How the game promotes Fantasy Kitchen Sink

[Catullus64]

I initially wrote a long post about how I think the game promotes, and increasingly promotes, a Fantasy Kitchen Sink as its setting, and how I think this creates problems for actual groups. But I'm coming to realize that when you want to discuss a complex topic on this site, posting a long tract that people then have to attack piecemeal seldom actually helps the conversation. So I'll just say what that post said in much briefer form. And if I need to further defend or clarify any of these points like I did in the thousand-word version, well, that's why it's a discussion forum.


The 5e line of D&D products, in responding to the demand for more and more player options, increasingly pushes its game settings, and particularly its PC parties, towards a Fantasy Kitchen Sink.
"PCs are meant to be exceptional" is, I think, an inadequate response to this criticism.
"D&D has always been a fantasy kitchen sink", while true, is another common response I find somewhat lacking. There's still a noticeable trend.
I don't think that the reactionary response, calling for the trimming down of the options which create this phenomenon, is likely, feasible, or a good idea.
The game should increasingly focus, moving forward, on character and party-building as a collaborative exercise between players and DMs to help parties be reflective of any given setting, rather than the more individualistic process it tends to be now.


Happy discussing!

[Waazraath]

One question and one disagreement:

Question: what do you mean with "fantasy kitchen sink"?

Disagreement: my experience is that at this forum conversation is greatly helped by posing a long tract (evidence A: https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?612915-Probably-unpopular-take-%96-we-have-large-portions-of-Bo9S-ToB-in-5e-already&highlight=tome%20of%20battle ). My hypothesis is that if you describe very detailed what you think and why, the odds get better that people who reply will reply to what you are actually thinking, and not to what they are assuming you must be thinking. (no guarantees though).

[Sigreid]

I initially wrote a long post about how I think the game promotes, and increasingly promotes, a Fantasy Kitchen Sink as its setting, and how I think this creates problems for actual groups. But I'm coming to realize that when you want to discuss a complex topic on this site, posting a long tract that people then have to attack piecemeal seldom actually helps the conversation. So I'll just say what that post said in much briefer form. And if I need to further defend or clarify any of these points like I did in the thousand-word version, well, that's why it's a discussion forum.


The 5e line of D&D products, in responding to the demand for more and more player options, increasingly pushes its game settings, and particularly its PC parties, towards a Fantasy Kitchen Sink.
"PCs are meant to be exceptional" is, I think, an inadequate response to this criticism.
"D&D has always been a fantasy kitchen sink", while true, is another common response I find somewhat lacking. There's still a noticeable trend.
I don't think that the reactionary response, calling for the trimming down of the options which create this phenomenon, is likely, feasible, or a good idea.
The game should increasingly focus, moving forward, on character and party-building as a collaborative exercise between players and DMs to help parties be reflective of any given setting, rather than the more individualistic process it tends to be now.


Happy discussing!

1. Like when they put character options into modules, they're really just trying to tempt you to buy a product you may not be interested in. I'd bet most groups would be happy with one setting that suits them, but the company would, of course; like to sell all of their settings to everyone.
2. No comment
3. D&D is a whole is a tool box that is meant to be used by groups to create the game and setting that they want. It always has been. I don't think it was ever meant to have every option available in one setting. People being people, we want to play with the new toys so lots of groups tend to wind up being kitchen sink.
4. Ideally, Options would be opted into by the group for a given setting and everything else left on the curb waiting for the setting that they are suited to.
5. There's nothing wrong with the game itself focusing on options. Tables (and maybe AL, I don't know I don't do AL) should focus on a cohesive setting and party.

All that said, there's absolutely nothing wrong with a given table wanting everything in their kitchen sink setting. The only wrong way to play is to not have fun together.

[Catullus64]

One question and one disagreement:

Question: what do you mean with "fantasy kitchen sink"?

Disagreement: my experience is that at this forum conversation is greatly helped by posing a long tract (evidence A: https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?612915-Probably-unpopular-take-%96-we-have-large-portions-of-Bo9S-ToB-in-5e-already&highlight=tome%20of%20battle ). My hypothesis is that if you describe very detailed what you think and why, the odds get better that people who reply will reply to what you are actually thinking, and not to what they are assuming you must be thinking. (no guarantees though).

By Fantasy Kitchen Sink, I mean a setting wherein a huge array of fantasy creatures and fantastical elements, often with wildly divergent tones and influences, regularly interact and intermix, often at the expense of the verisimilitude of the world.

No matter how detailed your post, someone will always take something in a different light than you meant it. I prefer to tackle misunderstandings as they arise rather than play an elaborate chess match against hypothetical objections and misinterpretations, which is what a lot of the length of the original post was. At least this way, you only have to type out the detailed clarification once instead of twice!

[meandean]

OP reminds me of Pascal's statement that "I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time." :smallsmile: A commendable sentiment to be sure, but perhaps taken a little to the extreme in this instance.

I suppose 5E can be thought of as a "kitchen sink" in the sense of character options. There are, after all, now over 100 subclasses, along with hundreds of spells, lots of feats, etc. If you could somehow randomly generate a complete level 20 character, there would probably literally be billions of different combinations that could result. Although there are still surely prototypical character concepts that you can't fully capture, you can at least partially capture just about anything, and fully capture a lot of them. I agree that it wouldn't be wise to limit these options on purpose.

I definitely don't think 5E is a "kitchen sink" in the sense of a setting. The game assumes combat-heavy storylines in a setting that bends towards "heroic" PCs in a "high" magic world. People often try to shoehorn settings with very different assumptions into 5E, but that's because D&D is essentially the industry standard and it's easier to find both players and DMs to play it. Luckily, both the mechanics and the culture of the game are conducive to homebrewing, and to otherwise customizing both your rules and your playstyle. As Sigried said, as long as everyone is having fun, that's what matters. But it's much more a kitchen sink in practice than it is from the materials as presented.

[Ionathus]

I don't think Fantasy Kitchen Sink is a problem, because I don't see any reason for D&D to take itself seriously in the first place.

This happens a lot to the codifiers of a given genre...because when something is in its infancy, you have so many potential directions to take it that things can spiral out of focus quite quickly. Superman codified superhero comics, and look at how much wacky bull**** he has in his overarching canon as a result!

D&D, as the codifier and most popular among modern TTRPGs, has accumulated decades of clutter and vestigial design choices - many of which became accidental favorites and defined the game in numerous ways - which means D&D started as a hodgepodge and has never really gotten away from being one. And I think that's perfectly acceptable! It's beneficial for several reasons:


Allows for numerous different stories and homebrew worlds without learning a new game system
Is modular enough to allow homebrew mechanics
Is so loosey-goosey with the canon that new players don't have to read 500 pages of lore to even hope to participate (not like that stops gatekeepers, but at least it's not hard-coded into the rules)

But really, this isn't a new problem. Our conception of the Middle Ages is already skewed in much the same way (https://xkcd.com/771/)! Mixing up different settings is a part of how storytelling works, and it's not something we can really keep from happening. You can create other game systems with much tighter continuities, sure...some of my favorite comic stories have been ones where the author specifically locks down the canon and shuts a bunch of other stuff out so their self-contained world is insulated from the hijinks of the other 241 parallel universes. But the DC comics universe as a whole, for example, is always going to be crammed to bursting with wacky crap that would instantly invalidate most stories if thought about for 5 minutes. And loads of people enjoy DC comics for that endless possibility. Just don't think too hard about it.

The SCP Wiki (which features, at last count, 6700+ individual entries of user-submitted fiction) has a mantra that "there is no canon." It doesn't matter if your story contradicts key lore of the 34th-most-popular article on the site, or even the 3rd-most-popular: if readers like it, and they feel it fits the vibe of the SCP Foundation-verse, then it has a place on the wiki. Some of my favorite stories on the wiki would make no damn sense if you tried to reconcile their lore with everything else, or even just the "top" articles. That openness allows for new and unique stories against a familiar-enough backdrop without getting bogged down in meaningless, boring debates about what is and isn't canon. D&D, as another cooperative storytelling project, is perfectly suited to the same approach.

TL;DR - D&D is not a single unified "canon." D&D is, always has been, and always will be, a "vibe."

[Catullus64]

Synthesizing a little bit here from meandean and Sigreid's comments, but it is certainly true that the books themselves often do their best to present character options as well-rooted in a particular setting, and that it is then players who turn other games into grab-bags of these disparate options. What I might like to see is some game text, in a setting-neutral book, emphasizing the importance of groups and DMs moderating this impulse. Perhaps providing an example system whereby players and DMs 'draft' a more narrow selection of magic, fantasy races, and creatures into the game before it begins.

I should probably also clarify that if you like or don't mind playing in a Fantasy Kitchen Sink setting (like Ionathus), that's perfectly alright, and I don't think the game needs to militiate against it. But I don't care for how that feels like the entropic state towards which the game tends to lapse, because of the market pressure to put out more books with player options.

[Hytheter]

The Fantasy Kitchen Sink approach is at once a strength and a flaw, I'd say.

On the one hand, it results in a fun and evocative world where anything goes. For players that allows for a broad range of character concepts and thus enables a high degree of creative expression. For DMs it gives them a lot of flexibility in the kinds of stories they can run and allows them to pull from a wide swathe of familiar tropes with which to create exciting adventures.

I play on a server that embraces this to fullest, and it works perfectly for a play environment with many players and DMs. Trying to police everything to make sure it fits within strict boundaries would be tedious and exhausting, and probably result in a lot of hurt feelings and stifled creativity, likely drastically reducing the number of sessions that are run. As it stands though, it's very liberating to not have to worry about whether everything fits in or makes sense.

Of course, the problem is that it nothing really fits in or makes sense. :P When anything goes, it's hard to keep everything together in a way that feels cohesive. It hurts verisimilitude and immersion, and it can make it feel like nothing really connects to anything else in a meaningful way. I like our server for what it is, but I'm also craving a more tailored campaign as well right now, something that feels a little more concrete and a little less gonzo.

Tailored being a key word, there. If you don't want the baggage that comes in the kitchen sink, then it falls on you and your group to cut the chaff and decide what kind of game, specifically, you want to play. This is actually a strength of the approach from a design level - as mentioned up-thread, it provides a large toolbox from which you can create a more catered experience. Of course, friction may arise from disagreements about what should stay and go (for example, when players want the shiny new toys from the new book), but you'll just have to deal with that like adults.

Failing that, you can play a different game that supports a cohesive and focused setting out of the box. D&D simply will never be that game and really can't be without losing its spirit.

[Amnestic]

By Fantasy Kitchen Sink, I mean a setting wherein a huge array of fantasy creatures and fantastical elements, often with wildly divergent tones and influences, regularly interact and intermix, often at the expense of the verisimilitude of the world.

Okay, so:

The 5e line of D&D products, in responding to the demand for more and more player options, increasingly pushes its game settings, and particularly its PC parties, towards a Fantasy Kitchen Sink.

The only player options which have an effect on the "kitchen sink" effect will be races - the (sub)classes published so far don't do that at all. I don't believe that any of the published races are 'increasingly' pushing their settings towards being a kitchen sink. The official settings that we have published for 5e don't seem to be getting more kitchen sink-y as time goes on.

