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Campaign Design and Advice Workshop
Aegeri
Tiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered User regular
Tiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered User regular
A wee while back I got some comments relating to the way I like to design campaigns. Now that I am in fact in the prototypic stages of designing new campaigns (for Eberron) I thought others might like to share ideas about campaign design and such forth.
Running a roleplaying game
I've now been DMing various roleplaying games for a long time, about 13 years and I started back in high school. I started with 1st edition DnD and moved to AD&D, then to other systems like storyteller and Call of Cthulhu. During this time I learned a lot about DMing, storytelling, designing combat encounters and generally "people" skills required to keep a group of disparate individuals at a gaming table. As a DM (Dungeon Master)/ST (Storyteller) you are taking the most responsibility for the game and also the most difficult role. In no particular order your job involves:
Being the "referee" of the game.
Essentially the core job of any DM/ST is to provide a way that the PCs (Player Characters) interact with the world, what it looks like and the results of the PCs actions within that world. This is different depending on the system that you choose to use, for example Call of Cthulhu tends to have enemies that border on the invulnerable side or drive PCs (Investigators in that game) mad at the drop of a hat. On the other hand, characters in DnD are more than likely to stick their axe through the monster in question.
Despite the numerous differences between systems, no matter what you are using this point still remains the same. The core of a roleplaying game is the players tell you what they want to do and with a combination of the games rules and your judgment they can affect the world you've created.
In the same vein, you also decide how the rules often work and what rules are allowed or disallowed. This is by far one of the most complicated parts of DMing and takes a lot of finesse. Too restrictive and you risk denying players the ability to play the characters they want. Allow anything and often you can end up running into some problems.
People manager
You're also responsible for managing your players, setting the time the game starts and resolving conflicts. This is often the most or second most difficult task, especially when players take a direct exception to one another to the point of outright attacking one another or just storming out of a session. There are also issues about if people don't attend sessions, what to do when you have a player with a really problematic character and other things.
Storyteller
The main thing with DMing is that you are telling the story. You make the characters and world that the players interact with, or you get it from somewhere else like a setting like the Forgotten Realms. You then decide what characters are important, what NPCs inhabit the world and overall how the plot is structured.
Worldbuilder
Often you use a set setting like in Forgotten Realms or Eberron. These come complete with a world already mostly built, NPCs and other things established for you. Sometimes you'll want to make your own and this obviously takes a considerable amount of effort. Sometimes you'll be using the real world, maybe even your own city with a darker twist (Call of Cthulhu and Vampire are examples of systems that make great opportunities for this sort of thing).
With these points in mind, I'm going to start going over some of the things I do when designing a campaign. I'm not going to be able to cover every aspect in one post otherwise you'll be dead of old age by the time you're done reading, but instead I'm going to talk about how I do things. Bear in mind that this is simply my method, I've never found two DMs who agree on exactly how to do this and everyone has different ideas. You should ideally take anything purely as advice and nothing here is supposed to be set in stone or the "right" way of doing things. It's simply how I do things and I hope it can provide a starting point for your own campaigns.
Bear in mind as well there will be a bias to 4E DnD especially during the more mechanical sections of this thread, but a lot of the advice I give will be applicable to multiple systems and I will be bringing up experiences with my past games routinely.
The first step: What do I want to run?
The first thing you need to do, assuming you have a group of people who want to play some roleplaying games and you have decided to take up the mantle of running the game is what to run. There are a lot of different systems and the mechanics are very divergent. Something like DnD is very good for a combat orientated game, while something like Call of Cthulhu is designed from the group up to make for very lethal combat and a slower paced game. So you need to decide what you'd like to run and what your players want. A group of players wanting to hit things while pretending to be fantasy elves may not be impressed with playing Call of Cthulhu. A group that likes immensely lethal combat and slow intrigue based gameplay may not be enthused with 4E Dungeons and Dragons.
Once you've made that decision you have your first two issues when starting to run any game:
A) What world are you going to use? Is it a twisted version of our own reality, maybe even your own city? Is it an official published world? Did you make it up from scratch?
What books and supplements you are going to use; essentially you need to make it clear to your players if you don't want particular races and rules being used. For example, if you're running a Dungeons and Dragons game and you don't think Warforged fit into your setting, you need to state that to your players.
