#DnD DMs of the #Fediverse: Have you ever made a PC race illegal?
I am feeling inspired by #mcdm_productions worldbuilding where all Dragonborn have a bounty on their heads, which was set by the current king. I would like to do something similar in mine with Orcs, but I’m not sure how to handle that lore-wise.
By “illegal,” do you mean the player is not allowed to choose the race for their character? Or do you mean the race is outlawed within the setting, i.e. Orcs would have no legal protections and are persecuted by the law?
On the flip side I was able to convince my DM to let me play as a goblin since his back story was that he didn’t like goblin society and wanted to be a bard. However, due to the perception of goblins in the bard scene, he would be disguising himself as a halfling.
So we kept it a secret from the other players for a long time while I dropped clues and was eventually called out. It was like a year of sessions before someone was like, “ok what’s with the weird rage fits you keep having?”
In some regions in my world there’s a distinct amount of racism so some places have outlawed different people to different degrees.
For example one city outlawed Goblinoids within their city limits. Another nearby city had a curfew for Goblinoids vs outright banning their presence within their city limits.
There’s quite a a bit that can be said about quite a bit by what restrictions exist in your world and the hardships people can face.
@Shkshkshk @dnd I’m currently running a campaign that I’ve restricted to just the PHB, or do you mean a setting where a race is in the world, but simply existing is punishable by some means?
He’s talking about in-world legal bans on races. In other threads he has used examples of how in Matt Colville’s lore, Dragonborn are banned by the evil Lord Ajax the Invincible since they are a symbol of the previous regime, and he has enforced that via a hefty bounty.
I ran a short campaign where Warforged were heavily legally restricted. If you played one, you did not legally count as a person, and could not conduct activities without your owner. If you were by yourself, you needed to be unarmed and unclothed except for an amulet from the noble house of your owner. The plot ended up being basically Django Unchained.
I would talk to the player(s). Playing the outlaw, making disguises, sounds fun.
But also it could introduce racial discrimination into the mix. Y’all would need to be OK with handling that theme.