My basic evidence for this is just "compare it to the list of 3.5 playable races". Since the list of 5e playable races is notably and incredibly smaller, it can't be that their settings are becoming more kitchen sink than they were before.

I don't think that the reactionary response, calling for the trimming down of the options which create this phenomenon, is likely, feasible, or a good idea.

DMs limiting playable races to ensure that the tone of their campaign is consistent is both feasible and a good idea. "I want to play a fairy->sorry, that's not really what this grimdark ravenloft campaign is all about" is both normal and expected (and if the DM does want to let a fairy in, then more power to them, it's their game).


The game should increasingly focus, moving forward, on character and party-building as a collaborative exercise between players and DMs to help parties be reflective of any given setting, rather than the more individualistic process it tends to be now.

Isn't that just called a session 0? I mean, you're not wrong, but also the game is doing that. Tasha's had things like group patrons (pinched from Eberron) and a section on Session Zero which talked through this sort of stuff. Yeah, it'd be nice if that was in the DMG*, and I'd expect that in 5.5 it probably will be but...I don't get your point.

*a book with frankly terrible organisation. Why is 'Running the Game' Chapter 8 instead of Chapter 1 exactly?

[Catullus64]

Okay, so:

The only player options which have an effect on the "kitchen sink" effect will be races - the (sub)classes published so far don't do that at all. I don't believe that any of the published races are 'increasingly' pushing their settings towards being a kitchen sink. The official settings that we have published for 5e don't seem to be getting more kitchen sink-y as time goes on.

My basic evidence for this is just "compare it to the list of 3.5 playable races". Since the list of 5e playable races is notably and incredibly smaller, it can't be that their settings are becoming more kitchen sink than they were before.

I would argue that subclasses affect this too. Note that as the subclass-production cycle (probably the most looked-for chunk of player-facing content) goes on, the more they seem to need to lean on magical powers as the driving theme for the otherwise non-magical classes. It's exceedingly rare for me these days, with a pick-up group, to see a party with more than one non-magical character.

And 'more coherent than latter-era 3.5' is not a particularly difficult bar to clear. I think 5e is starting to undergo the same process that occured in that edition, just to a less severe extent.



DMs limiting playable races to ensure that the tone of their campaign is consistent is both feasible and a good idea. "I want to play a fairy->sorry, that's not really what this grimdark ravenloft campaign is all about" is both normal and expected (and if the DM does want to let a fairy in, then more power to them, it's their game).

I meant that it's not feasible or a good idea for the game itself (as in the product) to be making those cuts.




Isn't that just called a session 0? I mean, you're not wrong, but also the game is doing that. Tasha's had things like group patrons (pinched from Eberron) and a section on Session Zero which talked through this sort of stuff. Yeah, it'd be nice if that was in the DMG*, and I'd expect that in 5.5 it probably will be but...I don't get your point.

*a book with frankly terrible organisation. Why is 'Running the Game' Chapter 8 instead of Chapter 1 exactly?

The strides towards emphasizing session-zeroes is a good one, though the emphasis in the Tasha's section is much more about personal boundaries and comfort than it is about storytelling and setting creation.

[Psyren]

The 5e line of D&D products, in responding to the demand for more and more player options, increasingly pushes its game settings, and particularly its PC parties, towards a Fantasy Kitchen Sink.
"PCs are meant to be exceptional" is, I think, an inadequate response to this criticism.
"D&D has always been a fantasy kitchen sink", while true, is another common response I find somewhat lacking. There's still a noticeable trend.
I don't think that the reactionary response, calling for the trimming down of the options which create this phenomenon, is likely, feasible, or a good idea.
The game should increasingly focus, moving forward, on character and party-building as a collaborative exercise between players and DMs to help parties be reflective of any given setting, rather than the more individualistic process it tends to be now.



I'm not seeing the relationship between (1) and (2), can you explain?

Also, I'm pretty sure (5) IS the expectation, at least when you move away from theorycrafting to sitting down at an actual table.

[Catullus64]

I'm not seeing the relationship between (1) and (2), can you explain?


The reasoining for me goes something like this:

1. If you have more player options without limit on what can be used, people will want to use them, meaning that more PC parties will be very high-magic, and have a lot of the stranger races.
2. This means that PC parties become less and less representative of worlds that are not "Fantasy Kitchen Sink"
3. People often try to respond to this criticism by saying "PCs aren't meant to be typical or representative of the world, they're PCs and therefore abnormal."
4. For me, that is an unsatisfying answer. PCs are the figures that receive by far the most focus in the story; if they're unrepresentative of the world, then the setting itself feels weak.

[Amnestic]

I would argue that subclasses affect this too. Note that as the subclass-production cycle (probably the most looked-for chunk of player-facing content) goes on, the more they seem to need to lean on magical powers as the driving theme for the otherwise non-magical classes. It's exceedingly rare for me these days, with a pick-up group, to see a party with more than one non-magical character.

Those are two entirely different arguments though? A magic subclass isn't any more or less "kitchen sink" than a non-magic subclass when you have wizards and clerics and bards and druids and warlocks as the default.

Wild Magic Barbarian getting added to the game doesn't make it more or less 'kitchen sink' when wild magic sorcerer exists; the magic is already in the setting. Nothing has changed.

Every single class in the PHB has either native spellcasting or at least one magical/supernatural subclass. The 'martials' get EK fighter, AT rogue, Totem barb ("your totem spirit fills you with supernatural might, adding magical fuel to your barbarian rage"), and 4E monk.



I meant that it's not feasible or a good idea for the game itself (as in the product) to be making those cuts.


I'm confused - are you saying the reactionary response to ask for WotC trim down the options? As in, to retroactively remove options from the game? I can't say I've ever heard of that response. Almost all the time the focus is on DMs putting their foot down (which they should if they feel they want to).



The strides towards emphasizing session-zeroes is a good one, though the emphasis in the Tasha's section is much more about personal boundaries and comfort than it is about storytelling and setting creation.

It's both. It could go further, sure, and hopefully they do.

[Catullus64]

Those are two entirely different arguments though? A magic subclass isn't any more or less "kitchen sink" than a non-magic subclass when you have wizards and clerics and bards and druids and warlocks as the default.

Wild Magic Barbarian getting added to the game doesn't make it more or less 'kitchen sink' when wild magic sorcerer exists; the magic is already in the setting. Nothing has changed.

Every single class in the PHB has either native spellcasting or at least one magical/supernatural subclass. The 'martials' get EK fighter, AT rogue, Totem barb ("your totem spirit fills you with supernatural might, adding magical fuel to your barbarian rage"), and 4E monk.


The proportions change as more and more magical options get added without substantial new mundane ones. Yes, even just the PHB is already heavily leaning towards the all-magic PC roadshow; but if you add, for example, half a dozen new magical Barbarian subclasses without adding any non-magical ones*, you are going to see even fewer non-magical barbarians show up at tables. Likewise with Fighters and Rogues. The sheer number of magical options does create more of a kitchen sink effect when they drastically overtake the nonmagical ones in number.

I talk about the Barbarian a lot because it's a concrete example I can cite in my regular play experience. I play with/DM for different groups almost every week in addition to my 'stable' friend group, so I can see at least some trends emerging and changing in party composition over time, and the Barbarian is the most dramatic instance.

[Sorinth]

The proportions change as more and more magical options get added without substantial new mundane ones. Yes, even just the PHB is already heavily leaning towards the all-magic PC roadshow; but if you add, for example, half a dozen new magical Barbarian subclasses without adding any non-magical ones*, you are going to see even fewer non-magical barbarians show up at tables. Likewise with Fighters and Rogues. The sheer number of magical options does create more of a kitchen sink effect when they drastically overtake the nonmagical ones in number.

I talk about the Barbarian a lot because it's a concrete example I can cite in my regular play experience. I play with/DM for different groups almost every week in addition to my 'stable' friend group, so I can see at least some trends emerging and changing in party composition over time, and the Barbarian is the most dramatic instance.

A counter point would be that more options allow the DM to create a less kitchen-sink approach by having a uniting theme. If every/most classes have a wild magic subclass then the DM could easily create a game/world where wild magic is central and is how magic works. When there are only 1 or 2 subclasses that actually becomes harder because you have to exclude so much and/or refluff/homebrew more stuff.

I would also point out that random pick up groups will by nature be more kitchen sink based.

[Sigreid]

Synthesizing a little bit here from meandean and Sigreid's comments, but it is certainly true that the books themselves often do their best to present character options as well-rooted in a particular setting, and that it is then players who turn other games into grab-bags of these disparate options. What I might like to see is some game text, in a setting-neutral book, emphasizing the importance of groups and DMs moderating this impulse. Perhaps providing an example system whereby players and DMs 'draft' a more narrow selection of magic, fantasy races, and creatures into the game before it begins.

I should probably also clarify that if you like or don't mind playing in a Fantasy Kitchen Sink setting (like Ionathus), that's perfectly alright, and I don't think the game needs to militiate against it. But I don't care for how that feels like the entropic state towards which the game tends to lapse, because of the market pressure to put out more books with player options.

AD&D DM's Guide talked about how to build a world. Does the current one not do that?

[Psyren]

The reasoining for me goes something like this:

1. If you have more player options without limit on what can be used, people will want to use them, meaning that more PC parties will be very high-magic, and have a lot of the stranger races.
2. This means that PC parties become less and less representative of worlds that are not "Fantasy Kitchen Sink"
3. People often try to respond to this criticism by saying "PCs aren't meant to be typical or representative of the world, they're PCs and therefore abnormal."
4. For me, that is an unsatisfying answer. PCs are the figures that receive by far the most focus in the story; if they're unrepresentative of the world, then the setting itself feels weak.

I still don't quite understand. Nobody is holding a gun to your DM's head and forcing them to include every published race in their campaign regardless of how uncommon/exotic they might be perceived. (I mean, maybe the players are doing that, but that doesn't sound like the healthiest gaming environment if so.)

Less facetiously, shifting (or at least providing ways to shift) more settings towards racial kitchen-sink is almost always the superior business move. When it comes to first-party races, I broadly envision three kinds of playgroup:


1) Those whose DMs want to restrict what's available (for power concerns, theme concerns, simplicity or something else) and won't budge.
2) Those whose DMs are open to everything official being available, and will do their best to make it work in the campaign.
3) Those whose DMs might be open but may need some convincing/justification for certain races, or at least guidance on where to put them and how NPCs might react to them.

If WotC's goal is to sell books with new race options, (1) is largely a lost cause; their best bet is hope that eventually, some or all of the players shift them into (3).

(2) are fine customers for new race content; a bunch of effort on justifying / placing the races probably isn't needed for them, but it likely won't hurt either.

(3) are the ones where they get the biggest bang per lore dollar spent. This is the bucket that wants to know things like Aarakocra tend to live near elvish settlements, or Aasimar can spontaneously appear in any humanoid population (mostly human) even generations later, or Goliaths concentrate in mountainous areas with lots of giants, that kind of thing. These are the playgroups you get to spend money by making the setting more Kitchen-Sink, and who won't if you don't.

