Do highly unique characters still get a bad rep; and: how to give them room to exist?

[Swanosaurus]

It's not the RPG angle that's the issue, the term is politically charged and part of the stock standard set of conservative insults. You seem to be using it in honest ignorance of that context, which is a pleasant surprise.

Well, honest ignorance is better than wilful ignorance, I guess ... I changed it in the thread title to avoid further confusion. In my mind, it was still in the "harmless and slightly self-ironic" category.

 

[TiQuinn]

I think it all comes down to what the rest of the players can bear. Some players like the spotlight and they play at tables with players who don’t like it and want to be supporting roles. No problemo. Even with two players who love the spotlight - if they know how to share the spotlight when appropriate, it’s not a problem either.

The problem is when a player expects everyone else to acquiesce to their playstyle, and makes demands of others to “be smaller” so their special character can stand out more, and the other players are not in agreement with this.

 

[Jack Daniel]

Some campaigns are all about a cast of player character misfits and OCs, and others are more about the adventure or the world.

I prefer to focus on adventures and worlds, which gives me a low tolerance for outlier OCs. I get the impetus behind them: every player wants their 1st level PC to be "special" right out of the gate. That's the stuff novel and movie protagonists are made of. But RPGs aren't novels or movies, and I'm really only interested in running the sorts of campaigns where PCs start out as nothing-special nobodies who only grow into becoming special through adventuring.

I do have character generation mechanics in place to account for the occasional outlier; but at my table, it's up to the dice, not the player, whether they get the chance to play an oddball who doesn't fit the setting. If you want to play a space alien in my fantasy campaign, or an elf in my space opera campaign, or an isekai'd Earth human who unexpectedly met truck-kun and woke up as a 1st level magic-user in fantasyland, it's possible . . . but the odds of it are something like one-half of one percent per character generated.

 

[Swanosaurus]

I have to say I only very rarely encounter someone who doesn't want to make a character that will fit the campaign. In fact, I think it's been about 15 years since I've run into that problem. Typically I'm more than happy to enter into a little give & take with players to ensure they can play the type of character they want.

I think there's also a subtle difference between "fit the campaign" and "fit the setting". Your campaign can be about a bunch of characters that are totally ouf of place in the campaign setting, and you'll still be fine if everyone is on board with it.

 

[Distracted DM]

Yes... I came in here expecting a MUCH different topic.

I think I get the gist of the OP. If everything is unique and special, then nothing is unique and special.

In the original Everquest MMORPG, there were restrictions as to what races could be which classes. Only Humans and Iksar(The race of Evil ((So evil that other evil races hated them)) Lizardfolk) could be Monks for instance. There was a Web Comic called WTF Comics based on the game, and one of the minor antagonists were a squad of Gnome Monks. It was funny, and weird, and cool because it was abnormal.

In EQ2 they removed the race/class restrictions.. So now Gnomes, Ogres, Elves, or any other race could be Monks. Introducing a Gnome Monk antagonist would lack the lack the shock factor that came in that original comic run.

Ultimately I think this is a change for the better. Being able to play what you want is a good thing. This is a game about playing pretend right? Why have limits on your imagination?

I will say that I do think there is another downside, aside from the Gnome Monk thing. The fact that there are so many of these "Unique" options available, have made the standard fare, stereotypical ones seem even more standard fare and stereotypical. Tiefling Warlocks? Elf Rangers? I can't possibly play one of those can I? They're so expected.

Very well put.

One of the ways that I will sell "weird" characters to myself, in an effort to make myself a fan of the character, is that this is why they're an adventurer. Because they're friggin weird and don't have a place.

For instance, an elf in my setting that's an adventurer? You're not a typical elf- elves don't want to gamble their incredibly long lives on daily adventures and treading through sewage and monster teeth.

So you're a weird character? Everyone thinks you're weird, and they'll react as such.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I'd say it depends in what way they run atypical, and how much its going to necessarily grab attention. In a superhero game there are common tropes, but if you're playing a man who has an intelligent viral colony that ate his brain and absorbed his personality as a nervous and circulatory system, most people will never know, and will only even realize he's particularly quirky when you blow a hole through his head and he keeps fighting. Other than that, he's mostly just another superhero who's hard to kill and fights with a staff.

Similar things can apply to other genres. The place where it can get quirky is when the character concept requires, on some level, redefining important elements of the setting. In a game set in a version of the modern world with all the normal laws of nature the elvish mage is going to be a problem, but the character raised by the hidden ninja cult shouldn't be (barring relative power issues). That's liable to turn more on a question of look-and-feel and whether the GM (and possibly but not certainly) other players sense of this trumps the player who wants the odd-man-out.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I think there's also a subtle difference between "fit the campaign" and "fit the setting". Your campaign can be about a bunch of characters that are totally ouf of place in the campaign setting, and you'll still be fine if everyone is on board with it.

Well, maybe. If I've set out to run a game about a special federal law enforcement squad, I'm not necessarily going to be thrilled about the players trying to turn it into a game about an international mercenary group via drift.

 

[grimmgoose]

You discuss it in Session 0?

The way we do it, everybody sits down and talks about the "big picture" idea for their character. If something doesn't jive, you talk about it. Compromise. Come to a solution.

When I DM, I don't do fantastical races (yes, I'm a tyrant). So that means no cat-people, dog-people. ooze-people, etc. If somebody wants to play a cat-person, we try to find a compromise (maybe they can play a "Path of the Beast" Barbarian whose bestial form is a lion, or a druid who prefers to lounge around in cat-form). If that doesn't work, we wave goodbye and they join a different table and that's okay.

 

[bloodtide]

The problem is that most players take unique to be disruptive.

First there are the far too many toxic players. They want nothing more then to ruin the game. That is their idea of fun: ruining things for others. And often they can trick a DM to letting them join the game. They will "promise" to not ruin the game 100 times....and then five minutes after the game starts act to ruin the game.

Second you get the players that just want to ruffle feathers, rock the boat and cause problems. No matter what they will just 'randomly" pick something unique that is problematic.

The last common one is the player looking for an exploit. They pick something unique, and then want the game world to bend around them. The classic is they want to be some sort of "monster" with claws, flames or whatever. Then go into town and they get everything for free as all npcs are so scare of the character. And, of course, at the same time they want to be treated like an innocent farmer when caught by guards with their characters three foot long poisoned flaming claws.

 

[Arilyn]

The problem is that most players take unique to be disruptive.

First there are the far too many toxic players. They want nothing more then to ruin the game. That is their idea of fun: ruining things for others. And often they can trick a DM to letting them join the game. They will "promise" to not ruin the game 100 times....and then five minutes after the game starts act to ruin the game.

Second you get the players that just want to ruffle feathers, rock the boat and cause problems. No matter what they will just 'randomly" pick something unique that is problematic.

The last common one is the player looking for an exploit. They pick something unique, and then want the game world to bend around them. The classic is they want to be some sort of "monster" with claws, flames or whatever. Then go into town and they get everything for free as all npcs are so scare of the character. And, of course, at the same time they want to be treated like an innocent farmer when caught by guards with their characters three foot long poisoned flaming claws.

In my many years of playing and running games I have only rarely seen behaviour that even comes close to this.