Thread 96016949

How could you make them not entirely intolerable?

>>96016949 (OP)
how can we make you not entirely intolerable?

>>96016949 (OP)
IIRC, the 5e rewrite was not a terrible attempt to wipe out their worst traits while still leaning into the intended whimsy. They're still kinda little shits like the fey can be, but they won't agitate you to death by stealing everything that isn't nailed down because they have no sense of ownership.

>>96016976
There's no need to be rude, you big meanie

>>96016949 (OP)
Have them all raped to death by minotaurs.

>>96016949 (OP)
make them very tasty and deadly afraid of getting eaten by the other races

Easy: don't play trash like D&Done or Shitfinder. Problem solved.

>>96016949 (OP)
Only let a player play as them if they can give five examples of things that will fall into their pockets. If they name anything valuable or important, they're the problem.

Kender are supposed to be childlike wonder made manifest, not total assholes. Asshole kenders are 100% a player problem.

>>96016949 (OP)
Axe pretty much mentions of handling from their lore. Stealing shit isn't precocious and there's a reason good parents clamp down on it immediately. "But I was totally gonna give it back" is literally baby's first excuse and no amount of justification makes it land well.

Instead play up actual childlike traits like curiosity, clinginess, poutiness, spitefulness, excitability, and as is already there foolhardiness.
Make them into a sort of heroic fantasy lost boys. Naturally the fact that they're essentially adult children will instead give them the stigma of being the "pedo race," but even that stigma is probably better than being the "completely unlikable little shit race" reputation they have now.
To mitigate that arguably give them a more magical origin and don't have them mention sex at all... But That Guy is still going to ruin it for everyone else.

>>96016949 (OP)
the thing they most want to steal in the new edition is your seed. problem solved.

>>96017086
Too many anons are miserable assholes out to pick a fight for no reason, like they're tourists who gobbled up internet hate machine propaganda

>>96017250
I'd really like someone to pinpoint the moment of the cultural shift on 4chan (although realistically everyone is just going to say whatever thing they personally dislike is the cause) from:

"You can be an asshole if it's warranted" to "You must be an asshole to be here."

/tg/ especially had a reputation for being a friendly and helpful board overall. Don't know what changed and when.

They're supposed to he some kind of living avatars of Chaotic Goodness, right? They should have some kind of crazy powers that only come out when something too evil and/or too authoritarian is around. Or maybe something more subtle. Like they look like thieving, shit-stirring little assholes, but everything they do is actually calculated to undermine whatever the greatest source of evil and/or control in the area is and push people toward freedom.

so they're pretty much skinny, lest hungry warhammer halflings.

>>96017266
A lot of anons point to the 2016 election cycle, with tourists coming in and then just not leaving.
I think it's primarily because of the increase in access to the site on mobile devices. Social media as a whole dropped significantly in quality around the time it became normal to have constant access to it rather than just when you're at a computer.
Then 4chan became known to the general public as "the edgy website" and anyone with a phone and access to wifi can pop in, they have these preconceived ideas on how people use this website and no concept of board culture.
Combine that with a generation that had attention spans shot to hell and suddenly there's floods of threads attempting to recreate threads seen in a "best of 4chan greentexts" video.
Older users naturally become jaded and new users don't do much more than mimic what they think is normal posting behavior (shitposts and rage baiting).

Tldr; cell phones and not lurking moar

>>96017525
Oh, and moderation is a joke too

Rolled 6, 3 = 9 (2d20)

Best idea I've heard was model the kleptomania by having them just generate objects of varying degrees of use, at the roll of a die
>Shit, we're out of torches Thistle?
>Got a lantern and some extra virgin olive oil.
>That'll work.

Hard rewrite. They are now mousefolk who are something akin to the borrowers mixed with gnome/goblin tech making. They make stuff out of junk and other abandoned items. They do occasionally take things they think aren't owned by anyone but when corrected try to make up for it with a doohickey for the owner of whatever they took. Very humble and their fey origins help keep whatever contraption they make functioning as intended but effectively unreplicatable. Like ork tech in a way

>>96017086
>be OP
>be faggot (redundant)
>shit out yet another spam thread
>get called out on it
>immediately play the pitiful victim
Did /lgbt/ kick you out for being too much of a faggot?