Both of these decisions inform people playing how you are going to run the game, both in what sort of characters they play and in how they will perceive the way you are going to run the game.
Choosing a setting
This should ideally be the first thing you do, if you want some generic high fantasy than I think the Forgotten Realms is good for that. Often though as a new DM you may either not know about these or have any on hand, as they can be a big investment for something you are not even sure you will even enjoy. So often the easiest thing to do is draw a small map, plonk a town on it and then radiate the gameworld out from there while keeping the "core" assumptions and world (which nearly every game system has).
Let's work through an example for DnD; the first thing to do is maybe pick a map that someone else has done like from the cartographers guild pick a town and then start to populate it. You need a selection of basic shops, an inn, some basic NPCs to give your players some direction in life and from there somewhere to adventure. Ideally, pick a place near mountains, hills, a forest, the ocean or similar. This means you can put in a bandit camp hidden among the trees, a cave full of orcs or whatever else you require nearby easily.
From here you can simply expand outwards to bigger cities, making new locations and similar as you go. You can gradually expand the "world map" outwards as well. For example, you start with one town, then maybe another and then make a city as your campaign escalates. This provides you with a way of designing things gradually, so you don't become overwhelmed or burn yourself out. The last thing you want to do is try to make an entire campaign setting with the detail of say Eberron or FR straight off the bat from nothing. Combined with writing the story, planning encounters and other aspects you're going to end up with too much to do and a lot of stress.
If you're playing something like Vampire: The Requiem, you can pick your own town or city! Then you have your map, places and things already worked out. This simplifies your work, helps automatically ground the games verisimilitude in the minds of your players and provides you with something familiar to start with. As an example, I once ran a game of Call of Cthulhu where the game was based in my home city Christchurch. I used real world locations and even the format of the local newspaper the press to add verisimilitude to the game.
Depending on what you're doing, I like to choose a published setting in the end. Published settings already assume or conform to the rules and logic of whatever game you are wanting to play. They reduce work on your end allowing you to focus on the important bits and give your players an idea of what the game will be like before they begin. As I will discuss in the future, DMing is a massive amount of work and so things to reduce that will only help you keep on DMing; as opposed to growing frustrated and eventually having to stop the game.
Establishing rules
Every DM has things that they either don't like or don't want in their games. Perhaps warforged doesn't fit with your setting, or perhaps you don't want Werewolves in the same role (or as a playable role) in your World of Darkness. These are things you need to decide after you've set upon whatever setting you've made and to make sure your players are aware. This will be the most varied thing between systems, but here are some general ideas for when you're starting:
A) Don't go editing the rules a whole bunch of stuff initially if you've started on a system you haven't used before. This can either frustrate players or have completely unintended side effects during play.
Example: When I first started running DnD 4E I made the big mistake of trying to change some of the core assumptions that 4E makes, particularly with the way the magic system worked. In 3E I always favoured low magic settings, as a way of resolving the issue that casters would frequently dominate the game at high levels. In 4E this had disastrous consequences because 4E is built inherently assuming PCs have certain increases to hit at different levels, their defenses increase certain ways and that they have extra powers from the items they carry. It turns out when you remove these things 4E tends to break down in several places, because the system was designed in a certain way and when you change that without compensating for it; you get issues.
Of course, I would now feel comfortable doing this but I have a year of DnD 4E experience now and firmly understand how the game works. It's important to realise even if I have been running games for 13 years, just strolling in and changing things with a new system wasn't a good idea. Experience with a particular system is the most invaluable thing when making changes to it.
Decide if you're going to put any restrictions (if any) on certain races or elements.
Example: I'm going to bring up my experiences using World of Darkness. Back in the old World of Darkness (which was basically a looming apocalypse type setting) one player wanted to play a mixed game, with him playing a mage in a vampire game. After some thought I went "well why not?" and allowed this. To be quite frank it was the biggest disaster I've ever run in a PnP game in the history of my time running games. The mage would literally derail the game and often completely overshadowed the vampires power wise.
Allowing classes or races with especially divergent power levels is a careful consideration. If you're not willing to deal with something like that, stick to say a mono-supernatural game in say World of Darkness or disallow things like monstrous races if you're playing Dungeons and Dragons.
