cjspyres said:
So I've come to realize in all of my time in playing Dungeons and Dragons, that there is always a person in the group that does something ridiculous. Whether it be someone trying to make a ridiculous character out of non-basic races, someone who tries to break the rules, or anything of that sort.. So I'm wondering Escapist. Who is THAT person in your group, and what do they do?
As for me, it's the first that I listed. In my group, we have a person who apparently has a love affair with Gnolls. And every character he has ever tried creating has been as such. So much to the point, that he refuses to even play if he can't be the race. So we finally compromised and said he could be a Gnoll....on the grounds that he roleplayed as such. Gnolls, being Chaotic Evil, are always hated my society and would never be accepted. His Gnoll was Chaotic Good, and was rejected by his clan, but still isn't accepted by society, except for our small group. Eventually he gave up and left the group because it was "unfair" for him to be treated that way.
Everyone has had their share of odd experiences in various games. I've been both the jerk (I guess) and the person GMing for them. To be honest I've come to the conclusion over many years of experience that the best way to deal with such things is to simply work with the player, especially if the request isn't utterly game breaking. For example the guy wanting to play a Gnoll is pretty bloody tame compared to some things I've run into over the years. I figure a guy who wants to play one that bad has some decent ideas for playing one, and as a GM it's not a hard thing to find story potential with. Going out of your way to make him miserable actually turns you into the bad guy assuming you approve it to begin with, that's how you alienate players.
Speaking for the Gnoll example, the first thing that comes to mind is that Gnolls are semi-accepted in society. If you check a lot of the city encounter maps and such you'll notice gnolls do show up as rowdies and such, and they are also a species that values/steals coinage which means they obviously do get to spend it somewhere, so that makes a degree of sense. If nobody traded with them, why would they be raiding to steal money? Now granted, they aren't well liked by non-evil races, but at the same time your not going to have people spitting on you in the middle of Greyhawk or Waterdeep, to most people your coin is as good as anyone else's, and as far as mercenary work goes, gnolls are known to be strong, ferocious fighters (and frequently get hired for that trait, there is no real reason why only bad guys would hire one for muscle). I also remember the old RPGA/Polyhedron group "Sir Orville and Company" which was a party built around Sir Orville who was a Gnoll in full plate armor if I remember.
My basic point is that even if you don't care for the idea, assuming you know the guy well enough for him to be gaming with you, it's not hard to work with him. You might change your mind, and if you don't, well... no game lasts forever, and everyone will be generating new characters before too long.
Of course there is worse, in one group I was GMing I had a girl who wanted to play an Illithid... I kid you not, a bloody Mind Flayer, but not just an Illithid a sexy one (and she drew her own art). This idea apparently having come about after reading the "Cloakmaster Cycle" of Spelljammer novels where there was a good aligned Illithid. I was running a fairly bizzare campaign at the time based out of Planescape, with the PCs running an expedition into Ravenloft to perform an artifact recovery (pre-equipped with a Scroll Of Return to get out). After she lost her character in the Nightmare Lands, and with no real method of bringing in a new PC I decided to limit the bummer factor by letting her play her sexy good aligned Illithid, with it being justified as one of the stronger dreams/nightmares in the region that was going to be able to survive outside. It was 2nd Edition so I let her do it as the base monster counting as 10 levels and then let her advance as a psionicist to add additional powers. I had assumed she planned to play the character as being basically okay (neutral alignment) but then about 4-5 sessions in she explained she wanted to start eating NPC
brains during sex instead of animal brains. I didn't have to step in though, other party members were basically going to kill... it.. if they found out about it, so she retired the character who now once in a while shows up as an NPC in my campaigns as one of the more prolific seriel killers in Sigil....
In short I've dealt with my share of wierdos, and will generally let someone play just about anything if it won't totally screw up the adventure, and generally won't prevent someone from doing something unless there is a reason for it, which I will usually explain. For the most part while The Illithid was proabbly the worst since I don't think there has ever been rules for those as PCs unless I missed it somwehre, I tend to not bat an eye unless someone decides to start asking to play Arduin Grimoire variant races and such... or what I consider to be "joke characters". I generally will not let people play "screw the party" characters like some versions of The Jester, or comedy relief characters like Gully Dwarves or Tinker Gnomes in Krynn, in part because I tend to feel that in a decent party all the characters have to pull their weight, and since I'm making a challenging adventure, some dude playing a kender jester who is "accidently" stealing all his companions stuff, and firing off a semi controlled wand of wonder for lulz every 15 seconds to see how chaotic they can make every fight, does not help either the party, or the GM trying to keep the adventure going.
At any rate that's my thoughts, and my story contribution.