>>96016949 (OP)
Make them rich. Their whole behaviour becomes completely sensible once they're insanely rich.

>>96016949 (OP)
This hasn't been a relevant topic for 10+ years now my man. Fantasy races have lost all their flavor and are just Left Wing Urbanite Human But With X Physical Feature for years now.

>>96017755
Neoliberal universalism and rainbow capitalism is centrist, Anon-dono

>>96017266
>Don't know what changed and when.
2011, kitten-mod.
2012, all crossboard quests forced onto /tg/. Meant a bunch of /v/irgins stuck around and shat up trouble. If you look at the common shitposting thread formats, they have their roots in /v/.

>>96017583
OK, this is nice actually.

>>96017250
>>96017266
It's the fault of mods. They've cultivated a sense of toxicity with their constant unwarranted bans, it makes people like me no longer want to legitimately participate in threads. I now come here just to steal from those who do, and shitpost, because fuck 4chan mods.

>>96016949 (OP)
They commit 3 cardinal sins:
1.) They're ugly, but not cool ugly.
2.) They steal from players.
3.) The setting godmods and tells you that you love them, anyway.

Three is the worst. One is second worst, two can work if the GM is good.

>>96016949 (OP)
They shouldn't exist to begin with or never be a PC'able character race.

They are essentially teehee macaroni the race except that you are forced to love them and harming them actively hurts the forces of good.

>>96017755
And now D&D is dying because of this BS.

>>96016949 (OP)
Make them short stacked brats who procreate through receiving corrective rape.

>>96016949 (OP)
I don't think you can.

>>96017608
Nta, but you're just being a dick, anon. There's nothing that makes this a spam thread besides the fact that you say so. Plenty of others are enjoying the conversation around the biggest meme race in Dragonlance. Don't make being a cunt your entire personality.

>>96016949 (OP)
Making them akin to goblins would actually solve a lot of problems. Goblins are thieving little shits as well, but they are unapologetic gremlins, and the narrative doesn't bend over backwards to make them seem like innocent little scamps.

>>96017583
>After a bar fight, kender PC scrounges through the broken furniture, glass, and other bits and pieces
>Makes a "crossbow" that doesn't seem remotely usable
>It's better than the basic crossbow the party's fighter owns
>Bandits' faces when they're getting bowscoped by trash
It would be kinda funny, and if the player is creative enough they could probably make more than just weapons, like tools, vehicles, armor, etc.

>>96016949 (OP)
If they were rendered into undead, they could be made useful in a rock quarry somewhere.

>>96016949 (OP)
I would leave them out of my setting entirely

>>96017583
What a crock. There's no small amount of description of Hobbits and Bilbo that clearly remarks on human traits like his face and cheeks and specifically the height of hobbits being like 4 feet tall, and what sting looked like.
It also specifically says he puts the ring on his fingers, not a fucking gerbil tail.

If this furry just wanted to NIMH the lord of the rings, then do it. Don't make up some 'teehee wow i was so imaginative as a child' bullshit for it.

>>96016949 (OP)
Too many of their traits are at odds. The idea that they are precocious and innocent is not the worst place to start from, but you can't then say "everyone recognizes this inherently" AND "they steal stuff constantly because they don't know any better." This is a blank check to be a little shit without social repercussions, which no one else on the meta level wants to put up with. So, if the core of the kender is being little whimsical people who have almost childlike tendencies, emphasize that without giving them extra reasons for people to be at odds with that concept. Less "everyone would let their behavior slide" and more "people understand the stereotypes enough to give them the benefit of the doubt sometimes." Less "they are constantly grabbing everyone's shit" and more "sometimes they're prone to good-spirited pranks."

>>96017266
>"You can be an asshole if it's warranted" to "You must be an asshole to be here."
There were shades of that here for ages. It just became more common, with two general kinds of behavior pushing it:
>Spiteful oldfags who reveled in the edge of their teenage years and didn't want to change
>People who came to 4chan and browsed in its worst places, believing that their experience was meant to be indicative of the whole site's culture
This is to say, that on a website where everyone is anonymous and there is no specifically dictated culture, there are still some people who will try to enforce their impression of what the site's culture was onto everyone else.