C) Somewhat contradicting B though, make sure you are still open to your players ideas and suggestions. If someone has a truly great concept for playing a gnoll or warforged in my FR campaigns, even though I don't feel such things fit at all into the setting cohesively you should consider allowing it. The game once you begin isn't just yours anymore; it's everyones. The better you integrate your players and make them feel like they are a part of the world you've created the more they will work with you on your plot hooks and other things.
D) Many roleplaying games are not a you vs. them situation. Don't view your players as the enemy and they won't view you as the enemy either. Sure, you control the bad guys but bear in mind you also control their allies, the innocent people they are trying to protect (well, not always...); but ultimately for a condusive and long running game you should not be trying to basically kill them. Killing your players is always easy, as you control the rules and decide what they can or cannot see anyway.
This of course somewhat comes under encounter design as well; making the game challenging (and fun) but not to the point where you're basically murdering people.
E) Don't be a dick.
You're in control of the game yes, you do most of the hard work but if you're a dick to your players you're going to make your life harder. The simple point here is that if you work with your players about things and listen to them, you're going to get much further than if you act like some sort of power mad dictator. This doesn't mean you should let players just walk all over you; you're still controlling the game and your decision *is* final. What I am saying here is to try to listen and be open to the ideas of the people you're playing with. If someone comes up with a detailed character background and history, try to find ways to reward that player by putting in interactions for their character.
A lot of information, especially in 4E Dungeons and Dragons terms, can be found in the DMG of course and I don't intend to reiterate a lot of that information beyond this post. The next posts will cover building a campaign more specifically with a focus on fourth edition Dungeons and Dragons. Starting with the basic building blocks of writing a story (what kind of plot); plot progression (thinking in relation to the three tiers in Dungeons and Dragons 4E); encounter design (which will be largely 4E focused) and then dealing with other problems that can arise with a campaign (such as "What do I do if I get bored or don't like how the plot is going?").
Further Entries
Campaign 101: Theme
Campaign 102: Plot Progression 101 and Encounter Design 101
Campaign Building 103: Telling a Story
[url]Campaign Building 104: Module and Encounter Design: Part 1[/url]
Running a roleplaying game
I've now been DMing various roleplaying games for a long time, about 13 years and I started back in high school. I started with 1st edition DnD and moved to AD&D, then to other systems like storyteller and Call of Cthulhu. During this time I learned a lot about DMing, storytelling, designing combat encounters and generally "people" skills required to keep a group of disparate individuals at a gaming table. As a DM (Dungeon Master)/ST (Storyteller) you are taking the most responsibility for the game and also the most difficult role. In no particular order your job involves:
Being the "referee" of the game.
Essentially the core job of any DM/ST is to provide a way that the PCs (Player Characters) interact with the world, what it looks like and the results of the PCs actions within that world. This is different depending on the system that you choose to use, for example Call of Cthulhu tends to have enemies that border on the invulnerable side or drive PCs (Investigators in that game) mad at the drop of a hat. On the other hand, characters in DnD are more than likely to stick their axe through the monster in question.
Despite the numerous differences between systems, no matter what you are using this point still remains the same. The core of a roleplaying game is the players tell you what they want to do and with a combination of the games rules and your judgment they can affect the world you've created.
In the same vein, you also decide how the rules often work and what rules are allowed or disallowed. This is by far one of the most complicated parts of DMing and takes a lot of finesse. Too restrictive and you risk denying players the ability to play the characters they want. Allow anything and often you can end up running into some problems.
People manager
You're also responsible for managing your players, setting the time the game starts and resolving conflicts. This is often the most or second most difficult task, especially when players take a direct exception to one another to the point of outright attacking one another or just storming out of a session. There are also issues about if people don't attend sessions, what to do when you have a player with a really problematic character and other things.
Storyteller
The main thing with DMing is that you are telling the story. You make the characters and world that the players interact with, or you get it from somewhere else like a setting like the Forgotten Realms. You then decide what characters are important, what NPCs inhabit the world and overall how the plot is structured.
Worldbuilder
Often you use a set setting like in Forgotten Realms or Eberron. These come complete with a world already mostly built, NPCs and other things established for you. Sometimes you'll want to make your own and this obviously takes a considerable amount of effort. Sometimes you'll be using the real world, maybe even your own city with a darker twist (Call of Cthulhu and Vampire are examples of systems that make great opportunities for this sort of thing).
