For you, at what point does the integrity of the setting and world outweigh the player's desire to play a certain race...

Granted, I'm talking stuff like 'I want to play an anthropomorphic wolf-man with a GIANT WANG in a game set in modern-day, RL-esque Seattle.'

It makes sense if you make an aspect of the game clear up front, like if you said "okay guys this is a low magic setting, no full casters" and someone still brought in his lucky divination wizard

Or something that just completely breaks the setting for no real reason, like a Dark Sun campaign where a level 1 pc has "punched the Dragon of Tyr in the face" in his backstory, or a Planescape one with a cleric of the Lady of Pain

depends on the race.
i let a friend of mine play a dawrf even thoi hate dwarves , i guess it is a bit of self reflection because the reason i began to DM was becaues our old DM created a boring world not suited for interresting character archetypes like different cultures of Humans other than "Knight land" and other races than humans elves and dwarves.

Of course i did dwarves a bit different in the lore at least in the way that they integrate into society without forcing my player into a role he didnt want.

I also let another player be a Dragonborn but i dislike dragonborn fluff.

So i refluffed them into essentially beeing Sarnark from Everquest: Alchemistic Hybrids created by Lizardmen who wanted to gain the dragons ability to be warm blooded, they were ultimatley deemed a failure and discarded.

The fun bit is that the Dragonborn dont know this, they believe in the whole DnD schtick of great Dragon empire and world spanning dominion, when in reality they were a thrall race who got discarded and then picked up by Dragons as cannon fodder.

Ill make discovering this fact and dealing with the truth part of her ongoing story.

That's a real dick thing to do to your dragonborn player, you asshole.
The DM should always be very upfront with those types of things. Just take all your notes, throw them into a campfire, and donate your dice to a youth center, then never play games again.

Frankly I'd allow that if I trusted the player and the campaign was short.

Its a bit edgy but thats what you get for wanting to be a dragon person over a good old handbag person.

Their origins were never gonna be natural one way or another.

also i wanna see how her character reacts. Tell her people the truth and let them carve out their own path? Or go alongisde a constructed narrative but keep their pride intact? Or just make up something else to get herself more power?

It does help that time traveling lizard people are an antagonist in the campaign so it gives her a nice motivation to hate them.

> thats what you get for wanting to be a
player in a game run by a petty dick. Seriously, your idea is not bad but you personally need to grow up. This is shitty behavior.

>Its a bit edgy
No, it's a dickbag power move on part of the GM, period.
You are violating the fundamental tenet of trust between GM and player. There is a time to pull the wool over the player, and it is not with THEIR pcs which are the only thing they have control over.
You know for a fact that if you told the player this dreck, they would refuse to play a dragonborn, and that is why you didn't tell them.
>also, bait
>post a picture of your notes, you are on a phone

I mean they still have complete control and agency over their PC. I think that twist is kinda cool, and I do sort of agree that's a thing that should be told up front but it's not that fucking bad. Their mechanics don't change, they're character doesn't spontaneous die, their backstory and history is more or less unchanged.

>Death to Furfags.

Once again, an encyclopedia dramatics reading newfag proves that anti furry shitposting is far more annoying then any of the problems caused by the original furries.

There is literally nothing wrong with having, playing, or sexualizing furry characters in tabletop games. Get over yourself, fag.

You know the reason we have a persistent population of anti-furry aspies is because of how bad the furry invasion was, right? The squeaky voices and rancid BO of social retards who claim Robin Hood is furry propaganda are but a faint echo of something far worse.

First, collectively define what the group wants the game to be, and only permit PCs which neatly fit into that framework.

For example, if I'm playing a low-powered american high school superheroes game (i.e. jojo/persona) with an emphasis on slice-of-life and investigation, then that helps define the sort of characters which are permissible. Players are to make human teenagers with superpowers attending an american high school, whose non-superpower abilities are not to exceed those of a teenage prodigy in those areas.

I will not permit a player to come in with a cat-person, a pirate, or a middle-aged drill instructor. However, an army-brat, a sailing enthusiast who wears a tricorn, an international exchange/transfer student, or a japan-enthusiast would all be permissible as they fit the rough outline of the setting.

explain why.
Ive gotten this reaction a lot now and i dont get it.

Im not changing the characters backstory, im not telling them what they did or not do.

