Dragonlance Would you allow Kender outside of Dragonlance?

[Quartz]

Kender are NPC-only, even in Dragonlance.

 

[Jeff Albertson]

In a Planescape/Spelljammer campaign, sure.

 

[DMZ2112]

I don't understand why folks happily accept that the personality traits listed for dwarves and elves are guidelines but assume every kender must be Tasslehoff Burrfoot.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

My hat of kender know no limit.

 

[Serendipity]

No, but if I were to do so they'd have to be an import from Krynn. Given that I do use the D&D multiverse (more or less) as the backdrop to my homebrew, that wouldn't be too much of a problem.
But that's if. And the answer's no. If one of my better RP oriented players had a concept that didn't make me cringe I suppose it'd be possible...but I don't see that happening. It's totally a knee jerk reaction but I'm well adjusted about it.

(And none of this is going to prevent me from playing in someone's DL campaign but I'll be playing a minotaur so....hopefully it won't come up.)

 

[I'm A Banana]

I'd allow Kender. I wouldn't allow disruptive play. The player would have to figure out how to do one without the other.

Yeah, this has been driven home in my recent Dragonlance game.

I'm playing a gnomish wild sorcerer. And gnomes on Krynn are the "mad scientist blow everything up" kind of comic relief. Which is different than the kender's style of comic relief, but no less insufferable when you are actively hurting the party and screwing everything up with your love of explosions.

But my gnome is NOT the biggest annoyance in the party. Sure, he's a wild sorcerer - and sure, he might blow up the party someday in a fireball (though so far, he hasn't been that destructive). And he's not exactly a reliable party member. But he works fine with everyone else, doesn't really get in the way, and is surprisingly useful (even to me!) most of the time.

That's largely because of my choices as a player. I want to play a gnome wild sorcerer, but I don't want to make the game less fun for my fellow players because of it.

At the same time, our game has an elf ranger in it. DL elves are, apparently, one pointy-eared goose-step away from proclaiming themselves the Master Race, and this elf is constantly, begrudgingly, accompanying the rest of the party. She's always throwing a fit about something or other. She refused to put on a disguise for an infiltration mission (because elf?), she has healing spells but you wouldn't know it for how often she helps people who are injured, she has aimed her weapons at other party members multiple times (one time she was mind-controlled....but only one time...), she has no qualms about triggering area effects when allies are in the way, she disregards the other party members when choosing targets (she's gone for targets that were harmlessly asleep or incapacitated over targets that are actively harassing us).

This player seems to be more....struggling....with playing his character in a way true to her personality, but also in a way that doesn't disrupt play. We've managed pretty fine so far, but the character's always a few inches from just being written out of the story because she refuses to be part of the team.

It's not the kender that is the problem. Though they might be attractive to players who are more likely to be problems, the problem lies in the disruptive player (or the player who can't make the race constructive), not necessarily in the race itself. I could be a CRAZY disruptive gnome wild sorcerer. That elf ranger could NOT be so disruptive. That boils down to player choices in character actions.

 

[mlund]

At the same time, our game has an elf ranger in it. DL elves are, apparently, one pointy-eared goose-step away from proclaiming themselves the Master Race, and this elf is constantly, begrudgingly, accompanying the rest of the party.

To be fair, that's an accurate characterization. Maybe even a little charitable. Between Dragonlance and Tolkien I came away from childhood with a very sour opinion of fantasy elves in general. In retrospect, it isn't called the "Age of Despair" for nothing. I probably wouldn't have enjoyed a human race modeled entirely off of general populace designs for Blade Runner either.

Marty Lund

 

[neobolts]

It's not the kender that is the problem. Though they might be attractive to players who are more likely to be problems, the problem lies in the disruptive player (or the player who can't make the race constructive), not necessarily in the race itself. I could be a CRAZY disruptive gnome wild sorcerer. That elf ranger could NOT be so disruptive. That boils down to player choices in character actions.

"Guns don't kill people! I DO!" - Weird Al's UHF

 

[I'm A Banana]

To be fair, that's an accurate characterization. Maybe even a little charitable. Between Dragonlance and Tolkien I came away from childhood with a very sour opinion of fantasy elves in general. In retrospect, it isn't called the "Age of Despair" for nothing. I probably wouldn't have enjoyed a human race modeled entirely off of general populace designs for Blade Runner either.

Marty Lund

Dragonlance in general, IMXP, has kind of a problem with poorly characterized races, a legacy of the setting being invented for a novel series. Like, an elitist elf is a good character, but this is DL, so ALL ELVES ARE EXTREMELY RACIST. A wacky gnome is fun, but this is Dragonlance so ALL GNOMES ARE INSANE. A chlidlike halfling is nice, but this is Dragonlance so ALL KENDER ARE ADHD AND ANNOYING. A greedy dwarf is cool, so ALL DWARVES ARE OBSESSED WITH WEALTH. Every race is like the worst stereotype, Flanderized to the nth degree.

Those are all good characters to highlight a stable fairly-human baseline in a narrative sense.

They are not necessarily great for a world that needs more than a narrative arc, or in the hands of players who need to make these characters work together.

I could Get Into It about DL's races, but that way lies madness.

...and that's ALSO a player choice. I'm not going to pooh-pooh the rest of my group's fun just because I could soapbox about the problems with DL for a week. Ain't worth it.

 

[Sunseeker]

No. Halflings are annoying enough, Kender take all the aspects I hate about halflings and turn them to 11. Kender are seriously one of the reasons I simply can't read the Dragonlance books.