What it boils down to, is that keeping (1) happy by not including any justifications or expansions to the existing settings also has no real benefits. The folks in that group aren't going to buy more of every other book to make up for the race books they wouldn't have bought anyway. Moreover, producing those race books is unlikely to get (1) to quit the game. Meanwhile, more race books make (2) and (3) happy - especially (3) who need not just the content itself but the guidance on incorporating it - and they will buy more. Thus, more race books wins.

[Sigreid]

I still don't quite understand. Nobody is holding a gun to your DM's head and forcing them to include every published race in their campaign regardless of how uncommon/exotic they might be perceived. (I mean, maybe the players are doing that, but that doesn't sound like the healthiest gaming environment if so.)



You clearly don't know my players!

[Amnestic]

The proportions change as more and more magical options get added without substantial new mundane ones. Yes, even just the PHB is already heavily leaning towards the all-magic PC roadshow; but if you add, for example, half a dozen new magical Barbarian subclasses without adding any non-magical ones*, you are going to see even fewer non-magical barbarians show up at tables. Likewise with Fighters and Rogues. The sheer number of magical options does create more of a kitchen sink effect when they drastically overtake the nonmagical ones in number.

But like I said, "nonmagical" and "kitchen sink" aren't the same thing. All the 5e settings are explicitly wide (eg. eberron) and/or high (eg. FR) magical settings. Adding more magical subclasses does nothing to change the setting(s). It is not creating a situation where you have "wildly divergent tones and influences" that "regularly interact and intermix" any more than already existed. The tone and influences are consistent, because as a baseline the setting is magical.

If you are talking about not liking adding more magical subclasses that is a different argument to believing the 5e is moving towards a kitchen sink for its settings.

[KorvinStarmast]

1. Like when they put character options into modules, they're really just trying to tempt you to buy a product you may not be interested in. Yes. :smalltongue:

3. D&D as a whole is a tool box that is meant to be used by groups to create the game and setting that they want...The only wrong way to play is to not have fun together. In a nutshell.

D&D, as the codifier and most popular among modern TTRPGs, has accumulated decades of clutter and vestigial design choices - many of which became accidental favorites and defined the game in numerous ways - which means D&D started as a hodgepodge and has never really gotten away from being one. This is doubly supported by Jon Peterson's most recent book.

TL;DR - D&D is not a single unified "canon." D&D is, always has been, and always will be, a "vibe." I remain unhappy with the modern obsession with 'canon' ... but then, I know that Han shot first. :smalltongue: (I saw the movie when it first came out).

Nobody is holding a gun to your DM's head and forcing them to include every published race And if they try, the door gets pointed to by this DM.

[Psyren]

This is doubly supported by Jon Peterson's most recent book.

Which one is that if you don't mind me asking?

[Catullus64]

Which one is that if you don't mind me asking?

I think he's referring to Playing at the World. It's a great read.

[KorvinStarmast]

I think he's referring to Playing at the World. It's a great read. Nope, it is his new one: The Elusive Shift.
@Psyren: sorry, I had a brain fart as I was writing that, and the phone rang, and failed to include the title.

[LibraryOgre]

Generally, I agree; D&D has trended, really since Unearthed Arcana in 1985, towards providing a lot more options directly to players, allowing a huge variety of characters that draw it away from it's humanocentric and Tolkien roots (those being two separate roots). In a sense, this contributes to every campaign defaulting to "use whatever you want", especially as player input into the campaign has grown... the expectation is not "This is the story the DM wants to run", but "this is a story we're creating together."

But, in general, I prefer this.

In talking about old school games recently (and elsewhere), I observed that it is a lot easier to REMOVE things that exist from a game, rather than add things to it. "Ok, this game, there's ONLY humans, tieflings, aasimar, and genasi. No dwarves, no elves, nothing but those four races." You'll have some people who grumble, but it's a lot easier to take everything else out than it is to homebrew all the races you don't have. Want a PC orc? That's built into the system. Don't want PC orcs? Take them out.

To an extent, I also think this goes back to player buy-in of a given setting. Back in 2e, if I wanted a specific setting with certain limitations, I could point to it. "We're playing Dark Sun, with these races, these classes, and these alterations to the classes." "Ok, we're playing Dragonlance, so here are alterations to the dragonborn to be draconians, there are no tieflings, halflings are now limited to these kender subraces, etc." In 5e, that shift to player participation in game creation really dilutes this; if we're playing in Dark Sun and you ABSOLUTELY must play a gnome, the expectation is that the DM will make it work somehow. And, of course, you can... but if players don't buy in to the world, then you have a disconnect between them and the DM, between the world THEY want and the world that the DM wants... and, really, I tend to side with the DM in this. They're going to be the ones putting in the most work of world creation, and some reasonable limitations are not out of line to make the world the DM wants, even if the actual progress of the plot is in the player's hands.

To an extent, I see it is a matter of roles. The DM's job is to tell the players what situation they find themselves in, and that includes a lot of world information. The players' job is to react to that situation.

[KorvinStarmast]

The DM's job is to tell the players what situation they find themselves in, and that includes a lot of world information. The players' job is to react to that situation. I would say 'adapt' rather than react, but I find myself in agreement with pretty much all of your post.

I still think that PHB +1 as a model was the better idea, for AL, but as I sincerely doubt I'll ever play an AL game in the near future it won't matter for me.

[Sorinth]

Generally, I agree; D&D has trended, really since Unearthed Arcana in 1985, towards providing a lot more options directly to players, allowing a huge variety of characters that draw it away from it's humanocentric and Tolkien roots (those being two separate roots). In a sense, this contributes to every campaign defaulting to "use whatever you want", especially as player input into the campaign has grown... the expectation is not "This is the story the DM wants to run", but "this is a story we're creating together."

But, in general, I prefer this.

In talking about old school games recently (and elsewhere), I observed that it is a lot easier to REMOVE things that exist from a game, rather than add things to it. "Ok, this game, there's ONLY humans, tieflings, aasimar, and genasi. No dwarves, no elves, nothing but those four races." You'll have some people who grumble, but it's a lot easier to take everything else out than it is to homebrew all the races you don't have. Want a PC orc? That's built into the system. Don't want PC orcs? Take them out.

To an extent, I also think this goes back to player buy-in of a given setting. Back in 2e, if I wanted a specific setting with certain limitations, I could point to it. "We're playing Dark Sun, with these races, these classes, and these alterations to the classes." "Ok, we're playing Dragonlance, so here are alterations to the dragonborn to be draconians, there are no tieflings, halflings are now limited to these kender subraces, etc." In 5e, that shift to player participation in game creation really dilutes this; if we're playing in Dark Sun and you ABSOLUTELY must play a gnome, the expectation is that the DM will make it work somehow. And, of course, you can... but if players don't buy in to the world, then you have a disconnect between them and the DM, between the world THEY want and the world that the DM wants... and, really, I tend to side with the DM in this. They're going to be the ones putting in the most work of world creation, and some reasonable limitations are not out of line to make the world the DM wants, even if the actual progress of the plot is in the player's hands.

To an extent, I see it is a matter of roles. The DM's job is to tell the players what situation they find themselves in, and that includes a lot of world information. The players' job is to react to that situation.

If anything I'd say the trend is away from player centric books, a quick glance at my shelf of 2nd edition books (By no means a complete collection) shows 12 player centric books, and 3 DM facing book (Outside of the core books), 3e it's the same most books are player centric. But 5e is actually quite different, not only is there much slower release schedule but the books tend to be hybrid books with both player and dm content. For example, over half of Tasha's book is DM stuff like Patrons, Magic Items, Magical/Supernatural Regions, Puzzles, etc..., for Xanathar's it was something like 40% DM content. The setting based books are similar, some player focused content and a bunch of DM stuff. I'm not sure there's anything like the old Complete ... Handbooks that were 85% player focused content and the rest being optional combat rules.

[Psyren]

I still think that PHB +1 as a model was the better idea, for AL, but as I sincerely doubt I'll ever play an AL game in the near future it won't matter for me.

They had to move away from that eventually!

[MrStabby]

By Fantasy Kitchen Sink, I mean a setting wherein a huge array of fantasy creatures and fantastical elements, often with wildly divergent tones and influences, regularly interact and intermix, often at the expense of the verisimilitude of the world.

Yeah, I broadly agree. If ound it a point of a regret as a DM - my mistake, but shaped by the system. I had a homebrew world with a bit of everyting in it, no strong themes and I found as a DM I couldn't build a strong aesthetic. A bit of a workshop here, a library there, ancient stone tablets elsewhere - it felt like a setting between different landscapes and different epochs. It felt confused. Of course it ony felt confused once we were knee deep in it. The fantasy creatures is less of an issue to me than most of the player options though as I feel there is a lot less pressure to use them than there is to allow player options.

I quite like the settings books. In fact I would like more content tied to settings styles and an expectation that some well defined subset of content will be available to be played in any given game. Not just classes or subclasses but that certain spells are relatively setting dependant or similar.

Honestly, now I have made these mistakes I don't really have so much of a problem building a beter world, but what I do need help with is communicating this to my players and that I am not out to spoil their fun by aiming for a tighter thematic focus.

[Anonymouswizard]

There's nothing wrong with kitchen sink settings, but D&D has little restraint. This can be a good thing or a bad thing, and it really depends on your viewpoint.

At a system level there's not really much wrong with designing for [genre] kitchen sink. The Vortex system is a great non-D&D example, you can throw pretty much any pulp sci-fi alien or character at it and come out with something playable, even if you sometimes have to go into NPC-only abilities or past the. ~50CP starting character recommendation. As a system it has some problems, notably skills are dramatically overpriced compared to Attributes, but it works and it lets itself be constructed into various settings (although the two big ones, Doctor Who and Rocket Age, are both kitchen sinks).

On a setting level it mainly matters on of having eight types of elf gets in the way for your group. I really think that many systems, D&D included, could do well with including more formalised game creation tools. It doesn't matter if griffons exist in the world, what matters is do griffons feature in this game. In general the less variety there is the easier it is to make the game feel serious.

Also D&D is missing some pretty big fantasy tropes despite being a kitchen sink. As one example, where is my dedicated shapeshifter class? (No, Moon Druid doesn't cover it, it has too much spellcasting.) I guess Changelings will have to suffice for my shapeshifting fantasies for now

[KorvinStarmast]

They had to move away from that eventually! As a DM, a curse that I have to embrace yet again, no they didn't.
I will never DM AL, now that they have done that. Never.
It penalizes DMs.
You don't pay me enough for that sums up my feelings on that.

Now, if you'll pay me 15 dollars, US, per hour (prep time and at table time) we can talk. Until then, no, you cannot demand that of me.

(Yeah, I saw a local burger flipping joint offering 15 dollars per hour recently).

[False God]

Because D&D doesn't promote roleplaying. It simply allows you to engage in it.

There is an important distinction.

D&D is an incredibly low-investment system. Roleplaying is generally high-investment by nature. Both on the creator and player side. You have to make detailed worlds, well-developed NPCs, and have systems to support that. Likewise players need to make well-developed characters, engage with the world and have systems to guide and support them doing that.

Generally speaking, D&D is "Grab a sheet, roll some dice, have fun." It's sort of like Whose Line is it Anyway. Everything is made up and the points don't matter.