Im mereley witholding information about the characters race, something that said race does not actually know in universe.
i honestly dont see what would be gained from telling her about that.

Nobody in universe actually knows this and finding out that the entire dragonborn race is basically a huge lie a central plot point because it introduces the idea that someone else was actually running the world before they showed up.

do you have the same issue with shadowrun when the premise of a run is based on a lie?

How much information do you people actually give your players about the world?

Id say that plot point about the dragonborns origins is pretty interesting if you can lead up to it properly.

I dont know if i do it right.
right now it goes like this.

Dragonborn woman is a barbarian from an outskirt tribe.
In one of her raids she found an ancient shieldbuckle with the symbol of her tribe engraved on it, after a while she finds a scholar and interrogates him about it and finds out that the symbol that her clan uses is tied to one of the Noble Houses of the Ancient Dragonborn empire (which never existed but nobody alive knows this)

The scholar also tells her where the fiefdom of said noble house was: the Deserts of Copper. This is pretty much where the party is, they havent investigated further.

If the party chooses to pursue the lead (i plan on opening up the campaign at this point, letting them choose to which part of the world to go and which plot hook to pursue) theyll end up in the copper desert, a dark sun type of place where metal rusts very fast and the sand in places is made out of metal residue, it is also scattered with strange rusted ruins that dont correspond with any other culture anyone has ever seeno, it is also in complete bumfuck nowhere so the only people who ever care are the backwards native humans that live there.

Theyll investigate the ruins, do some dungeon crawling and will eventually team up with a shaman type of guy, now this is 4E (hence the dragonborn beeing in the core book) so shamans are all basicalyl stand users with their weird spirit companions and this shaman is possessed by an ancient inhabitant of those ruins who will act as a tour guide for the party.

Hell explain that hes an ancestor of the PC (this isnt technically a lie) and that the party can restore the seat of her line to her former glory.

Now this is where it intersects with the main plot.
one of the majort antagonists in my campaign are a race of ancient time traveling lizardmen who were in the process of going extinct via an ice age

Yeah, but it's long, long since passed, and the tolerable ones have made their way back in, if they ever left in the first place. The antifurfags are shouting at phantoms at this point.

>cont

in order to save themselves the lizards first tried to merge themselves with dragons to become warm blooded and survive the ice age, this mostly had the result that the dragons now wanted to genocide them as well for performing experiments on them

So in their final act of survival they decided to travel forward in time, this however also failed and they are now stuck behind the timeline.

They can never quite catch up with the timeline, they are always a few years behind in an empty world that can never reach real time.

So the ancient spirit guy actually attempts to trick the party into allowing the lizard empire back into real time so they can start their asshole empire all over again.

he will attempt to use the kinship the PC feels with him as leverage

eventually unless everything goes horribly wrong the PCs will find out that this is all just the plot of Extreme Dinosaurs and will dick em over. At which point the Dragonborn PC has the choice to either tell her people the truth that the Dragon Empire was just a lie fed to them by the Dragons to ensure their loyalty (their clan names arent actually from noble houses but from the dragons that claimed them as slaves), or embrace their draconic image as a final act of defiance over their treacherous lizard ancestors.

But beeing the moralfag she is this is going to be funny one way or another.

>Ive gotten this reaction a lot now and i dont get it.
Alright, start with asking yourself 2 questions.
>Why did I tell the dwarf player about the setting changes, and not the dragonborn player?
>Are my changes to dwarves the same scale as dragonborn changes, and did either radically change their racial/cultural traits that make them appealing to players?
I can take a guess at the answers for both.
To wit, if you need to have explained to you why making sweeping changes to the setting and not letting your players know up front is a definitive Red Flag for That DM, I'm sorta at a loss of where to start.
So I'll be basic: I'd bet you your GM hat that the primary reason the player chose dragonborn is because they are described as possessing an air of both nobility and savagery, courageous in times of danger, loyal to their chosen brothers, and wizened to the danger of imperial attitude due to the fall of Arkhosia.
Your changes strip half of those traits away on top of infringing on the dwarven lore of being slaves to a mightier race.
The fact that you are suckering a player is a DM sin. You could have easily told the player about this and used it as a great moment of revelation, where the dragonborn pc could choose to lose the shackles of the past and be free to become who they want, rather than live up to a greater past.
But you didn't, because you chose the cunt's way out, because you knew the player would tell you to shove it. The player WILL walk when this drops, I guarantee it. Fucking screencap it.

