Ended up getting into a 'spirited debate' with a different player last night.  I commented on some of the half-orc discussions etc, we were going to be playing some Divinity Original Sin 2 so the upcoming Baldur's Gate Game got me going on the races/companions tangent.  I bitched about the Tiefling nursemaid, and he and I went back and forth, round and round about it, him eventually siding with the (seeming) 'anything goes, play what you want' Flintstones Setting that is Forgotten Realms, and (correctly) pointing out my dream game is something along the lines of Conan.

<shrug>

Enjoying the discussion, I wanted something to come out of just venting.

Quote from: LiferGamer on October 02, 2020, 02:48:05 PM
him eventually siding with the (seeming) 'anything goes, play what you want' Flintstones Setting that is Forgotten Realms,

Did he never read the old Drizzt books!? Yes, the books led to hundreds of dual scimitar wielding "actually good edgy evil race" characters, but Drizzt himself had a ton of issues with discrimination against him for being a drow, especially in the prequel trilogy. The svirfneblin nearly executed him out of hand except one of them recognized him as having saved his life. On the surface, Drizzt was chased out of civilization up to Icewind Dale because no one gave him a sh***, and even there he was only tolerated and had to live outside the city for years before making a few friends who vouched for him.

Now - arguably the current FR adventurers look like the Mos Eisley scene, but that wasn't always the case.

I avoid this problem by not allowing stupid shit like Tieflings in my campaigns.

I've been gaming with most of this group for years; first time with 5e and if I had it to start over again, not ONLY would I have limited it to the PHB, I'd have cut certain races and classes for the setting.

Interestingly enough, Dragonborn are -more- common in this setting (though only 'common' in one nation) for campaign story purposes.

Anyway, wait till they get to the Tiefling 'city', and find how 'nice' and 'cosmopolitan' they are in large groups.

Even if you don't want to say "No" on everything, there's a time and place to say "Yes".  As in, sometimes, the answer is "No, but if you want to register a preference for certain options in the next campaign, it is duly noted."

Now, with Tielfings, I dislike them so intensely as a character conceit that my answer on that is, "If you want to run a game with them in it, I might play, but don't count on it."  Some things just get a hard veto because the GM is the one doing most of the work.  Lots of other stuff, I don't necessarily have anything for or against it, but I do want a campaign developed with some coherence and focus.  That is, not only not a kitchen sink approach, but even in a setting where the pool of available races is wider, I want a given campaign to focus on a smaller set.  (For this reason, in D&D we sometimes have a limited race choice at 1st level, that will explicitly open up a little for replacement characters at higher levels.)  Logically, that means there are lots of "playable" races running around in the setting that you may encounter--but you still can't play them!  Not yet, anyway.

Fortunately, I only play with people mature enough to understand that not getting what you want right now is different than not ever getting what you want.

Tieflings appeal to Edgelords as the ultimate kind of outcast. But I also find Edgelords absolutely immature and very much needing to be called on their crap from the outset.

It was vampires before. Tieflings now. And honestly, I find it tiresome.

So, it all depends on the campaign world. I haven't done much with tieflings in my D&D games so far, but there are a lot of possibilities. Having demon blood is a common trope in myth and fantasy. Merlin was often said to be partly of demonic blood, for example. Personally, I'm at this point fairly blissfully ignorant about whatever has been done with tieflings in anime and video games - which probably sucks, but that shouldn't limit other interpretations.

Quote from: LiferGamer on October 01, 2020, 06:55:44 PM
I pull up my OneNote campaign binder, and when searching tieflings, I find the Nightstone module, where there's a tiefling midwife in the tiny village.  WTF?

I've made it CLEAR from session 0 that in my campaign, tieflings are heavily persecuted in civilized lands.  They have a presence in the Blasted Lands/Reclaimed territories, but they're just shy of kill on sight.  ...and its for good reason.  They're part devil.  They're descended from evil. They have horns and fangs; that's natures way of saying 'hey, don't fuck with me.'

Quote from: LiferGamer on October 01, 2020, 06:55:44 PM
This is coming from a place of mild frustration (obviously) and off the cuff (as usual).  I guess I just want some help/discussion on how to achieve a certain verisimilitude.  I don't need every visit to a small town to be "In the Heat of the Night" or a Klan rally, but I also don't want a PC OR NPCs race to just be a blurb on the character sheet, otherwise what's the point?

I don't think that the only two choices are KKK or being completely race-blind. The KKK's version of racial purity was actually very particular to the United States and it's history of slavery. Other places in history often had very different views of race relations - and of religion. Especially in a non-Christian game world, I think there's plenty of room for different reactions to tieflings. In particular, the figure of a midwife is kind of a liminal one - like being the town witch.

Among pagans and also among some varieties of Christians, it wasn't always a bad thing to "give the Devil his due" - and have a witch or similar figure as a valued member of the community. It's having one of "them" batting on your team. If evil gods really exist, many village members might want to give offerings to both the good gods and the evil gods -- much like putting your offering in church, but still leaving milk out for the faeries at night.