With these points in mind, I'm going to start going over some of the things I do when designing a campaign. I'm not going to be able to cover every aspect in one post otherwise you'll be dead of old age by the time you're done reading, but instead I'm going to talk about how I do things. Bear in mind that this is simply my method, I've never found two DMs who agree on exactly how to do this and everyone has different ideas. You should ideally take anything purely as advice and nothing here is supposed to be set in stone or the "right" way of doing things. It's simply how I do things and I hope it can provide a starting point for your own campaigns.
Bear in mind as well there will be a bias to 4E DnD especially during the more mechanical sections of this thread, but a lot of the advice I give will be applicable to multiple systems and I will be bringing up experiences with my past games routinely.
The first step: What do I want to run?
The first thing you need to do, assuming you have a group of people who want to play some roleplaying games and you have decided to take up the mantle of running the game is what to run. There are a lot of different systems and the mechanics are very divergent. Something like DnD is very good for a combat orientated game, while something like Call of Cthulhu is designed from the group up to make for very lethal combat and a slower paced game. So you need to decide what you'd like to run and what your players want. A group of players wanting to hit things while pretending to be fantasy elves may not be impressed with playing Call of Cthulhu. A group that likes immensely lethal combat and slow intrigue based gameplay may not be enthused with 4E Dungeons and Dragons.
Once you've made that decision you have your first two issues when starting to run any game:
A) What world are you going to use? Is it a twisted version of our own reality, maybe even your own city? Is it an official published world? Did you make it up from scratch?
What books and supplements you are going to use; essentially you need to make it clear to your players if you don't want particular races and rules being used. For example, if you're running a Dungeons and Dragons game and you don't think Warforged fit into your setting, you need to state that to your players.Both of these decisions inform people playing how you are going to run the game, both in what sort of characters they play and in how they will perceive the way you are going to run the game.
Choosing a setting
This should ideally be the first thing you do, if you want some generic high fantasy than I think the Forgotten Realms is good for that. Often though as a new DM you may either not know about these or have any on hand, as they can be a big investment for something you are not even sure you will even enjoy. So often the easiest thing to do is draw a small map, plonk a town on it and then radiate the gameworld out from there while keeping the "core" assumptions and world (which nearly every game system has).
Let's work through an example for DnD; the first thing to do is maybe pick a map that someone else has done like from the cartographers guild pick a town and then start to populate it. You need a selection of basic shops, an inn, some basic NPCs to give your players some direction in life and from there somewhere to adventure. Ideally, pick a place near mountains, hills, a forest, the ocean or similar. This means you can put in a bandit camp hidden among the trees, a cave full of orcs or whatever else you require nearby easily.
From here you can simply expand outwards to bigger cities, making new locations and similar as you go. You can gradually expand the "world map" outwards as well. For example, you start with one town, then maybe another and then make a city as your campaign escalates. This provides you with a way of designing things gradually, so you don't become overwhelmed or burn yourself out. The last thing you want to do is try to make an entire campaign setting with the detail of say Eberron or FR straight off the bat from nothing. Combined with writing the story, planning encounters and other aspects you're going to end up with too much to do and a lot of stress.
If you're playing something like Vampire: The Requiem, you can pick your own town or city! Then you have your map, places and things already worked out. This simplifies your work, helps automatically ground the games verisimilitude in the minds of your players and provides you with something familiar to start with. As an example, I once ran a game of Call of Cthulhu where the game was based in my home city Christchurch. I used real world locations and even the format of the local newspaper the press to add verisimilitude to the game.
Depending on what you're doing, I like to choose a published setting in the end. Published settings already assume or conform to the rules and logic of whatever game you are wanting to play. They reduce work on your end allowing you to focus on the important bits and give your players an idea of what the game will be like before they begin. As I will discuss in the future, DMing is a massive amount of work and so things to reduce that will only help you keep on DMing; as opposed to growing frustrated and eventually having to stop the game.