We all know the party line, we're just not fooled by it.

The integrity of the setting is paramount and should not be compromised. If there is some reason that a race doesn't fit in the setting, then it shouldn't be included in the setting.

This isn't much of a problem in practice because most fantasy settings ar, by design, rather when it comes to the various creatures that inhabit them. Even if a race wasn't accounted for in the worldbuilding, it's usuallly possible to include it in some fashion without causing any logical problems or violating the setting's themes. If for some reason it actually does break the setting's logical or thematic consistency to include a particular race, that's a good reason to exclude them. Usually the actual reason is less about the setting and more about someone having a grudge against that race for some reason.

The change itself is not an issue. The issue is that you're doing this to spite a player for picking a race, and "beeing the moralfag she is this is going to be funny one way or another" is not something you should say when justifying your decision. You're being petty and infantile. Talk to your player and roll back the change if you can't find a compromise with her.

Think of them like radiation, it's here because of the nuke that was dropped on you and it's not going to go away just because you're now buddies with the gaijin.

bump

>spite the player
I didnt do it to spite the player but in order for the dragonborn to fit the setting and to come up with drama.
I like to exagrate for comedic effect but no, i didnt do it because i hate dragonborn, i dont actually hate them, 4E doesnt have a non homebrew way to play lizardmen anyway so her picking a Dragonborn was a good way to connect the party to that particular subplot.

>moralfag

Unrelated to her picking a dragonborn , thats related to the drama i want to create, if she was an edgelord then there would be no point giving her that descision because sehd only takte the edgiest answer, if shes a moralfag theres an actual moral debate to be made her. read: good roleplaying, hopefully.

Animating my players to roleplay is half of the stuff i do since they are all newbies who *like* roleplaying but dont know how to get into the character well.

also none of them bothered writing a backstory and now i have to fill in the blanks every time one of them comes up with something their character did in the past.

Overly dramatic. The palyer picked a Dragonborn because she wanted to look like a Dragon.
She actually didnt read up on the 4E lore at firt.

But i genuinly want to know, what does this revelation change about the character of the race?
Are they less noble and courageous because their empire never existed?
It doesnt change anything about their present, the empire was lost one way or anohter.

Also note that my setting is not actually points of light but a Homebrew setting, which i told them all before, i basically let them pick whatever races they wanted save for shardmind and i tried to put em into the setting in some way and then connect em to the main plot.

You seem to think that i am pulling something malicious here, i realy just tried to make an interresting story out of a player wanting to pick a race i didnt anticipate anyone picking

and as said, exagrating for comedic effect.

I'd say the problem is because it's framed as a "Gotcha" about an issue that the player has no finding out. Also, who is to say the player will even finding this out will find it to be interesting?

Just from my personal point of view, I'd go along with it but I wouldn't actually care. Not that there is much to do with that revelation/information except accept the fact that your race was manufactured.

This guy gets it.

There isn't a setting to have integrity without the players. The book of lore is just a book full of ideas you get to mess with together, its not a sacrosanct entity. You make a setting together necessarily, even if you're using one someone else wrote. If you want it to remain as is, just read it. If you're playing, talk about themes, make sure everyone's on a close enough page and go from there.

Are you literally the same guy who asked for an non-edgy way to play a halfdragon a bit ago?

well i dont know if the player will find it interresting, the player is relativeley new and all she did in her other campaign was doting on her animal companion.

Shes mostly interrested in doing high crit damage anyway, but at least one of my playes enjoys exposition and they at least seem to be partly interrested in my worldbuilding, at least when its wacky.

For some reason they *realy* liked the idea of a dwarf hero beeing the most respected guy ever because he managed to barter a mountain stronghold from a dragon.

either way its a way to anchor this part of the plot onto the personal storyline of one of the characters, the players didnt write an awfull lot of backstory for their characters so thats mostly all i can go for in that regard

For all i know maybe they wont ever uncovr this bit because they want to pursue another plot hook, i basically figured out that the best way of finding the right mood of the session is to let the players decide if they want to roll with the more goofy or the more serious plot hook for the time beeing.

They are quite inconsistent in that, but its a large group and its not easy to cater to all of them at once.