>>96017583
I am currently readying the Lord of the Rings. I am now keeping all characters races the same, but Hobbits are Gribble/Mouse. Other then changing what Wizards or Orc not Goblins to Owl and Boars, It will ruin the story beyond repair.

>>96020253
>Less "they are constantly grabbing everyone's shit" and more "sometimes they're prone to good-spirited pranks."

Also "no sense of (personal) ownership" shouldn't be read as "kleptomania" or an urge to pickpocket everyone. It should be read more as "grabs things they think will be useful to them no matter who owns them."

>>96017583
Damn this is good, I'll keep note of this

>>96020801
Well, yeah. That's the correct flavor. But that's not how it generally plays out. Nor do people like the idea that someone that they interact with is generally going to just take things without notice when that can cause consequences.

I remember reading a concept for this where it's not "steal things" as much as "you can randomly just have items sometimes because you happened to pick them up." It touches on the right flavor of things without tying up the game in unnecessary problems where the character is going to be seen as a thief who causes problems without trying to.

>>96021414
A several months ago in one of these "fixing Kender" threads I pretty much suggested exactly that.

>>96020687
Kids can be stupid and he probably didn't read that far idk just rate my idea

You can't really. There's just something fundamentally obnoxious about them. Even in computer games and MMOs, the kind of people drawn to liking and playing as them, all tend to be obnoxious.

As someone recently told me, "There's nothing inherently wrong with kender. There's something inherently wrong with everybody who wants to play one."

>>96016949 (OP)
>How could you make them not entirely intolerable?
Taxidermy maybe.

>>96017755
I agree. The problem with most fantasy races is made to be humans but with a different feature and they remove the things that would make them feel like a different race. Orcs can't be evil and dumb but just like humans. Tieflings can't fighting their evil demonic urges and just humans with tails and horns. You can't even have the elves and the dwarfs have their classic racist hatred of one another without some woke bitch crying about it.
>>96017810
Nah, it's left leaning. They're just trying to push that they're centrist, most people don't care cause it's not something they care about it. However the fans that been there before it was cool complain about something, they get called toxic and push out by the same groups then the company wonders why no one is buying their product anymore since before the fans would buy anything they bought but now they stop and the "modern audience" never showed up to replace them after changing everything for them. Hell the new fans rarely buy it and just talk about loving the changes before moving to the next host to make lame and gay. Look at Marvel, look at Star Trek, look at DR.Who, they all just want to spread their gay message and think people will listen if they get some big IP to promote it for them since their own IPs are always DOA

>>96017810
lmao lol

>>96023025
People can't deal with the fact that a massive shift to the right happened during the interwar period, which left the Unabomber to be an authentic voice of classic left-wing politics.

>>96017266
its the increase of mobilefags

>>96017810
Actually, neoliberalism is right-wing, Anon. The liberal economics and constant collaboration with those further right on governing is how that works. They're just "more" left than conservatives, which is not the same as being in the center. In fact, in the US, there are neoliberals, conservatives, and far right representatives in government, and extremely few centrists or actual lefties. You're watching what an all right-wing government looks like in real time, and have been since the 1990s.

>>96023298
Nah, you are just drinking that kool-aid man. Most media was heavy leftist to the point that anything left of center left was seen as far right. Which doesn't help most of the leftist don't even know what they're fight for when they go out to protest and riot. They just feel like they need to fight cause they been trained to by the schools and the media. They will say the buzzwords they hear and call their political rivals the slurs they think they can get away with to dehumanize them, but ask them to debate their position and they start crashing out as their mind breaks cause they can't think for themselves. Hell, Trump exposed the NPCs for being NPCs to the point they stop trying to hide it.

>>96016949 (OP)
Depends on how much we're allowed to change about them. If we're supposed to stay within the spirit of "justified halfling rogue", make their more twee shit cultural rather than genetic. Their relative innocence, lack of personal boundaries, and sticky fingers would ideally be mostly a result of being from isolated communities where everyone is a kender that knows each other's name, meaning that their habit of picking shit up from everywhere and turning their pockets inside out at the end of the day is because they know whatever they find belongs to someone in the village and they do genuinely intend to bring it back to them before it's missed. And it's when they get wanderlust and start meeting other civilizations that they quickly learn that what they're doing is considered "thievery", which makes them either try curbing their sticky fingers to items people don't want (good) or likely won't miss (neutral) or get professional about it now that they know it's bad (evil). The curiosity, natural slipperiness, and the lack of traditional fear are okay features, it's the thievery that's the main issue considering how so many That Guys abuse the "it's what my character would do" defense.