[Hytheter]

Roleplaying is generally high-investment by nature. Both on the creator and player side. You have to make detailed worlds, well-developed NPCs, and have systems to support that. Likewise players need to make well-developed characters, engage with the world and have systems to guide and support them doing that.

None of these, except the bolded, are required to roleplay.

[animorte]

Generally speaking, D&D is "Grab a sheet, roll some dice, have fun." It's sort of like Whose Line is it Anyway. Everything is made up and the points don't matter.
Be careful with that kind of talk around here. The points are easily the most important aspect of this game to a great deal of residents. You'll typically discover this in the threads built up to an impressive double-digit page count featuring the same people arguing over those very points, rarely encountering a consensus.


None of these, except the bolded, are required to roleplay.
That's a bold statement from you, which I happen to agree with.

[Anonymouswizard]

It's sort of like Whose Line is it Anyway. Everything is made up and the points don't matter.

Never got why they said that in the US version, it's no different than any other panel show.

[Psyren]

Never got why they said that in the US version, it's no different than any other panel show.

I'm not sure the US had any other improv game shows, at least not that achieved WL's widespread appeal.

Plenty of improv sketch shows (SNL being the Ur example of course) but few improv game shows.

[sithlordnergal]

I'll be honest, I feel like the Kitchen Sink approach is actually a benefit, not a detriment, to the system. Yes, there are a lot of things that don't exactly make sense in a narrative sense if you have a no holds barred game, but if you're going into a game where everything is allowed and nothing is restricted then you kinda need to accept that verisimilitude might suffer slightly due to having a Orc Bladesinger/Artificer with 16 to 20 Int. That's just the nature of games without any limits.

However, by having all of those options you end up with a far wider amount of possible games and worlds you can create. And you can do it all without homebrew. Before the Artificer came around, you didn't really have a way for players to really create magic items. There was no real "engineer" class as it were. Sure, you could use Xanathar's item creation rules, but those are kind of clunky to say the least. A decent starting point to be sure, but in need of some tweaking to really get working. And of course you can always homebrew a new class/subclass/ect., but you need to test those and make sure they're well balanced. If they're under tuned, then no-one will use what you made. If they're over tuned, it could break the game. All in all, its a lot of effort to do that, and it ends up being far easier to just point at a class and go "There's the Artificer, you can be an engineer that way".

And as Mark posted earlier, its simple to remove things from the game. If there are no Artificers in the world you're making, you can just ban them. Same with any other class, spell, race, feat, ect. And by doing so, you can make a world with verisimilitude via those restrictions.

[NRSASD]

I agree, by and large, with the argument that D&D makes a kitchen sink out of its game world, and that this kitchen sinkification is harmful to the creation of strong themes and aesthetics. While I absolutely agree that D&D makes it very easy to ban things you don’t want, it also doesn’t provide any guidance on the subject. I really wish there were more campaign settings that existed as examples to make this work, like a 20 page write up on a world with no clerics, sorcerers, and wizards, only warlocks, bards, and druids. What society would look like, what their relationship to magic would be, etc. I know I’m totally capable of doing this myself, but having that framework to jump off of would make it so much easier and more rewarding when one loots it for ideas.

The other thing I dislike is how independent and self contained classes are, with the artificer being the prime example of this. Being an artificer, one might expect that they make things, but they don’t! They don’t buy or scavenge materials, they conjure them out of thin air with magic while waving their tools about. The alchemist is especially egregious, where they have an empty bottle that magically fills once a day. My friend, that’s not what I think of when I hear of alchemy.

The reason this occurs, far as I can tell, is because WOTC doesn’t trust DMs to not hamstring any crafting classes by declaring they can’t find any materials, and WOTC is unwilling to do any work developing any mechanics to support a crafting lifestyle. Granted, I despise wealth by level and measuring all crafting resources in gold pieces, but at least that was something.

The reason this bothers me is because WOTC slams the door shut on another avenue of interacting with the game world, yet another way of spending player gold, all in the interests of using the rules to make it more difficult for jerk DMs to be jerks. Which, I’m sorry to say, isn’t going to succeed.

[Amnestic]

The reason this occurs, far as I can tell, is because WOTC doesn’t trust DMs to not hamstring any crafting classes by declaring they can’t find any materials, and WOTC is unwilling to do any work developing any mechanics to support a crafting lifestyle. Granted, I despise wealth by level and measuring all crafting resources in gold pieces, but at least that was something.


It is perhaps that, but if I were to more generous it might be that they simply don't want to incentivise that style of play. While D&D can be "anything", it is still at its core heroic fantasy - dungeons and dragons, not draft-tables and dragons. Characters are meant to be spending their days doing heroic stuff usually, not sat around at home making 15 Wands of Magic Missile that they can then resell at a markup to allow them to fund their excel spreadsheet.

Having a classes efficacy vary wildly based upon available downtime and DM permissiveness just isn't conducive to a good play experience, in my opinion.

[Cikomyr2]

Dnd is a system that has to try to be everything. Therefore rules are put in meant to accomodate as much stuff as possible.

People then leap to the conclusion "its in the book therefore i can use it" without first checking with the DM if it fits the world/story.

Like, say i want to create my own OP where there are only 10 dragons in the world- one of each original 10 colors - and they rebirth in dragon eggs everytime they die, fine. But then someone brings a rulebook that says they can have a crystal baby dragon as a familiar; i can either shatter my player's dream at the same time as i shatter the mini they brough, or i have to find a way to make it fit the lore somehow.

[NRSASD]

While D&D can be "anything", it is still at its core heroic fantasy - dungeons and dragons, not draft-tables and dragons. Characters are meant to be spending their days doing heroic stuff usually, not sat around at home making 15 Wands of Magic Missile that they can then resell at a markup to allow them to fund their excel spreadsheet.

Hah, I was thinking the same thing just now. Manufacturing permanent magical items en masse very much disturbs the intended order of things, I completely agree. This is the primary reason I disliked the idea of measuring crafting materials in gold pieces, because magic and money should not mix, lest we spawn arcano-capitalism.

More I was arguing for a class that can easily produce potions and scrolls. Or has a magnum opus they need to spend considerable effort improving, because I also want to avoid the “guess what guys, I hit level 6 last night, and now my hitherto ordinary boots have wings and a harpoon cannon!” paradox that artificers create.

I agree, the 5E artificer can be plugged into any game and function mechanically just fine. But that functionality comes at a pretty high cost of verisimilitude, because the archetypes it is emulating require significant sacrifices of time and resources on the character’s behalf, something the artificer does not.

{/blue text} In short, a 5E artificer is Ironman, but he lives in a dumpster and makes his high-tech suits out of a fast food wrapper and a moldy banana overnight. And I don’t like that >: ( {/endbluetext}

[Yakk]

I would argue that subclasses affect this too. Note that as the subclass-production cycle (probably the most looked-for chunk of player-facing content) goes on, the more they seem to need to lean on magical powers as the driving theme for the otherwise non-magical classes. It's exceedingly rare for me these days, with a pick-up group, to see a party with more than one non-magical character.
Magic is Better (tm).

In the 4e D&D cycle, non-magical "action hero" style builds existed. There was a huge negative response; a fighter that was so strong they could suplex a dragon, but was otherwise mundane, wasn't acceptable.

They also restricted what a wizard could do, so they wouldn't outshine that fighter who could suplex a dragon.

The result wasn't a marketing success.

So we get 5e. There are a few purely mundane options that, well, learn to hit things better and a bit harder mostly. And most of the rest is magical. Because in T3/T4, keeping up with someone bending reality with magic with "I can wrastle bears good, but nothing bigger" is a bit tricky.

The design space of "competent T3/T4 PC" and "PC with some supernatural abilities" is almost a complete overlap.

[Catullus64]

Magic is Better (tm).

In the 4e D&D cycle, non-magical "action hero" style builds existed. There was a huge negative response; a fighter that was so strong they could suplex a dragon, but was otherwise mundane, wasn't acceptable.

They also restricted what a wizard could do, so they wouldn't outshine that fighter who could suplex a dragon.

The result wasn't a marketing success.

So we get 5e. There are a few purely mundane options that, well, learn to hit things better and a bit harder mostly. And most of the rest is magical. Because in T3/T4, keeping up with someone bending reality with magic with "I can wrastle bears good, but nothing bigger" is a bit tricky.

The design space of "competent T3/T4 PC" and "PC with some supernatural abilities" is almost a complete overlap.

This isn't another thread to re-litigate whether and how mundane PCs fit into the game at higher levels; goodness knows there are enough of those already. You don't need to look at higher levels or gameplay balance to see the imbalance in numbers between magical and non-magical options, and to conclude that this will have a corresponding impact on what actually gets played.

[Yakk]

This isn't another thread to re-litigate whether and how mundane PCs fit into the game at higher levels; goodness knows there are enough of those already. You don't need to look at higher levels or gameplay balance to see the imbalance in numbers between magical and non-magical options, and to conclude that this will have a corresponding impact on what actually gets played.
Sure, but the options -- subclasses -- are extended features that stretch from T1 through to T4.

A subclass that starts out mundane and becomes magical at T3/T4 seems a bit strange.

So subclasses designed to work in T3/T4 end up magical usually. And starts off in T1 with something minor.

Also, if you have a mundane class, the subclass is the primary way to "magic it up". Tasha's "optional features" is another way, I suppose.

Mundane feats are another thing that are options. And new mundane feats show up (slasher feat for example) with reasonable frequency. They don't have the problem of having to carry character weight until T3/T4 as they are one-spot features.

[Amnestic]

You don't need to look at higher levels or gameplay balance to see the imbalance in numbers between magical and non-magical options, and to conclude that this will have a corresponding impact on what actually gets played.

Rogues have more non-magical than magical (6 to 3). Fighters are 50/50 with 5 of each. Barbarians have more magical than non-magical (5 to 3), though it's not like more non-magical aren't being printed - Beast was in Tasha's.

Not exactly a huge imbalance in numbers here, I gotta say.

[Catullus64]

Rogues have more non-magical than magical (6 to 3). Fighters are 50/50 with 5 of each. Barbarians have more magical than non-magical (5 to 3), though it's not like more non-magical aren't being printed - Beast was in Tasha's.

Not exactly a huge imbalance in numbers here, I gotta say.

It feels bigger to me because those three classes are the only ones whose core class features are wholly non-magical.

And I'm not trying to advance the claim that this is especially new. The oldest thing in existence to be called Dungeons & Dragons had two magic-using classes to one nonmagical. It doesn't have to be a new or unprecedented trend for me to consider it annoying.

[Psyren]

Magic is Better (tm).

In the 4e D&D cycle, non-magical "action hero" style builds existed. There was a huge negative response; a fighter that was so strong they could suplex a dragon, but was otherwise mundane, wasn't acceptable.

They also restricted what a wizard could do, so they wouldn't outshine that fighter who could suplex a dragon.

The result wasn't a marketing success.

So we get 5e. There are a few purely mundane options that, well, learn to hit things better and a bit harder mostly. And most of the rest is magical. Because in T3/T4, keeping up with someone bending reality with magic with "I can wrastle bears good, but nothing bigger" is a bit tricky.

The design space of "competent T3/T4 PC" and "PC with some supernatural abilities" is almost a complete overlap.


It feels bigger to me because those three classes are the only ones whose core class features are wholly non-magical.