Establishing rules
Every DM has things that they either don't like or don't want in their games. Perhaps warforged doesn't fit with your setting, or perhaps you don't want Werewolves in the same role (or as a playable role) in your World of Darkness. These are things you need to decide after you've set upon whatever setting you've made and to make sure your players are aware. This will be the most varied thing between systems, but here are some general ideas for when you're starting:
A) Don't go editing the rules a whole bunch of stuff initially if you've started on a system you haven't used before. This can either frustrate players or have completely unintended side effects during play.
Example: When I first started running DnD 4E I made the big mistake of trying to change some of the core assumptions that 4E makes, particularly with the way the magic system worked. In 3E I always favoured low magic settings, as a way of resolving the issue that casters would frequently dominate the game at high levels. In 4E this had disastrous consequences because 4E is built inherently assuming PCs have certain increases to hit at different levels, their defenses increase certain ways and that they have extra powers from the items they carry. It turns out when you remove these things 4E tends to break down in several places, because the system was designed in a certain way and when you change that without compensating for it; you get issues.
Of course, I would now feel comfortable doing this but I have a year of DnD 4E experience now and firmly understand how the game works. It's important to realise even if I have been running games for 13 years, just strolling in and changing things with a new system wasn't a good idea. Experience with a particular system is the most invaluable thing when making changes to it.
Decide if you're going to put any restrictions (if any) on certain races or elements.Example: I'm going to bring up my experiences using World of Darkness. Back in the old World of Darkness (which was basically a looming apocalypse type setting) one player wanted to play a mixed game, with him playing a mage in a vampire game. After some thought I went "well why not?" and allowed this. To be quite frank it was the biggest disaster I've ever run in a PnP game in the history of my time running games. The mage would literally derail the game and often completely overshadowed the vampires power wise.
Allowing classes or races with especially divergent power levels is a careful consideration. If you're not willing to deal with something like that, stick to say a mono-supernatural game in say World of Darkness or disallow things like monstrous races if you're playing Dungeons and Dragons.
C) Somewhat contradicting B though, make sure you are still open to your players ideas and suggestions. If someone has a truly great concept for playing a gnoll or warforged in my FR campaigns, even though I don't feel such things fit at all into the setting cohesively you should consider allowing it. The game once you begin isn't just yours anymore; it's everyones. The better you integrate your players and make them feel like they are a part of the world you've created the more they will work with you on your plot hooks and other things.
D) Many roleplaying games are not a you vs. them situation. Don't view your players as the enemy and they won't view you as the enemy either. Sure, you control the bad guys but bear in mind you also control their allies, the innocent people they are trying to protect (well, not always...); but ultimately for a condusive and long running game you should not be trying to basically kill them. Killing your players is always easy, as you control the rules and decide what they can or cannot see anyway.
This of course somewhat comes under encounter design as well; making the game challenging (and fun) but not to the point where you're basically murdering people.
E) Don't be a dick.
You're in control of the game yes, you do most of the hard work but if you're a dick to your players you're going to make your life harder. The simple point here is that if you work with your players about things and listen to them, you're going to get much further than if you act like some sort of power mad dictator. This doesn't mean you should let players just walk all over you; you're still controlling the game and your decision *is* final. What I am saying here is to try to listen and be open to the ideas of the people you're playing with. If someone comes up with a detailed character background and history, try to find ways to reward that player by putting in interactions for their character.
A lot of information, especially in 4E Dungeons and Dragons terms, can be found in the DMG of course and I don't intend to reiterate a lot of that information beyond this post. The next posts will cover building a campaign more specifically with a focus on fourth edition Dungeons and Dragons. Starting with the basic building blocks of writing a story (what kind of plot); plot progression (thinking in relation to the three tiers in Dungeons and Dragons 4E); encounter design (which will be largely 4E focused) and then dealing with other problems that can arise with a campaign (such as "What do I do if I get bored or don't like how the plot is going?").
Further Entries
Campaign 101: Theme
Campaign 102: Plot Progression 101 and Encounter Design 101
Campaign Building 103: Telling a Story
[url]Campaign Building 104: Module and Encounter Design: Part 1[/url]
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SoogaGames Blog
One question though; if you're willing, get to it whenever you can: In 4E DnD, how do you handle limiting, or preventing altogether, specific character races? For instance, I really don't dig Tieflings or, to a lesser extent, Warforged - I don't feel like they "fit" as PC's. I'm trying hard to get over that, and work something into my campaign setting to make them fit better, but is it kosher to just tell my players that such races do not exist in the campaign? Do I risk screwing up any game balance by doing so, or just risk a slightly upset player or two?