>Not that there is much to do with that revelation/information except accept the fact that your race was manufactured

It depends on how the GM goes about it. Maybe he could have them uncover the wizard who did it, and make a choice about what to do with him.

If the setting and world have been decided and agreed upon beforehand. Immediately. Don't agree to something you don't actually want to be a part of you dishonest cunt.

>GM provides list of setting appropriate races
>Players pic from the list
How is that hard?

How often do players DEMAND to play, say, an elf in Traveller or in Call of Cthulu?

Reasonably what are you going to do to the wizard who gave you and your people life? Are you supposed to be happy? Angry? Somewhere in between?

It's an ambiguous, messy issue through which the PCs might learn about themselves while having a real impact on the setting.

Why would you ever make a setting that doesn't include the things your players want to play as?

If the lizard empire is composed of assholes, why do they want to get back to real time? An empty world has no competition. They've already got all the resources they could ever want. In essence, they already rule the world, just a few steps behind everyone. Maybe they don't like having to live in a world where other people have already acted? In that case, wouldn't it be better to swap places with everyone else, moving themselves to real time while sticking all the other species in a (formerly) empty world?

Also, didn't Patrick Stuart do the one-step-behind time travel thing already, with dinosaurs?

Wouldn't a trial be the most sensible course of action? The only contrary argument I see there is the time travel one-- "when I did it, it wasn't a crime."

I've seen more of this shit recently than the other way around.

I have a clear vision of what the game is about, and I got the players' buy-in on the campaign and its premises.

Also I am quite tired of kitchen-sink settings whose bloated lists of features invariably serve as distractions from whatever the game was originally supposed to be about. I have played more focused games and systems, and I prefer them greatly for their focus.

the original "furry invasion" was people spamming shit on /b/ because it got a rise out of people, nothing more.

>Player wanted to be a heir to the throne
>Made up a kingdom that didn't even fit the setting
>Character had an anime portrait
>Said I couldn't mess with the background and everything I said need to be changed was met with "that isn't how my background is, stop trying to tell my what my story is"
To be fair, it's someone who was actually diagnosed on the spectrum.

>with dinosaurs

Also there was the thing with the dinosaur god and the Pseododinosaurs Also langoliers by stephen King. Where Do you think i stole the idea.

>why Do they want back

Without going too much into the metaphysics of my setting: used up time is a mess, think about it like a historical trash heap where unused timelines decay and rot, if you played turok the lost Lands are a good analogy, or the Dead sea from chrono cross
Its not a peasant place even for an evil lizard empire who have only gotten more fucked in the head by staying there

Revenge for abandoning them? stealing their technologies? Reconcile with them and attempt to Reform the evil lizards to make the dragonborn empire like it was supposed to be?

Im open to the PCs actions as this, this is 4e and that would be a neat Epic destiny for that PC

>langoliers by stephen King.
The reality eating testical demons?

Did you kick him? Because you should kick him

This is why you play a half-dragon instead, folks.

I DM for the party, so I usually just work with people to make everything work together. I don't really have a problem smacking them down if they try to dominate the whole world, or throw the balance way off. Working for the party is not the same as working for individual players.

It takes a lot of coordination and talking to people, but it's well worth it when everyone has fun.

Player's desire outweighs the premise at the point when all other players are all right with this shit

Yeah they eat up used timelines. I dont have a direct creature doing it but i got the used up timelines decaying and going to shit
>half dragons

Fucking no you gotta draw a line somewhere, i let a Player be a literal fairy but definitly not a half dragon.
I tend to a agree to a point. For example if you Run a Call of cthulu game and the Group agrees to it then no you cant be an elf.
Likewise if some of the players explicitly DONT want something thats Part of the setting then thats an issue aswell. Two of my Players are fervently opposed to firearms of any sort and dont want anything to do with them which realy is an issue with the World ive created

I think it's more trying to play a wizzzzzard in Dark Sun or a werewelf in any game other than capital W Worewilf.

Personally, I love the idea of playing monstrous races like goblins, but the setting would have to have some balance on "you are misunderstood" vs "the town forms a mob if you fail a disguise check.".

Any setting worth playing in has integrity to accommodate a burd that classy!