And I'm not trying to advance the claim that this is especially new. The oldest thing in existence to be called Dungeons & Dragons had two magic-using classes to one nonmagical. It doesn't have to be a new or unprecedented trend for me to consider it annoying.

They're ALL magical, at least to a degree. Yes, even Champion. Yes, even Thief. Yes, even Battlerager. There is no such thing as a "purely mundane" PC in this game.

I agree 4e went too far by ripping away any interface between martial classes and some of the more spell-like powers. I don't want a repeat of that. But I think it's easier than it's ever been to make PCs, regardless of class, feel like what they are - superhuman/preternatural by the standards of our world. And that preternatural quality is called magic, even if just the "background magic" mentioned in Sage Advice.

[Hytheter]

Yeah, you lose the right to call yourself non-magical when you can hit the ground at terminal velocity only to get up and walk away like it's nothing.

[Dr.Samurai]

Ah, the old "mundane strong and tough heroes in the setting are just as magical as spellcasters and heroes that can change shape and charge their weapons with elemental energy and use rune magic, it's a distinction without a difference!" canard...

Anyways, isn't the setting kitchen sink by virtue of all the lore saying it's a shared multiverse where everything exists in every setting? Didn't the setting make this shift recently?

[Psyren]

Ah, the old "mundane strong and tough heroes in the setting are just as magical as spellcasters and heroes that can change shape and charge their weapons with elemental energy and use rune magic, it's a distinction without a difference!" canard...

Bold is very clearly a strawman as I even explicitly said "to a degree." Unless your "canard" comment was aimed at someone else's post.


Anyways, isn't the setting kitchen sink by virtue of all the lore saying it's a shared multiverse where everything exists in every setting? Didn't the setting make this shift recently?

I do think this is a point worth mentioning. For good or ill, multiverses are the zeitgeist of nerd culture right now - not just the MCU and Sony, but also the DCEU, Arrowverse, Umbrella Academy, even wholly original adaptations and properties like EEAO. WotC wanting to jump on that bandwagon is just good business sense.

[Anonymouswizard]

I'm not sure the US had any other improv game shows, at least not that achieved WL's widespread appeal.

Plenty of improv sketch shows (SNL being the Ur example of course) but few improv game shows.

To be fair, the modern UK (and I think RoI) panel game tradition stems mostly from Clue, which I don't think has ever been properly exported to the US. Although I vastly oversimplified, there are panel shows in which the points do matter.


Dnd is a system that has to try to be everything. Therefore rules are put in meant to accomodate as much stuff as possible.

Then where's my D&D space opera!?

Oh wait, that's a thing again isn't it? I retract my complaint.


People then leap to the conclusion "its in the book therefore i can use it" without first checking with the DM if it fits the world/story.

Like, say i want to create my own OP where there are only 10 dragons in the world- one of each original 10 colors - and they rebirth in dragon eggs everytime they die, fine. But then someone brings a rulebook that says they can have a crystal baby dragon as a familiar; i can either shatter my player's dream at the same time as i shatter the mini they brough, or i have to find a way to make it fit the lore somehow.

Which is why D&D would benefit from good world creation tools, especially group facing ones rather than GM facing ones. Sadly 5e is so popular that the designers have no motivation to improve it, even if it's any kind of 'let's all agree as to what we want this campaign to be' tool.

Plus I'll throw my hat in the ring as to many short settings. I think it's a great thing to showcase versatility and the benefit of limitations, some of my favourite settings are from the Fate Worlds series, which tend to be 40-60 much smaller pages (roughly A5).

[Catullus64]

Bold is very clearly a strawman as I even explicitly said "to a degree." Unless your "canard" comment was aimed at someone else's post.


Ok, but that 'degree' which you were arguing still contained an implicit claim: that because Thieves and Champions and the like surpass real-life human capabilities, every character is in some way magical, and therefore it's not worth complaining that the 'non-magical' role is shrinking in the game. (Such a complaint being what prompted your remark about Champions and Thieves in the first place.)

Am I wrong that's what you meant? If it is, then you are in fact echoing the sentiment of which Dr. Samurai accuses you, and which I find so disagreeable.

[Psyren]

Ok, but that 'degree' which you were arguing still contained an implicit claim: that because Thieves and Champions and the like surpass real-life human capabilities, every character is in some way magical, and therefore it's not worth complaining that the 'non-magical' role is shrinking in the game. (Such a complaint being what prompted your remark about Champions and Thieves in the first place.)

Am I wrong that's what you meant? If it is, then you are in fact echoing the sentiment of which Dr. Samurai accuses you, and which I find so disagreeable.

I never said "it's not worth complaining." I do want martials to get more toys. I just don't want them to become spellcasters-by-another-name. And part of what pushes us down the latter road is the belief that some martials aren't magical in a game where everyone should be.

[KorvinStarmast]

The usual hobby horses are being trotted out an ridden. Reminds me of the Ascot races I saw on TV this weekend, except that the horses are metaphorical.

[Catullus64]

I never said "it's not worth complaining." I do want martials to get more toys. I just don't want them to become spellcasters-by-another-name. And part of what pushes us down the latter road is the belief that some martials aren't magical in a game where everyone should be.

Even with that distinction made, I still can't get behind this equivocation between "preternatural relative to the real world" and "magic." I don't watch action films, see the hero do impossible stuff, and say "ah, yes, magic." I say "ah, yes, the willing suspension of disbelief." Lots of things in D&D are unrealistic, but because fictional game, not because diegetic magic.

Even if we agree to disagree vis-a-vis this debate (which I suspect will have to be the case), can we agree that there's at least an aesthetic of non-magic which certain classes (Fighter, Rogue, Barbarian) partly exist to service? And can I therefore reasonably claim that this aesthetic starts to get underserved when new options don't maintain a certain proportion between it and the more aesthetically-magical?

[Psyren]

Even with that distinction made, I still can't get behind this equivocation between "preternatural relative to the real world" and "magic." I don't watch action films, see the hero do impossible stuff, and say "ah, yes, magic." I say "ah, yes, the willing suspension of disbelief." Lots of things in D&D are unrealistic, but because fictional game, not because diegetic magic.

I think this is quibbling over labels honestly. But very well - I view things like Action Surge and Rage as tapping into a kind of magic (or at least a store of personal energy/focus that is akin to it), you don't, we can agree to disagree.


Even if we agree to disagree vis-a-vis this debate (which I suspect will have to be the case), can we agree that there's at least an aesthetic of non-magic which certain classes (Fighter, Rogue, Barbarian) partly exist to service? And can I therefore reasonably claim that this aesthetic starts to get underserved when new options don't maintain a certain proportion between it and the more aesthetically-magical?

Honest question here - what more can they really do with the "aesthetically non-magical?" There just isn't a lot of design space in Champion 2.0 compared to stuff that fails your litmus like Psionic Fighter, Psionic Rogue, Rune Fighter, Giant Barbarian, Shapeshift Barbarian, Soul Rogue, Dragon Monk, etc etc. If nothing else, the latter is far more interesting.

[Dr.Samurai]

Sorry, I didn't quote someone to avoid singling anyone out lol, but I was not referring to Psyren's comments.

I think that when discussing the topic, we should acknowledge that generally people are speaking to a certain kind of "magic". So yes, it's unbelievable to survive a fiery or acidic breath weapon, or go six days without eating and be at peak efficiency, or attacking so many times in six seconds. But I think for a lot of people the traits associated with "action hero" are not counted when these conversations talk about magic vs non-magic characters. And if someone doesn't agree with that, that's perfectly okay, but we should at least acknowledge the position the other person is coming from.

So if I say "I like to play non-magical fighters" and someone says "your fighter is magical because they can fall from 100ft in the air and survive the impact", we're not really talking about the same thing.

It's not to say one person is right, or one person is wrong, but it's apples to apples for some, and apples to oranges for others.

@Psyren: What is EEAO? Apart from the Environmental Education Association of Oregon?

[Catullus64]

Honest question here - what more can they really do with the "aesthetically non-magical?" There just isn't a lot of design space in Champion 2.0 compared to stuff that fails your litmus like Psionic Fighter, Psionic Rogue, Rune Fighter, Giant Barbarian, Shapeshift Barbarian, Soul Rogue, Dragon Monk, etc etc. If nothing else, the latter is far more interesting.

Honest Answers, just off the top of my head:


Barbarian emphasizing Dexterity, either in melee or at range.
Recycle 4th-edition Warlord ideas in a more robust fashion than the Battlemaster.
Any Fighter/Barbarian/Rogue subclass with companion-as-defining-subclass-feature similar to the Beastmaster Ranger.
Monk subclasses that emphasize martial-arts style rather than spell-like abilities, like what they did with the Drunken Master.
Rogues with in-combat skill gimmicks, like the Thief's Fast Hands and the Inquisitive's Insightful fighting, but with other skills.
Race-specific warrior archetypes, like the Battlerager (Fat chance on this one happening now, I know).
Low-magic healer class (to the extent that making potions is magic).


I'm not gonna stand by every one of those as the most fecund idea, but it's not too difficult to come up with mechanical toys that can exist in the non-magic sphere and then fit them to a theme. It's just a little bit more difficult than "take existing magical theme (Giants! Psionics! Feywild!) and bolt it onto the base martial class", which seems like WotC's default approach to iterating on these classes. Clearly a matter of different tastes, but "Fighter with a dash of X magic" is the less interesting approach for me.

[Psyren]

Sorry, I didn't quote someone to avoid singling anyone out lol, but I was not referring to Psyren's comments.

I think that when discussing the topic, we should acknowledge that generally people are speaking to a certain kind of "magic". So yes, it's unbelievable to survive a fiery or acidic breath weapon, or go six days without eating and be at peak efficiency, or attacking so many times in six seconds. But I think for a lot of people the traits associated with "action hero" are not counted when these conversations talk about magic vs non-magic characters. And if someone doesn't agree with that, that's perfectly okay, but we should at least acknowledge the position the other person is coming from.

So if I say "I like to play non-magical fighters" and someone says "your fighter is magical because they can fall from 100ft in the air and survive the impact", we're not really talking about the same thing.

It's not to say one person is right, or one person is wrong, but it's apples to apples for some, and apples to oranges for others.

I acknowledge that those aren't considered magic in the same way by the same people but my point is that there's a ceiling on designing in that direction. Either you run into "Look guys, we made a mundane fighter that can fall 200ft. without dying, so different!" or you run into "Look guys, we made a mundane fighter that can slice through the metaphysical concept of loyalty and mind control everyone around him!" And I see both of those as functionally being dead ends from a design perspective.

So instead let's just embrace the idea that Fighters learning different kinds of magic (like runes, echoes, dragons, giants etc) is perfectly okay thematically, and continue exploring that. Which it looks like WotC are doing.


@Psyren: What is EEAO? Apart from the Environmental Education Association of Oregon?