Or better yet, remove all Kender and replace them with regular old Halflings/Hobbits. Seriously, I'd rather play with a character descended from a bunch of chill pie-loving farmland people than having anything to do with the sticky-fingered offshoots.

>>96016949 (OP)
They exist for the same reason 'Soaking' does.
Remove the Mormonism and just make them grubby little thief-shits openly and honestly instead of the 'UwU, they're so innocent, they don't know what they're doing' and it removes 90% of the bullshit.

>>96023345
I still think "Soaking" is some BS someone made up to make fun of Mormonism. That just sounds like some gay kink shit push on to them. I mean they have enough shit to make fun of, you don't need to try to add your fetish in it now.

>>96016949 (OP)
By playing them as intended instead of letting "that guy" hide behind the race to be a faggot.
Being a kender doesn't mean
>oooh he has a coinpurse that i can snatch
it means
>look at this pretty clover, ooh look a butterfly, hey a shiny bottlecap
They're meant have a childish sense of wonder that means nabbing shit that has zero value but looks cool far more often than going after shit of actual worth. A tincture that makes up a health potion is not more interesting to a kid than a cool ass stick.

>>96023365
I don't get why you'd think soaking is fake
>teens are horny
>humans find ways to bend rules
Both of the above have been true for millenia.
>PPSXS
Even captcha knows

>>96016949 (OP)
Lean into what canon teased and make them a race of flirty shortstacks who want to capture a human baby-daddy to keep them barefoot and pregnant.

Seriously, look up "half-kender" and tell me there wasn't somebody writing about kender women with one hand.

>>96016949 (OP)
Simply delete the universe itself being apologetic toward their antics and they become immediately more tolerable because the gods themselves aren't forcing you to accept the developmentally-stunted kleptomaniacs at risk of getting negative karma for punting one across the room.

>>96017447
So a low-key hive mind of revolutionary pranksters and social engineers. I can dig that.

>>96016949 (OP)
Rakanishu

>>96020087
Idk I always make up a headcanon for character looks no matter the description

>>96026890
Bless you.

>>96023335
>"They'll say buzzwords"
>Uses the phrase "NPCs"
>"They crash out"
>Right wing politicians crash out and infight constantly, and the President has social media and interview tantrums basically every week. Liberal politicians are more complacent than not, though they do have a small share of infighting, primarily against the actual lefties.
Who's drinking the cult drink?

>>96017266
You kicked out quest threads which, for better or worse, included a big chunk of creativity/community driven players.
Were there too many threads? Yeah, and that was becoming a problem. But you cut off your nose to spite your face when they made /qst/.

>>96020087
The thread is about kender, not Hobbits or halflings

>>96029209
Less than a tenth of active threads at a given time were quests or civ threads. If moot booted /a/ and /v/ quests back to their boards then the ratio would go from a tenth to a thirtieth

>>96020253
>>96020801
I think thieving and teehee cutesy stuff should be axed completely for more of getting into trouble cause they're naive (though capable of learning) and curious as hell, but also good at surviving that trouble by accident.

Make them take and play with someone else's items if you must, but put them back, and generally don't hold onto any items, and make them be properly apologetic and trying to make it up to a character should they activate some single use/charge item on accident.

Make them sympathetic as attractive prey for monsters, slavers and other unsavoury sorts.

Make them useful as scouts and tagalong kids for planes and realms unfamiliar with them and living minesweepers in dangerous locations.

>>96017266
>I'd really like someone to pinpoint the moment of the cultural shift on 4chan (although realistically everyone is just going to say whatever thing they personally dislike is the cause) from:
>"You can be an asshole if it's warranted" to "You must be an asshole to be here."
I noticed it first on other boards in around 2012.

>>96029599
the thing is that all of this falls on the player side.
You could tell them to roleplay that way, but the dude looking for an excuse to be an asshole is gonna ignore it.

>>96029790
I wasn't gonna comment on this, but I kinda see this.

