the reason I would never play with groups that do that.
Hudson Sanchez
People like you are why the internet doesn't suck. Thanks user.
Jayden Murphy
Every race thats not human?
Aiden Jackson
On the other hand, when was 'it's broken' ever a consideration for whether or not it was suitable for players in 3.5? I mean, druids exist ffs its not like having good racial adjustments even comes close to 'I took Aberration WIldshape, and I use it to turn into a cloaker and get 2 actions every turn' or 'I took Frozen WIldshape, so I've decided to become a 12-headed cryohydra today'
Nathan Martin
That was the first time he'd sperged out so hard, and I made it a priority to never see him again.
My life has been measurably better since.
Austin Sanders
Because, user, things like that take effort and knowledge of the system! It's different than having big numbers!
Ayden Peterson
>no minitaur pun
Jonathan Gomez
shit
i have a long way to go before i'll ever be the punlord.
Zachary Carter
Leather or not you make it, you should never cowhide your talent.
Brody Morgan
You are cool.
Julian Wilson
>implying the incompetants who keep fucking up playing kitsune even know who Inari is Look up the story of Tamamo-no-mae and the Sessho Seki, as well as the god Inari
Zachary Roberts
The most important thing is to distance it from "sexy fox lady".
Kitsunes aren't sexy fox girls, they aren't even fox succubus. The appearance is entirely a disarming camouflage; you don't invite them back to your place and lose a level through your dick.
They are either a deity's agent or a muse, and both of these forms are capricious and alien. They pay civility with civility, punish the rude and uncaring with curses and hexes, so on and so forth.
Play up the divine nature, Your character is rooted in the Yokai and the legends are true. You have difficulty with tongue-twisters and can't stand dogs. When you give favors, you pay both in valuables and junk ensorceled to look valuable (You probably need supervised if you are sent to purchase supplies, especially if there's a food vendor.)
Dominic Perry
Yeah, expect a lot of leaves if they pay you for something. Aren't they fairly provincial in their speech as well? Thought I heard that somewhere.
Liam Hernandez
I'm pretty sure that's linked to the legends where they can't speak whole sentences.
Although I suddenly have half a mind to play a Kitsune with a southern accent going full Y'all'd've to hide her inability to speak properly.
Thomas Young
>Can't speak properly >Fakes a Southern accent to hide it
Brilliant! If you pretend to be retarded, people might not notice you're actually retarded
Don't mind me, just baiting.
Caleb Walker
For you guys.
Levi Roberts
What's the opposite of that? Going full whomst'd've?
Michael Rogers
That's just British.
Nathan Harris
That wasn't the inspiration. I don't watch anime.
Bentley Johnson
I am now picturing your typical seductive kitsune going full Southern Belle and it is oddly charming. The fuck is this?
You have my sympathies, OP. It sounds like you have played with some really shit people; I remain convinced however that it is the player, not the character - the character is just a symptom.
Matthew Carter
What about excessive formality? Their view of humanity's culture could be somewhat warped. They could speak in a formal, clinical, almost autistic manner. Foxes communicate to a great deal by smell (They piss on everything, even their food, and have a very strong odour), so they could be stunted when it comes to spoken language.
Anthony Robinson
This could also justify them using excessive amounts of slang and being unable to finish sentences properly.
Camden Butler
It depends on which kitsune, and which game and game style.
Kitsune are tricksters but also have rules. I will admit, my first encounter with them was in werewolf the apocalypse. The issue I think is not the race but the player.
Leo Parker
You need to set a theme and run with it. Kitsune should be arseholes who play tricks for fun, and ruin adventures or betray people for their own gain. Everything they do is for their tribe and themselves. Their party members are just the help.
Xavier Sullivan
I'm playing an extremely powerful fox sorceress who playfully threatened a tengu king with roasting him over an open fire when he was a coward who wouldn't go after a BBEG
The build I have for her will eventually be able to stop time. At will. At level 20. Among other bullshit God wizard abilities.
Am I doing it right if I'm playing this yokai fox as an extremely powerful sorceress who does not understand human right/wrong in most contexts, and knows PRECISELY how bullshit her wizardry is and will lord it over the rest of the party, consisting of weaker casters and martials? But still offer them my help because that bastard necromancer villain killed my childhood best friend and now I want pay back?
Do I get points taken off if it's Golarion, aka Pathfinder, and I justify her taking on a human appearance more like a normal European woman because she was adopted by an important soldier who found her in the woods of the one nation in the Asia equivalent that was basically colonized by Britain/Germany?
Am I doing it right Veeky Forums?
Hunter Flores
That (you) was much higher quality than I expected. Thank you, user
