What will you not allow?

[AlexanderHowl]

I was curious what you will not allow in your games? What type of characters, behaviors, traits, etc will you not allow regardless of genre or setting? In my own case, I will not allow players to play 'evil' characters such as slavers or rapists, and I will not allow players to commit 'evil' actions without having their characters suffer an appropriately cruel and ironic punishment. I also will not allow characters that possess persistent abilities that give other players permanent advantages, and I loathe time travel (paratronic travel is fine though).

[Phantasm]

Weirdness Magnet, potentially the most campaign-disruptive disad out there. I will reject all characters that have it, though usually in a "replace it with something else" manner

[Kalzazz]

Dual wielding automatic grenade launchers . . . . . death by 10 million fragmentation, hit location, damage rolls etc? No

[talonthehand]

Not me, but my first GM had a hard ban on the spell Rive. He felt it was too easy to use it to circumvent any plans he had made.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

I was curious what you will not allow in your games? What type of characters, behaviors, traits, etc will you not allow regardless of genre or setting? In my own case, I will not allow players to play 'evil' characters such as slavers or rapists, and I will not allow players to commit 'evil' actions without having their characters suffer an appropriately cruel and ironic punishment. I also will not allow characters that possess persistent abilities that give other players permanent advantages, and I loathe time travel (paratronic travel is fine though).

I'm fine with evil games as long as everyone agrees to it beforehand. I really hate it when players use the most absurd somewhat offensive rationalizations for committing evil acts with their supposedly ultra good characters.

Same goes for party betraying disadvantages and actions. No, Lucy, not everyone is okay with your rogue stealing from their characters, in or out of character.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Phantasm

Weirdness Magnet, potentially the most.campaign-disruptive disad out there. I will reject all characters that have it, though usually in a "replace it with something else" manner

I'm not fond of the RAW version either, but I think it just needs a better interpretation - one that ditches the talking dogs, groupies and witch hunters. Since I've replaced the reaction modifiers with "includes Unluckiness, but the guaranteed failure each session will fail in a *weird* way", only one player has been interested, and it wasn't any more disruptive than Unluckiness. A couple extra seconds of description of that failure and it earned its points that session, so I didn't feel I needed to force anything else in, plus the bonus that if the plot needed a bit of unlikely oddness it could just happen to him with no need to worry about whether it was plausible, or even made sense. If it needed more, you can simply change the descriptions you give for a few ordinarily rolled failures too. A technique I recommend for Unluckiness as well - there's no *practical* difference between "you miss" and "your foot slipped just as you made your lunge and you barely managed to recover your balance", but the one goes a long way toward making the player *feel* Unlucky.

The other major change I recommend is including in the description that a good source of weirdness is stuff only the victim can see, even if from his perspective it should be visible to others. That's weird in itself even if the event isn't that odd, and there's usually no need to even decide if is it real - suffering from random hallucinations is fairly strange too.... This sort of thing goes a long way toward explaining why people might hesitate to trust him.

[Prince Charon]

It really depends on what game I am doing. I tend to only forbid things that break the setting, or that make no sense for the character to have, and both of these will naturally vary by setting (including story mode, e.g. 'is this a Silly game?') and character.

EDIT: I do admit that I would be very reluctant to allow someone to play a rapist in any setting, though, nor a child molester. Some things are too creepy for what is essentially entertainment and escapism.

[tshiggins]

I tend to try to have my characters play decent folks, but (as can be seen in the Facets thread...) that sometimes doesn't work out.

I forbid, outright, what I call "GM Negotiation" or "GM Save Me" spells or abilities. For instance, Common Sense is right out.

[sir_pudding]

I am more likely to ask someone to never come back than to ban stuff regardless of genre or setting.

[Maz]

I have increasingly started to make players redo their characters because "they do not fit the game we are playing right now". Most often this boils down to them not really being able to answer a simple question such as "but then why wouldnt your character not just do that? Why are they here now, participating in this?"

Latest example: One player wanted to be a socially and physically inept techie who just wanted to fix up old computers and tinker with robots. Well thats a good concept, except we are playing a game where the PCs are all highly trained special agents expected to do on the spot investigation and take direct action.

I used to try to "go with it" but it always ends up being a bad experience for evryone.


This is also because Im sick and tired of the `reluctant hero` where the player wants ME to be the one to constantly force them into the hero role without it fitting into the game-story already there.