This topic is about translating player concepts into the game world. Identity or gender identity specifically, but talking about any character concept that might trigger the same response seems on topic enough to me.
It wasn't my intent to mischaracterize you, I merely interpreted what you said, such as: "Githyanki are not intrinsically evil", that's an out of universe take, you might not agree, it's not an attack on you. Whether or not they are, if your character lived as a Githyanki for any amount of time, they are.
If a Githyanki crashes in the woods, but there is no Waterdeep scholar to observe them, are they expected to be anything? The perspectives used in your example are not the ones I'm interested in, I'm interested in the Githyanki character who is now in the woods, you want them to be good, I want them to be Githyanki. That doesn't preclude them from being good, but it's not something I want to handwave.
Just don't tell me your perspective is in-universe and consider the matter settled.
That's not a DM I would ever want to sit at a table with, and that's not a DM anyone should ever want to sit at a table with.
If I made the statement, what would that make me? You have a line Niara:
its me! It doesn't sound like I'd have fun at your table, and it doesn't sound like you'd have fun at mine, but there are people for each and both. I can't help but feel like I'd either be discomfited with the leave given, or totally disinterested during a game where Githyanki show up without causing significant ramifications to the world and story.
Regardless, despite your belief that I'm equivocating, when I said it wouldn't immediately cross the line, I meant it. If someone wants to go extraplanar at level 1 in the Forgotten Realms, that's going to require a lot of work. I would probably ask them why they want to play a Githyanki, why they don't think playing anything else would equate that, and whether or not they would rather play an extraplanar campaign. Their reasoning doesn't have to be compelling, but they have to work with me to hammer this into the square peg.
Again though, we're not talking about the start of some hypothetical tabletop game, we have actual evidence of what we're talking about. The DM wants us to have the option to play Githyanki in a level 1 FR campaign, and to do it...a Mind-Flayer ship, attacked by a Githyanki war party, crash lands in the wilderness outside Baldur's Gate. Of those abducted by the Mind-Flayers is the Githyanki T'av. Good so far.
Unfortunately the game is inconsistently able to accommodate us further, slightly incoherent even.
This is what happened to an option that is
supposed to be in the game, now multiply it by all the options that
aren't part of Larian's mission statement and the problems will only compound themselves.
The idea that people in Kara-Tur use the term Bard doesn't sound right to me. Has Kara-Tur been dealt with in 5e yet? Still, yes Bard is a special term, like I said, for completely metatextual reasons. The game has been passed through a lot of hands, some where less adroit than others, a person can be referred to as Bard, and it can still be the abstraction of bard. I'm reminded of MMO dialogue, because there's so little effort for people to behave 'in-character' the veil between story and game is often transparent.
Probably not, casting divine magic is probably required, and yet...If you chose to take holy vows, but not "levels" in paladin, what would the end result be?
This last line was maybe a stretch, but the overarching point still stands. If you think that one point undoes it all, that's fine. I didn't want to have to go through every class. It was about the imperfect translation of the world to the table, do you have anything to say about that, or is it just that one point that you wanted to make?
I was going to put in a little light-hearted blurb here, about a small hamlet's public house being 'terrorized' by a Githyanki paladin, and a Drow ranger, but it's too late, so just enjoy the concept. There was a great bit in there about Astral Plains...oh well.