>>96029790
Yeah 2012. It was that election cycle specifically.

>>96029813
Whenever they annoy the whole party a kender (gnome, tiefling, whatever) can be put in a bag under the table and kicked till his behaviour or party mood improves.

>>96016949 (OP)
I have an idea... a final solution you could say

>>96016949 (OP)
They were supposed to be innocent, like children. Write their description to emphasize the parts of kids that are endearing and direct away from common behavioral traps.

>>96030054
For the last time Adie, you're already playing a Human Paladin already, all those homebrewed racial bonuses you're piling on are overkill.

>>96017583
Pretty cute, both concept and art.
I might steal this as a base for reworking these little shits.

>>96020687
>Gribble
Shackleford, sir.

>>96030275
I sure hope the real Rumbo Shacklefort doesn't show up and recognize you because that's the same pipeweed you've been smoking since you were 6.

I'd axe the manchildism and make it more an ill-informed stereotype. In reality they're fiendishly cunning and clever, and while they *are* exhuberant and carefree the personality they're (in)famous for is the result of them playing up those traits in front of non-Kender. Why? Because it makes people dismiss them as simple-minded idiots and irrelevant pests, which lets people's guards down and enables Kender to play out their actual schemes. A corrupt baron may be annoyed by a Kender stealing his purse to count the shiny coins, but while he and his guards are distracted demanding the little pest give the money back the thief's Kender pals are breaking into the baron's manor to steal a letter implicating him in the assassination of a popular local religious figure. As the anon above said, they're Chaotic Good incarnate, they should look the part.

>>96016949 (OP)
Turn them into fantasy chavs.

>>96016949 (OP)
Force players to actually play them how they're written and not like gypsy children. No concept of ownership goes both ways, you shouldn't be spamming pickpocket checks on every single NPC, then throwing a shit fit because another player goes. "Hey, lets give that starving peasant back his copper wedding ring, alright?"

The issue always ends up being the selective parts of players kendar-ness. Or having never pocketed a single loose item until you happen to be at an NPC's place that will matter if you steal some silverware, or more than likely, ignore every single mundane item and sprint straight towards magical/expensive things.

T- Probably still, but once retarded teen new player who used "Bro, it literally says in my races thing that I steal stuff randomly" as an excuse in a 3.5 game.

>>96033852
>Bro, it literally says in my races thing that I steal stuff randomly
I mean, that's also tiefling's, goblin's and pretty much any Chaotic or Evil Character's or Thief-adjacent class' thing.

The only thing that makes kenders different is the developer cunt telling you to go "oh, how adorable!" over it instead of kicking their ass and forcing them to apologise and reimburse the victim for the trouble caused.

>>96016949 (OP)
Make them into cocksleeves.

>>96019652
Anon is right though, this is yet another spam thread you are once again trying to downplay.

>>96034741
Really, the better question is how to portray Chaotic characters as anything but hurp durp spork of doom retards, because the tendency is overwhelming.

you dont actually have an opinion on kender at all

>>96040668
The problem there is people assuming that "chaos" means "no impulse control." But actually, it means the elaborate things that it means. Independence and a strong desire to commit actions on one's own will are there, but that is not the same as "I will immediately and always do something without considering or caring about the consequences." Some people like that may exist, but it's basically a bad stereotype and a bad character to bring to a table. It defies how the game is collaborative by spitting in the faces of the other players by making you everyone's problem, rather than adding meaningful dynamics and contrast to the whole.

>>96016949 (OP)
I played a tinker gnome, and kender were not at all annoying to my character.

>>96041746
>Independence and a strong desire to commit actions on one's own will
Does that mean an ubermensch type would be Chaotic rather than Neutral?

>>96018094
>They've cultivated a sense of toxicity with their constant unwarranted bans, it makes people like me no longer want to legitimately participate in threads.
This. I phonepost on /tg/ because there's no telling whether or not I'll get a ban for "replying to off-topic" or similar BS.

>>96023335
>they start crashing out

>>96025613
>I don't get why you'd think soaking is fake
nta but you can't actually expect adults to think teenagers will be satisfied with remaining motionless after penetration. How would an act that increases arousal (and causes the penis to be inside the vagina) be viewed as a method of dealing with arousal in a way that doesn't result in pregnancy?

