Player: I want to play a brainless incompletely-multiceullular glob with no separation between its anus and its mouth and who might have an ability like “glow in the dark” or “eject organs and then grow them back.” It eats tiny rocks in the water column.
The Land DM: No! At least have some sensible distribution-of-nutrients gimmick! Like, you’re not even trying! Like, I’m not anti-slimes, I’ll allow some of this for the Slime Mold, but they had a clever mechanic for succinctly generating wider pathways for nutrient transfer between high-nutrition areas that I’d be happy to...
The Ocean DM: OMG THAT’S MY FAVORITE THING. Do you have any other character concepts? Like, maybe it can also eject its brain and grow it back? Or maybe its gonads are also in the single hole where the mouth and anus are?
I have this vague intuition that some water-living organisms have fuzzier self-environment boundaries than most land organisms. It sorta makes sense. Living in water, you might at least get close to matching your nutritional, hydrational, thermal, and dispersion needs via low-effort diffusion. In contrast, on land you almost certainly need to create strongly-defined boundaries between yourself and “air” or “rock”, since environments can reach dangerous extremes.
Fungi feel like a bit of an exception, though, with their extracellular digestion habits.
If The Ocean was a DM:
Player: I want to play a brainless incompletely-multiceullular glob with no separation between its anus and its mouth and who might have an ability like “glow in the dark” or “eject organs and then grow them back.” It eats tiny rocks in the water column.
The Land DM: No! At least have some sensible distribution-of-nutrients gimmick! Like, you’re not even trying! Like, I’m not anti-slimes, I’ll allow some of this for the Slime Mold, but they had a clever mechanic for succinctly generating wider pathways for nutrient transfer between high-nutrition areas that I’d be happy to...
The Ocean DM: OMG THAT’S MY FAVORITE THING. Do you have any other character concepts? Like, maybe it can also eject its brain and grow it back? Or maybe its gonads are also in the single hole where the mouth and anus are?
The Land DM: …
I find myself more tickled by the competitive DMs.
I have this vague intuition that some water-living organisms have fuzzier self-environment boundaries than most land organisms. It sorta makes sense. Living in water, you might at least get close to matching your nutritional, hydrational, thermal, and dispersion needs via low-effort diffusion. In contrast, on land you almost certainly need to create strongly-defined boundaries between yourself and “air” or “rock”, since environments can reach dangerous extremes.
Fungi feel like a bit of an exception, though, with their extracellular digestion habits.