If a player really wants to play as a banned race accomodate him as much as you can, let him try and write it in, or replace the mechanics/background of a race that already exists. And remember that rules can always be broken by good roleplaying.
Here's a tidbit from my campaign spec for the b-side of teh zephyr that I'll be putting up eventually.
It's very kosher to say they don't exist. Being upfront about these sorts of things saves a lot of time for everybody involved. You can't please everybody. :U
SoogaGames Blog
For myself, I've found that if I approach things as the lone storyteller at the table, I tend to muck things up. I've learned that the players share an important part of storytelling responsibility as well. I create the setting and the NPCs with whom they interact, but the players create the main characters and I find that they drive the action as much if not more than I do at the table.
When creating a setting and prepping for a game, I tend to have a very loose plot. I may plan the first adventure and series of encounters for the players, but beyond that how they approach my story is up to them. I throw out lots of plot hooks and invite them to pursue whatever path they wish. I may have an epic tale in the background, but when or even if my players involve themselves is up to them. I continue to run my world as a persistent setting; that is, plots that are not picked up by the PCs' actions continue to unfold, while plots they pursue might change based on their actions. But I always keep in mind that this game is about the PCs and the story that they choose has to be the most important.
Not that what you've said here is incorrect. Just a little addendum and some of my own personal observations in my experience GMing.
I mean, I hope nobody here would ever imagine telling a player "no, you can't pick that weapon/feat, it's sub-optimal", so what of saying "no, you can't play that race because my personal conception of fantasy - the genre of imagination - may have room for flying, fire-breathing lizards, obese midget ninjas, two-headed demon goats, and flumphs, but a seven-foot reincarnated immortal is a bridge too far!"
There is a big difference in both context and intent of race restrictions vs itemization or feat restrictions. Mechanical reasons, even if they are bad, have nothing to do with telling a story or painting a world. Limiting or removing races because their flavor doesn't fit into the specification of a given world isn't that big of a deal, imo.
I've tried to run themed games before, being very upfront with that information... and I still get dumbasses that whine about it.
Completely agree. That wasn't what I was talking about before. I like to talk with my players about what they're looking for, but I always have final say about what gets included and what doesn't.
Basically, construct the framework, then allow as much freedom as possible within that framework.
As long as the DM spells out the differences clearly and immediately, I don't see what's wrong with running the game differently. A homemade setting is really not much different than an all-one-race game in restrictions and intent; the goal is to create a specific world with a flavor and theme that's different than what they'd get from just playing the default or an official campaign setting. The players should know there's going to be some changes when they agree to play a custom setting, and that the DM goes to a lot of trouble to make it coherent and distinct (well, ideally anyway. Most aren't.). If they don't like the style or omissions they should tell the DM and not play it, and the DM should consider catering to his available players if it comes to that.
The bottom line is the DM needs to make player options as clear as homebrew rules, and as long as everybody's fine with them there really isn't a problem.
Maybe to you, but someone who really wants to play a tiefling or whatever might disagree!
Obviously, there are shades and degrees. If someone just wants to play a race because they have a hard-on for the mechanical bonuses, that's one thing, but if it's important to them, if they have a great concept that they've put a lot of work into - iwhy not try and work with them on it? As DM, you control "the specification of a given world" - it isn't some immutable outside authority - so why make that world openly hostile to your players' wishes? The phrase "no, because I said so" should really be the tool of absolute last resort.
And again, this is more specific to D&D, but I generally have a hard time lending credence to arguments about what "fits" in a fantasy world where ninjas and angel summoners do battle against naked demon chicks and man-eating flying saucers.
Well, when I do limit races and other things I lay it out all upfront before the time comes 'round to stat up and build the characters.
If the limitations are poorly planned and executed—having somebody shows up with a fully rolled limited race/class/alignment—because you never told them that they couldn't do it, is one thing. From personal experience I hadn't restricted evil characters and when I projected that it would be an rp issue in the future had to change it, since I dropped the ball, I worked with the player to correct the situation.