>>96041778
A tinker gnome and kender in the same party? You've got to tell us how your campaign went.

>>96042209
The kender was an NPC. The humans largely ignored me, but the minotaur was constantly threatening to stuff me in a sack and wallop me until I stopped making noise.

The kender and I got along because he had a lot of interesting things in his pockets. Occasionally he would even find something of MINE in his pocket. Very fascinating creatures.

>>96016949 (OP)
1. if they randomly give as often as they randomly borrow. In fact, you could even make them always leave something of equal value, fey style, tooth fairies etc. Still fits the anarcho-communist to the point of blind autism culture, while not just being a bunch of thieves playing innocent.

2. Inability to feel fear is NOT inherently the same as "Terminally Scrappy-Doo." They don't have a wisdom penalty, they should still be able to judiciously assess risk.

3. The original inspiring concept was quote "savage warrior children." I hear that, I think Lord of the Flies and Lost Boys of Neverland but less mud pies and slingshots and more Ewok-style cannibalism and vietcong tactics. They should not be nearly so squee. Eberron's Talenta Halflings and Athas's halflings should be a good anchor points.

4. Older lore for them states they are an offshoot of gnomes, specifically due to chaos magic from the Greygem they split off at the same time as dwarves split off. It's almost like a urRu/Skeksis thing. I REALLY like that idea, frankly. Kinder as everything that makes a gnome, minus everything that makes a dwarf, and vice versa, makes a lot of sense in several ways.
>Dwarves are taller and burlier and hairier than gnomes with tiny heads compared to their bulky body, kinder should be scrawnier and shorter and less hairy than gnomes, with heads maybe a little too big for their body, hence the child comparisons.
>Dwarves are greedy to a fault, Kinder are so collectivist they don't have a cultural concept of private property only current ownership and an item's value, so if someone needs something, they just borrow it in trade.
>Dwarves are very cautious. They value tradition and order because ultimately they fear the uncertainty of change. You stick with what works. Kinder are cavalier. They value novelty and curiosity because they fear nothing.
>Dwarves hold grudges but fight stoically with honor. Kinder are easygoing, but fight dirty with constant taunting insults.

>>96042633
(cont)
>Dwarves build giant fortresses and monuments and may very well live in the same one their entire life unless otherwise driven by obligation or necessity. Kinder build jack shit, they're nomads.
>Dwarves are craftsmen, especially of armor and weapons. The pinnacle of kinder war technology is a pointy stick with a leather strap on one end. With their curiosity I'm sure they try all kinds of stuff. But none of it could remotely be described as quality workmanship or advanced.
>Dwarves find everyone slightly annoying and are slightly xenophobic. Kinder are slightly xenophilic, but everyone finds them slightly annoying.
>Dwarves are sour and slow to trust, but will honor an oath if it kills them. Kinder are genial but won't remember a promise 5 minute later.
>Dwarves are deeply religious and venerate ancestors. Kinder are universally irreverent and let's be honest here, a living blasphemy.

>>96017583
Would something akin to "at level 3 the kender can craft a simple tool under X gold from any junk collected once per day and every 3 levels to 15 increases the complexity and price" seem like an accurate way to recreate this?

>>96016949 (OP)
I played one and the handling just happened whenever I was bored. Usually I took objects out of my pockets or went through a nearby box. I

The problem are the players who can't handle the concept or use it as an excuse to be an asshole, and players who get mad that someone is playing something that is not super serious.
Like, seriously, you are grownups playing pretend, can you get over yourself?

>>96046864
Aspects of the kender concept still has serious flaws in it in terms of being plain annoying even when "done right", imo. Seeing the portrayal of the average kender in Dragonlance proper to know how a non-That Guy Kender should act, I found almost all of them still came across as annoying little toerags who need to be tossed by their ankles into the next county.

>>96046400
>craft a wrench once a day

>>96016949 (OP)
Play them straight, but flip them over to Chaotic Evil.

>>96027216
Clearly you

>>96046400
Seems more like a Tinker Gnime thing.

>>96042888
>The pinnacle of kinder war technology is a pointy stick with a leather strap on one end.
And a bunch of other weapons that also can be used as Instruments.