Everything Everywhere All At Once, the Michelle Yeoh/Jamie Lee Curtis multiverse movie that dropped earlier this year

[Psyren]

Honest Answers, just off the top of my head:


Barbarian emphasizing Dexterity, either in melee or at range.
Recycle 4th-edition Warlord ideas in a more robust fashion than the Battlemaster.
Any Fighter/Barbarian/Rogue subclass with companion-as-defining-subclass-feature similar to the Beastmaster Ranger.
Monk subclasses that emphasize martial-arts style rather than spell-like abilities, like what they did with the Drunken Master.
Rogues with in-combat skill gimmicks, like the Thief's Fast Hands and the Inquisitive's Insightful fighting, but with other skills.
Race-specific warrior archetypes, like the Battlerager (Fat chance on this one happening now, I know).
Low-magic healer class (to the extent that making potions is magic).


I'm not gonna stand by every one of those as the most fecund idea, but it's not too difficult to come up with mechanical toys that can exist in the non-magic sphere and then fit them to a theme. It's just a little bit more difficult than "take existing magical theme (Giants! Psionics! Feywild!) and bolt it onto the base martial class", which seems like WotC's default approach to iterating on these classes. Clearly a matter of different tastes, but "Fighter with a dash of X magic" is the less interesting approach for me.

I don't think many (any?) of these address your actual complaint though. It'd be nice to have, say, Dexbarians or companion-having martials, but the former doesn't move the needle and the latter would need to be magical (e.g. a morphic bound spirit like every other pet subclass) to have the impact you want.

Warlord is the closest to a true "mundane" expansion, but it would also take a lot of work imo. That was one of the primary culprits for "martial spellcaster" disconnects from 4e.

Race-locked anything is a step backwards. Hard pass.

We have low-magic healing via Alchemist and Mercy etc.

[Chronos]

Just because every sort of fantasy is accommodated in the rules, does not mean that every table needs to use every sort of fantasy. If everyone in the group decides that that they don't want to play My Little Pony, then you can just choose not to use the Heroes of Equestria supplement. But by the same token, if everyone in the group decides that they do want to play My Little Pony, then you can use HoE, and decide not to use almost everything else.


Disclaimer: I don't know if Heroes of Equestria actually exists

[Dr.Samurai]

So instead let's just embrace the idea that Fighters learning different kinds of magic (like runes, echoes, dragons, giants etc) is perfectly okay thematically, and continue exploring that. Which it looks like WotC are doing.
I'm not saying don't make more "tack on x D&D monster/element to y features" subclasses. I generally agree with you that providing them and letting people choose to play them or not is more ideal than not making them.

The problem for me is that as the game evolves and no new mundane options come out, the few mundane options we have won't keep up. Champion is barely a subclass, Berserker was always a problem, and Rogues get 1 feature for the levels where most campaigns live and die. The game now is quite different than what it was when it released and new subclasses are adding a lot more than any of these do. With the exception of the Battlemaster, which makes sense since it is a class turned into a subclass. But even the battlemaster can use some reimagining.

But I also agree with you that there's only so far to go in that direction. Part of the reason for that is how limited (or open ended, depending on your view) combat is, and skills as well. There's not much to grab onto there to have subclasses interact with in new ways without running into "this was left up to the DM before, now this subclass is codifying it".

So the best I can hope for is a revamping of the current mundane subclasses to bring them into the current meta, but that's a long shot too.

Everything Everywhere All At Once, the Michelle Yeoh/Jamie Lee Curtis multiverse movie that dropped earlier this year
Ah, got it. I haven't seen it yet, but need to set some time aside to watch.

Again, I agree, D&D should capitalize on the current trends from a business perspective. But it does, to me, diminish the settings to a degree when they are all in the same multiverse and all dragons are echoes of something or other and all elves come from Corellon, etc. But, that's for the table to hash out anyways.

[False God]

None of these, except the bolded, are required to roleplay.

Nothing is required to roleplay other than your own time and creativity.

But that's my point. D&D doesn't require that time or that creativity at all. It's a fun optional add-on, but completely unnecessary to actually playing the game.

[animorte]

Disclaimer: I don't know if Heroes of Equestria actually exists

I believe it’s called Tails (or tales) of Equestria. Get it? My wife and I tried it out. Not bad for getting our little ones into d&d, very simple.

[Psyren]

So the best I can hope for is a revamping of the current mundane subclasses to bring them into the current meta, but that's a long shot too.

I want this too, and in fact I've previously proposed a simple Champion rework (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?645163-Heroes-of-Krynn-Revisited&p=25439815&viewfull=1#post25439815) that makes it much stronger while also preserving its identity as the Simple Martial.



Again, I agree, D&D should capitalize on the current trends from a business perspective. But it does, to me, diminish the settings to a degree when they are all in the same multiverse and all dragons are echoes of something or other and all elves come from Corellon, etc. But, that's for the table to hash out anyways.

I don't know that the multiverse = "all elves come from Corellon" any more than it means all drow come from Lolth, which they don't. Certainly it means there's good odds the elf you're talking to in a D&D setting has heard of him, but it's no guarantee. You can still have that level of diversity and variation.

[Catullus64]

Just because every sort of fantasy is accommodated in the rules, does not mean that every table needs to use every sort of fantasy. If everyone in the group decides that that they don't want to play My Little Pony, then you can just choose not to use the Heroes of Equestria supplement. But by the same token, if everyone in the group decides that they do want to play My Little Pony, then you can use HoE, and decide not to use almost everything else.


Part of my fear does come from my usual play environment. I run store games, where I don't know what group I'm running for until we're there. Games are usually stand-alone affairs; maybe a two-parter sometimes, if all the people from one week coincidentally plan to come the next. New faces almost every week.

The kind of coordination required to come to an agreement about which races or class options to use is a luxury in such an environment. Session Zeroes are a dream. There are a few regulars with whom I've chatted enough that they kinda understand my preferences and are willing to play along, but there are just as many who know and don't care. The only real way to cull race or class selection is by fiat, sometimes only declared when someone shows up for the first time. Not only is that contentious and no fun, but the store certainly isn't about to back me up on that: they want to sell the game books, and telling people they can't use options from them runs counter to that.

(And to be frank, even in private groups of friends, the level of trust and like-mindedness needed to cooperate to this degree is far from a given. At some point, the game needs to acknowledge and mediate that social reality; if everybody's trust was absolute and their tastes in agreement, we wouldn't need rules.)

Now, is that the typical DM experience? Probably not. Do I expect the game to overhaul itself to be more accommodating towards my particular situation? Again, no. And this isn't my entire D&D life; I'm also lucky enough to run a private campaign with close friends where I can cultivate things much more naturally. But... maybe some kind of compromise? What I suppose I really want is for the game to promote a culture where people's default expectation isn't to be able to use any option, any time.

In short, I don't think you should always assume the play conditions necessary to extensively cut down the list of options.

[LibraryOgre]

One thing I really liked in Earthdawn is they made it explicit that all PCs were in some way magical. Wizards cast spells, but warriors drew on magic to be amazing warriors, enhancing their own abilities, weapons, and accomplish amazing feats at higher circle... because they WERE using magic.

When reading 4e, I first thought "This is pretty much d20 Earthdawn".

[Psyren]

What I suppose I really want is for the game to promote a culture where people's default expectation isn't to be able to use any option, any time.

Any option, no - but if you're not prepared to at least allow the mainline first-party races, subclasses, and feats, then public DMing in a store may truly not be for you. Accessing their space and their captive audience does indeed come with those kinds of compromises.

[Sorinth]

Part of my fear does come from my usual play environment. I run store games, where I don't know what group I'm running for until we're there. Games are usually stand-alone affairs; maybe a two-parter sometimes, if all the people from one week coincidentally plan to come the next. New faces almost every week.

The kind of coordination required to come to an agreement about which races or class options to use is a luxury in such an environment. Session Zeroes are a dream. There are a few regulars with whom I've chatted enough that they kinda understand my preferences and are willing to play along, but there are just as many who know and don't care. The only real way to cull race or class selection is by fiat, sometimes only declared when someone shows up for the first time. Not only is that contentious and no fun, but the store certainly isn't about to back me up on that: they want to sell the game books, and telling people they can't use options from them runs counter to that.

(And to be frank, even in private groups of friends, the level of trust and like-mindedness needed to cooperate to this degree is far from a given. At some point, the game needs to acknowledge and mediate that social reality; if everybody's trust was absolute and their tastes in agreement, we wouldn't need rules.)

Now, is that the typical DM experience? Probably not. Do I expect the game to overhaul itself to be more accommodating towards my particular situation? Again, no. And this isn't my entire D&D life; I'm also lucky enough to run a private campaign with close friends where I can cultivate things much more naturally. But... maybe some kind of compromise? What I suppose I really want is for the game to promote a culture where people's default expectation isn't to be able to use any option, any time.

In short, I don't think you should always assume the play conditions necessary to extensively cut down the list of options.

It's a stretch to say the game "promotes" something when it's pretty clearly your particular set of circumstances that are really driving factor.


You may have considered this already but one way to maybe get the store/session to is to promote specific setting/book is to present it as a promotion. Make a Ravnica promotion, the book is on sale 10-25%, there's lots of Ravinca themed minis also on sale/displayed prominently, along with posters, MTG stuff like maybe a tournament using only Ravnica block, etc... And of course the D&D game that week is Ravnica themed, that way the PHB+Ravinica only rule is less of a "restriction" you are imposing on potential customers but a way to convince those customers they should buy the Ravinca book by getting them to have fun using it.

[gijoemike]

The proportions change as more and more magical options get added without substantial new mundane ones. Yes, even just the PHB is already heavily leaning towards the all-magic PC roadshow; but if you add, for example, half a dozen new magical Barbarian subclasses without adding any non-magical ones*, you are going to see even fewer non-magical barbarians show up at tables. Likewise with Fighters and Rogues. The sheer number of magical options does create more of a kitchen sink effect when they drastically overtake the nonmagical ones in number.

I talk about the Barbarian a lot because it's a concrete example I can cite in my regular play experience. I play with/DM for different groups almost every week in addition to my 'stable' friend group, so I can see at least some trends emerging and changing in party composition over time, and the Barbarian is the most dramatic instance.

I believe that the design of 5e was a mistake that leads to all magic parties. Magic = more options and more options = good. Mundanes don't get that at the same rate. And taking just 1 class level as a magic class makes you a perfectly capable magic user. Unlike 3.X where being a level 1 wizard or sorc is practically useless as you only get a few spells for at most 10 minutes a day.

If given a choice, take A get maybe get slightly better at what you do, or B and get a dozen new options and be awesome at it, what would you choose? The answer is always B unless the player is specifically nerfing themselves to not outshine another player.

Spirit totem barbs are still barbarians, except with more options. In 3.5 I would compare that to the stupid lion totem barbarian ACF. That nonsense became a staple of builds. More options = better.

[Stangler]

I initially wrote a long post about how I think the game promotes, and increasingly promotes, a Fantasy Kitchen Sink as its setting, and how I think this creates problems for actual groups. But I'm coming to realize that when you want to discuss a complex topic on this site, posting a long tract that people then have to attack piecemeal seldom actually helps the conversation. So I'll just say what that post said in much briefer form. And if I need to further defend or clarify any of these points like I did in the thousand-word version, well, that's why it's a discussion forum.