>Two of my Players are fervently opposed to firearms of any sort
AHAHAHAHAHA

Frankly I'd let a player to roll a cleric of LoP, and then play it out like a regular run of the mill cleric PC and not make a big deal about it. Because that's what infuriates players like that: they want to be special and unique, so finding out their snowflake is just one among several is something they can't handle. Denying them outright makes them complain and become the center of attention, while crushing their spirit by giving them what they wanted is a thing of beauty.

I Took a lot of Inspiration from nausicaa, whfb and ivalice for my setting so firearms are a give, i basically Ended up with letting the players comes from backwards Ass countries where these werent too common but it didnt alleviate the "will this now be the fantasy D-day Simulator?" sperging.

I must explain we are german speakers and in the germanosphere fantasy is very no fun allowed tolkien Clone infested

I haven't dug deep into planescape, but I thought worshipping the Lady of Pain the worshipper died.

By simply existing, they are tempting a rocksfall.

I too take a lot of inspiration from the ghiblis specifically. Shame about your players. Have you considered violently shaking them until they quiet down?

Id just say forbid it. the character would be instantly killed anyway, saying He isnt a special snowflake is funny but you have to change the internal logic of the setting so not Worth it.

That guys will find other ways to derail the game anyway

I knew Most of my Players loved princess mononoke so i figured it would be a perfect fit but i guess they all forgot about firearms and aviation beeing big Themen in Studio ghibli.

The whole "war is an awfull corrupting thing" is the theme of the first adventure theyre on. I dont think they See the parallel yet

You're really bringing me down here. I'm reading nausicaa's mango right now, and I can't help but love the setting even more. You're breaking my heart muhammed.

I realy have to read the nausicaa Manga, shuna was realy fucking good. I just want knights with bolt Action rifles and that weird caucasus theme they got going

Have you thought about getting better players?
I bet they where miffed to begin with because you didn't run DSA.

The old DM actually wanted to Run DSA but then was scared away because the rules were too autistic, shadowrun was discussed aswell. Very teutonic i Know.

And well these are my friends. They aint all bad

What system are you using / where you planing to use for your Mononoke game, btw?

Not a mononoke game just inspired by Studio ghibli among other games, im using 4e cause its balanced and combat is fun, non combat Parts are largeley freeform, i dont realy Do the 4e social challenges cause they feel forced as fuck, the only issue with the System i got is that combat Takes very long

Y'know, I'm pretty sure the X-men must have a "cat-person" somewhere. A teenage pirate superhero sounds like Silver Age lolrandom shit. A teenage middle-aged drill instructor doubly so. Of course, the execution would be the key here, I think.

>Not playing a dragon in 2017

Have you thought about using a different system is the only thing you like it for isn't actually that great?

>Player wants to play a character that doesn't fit in the setting specified by the GM
>GM says no
>This is somehow wrong

I have never run into this problem, to be honest.
I have even problems coming up with a realist scenario in my head where this would even happen.

I can only think of two ways where this would come up: GMs with no imagination or Players that are way to attached to a character concept.

Honest question, could you guys give me some (preferably real) examples of this problem?

Since when halfdragons are edgy by default?

Luckily I don't have weirdo players, so if I tell them we're playing in Star Wars setting, they pick races and backgrounds that fit.

Same with others.

Never had a problem to be honest, we always reach a common ground

I actually Do like 4e. I like wargaming esque combat and imo combat is all you need a System for

Not edgy but in Most settings nonsensical or too powerfull

Almost always, except if we are about to start a campaign. Then we'll just play something else where they fit better.

But that is not a problem most of the time, because I am rather flexible

As a rule of thumb I never let players play their first option, that makes them more docile

Why play in a setting if you're not going to enjoy what the setting offers?

Half-dragon is just a dragonborn that just has their dragon heritage closer :^)

One example that I've seen is:
>Playing in a homebrewed D&D setting
>Very generic, tame, takes inspiration from a lot of popular fantasy fiction
>Player wants to play a Catgirl
>Dm says no they don't fit in the setting
>One player was allowed to be a birdman
>Player who wanted to be a Catgirl ended up playing as a dhampir and an aasimar/dragonborn hybrid (She liked to change characters a lot)

Nothing crazy, just a DM not wanting something that didn't fit into their idea of their setting.

I mean, that sounds like there wasn't any drama to it.
The OP makes it sound it is a regular occurrence that actually leads to problems, not something where someone goes 'Bummer, but okay' and moves along