But if you put your limitations/standards out there up front, and somebody shows up with something different, knowing what the score was? That's a different beast. Even then as a game that you're playing with friends or what have you, it even borders disrespect towards you as a DM. A player needs to be willing to work with you just as you need to be willing to work with them...
Because I said so is not a last resort. As the world builder, I have a very specific theme in mind usually and build the world around that theme. If this means there are no tieflings, there are no tieflings and no amount of whining or cajoling will get me to change my mind.
Some people prefer to run/play characters in settings that are more plausible. Not necessarily realistic, but consistent and have a reasonable versimilitude. I played in a game where everyone started as orc slaves in a human run kingdom, quarrying stone for our masters. It was a blast.
With all that said, I finally came to the realization that in my games, that I run for friends, that we all have more fun if my role as the DM is less of a storyteller and more of a scenery painter. I provide the backdrop and some of the speaking parts and let my players do the real heavy lifting in storytelling.
The essence of plot is conflict and resolution with each carrying even weight in advancing a story. As DM I supply the conflict and I do my best to let the players supply all of the meaningful resolution. For my games and groups this approach has led to the greatest enjoyment for everyone at the table.
As I said, there are shades of nuance. If we're playing a Tolkien game or a quasi-historical all-human medieval game and one guy shows up and wants to be a snake-man - well, that's a fairly clear-cut case. A middle case would be something like someone wants to play a Warforged in the Forgotten Realms, where it's not explicitly allowed, but with all the crazy shit already in the setting I can't honestly see the harm, but denying it seems reasonable too. But when the DM has made a custom setting explicitly for a certain game, but then chosen to arbitrarily limit the players' options within that game, I think that calls for at least a bit of introspection and examination of one's own motivations, and if it boils down to "my favorite childhood fantasy writer didn't have tieflings", then one should consider gritting one's teeth and dealing with it, because maybe someone else's favorite fantasy writer is China Mieville or Michael Moorcock.
EDIT: and SkyCaptain, your willingness to over and over again, in this thread and the other one, characterize your players as "whiners" and "morons" genuinely creeps me out. I'm glad I don't use my DM position to get my tinpot tyrant rocks off.
I've been mulling over my setting (still little more than a twinkiling in my eye), and it's occurred to me that I may want to hold off on introducing certain races until some point in the future. Basically, this world would exist with very definite and, at least to start, utterly impassable physical barriers between the lands of the more Tolkein-esque races and the lands of the Dragonborn or Teiflings or even some of the other-planar races.
That said, how conducive (or not) to the flow of a campaign would it be for a DM to tell his players that "You can't take a Dragonborn or Tiefling for now... Roll up something else, and get back to me later - the story will tell you when the right time is." This seems like it'd give those players the opportunity to play the character they want (well, eventually) and the DM the breathing room to build his world as he wants. But how jarring would it be to the party, to have built up a rapport with this one character, only to have them replaced at some point? I can think of some story-geared ways to make that swap, and I _think_ it would be cool, but I don't really have any experience to judge by...
First, the morons and whiners are not my players. Those people never make it into games I run. Second, I'm not a tyrant. I'm a storyteller. Sometimes I have a set of themed stories to share and the players need to make characters that fit within that theme instead of trying to subvert it with their favorite retread. It helps players to play something other than their favorite every now and then. Typically, my themed games run for six to eight sessions. Long enough to tell a decent story and not too long to make it boring.
My 3E game, which was heavily influenced by Perdido Street Station, took place in a tyrannical steampunk city. One player had clearly gotten bored of his ranger around level 6 or so and was having a hard time staying engaged, so I took him aside and we talked about what class he would rather be playing and how we could have the character go out in an interesting way. It came as quite a shock to the rest of the party when at the worst possible instant the character unmasked herself as an informant for the secret police, who of course promptly came rappelling through the windows. His new character joined us in the subsequent big jailbreak mission, and the old one became our main adversary for the next few levels.
The funny thing was that in the couple of sessions building up to that point, the player, knowing what was coming, got a lot more involved in the character and started having a lot more fun. Ah, well. What mattered was that everyone had a great, memorable moment that we still talk about several years later.
I've tried this in campaigns. Your concern is justified. In campaigns where I've done this, the players do get attached to their characters and the party as a whole tends to get attached to characters. With the result that when the right time arrived no changes ended up being made.