The 5e line of D&D products, in responding to the demand for more and more player options, increasingly pushes its game settings, and particularly its PC parties, towards a Fantasy Kitchen Sink.
"PCs are meant to be exceptional" is, I think, an inadequate response to this criticism.
"D&D has always been a fantasy kitchen sink", while true, is another common response I find somewhat lacking. There's still a noticeable trend.
I don't think that the reactionary response, calling for the trimming down of the options which create this phenomenon, is likely, feasible, or a good idea.
The game should increasingly focus, moving forward, on character and party-building as a collaborative exercise between players and DMs to help parties be reflective of any given setting, rather than the more individualistic process it tends to be now.


Happy discussing!

I would point out the obvious that this issue is meant to be addressed at the table as opposed to in the rules of the game. I totally get that the more WotC adds to the rules the more difficult it can be for a DM to hold back some of the options in order to create a vision of the game that suits them, not to mention create a more consistent feel within the party.

IMO these issues can be addressed in setting books which can help by providing party creation guidelines to fit a specific setting and/or playstyle like you talk about. I feel like that is more likely to be a third party setting because even settings books tend to want to just pile on options without restrictions.

One of the better ideas out there along these lines that I want to try is a Game of Thrones style game where the party starts off as something like the Starks. Very low magical levels, family connection, and a world out to get them and isn't playing fair. Dimension 20 Crown of Candy does this and it is a lot of fun.

[PhoenixPhyre]

One thing I really liked in Earthdawn is they made it explicit that all PCs were in some way magical. Wizards cast spells, but warriors drew on magic to be amazing warriors, enhancing their own abilities, weapons, and accomplish amazing feats at higher circle... because they WERE using magic.

When reading 4e, I first thought "This is pretty much d20 Earthdawn".

I agree that this is something I liked about 4e, and something I've incorporated hard into my worldbuilding. Because it makes so many things make more sense.

[KorvinStarmast]

I agree that this is something I liked about 4e, and something I've incorporated hard into my worldbuilding. Because it makes so many things make more sense. Have you played Earthdawn? :smallconfused:

[PhoenixPhyre]

Have you played Earthdawn? :smallconfused:

The reference there was to the "they're all magic" thing. I know of Earthdawn and the basics of the setting, but haven't played it. Did read one of the rulebooks though.

[AdAstra]

The things I'm seeing people complain about and the sorts of things that bring to my mind "kitchen sink setting" seem, completely different in this thread. Since when is "most subclasses are magical" more kitchen sink than having mundane sword-guys standing toe to toe with reality-warping nerds in equal numbers? Magic not being special in no way makes the setting more of a kitchen sink, it just makes the setting more magical, unless the fundamental nature of the magic is different. And right now 5e hasn't really gone beyond Arcane, Divine, Natural, and Psionic magic (except maybe Phantom Rogue, which is more specifically necromantic than fitting neatly into the above).

A kitchen sink is having wildly different expectations used at once. It's Crisis On Infinite Earths and such, Cowboys and Aliens, not just having a bunch of settings and things specific to those settings. DnD certainly supports that style of game, but I don't really see how it promotes it other than having the sorts of products that DnD has always had: different settings, different books, spin-offs and tie-ins. And from what I can tell the overall DnD culture doesn't really have any greater predilection to kitchen sinks than other games.

If there was ever a fantasy kitchen sink setting, it would be Pathfinder's Golarion. The game's default world has a desert full of alien robots (delivered by a crashed alien spaceship) right next to a crusader state still doing witch burnings and embroiled in religious tension between clerical and druidic beliefs (and demons of course). The capital of said crusader state is basically right next to the alien robot desert. In the default setting, railgun-toting android gunslingers, slime wizards, and gritty, grungy human fighters with longswords are all valid character options fully supported within the world, and often don't even need the excuse of being from some faraway land.

I find it pretty neat, but a good example that if DnD is a kitchen sink setting, it's extremely mild compared to its nearest competitors. Most DnD settings don't even prominently feature guns as far as I know.

[KorvinStarmast]

The reference there was to the "they're all magic" thing. I know of Earthdawn and the basics of the setting, but haven't played it. Did read one of the rulebooks though. One of the reasons I ask is because of an unpublished Earthdawn dragon supplement I read a little over a year ago. The parallels between that and your world's dragon set up was (to me) more similar than it was different.

[KorvinStarmast]

Most DnD settings don't even prominently feature guns as far as I know. For this blessing I thank the Crossbow Expert feat. :smallbiggrin:

My nephew's campaign (which didn't last all that long) included the use of musket like firearms (kind of a Spanish Conquistador setting, with our party crossing the sea and exploring a mostly wilderness setting...) but none of us was proficient with firearms. (RL got in the way of our progression taking us to where that option would open up).

[PhoenixPhyre]

One of the reasons I ask is because of an unpublished Earthdawn dragon supplement I read a little over a year ago. The parallels between that and your world's dragon set up was (to me) more similar than it was different.

Great minds (citation needed) think alike, I guess. Good thing I never make claims to originality.

[LibraryOgre]

As a note on the "all the subclasses are magical" front:

In 1e AD&D, only two classes did not get some sort of spellcasting (or scroll use): Fighters and Monks (monks had a lot of pseudo-magic, though).

In 2e, that was down to just fighters.

EVERYONE got magic, and pretty much always has.

[Catullus64]

As a note on the "all the subclasses are magical" front:

In 1e AD&D, only two classes did not get some sort of spellcasting (or scroll use): Fighters and Monks (monks had a lot of pseudo-magic, though).

In 2e, that was down to just fighters.

EVERYONE got magic, and pretty much always has.

As I've stated before, the fact that it's been this way more often than not doesn't actually resolve the issue. To me it seems less like a perpetual state and more like a recurring process that follows from the content release cycle of an edition.

[Dr.Samurai]

Did the original barbarians have magic (out of curiosity)?

[KorvinStarmast]

Did the original barbarians have magic (out of curiosity)?
No, the AD&D 1e Unearthed Arcana barbarians were against magic and could not hang out with Magic Users. IIRC, you had to be level 3 to be allowed to use a magic weapon. There were, however, empowered to hit (without using a magical weapon) creatures only hittable by a magic weapon.
And then there was this native ability:

Detect illusion: Barbarians have a 5% chance per level of determining that some sight, sound or other sensory phenomenon is actually an illusion/phantasm spell of some type. This detection takes one round of concentration on the illusion. Regardless of the barbarian’s level, the chance to so detect such spells may never exceed 75%.
Detect magic: Barbarians have a 25% chance of detecting any sort of magic other than the illusion/,phantasm variety. This again takes one round of concentration, and applies to items or spells, but not to persons who are able to effect magic. For each level the barbarian gains beyond the 1st level, the barbarian gains an additional 5% to his or her base chance of detection. However, this chance may never exceed 90% regardless of the barbarian’s level
of experience. The type of magic is never revealed by this ability.

Yes, it was fiddly as all get out.

[Dr.Samurai]

No, the AD&D 1e Unearthed Arcana barbarians were against magic and could not hang out with Magic Users. IIRC, you had to be level 3 or 4 to be allowed to use a magic weapon. There were, however, empowered to hit (without using a magical weapon) creatures only hittable by a magic weapon.
Yes, it was fiddly as all get out.
Sounds just perfect :smallcool:

[KorvinStarmast]

Sounds just perfect :smallcool: It was a fighter sub class. My favorite part was that unlike all other classes, that had their own names like Warrior, Myrmidon, Seer, Patriarch, etc at different levels, the name of each level, from 1 to 11 was simply
Barbarian. :smallbiggrin:

[JonBeowulf]

The kitchen sink provides options. Options are good for the game.

As a DM, not only is it my prerogative to pick and choose what is allowed in a game, it is my obligation in order for the game world to make sense. If I choose to allow everything, then I am responsible for making it work.

For example, I rarely allow non-PHB races because they don't make sense with my world. I've allowed exceptions when a player brought a concept they were excited about and we found a way to make it work... and it ended up expanding my world, so BONUS!

I'm not a fan of Counterspell mechanics, so nobody gets it. I still can't get my head around this new version of magical darkness so I went back to ball of blackness. I think spell components are stupid so they're gone (with a few exceptions) as long as the caster has a focus. Sorcerers are the source of magic so why do they need an arcane focus? Simple, they don't!

I took the kitchen sink I was given, kept what I wanted, changed a few things, and tossed the rest. It's a good thing.

(Not going to discuss the legal weirdness that can land at an AL table 'cause I don't do AL.)

However, this post has me thinking about creating a new world were I will ban non-monstrous races because I want to flip the script and see how it goes when humans/dwarfs/elves are the outsiders. I can do that 'cause I have options.

[Osopeluche]

I always saw it as a pick and chose type of thing instead of a kitchen sink. Unlike Pathfinder 2e where the lore is so firmly established with that setting.

[Witty Username]

Anyways, isn't the setting kitchen sink by virtue of all the lore saying it's a shared multiverse where everything exists in every setting? Didn't the setting make this shift recently?

That has been a thing since AD&D, most prominently when using the planescape and spelljammer settings. For 5e, it has been leaning on that lore more, and the official bring in of magic the gathering more obvious about it.
--
So, this setting customization stuff should have been a section in the 5e DMG, that is my stance on it.

I will say, personally, a setting that is not somewhat confusing actually hurts my verisimilitude. Usually this is an expression of homogeneousnes and passage of time, but this is kinda in the same vein. Limited options of race or class can contribute to this sense for me, if not handled well.

[Tanarii]

I don't see anything in the OP that actually demonstrates D&D is a kitchen sink.

Mystara was a specific type of kitchen sink setting, with lots of human pseudo-historical cultures slotted in. It's a specific setting that it's possible to point to and explain exactly what about it is kitchen sink-y. But the OP lacks even something as simple as that. The declaration is made, and assumed to be true without any proof offered.

Edit: okay reading onwards and going back, I totally missed the point of the OP. It's about kitchen sink party of PCs. Yes, if a DM doesn't groom the available races especially, but also classes and backgrounds, you can end up with a "kitchen sink" party, although I find "fantasy menagerie" a better term. That's a huge problem in AL and IMX a common complaint against it. Between its high char op and fantasy menagerie tendencies, AL is a rich recruiting ground for anyone willing to put the time into standing up a game store alternative.

And yeah, this has been an issue for pretty much every D&D edition as more and more splat gets released. Personally, I find even Tieflings and Dragonborn and Sorcerers and Warlocks* being added to the core to be an issue in that regard. I'm sure some folks felt the same about 1e Monks/Druids, UA Barbarians (and Cavaliers and Drow), and 2e troubadour Bards for that matter.

*despite warlocks being probably my favorite class.

[Leon]

Having the Options is a good thing, also being able to say No to what options are in any given game is a powerful thing that stops the options from getting silly.

If your DM says "These books are the confines of which we are playing in" the problem doesnt arise. Like the Strixhaven content which causes conniptions in so many people isnt a problem if you don't allow that setting/content to be used in your games

[johnbragg]

Honest Answers, just off the top of my head:

[LIST]
Recycle 4th-edition Warlord ideas in a more robust fashion than the Battlemaster.

I never played 4E, but my impression of the 4E Warlord is "The barbarian attacks with his axe, the Warlord attacks with his Barbarian." The best way to port that into 5E is with a spellcasting class--probably War Cleric 2.0, focused on buffs and action-economy shenanigans. Add some new domain spells ported from late 3.5--Snakes' Swiftness (single target gets a single attack action), Mass Snakes' Swiftness,

EDIT: Actually don't make those spells, make them subclass features. Otherwise they'll get poached.


