Critiquing the "Guy At The Gym" Fallacy

[Lord Raziere]

There is NO difference between the agreement to play in "a campaign in a setting where humans are largely like real world humans, unless they have some sort of magic (spellcasting or otherwise)" and the agreement to play in "a campaign about espionage in a gritty real-world-like setting".

There is NO difference between a player who demands to play a "not at all extranormal" martial character who still somehow can do things that are blatantly extranormal for people in that setting, and a character who wants to play their precious DBZ expy character in a gritty espionage game.

I've encountered that player -- as often as a fellow player as when I was the GM -- because there are too many players who don't read the setting materials, or who know what they're doing and think they can impose on the existing relationships and other peoples' desire to get along to get their way, or because they believe that their fun is simply more important than anyone else's.

But MOST gamers I've gamed with, I've never had this "but I wanted to play a space marine in your medieval setting" sort of silliness come up, because they want to make a character who fits the campaign.

And it's not "players who want to be wildly out of place", it's "players who want characters who are wildly out of place" -- though if someone can't tell the difference between those two statements, that would explain a lot about why they feel like their precious identity is threatened by not being allowed to play their DBZ expy in a heroic fantasy game, or feel like everyone else is just being big unimaginative meanies when they say "your space marine doesn't fit in the Forgotten Realms".

Which brings me back to this nonsense I'm seeing about "but it's FANTASY, that means I get to live out my FANTASY"... as with many of these discussions, that's two different usages of the same word being mashed together to win an argument. Just because the campaign takes place in a fantastic setting, of the sort that's often seen in the "fantasy" subgenre of speculative fiction, does not mean that it's a "fantasy" of the sort that implies anything the player can imagine is fair game and limits are somehow "infringing on their agency".

you sound like your being very engative than all those people your being vitriolic about. you sound like a GM who will hammer down anything, who is angry their world isn't working like a clock and will attack any concept that is slightly creative for fear of being "not a fit". and your continued ranting hasn't been dissuading me of that. I know you think your not, but your not presenting yourself well herew.

and again it sounds like you don't like the kind of games that these concepts are supposed to be in. you keep bringing up these low-powered grit stuff that has absolutely nothing to do with a god-fighter and equaling a god wizard. you keep bringing up DBZ and hating it, maybe, you just like completely different games from what we're talking about and this not even your concern dude. I think you just don't like high-powered games all that much and guess what, this kind of thing isn't a concern at low-levels of DnD.

this balance concern? this desire to play super fighters you don't like? nothing to do with your low-powered fun, so if you really don't like people butting in with concepts that don't fit, take your own medicine and stop bringing up low-powered campaigns and preferences when talking about a high-powered problem. E6 is a thing after all.