The tiefling midwife might be looked on like having a known witch -- or for a more modern example, a known bookie or a dealer. It's accepted that people have their vices that they engage in, and as long as it's not too outrageous, it is accepted and valued. Maybe the old elvish midwife was a moralizing stick-in-the-mud who the teenage girls would avoid when they got in trouble, but the new tiefling midwife is well-liked and frequently consulted by people who need help - maybe even for good mothers when they've had a bad day and just want the baby to shut up for a few hours or similar.

EDITED TO ADD: Again, it depends on the world and the views. I'm offering one interpretation of a tiefling midwife that fits with European myth and fantasy roots -- but fantasy worlds can and should vary widely. By some theologies, the sins of the father aren't visited on the children, and tieflings might not be considered evil (particularly if they really aren't). Merlin isn't usually seen of as evil for having demon blood in him, for example - just weird.

Yeah, it's certainly possible to frame things in different ways.

I, for one, am just damnably tired of bog standard elves, dwarves and halflings. Tolkien may be the gold standard of fantasy world-building, but that doesn't mean rip-offs of it are high culture any more than another YA Twilight/Hunger Games clone is.

I'd rather see a world where humans, tieflings and dragonborn are the main species and, if you MUST do elves and dwarves... at least do something unique with them (and I feel halflings should just be avoided entirely because they are so distinct to Tolkien that including them feels about as creative as doing a sci-fi setting with X-Wings).

Tieflings are not accepted, not trusted, not allowed, and are generally hated.  Otherwise, they are just fine.

I don't have much to say other than I've found that rather than say what you won't allow - which means players will push against the edges of things or want to play things you didn't think to exclude - it's better to just give a specific iist of what is allowed - with a sentence or two about what's specific to each race in your game.

This both better communicates the game you want to run and communicates that fact that it's your game.

In my Silk road inspired game I just went to the opposite extreme and made the Tiefling half devil thing so far in the past that nobody cares about it anymore, and they're just travelling persian desert merchants, a little like the historical Sogdians.

Mostly because I didn't want elves or dwarves, so I thought fuck it, I should probably allow something from the Player's Handbook.

The other races (aside from humans) are: Hengeyokai, Spirit Folk, Kenku and Ogre Magi.  Of those Tieflings attract the least comment from your average person.

Quote from: jhkim on October 02, 2020, 06:57:20 PM
Merlin isn't usually seen of as evil for having demon blood in him, for example - just weird.

Merlin was baptized. If something like that exists in the world in question that might be one way to go.

Quote from: TJS on October 03, 2020, 08:07:34 AMThe other races (aside from humans) are: Hengeyokai, Spirit Folk, Kenku and Ogre Magi.  Of those Tieflings attract the least comment from your average person.

I approve of your race/species selection and would subscribe to the newsletter. There's clearly an Eastern mythology theme to your selections and it definitely sounds way more interesting than Tolkien-clone #5347 would be.

And yes, there's a huge difference between the 2e-style "I have an infernal as a parent/grandparent" Tieflings and the 4E-style "I'm from race of humans whose ancestors made pacts with devils millennia ago" Tieflings.

The latter are much less "special snowflakes" since, by definition, there's a whole race of them out there (who all share the same general characteristics vs. each being unique) and there is no specific "parental issues" related to their infernal  ancestor (because, first, there is no infernal ancestor, just humans who made pacts with infernals and, second, said pact was made a hundred generations ago by people whose names are forgotten to history).

And that version is the type I definitely prefer and used when creating my Malfean bloodlines. They were bred by the demons so long ago that literally the only accounts of their origins come from texts written down from oral histories millennia after the supposed events occurred.

Quote from: TJS on October 03, 2020, 08:00:11 AM
I don't have much to say other than I've found that rather than say what you won't allow - which means players will push against the edges of things or want to play things you didn't think to exclude - it's better to just give a specific iist of what is allowed - with a sentence or two about what's specific to each race in your game.

Heck, I have at least a full page for each race.

But "Nice try, but no" remains in the arsenal.  (Quite aside from that GURPS has a catch-all advantage called "Unusual Background," effectively a point surcharge for playing something offbeat.  Hellbent on playing a WWI grenadier in my Renaissance fantasy campaign?  Sure, if you don't mind paying a fifth of your character point allotment for the privilege.  I bet those people intent on playing whacky races in D&D wouldn't be nearly so keen if they were told that they'd have a permanent increase of 10% in the XP needed to level, no matter the class.)

Quote from: Ravenswing on October 03, 2020, 11:58:14 AMI bet those people intent on playing whacky races in D&D wouldn't be nearly so keen if they were told that they'd have a permanent increase of 10% in the XP needed to level, no matter the class.)

For that to actually matter you'd have to be old school enough to award differing amounts of experience to each player. All of the (new to me) DMs I've seen over the past year  either award the exact same experience per person per session or they don't even track experience. They just level up every PC in the group all at the same time. And the majority of the DMs aren't awarding the same experience per session, they are in the "don't even track experience" category.

Besides, deferred pain is like deferred gratification. Humans often don't assign it much value.

So I'd give them the pain up front at character creation. Penalize them on build points or on stats, spells, skills, or whatever. Why if you have multiple players who want to play an unusual character we could even do it as an Amber-style auction where they bid how many build points they are willing to deduct so they can be really unusual.