Where does your limit go for character concepts, /tg/? Which ones of the following would you approve or reject as a GM, and why? If possible, give a reason rather than "it's bad".
Assume that the player is a casual acquaintance who has otherwise proven himself to be sane and well-functioning.
There's nothing immediately wrong with him aside from the character, and your other players don't hate him.
1: (Vampire) "I want to play a character with the Child flaw. I'm thinking of her as around 9 years old, maybe a Toreador who uses her innocence to charm her way out of tight spots and win people over. She thinks she covers up her maturity with innocence, but she's fundamentally immature and bratty. She wouldn’t use sex appeal because it would creep people out.
2: (D&D): "I'm thinking a tiefling, a sorcerer maybe. She uses sex appeal to get what she wants, and she isn't afraid to actually have sex for a payoff. I'm fine with you making it come back to bite her."
3: (Shadowrun) "Total gender reassignment costs no Essence, right? Alright, I'll go with a good-looking female phys-ad focusing on kicks. She's a professional gymnast and isn't afraid of physical contact with opponents, but she's a bit too serious and doesn't talk about herself. Doesn't like sex, either."
4: (Double Cross) "Yeah, since this is animu, I'll go white trench coat, katana, black hair, Hanuman/Morpheus. What? It's just an anime game, no need to get deep."
5: (More Vampire) "Since we're playing Sabbat, I feel like playing a Tzimisce who kidnaps women and girls, good-looking of course, and turns them into killing machines with Vicissitude and freebied Dominate. He does it to destroy his pity for mere mortals so that he can learn the Path of Metamorphosis better."
When I've gotten iffy character pitches, I've never gotten a clumsy strawman, but only concepts with a bit of background and actually a plot hook or two. It's always a different problem when the player is decent and has at least tried.
>>46789152
1: "Sex appeal or no, an immortal 9 year old is creepy enough. Sounds interesting."
2: "And bite you, it will. Do you make any attempts to disguise your infernal heritage or do you openly advertise you're a Tiefling?"
3: "Professional gymnast? Are there any people left who want to watch stuff like that? Also, a somewhat well-known civilian identity does not seem very smart. Care to tell me where you were going with this?"
4: Long, disapproving stare with half-closed eyelids and a raised eyebrow. "Yeah, I don't know why I invited you." (No reason spoken, because what he said shows no willingness to listen.)
5: "Why make a difference? Mortal is mortal."
>>46789152
1. Sure
2. Sure.
3. Sure.
4. Sure.
5. Sure.
>>46789152
4. Can go fuck itself. You don't want to put actual effort into your character and therefore the actual game, hindering everyone else's experience, you can go fuck yourself.
>>46789152
As long as they are prepared to put even a pinch of actual effort into roleplay, I'll accept any of them.
>>46789152
Yeah, these are fine so long as the guy actually plays them. I will say, however, that these characters look like the work of what in PbP communities is called a 'two-post ghost'.
>>46789593
Exactly.
Were these actual occurrences, OP? Because in the grand scheme of things they're very tame, especially in comparison to some of the stuff I've rejected.
>>46789576
>>46789902
They're things I've personally noted people sperging about a lot on this board, and I'm actually surprised to find out that people are taking it well in this thread.
It might be because people tend to bring up strawmen ("My character is a Gargantuan half-succubus lamia with mind-control abilities, and the sourcebooks, uh, they're old Dragon magazines that I don't have along, and also can she have a dick?") in these threads, so it's surprisingly easy to take for most people once you give the player a real voice and a willingness to roleplay.
>>46789902
Also, do tell stories. I've had a few gory experiences, but it's always nice to hear how much worse other people have had it.
>>46789962
I will say this: modern social movements have absolutely ruined 'can she have a dick' for me. I used to think nothing one way or the other about it when somebody wanted to play a transexual or a transvestite or even a woman pretending to be her own brother. Nowadays, however, I'm immediately tense and on alert that it'll be some sort of situation where the player is constantly using the character to feel oppressed and every decision I make that ends in that character suffering is just, to the player, an extension of my 'cis patriarchy' or whatever. I never cared before, but nowadays if I'm playing with a stranger I always shy away from characters that aren't classical gas if you know what I'm saying.
>>46790048
You don't say.
I used to be a lot more relaxed and liberal about character concepts, and then Tumblr happened. A couple of my games nearly blew up because "gender-special" players demanded special treatment and to be able to break the rules of the setting simply to be able to play their Mary Sue wish-fulfillment self-insert fantasies, and a few others got very close because of the player getting so obsessively invested in their character that they focused more on protecting their pet cause than roleplaying.
It's the Wil Wheaton wave of gaming that's causing this, at the bottom of it. The idea that everyone should be able to play everything without even trying and that all demands of the players are "depriving them of agency" and "oppressive" is allowing worse and worse people into the hobby by giving them a blunt tool to beat people over the head with if they're chided or kicked out.
The Tumblr wave is so bad not because they get preachy and hysterical - we've had those people all along, sheesh - but because they turn any kind of rejection or lack of worship into a matter of discrimination and oppression instead of being forced to learn how the hobby works. The problem isn't that they're assholes, because we've always had plenty of those in the hobby - the problem is their sense of entitlement and their absolute refusal to even try in the least. There's a reason these people weren't in the hobby before Wheaton made it easier for them, after all - because they don't have the patience or decency to learn the rules or play alongside the other players. What they want is an altar upon which they can be worshipped without having to move a finger, and both the GM and the other players have to prostrate themselves worshipfully enough or be accused of being patriarchal, racist, ageist, sexist, heteronormative, microaggressioning rape-beasts.
>>46789152
The girl is pretty cute
>>46790192
Yeah, basically.