Unless you want to effectively use it as a way to say no without saying no to a given race; I would recommend working with the player to find a good backstory reason why a member of that distant race could be there for a player to use as a character. You don't haved to work in a whole community of that race, just a reason why one individual is there.
In the case of debatable instances (where something is plausible and in-line but not known or considered to exist) I think the DM and players should meet each other half-way. A warforged could exist in FR, since it's essentially a smart human-like golem, but the PC should have a reasonable backstory to explain how he uniquely fits into the world, like he was one of the last things made by engineers in Lantan before their workshop sank under the sea, where he was later picked up by pirates diving for treasure.
If the DM is putting together an elaborate setting and most the players are excited for uniqueness or intrigued by the changes, then the guy who is 'only in it for the elves' either needs to compromise or find a different game. If the DM declares his 'Yet Another Fantasy World' is only majorly different by not having elves and most of the players are annoyed by its lack of reason or purpose, he really ought to put in some thoughts for accommodation or find a new group.
In my view, the stats and player rolls are there as guidelines toward a realistic experience, and you cannot count on random chance to always give the most fun experience.
For example, I am setting my players against a very hard boss monster for thier level.
Should the players think they might die fighting the monster? Yes.
Will I beat on them until they are almost dead and then fudge the rolls a bit in their favor so that they can turn the tide of battle and fight back and kill the horrifying beast? Also yes.
To me, sometimes nudging random chance in one direction or another can enchance the fun for the PCs, even if they don't know I am doing it.
I'd like to hear others thoughts, though.
If they do something stupid, then I don't tend to fudge rolls in their advantage, but if they're doing everything right that's in their power, then I'm not going to let them die because of it. In my view, fudging hits into misses just basically "pauses" the fight until the players get the shitty rolls out of their system, and then I can go back to enjoying the fight myself as well.
PSN: SAW776
One thing I would like to comment on. One of the parts you discuss under Theme I tend to think of as Tone. For example, your first description of a "Griity" theme I would think of as a tone that colors the theme.
I ran a game several years ago with a theme of courtly intrigue in a pseudo-renaissance europe. Within this theme I considered a couple different tones or approaches to creating the encounters. The first was a free flowing Dumas style of swashbuckling the other was something closer to Italy during the ascendancy of the Borgias. Same theme but very different tones.
In my campaigns, I've found that my players are very willing to play any theme I want to throw at them; if I set a tone that they enjoy. In the above example, I started with the very gritty and paranoia inducing Borgia court tone. My players did not respond well. When I shifted to the more optimistic tone of the Three Musketeers, my players loved it and we had a great campaign arc that ran weekly for nine months.
Same theme, same antagonists and plot points. The tone made all the difference to the players enjoyment and ultimately mine. It's miserable trying to keep a game running with unhappy players.
Is it so hard to say "No, you can't be a tiefling, but we can take said tiefling stats and make you a human or a dwarf or something with a background/flavour that gives you the same abilities and fits into my world?"
PSN: SAW776
Sometimes, yeah, it can be, especially when the background and flavor is the reason DMs decide not to include them.
That's silly, though.
Tieflings are demonic, horned presences that are resistant to fire. That I could understand not fitting.
But what about someone who was a slave in a forge for years and years to develop an resistance to fire? That same character, as a slave, had to learn how to survive in a place where people would fight and kill to get any kind of luxury, and so he's learned to fight a bit dirty, and so he gains a +1 bonus against bloodied foes. And, in that same way, memories of all those times before he learned to defend himself drive him to be able to unleash a bit of wrath and get a +1 attack bonus against people who hit them.
There. I just turned a tiefling's demonic heritage-flavored abilities into something totally mundane that would make sense in just about any campaign setting.
PSN: SAW776
On the whole, I don't really see the problem with a DM saying "This is how I want to use these rules. Anyone want to play?"
This is why I only like to play RPGs with friends. These kinds of issues never come up.
I have never heard of anyone who wants to play one because they have Fire resistance and a bonus against bloodied foes. The only exception might have been somebody joining a generic one-shot delve and all PHP races were equally valid.
That would have nothing to do with wanting to min-max, but everything to do with flavor.
PSN: SAW776