I'm not gonna stand by every one of those as the most fecund idea, but it's not too difficult to come up with mechanical toys that can exist in the non-magic sphere and then fit them to a theme. It's just a little bit more difficult than "take existing magical theme (Giants! Psionics! Feywild!) and bolt it onto the base martial class", which seems like WotC's default approach to iterating on these classes. Clearly a matter of different tastes, but "Fighter with a dash of X magic" is the less interesting approach for me.

WOTC's approach is probably easier though, in terms of rolling new books off of an assembly line. Pick a theme, every base class gets a subclass or two related to this year's theme.

For what you're asking, they'd have to decide to roll out a book focusing on a no-magic or very-low-magic world, maybe where spells don't work reliably or cost HP or something.

Maybe it's a thought to keep in the back of their heads when designing D&D 50th Anniversary Edition

[animorte]

For what you're asking, they'd have to decide to roll out a book focusing on a no-magic or very-low-magic world, maybe where spells don't work reliably or cost HP or something.

Maybe it's a thought to keep in the back of their heads when designing D&D 50th Anniversary Edition

I have run a martial-classes only campaign, low-magic setting. It wasn't expected to go very long, but everybody actually had a great time. People really learned to appreciate their spells.

I would like to think that 50th anniversary stuff has been in the works for some time already.

[Psyren]

I'd also like to challenge the notion that just because X race is rare or even nonexistent in a given setting, that means letting the PCs play as that race will automatically be too much trouble to integrate into the campaign.

In a lot of cases there's an unspoken assumption that NPCs in a setting will freak out and grab the pitchforks if they come across a species they've never seen before, probably because that's how our own world (medieval or current) would likely react to a new species. But I think D&D worlds are different - a commoner in a fantasy world may not have seen every bipedal creature in the monster manual or even be particularly well-traveled, but they might at least expect their chances of running into something they've never seen before in their lifetimes to be fairly decent. And those odds go up dramatically once you get to folks who are more worldly like merchants, soldiers, scholars, nobles etc.

In other words, even when they're meeting a race they've never met before, the attitude of a Faerunian or Ansalonian might simply be to shrug and say "well that's a new one" and then judge whatever they see on its appearance and actions like they would anyone else. If a brand new race looks obviously threatening in some way, like a Reborn looking zombie-like, a chromatic Dragonborn or a Dhampir showing its fangs, that's one thing, but even something really exotic like a Plasmoid or Warforged asking a farmer to sleep in their hayloft might get little more than some headscratches and tentative queries about whether they want any stew. And in a setting where creatures can drop in almost from thin air, like Ravenloft or Planescape, the "new" is likely to be even less remarkable.

[Dr.Samurai]

@Psyren - I get the sense that what you're describing is what the OP is referring to, but I admit to not having a tremendous amount of in-depth knowledge on the settings. However, from what I remember in reading the Drizz't novels, I didn't get the impression that you can walk around as a drow and not get witch-hunted on sight. Or a tiefling for that matter.

So my sense of it is that the game has shifted to allow these monstrous races to be more playable, but that this was not always the case. Hence the shift to "kitchen sink", where you can walk into a tavern and bump into a warforged, a plasmoid, a shardmind, and a loxodon and wonder where all the humans and elves and dwarves went.

I believe the game worlds had oddities always, but these were exceptions, as opposed to "turn any corner and you'll find exotic race X". But again, I am not so familiar to be sure.

[animorte]

I believe the game worlds had oddities always, but these were exceptions, as opposed to "turn any corner and you'll find exotic race X". But again, I am not so familiar to be sure.

Perhaps it represents an evolution of being open-minded. Even with that in mind, there are still notes along with picking your race to keep in mind about how effectively you may be able to interact with the world and how the world naturally interacts with you. Examples are given right in the PHB of what the most common races think of each other: Dwarves, Elves, Halflings, and Humans.

Half-Orcs can have trouble being taken seriously from either Orcs or Humans depending on which they grew up with. Tieflings are very often mistrusted, shunned, and even attacked. Which has always been genuinely confusing to me considering their bonus to Charisma.

[BRC]

I think there's a few things going on.

1) What players want out of the fantasy

I feel like there has been a definite focus in the shift of the game, at least as regards how players interact with PC race and character creation. Once upon a time, the choice of Dwarf vs Elf or whatever may have been primarily a mechanical lever to tweak, with a bit of implied culture or backstory built in to inform your character, but I feel like these days there's a lot of just...joy in Character Building as a form of expression in of itself, which in turn increases the use of less-human races like Tieflings and Dragonborn, both from an Aesthetic standpoint, and from a standpoint of playing something a bit more Fantastical than "A Short, tough human that likes beer and mining".


2) The breakdown of the PHB vs Monster Manual divide in worldbuilding.

If you go back to Tolkien, you have the Good People, Elves, Dwarves, Humans, Hobbits, and the Evil People, Orcs, Goblins, and Trolls. The "Good People" are generally described as "humans But", while the Evil People are Monstrous and Inhuman.

This approach to worldbuilding has issues, which we don't need to get into here, but the genre as a whole, and RPG worldbuilding especially, seem to have been making strides away from it, trying to break up the idea that you have Towns, full of People, and Dungeons/The Wilderness, full of Monsters.

But, the worldbuilding had already populated those dungeons and wildernesses with countless sentient species, Lizardfolk, Goblins, Orcs, Trolls, Gnolls, Minotaurs, and so on and soforth.

Which is to say, the Sink was already here, but if you don't want to split the world into "Good" and "Evil" groups, you inevitably bring the sink into the kitchen as it were. If Orcs exist, and Orcs are people, then why can't an Orc be a PC? Why can't an Orc be an innkeeper?

3) Even a good bit gets old.

Campaigns run a long time. Maybe once upon a time the majority of playtime took place in dungeons or wilderness, but nowadays, plenty of campaigns include extended sections in "Civilized" areas.

If you enforce regular in-game bigotry, or even just wonder, against a PC, you're going to be running a repeat of the same encounter quite a lot, where some townsfolk sees the PC and freaks out and the rest of the party has to talk them down. Or every new NPC sees the PC and must immediately have their whole deal explained, over and over and over again.

And even if the Player signed up for that, it is going to get old very fast.

[Lord Raziere]

Tieflings are very often mistrusted, shunned, and even attacked. Which has always been genuinely confusing to me considering their bonus to Charisma.

just because your socially competent doesn't mean your socially accepted. being charismatic, insightful and knowing what to say can also be spun as being manipulative, deceitful and controlling in the right circumstances. also there is such a thing as jealousy: "why does this devil-spawn get to be so articulate and good at this and I'm not? they must be lying and manipulating people! I should teach 'em a lesson!" and someone who has faced many dangerous distrustful situations might learn ways to avoid those situations as a defense mechanism.

meanwhile, there are people who are socially awkward and stutter can have a charm of being vulnerable and "dorky", people seeing it as cute. with no need to BE super-socially competent, since everyone accepts them as they already are. a child who grows up being watchful of others moods and learns how to please them because if they don't they'll get hurt is probably more socially attuned in some ways than someone who is naturally accepted and thus can just say whatever they want because they are comfortable with everyone around them- such as a normal human among many others.

[animorte]

just because your socially competent doesn't mean your socially accepted. being charismatic, insightful and knowing what to say can also be spun as being manipulative, deceitful and controlling in the right circumstances. also there is such a thing as jealousy: "why does this devil-spawn get to be so articulate and good at this and I'm not? they must be lying and manipulating people! I should teach 'em a lesson!" and someone who has faced many dangerous distrustful situations might learn ways to avoid those situations as a defense mechanism.

meanwhile, there are people who are socially awkward and stutter can have a charm of being vulnerable and "dorky", people seeing it as cute. with no need to BE super-socially competent, since everyone accepts them as they already are. a child who grows up being watchful of others moods and learns how to please them because if they don't they'll get hurt is probably more socially attuned in some ways than someone who is naturally accepted and thus can just say whatever they want because they are comfortable with everyone around them- such as a normal human among many others.

That's true, something I've started recently putting thought into as well. Including ALL of the Charisma skills gives a wider picture of the whole subject with Deception and Intimidation (I actually incorporated this when I built a Warlock around the Cloak of Flies invocation). Another example is babies. Infants in general are adored and accepted even though they have no way of building rapport.

Still, it's something to be aware of when looking at PCs or NPCs for various immersion effects. Can be difficult to do without being offensive. I watched a video about Matt Mercer incorporating accents. Basically make sure that if you have a bad guy that talks like this, it's fair for that accent to be represented by a good guy as well. Also communicating with your players helps to clear up a lot of that, but there communication is likely the best note to maintain always.


I think there's a few things going on.

And even if the Player signed up for that, it is going to get old very fast.
This was extremely insightful. Anthropology!

[Psyren]

@Psyren - I get the sense that what you're describing is what the OP is referring to, but I admit to not having a tremendous amount of in-depth knowledge on the settings. However, from what I remember in reading the Drizz't novels, I didn't get the impression that you can walk around as a drow and not get witch-hunted on sight. Or a tiefling for that matter.

So my sense of it is that the game has shifted to allow these monstrous races to be more playable, but that this was not always the case. Hence the shift to "kitchen sink", where you can walk into a tavern and bump into a warforged, a plasmoid, a shardmind, and a loxodon and wonder where all the humans and elves and dwarves went.

I believe the game worlds had oddities always, but these were exceptions, as opposed to "turn any corner and you'll find exotic race X". But again, I am not so familiar to be sure.

I think you're actually conflating two concepts here: races with negative reputation, and races with no reputation. Based on the OP (especially the clarification in post #4) I believe they were thinking more of the latter, but I'll address both. After all, a setting that only allowed core races might be a way for them to avoid "kitchen sink" - but could still allow playable Drow and Tieflings as they are core races.

Races with controversial histories like Drow, Orcs, Yuan-Ti and Tieflings can have a negative reputation in several settings, sure. I'm not at all saying you can play one of those and expect to waltz through every village or even every city unaccosted or with the trust of those around you, and that possibility should be ironed out between the player and DM before the character is finalized. But even for those races - support networks, safe havens, NPC specimens and open-minded individuals exist. You might have to pull your hood up in high society, but there are many places (particularly the underbelly of a big city) where you'll be relatively unremarkable.

Other races however, e.g. Aarakocra/Owlins, Warforged, Tortles, Harengon and Plasmoids may be completely unheard of in a given setting. But that doesn't mean they will immediately have a throng of gawking onlookers following them around everywhere or running to light torches either. My overarching point is that, if a player wants to play something uncommon, don't let the odd boggling yokel NPC be a barrier to that; it's perfectly reasonable that most people in a setting don't care about even something they haven't seen before - especially if you're obviously an adventurer or mercenary, professions that tend to attract weird types to begin with. Allowing such as a PC does not mean you have to rewrite the fabric of your setting's reality in other words.

[animorte]

Something my wife introduced to me while playing a long time ago was relevant to this somewhat. She typically builds PCs toward big bulky front line folk. Running an Orc at the time (very often mistrusted and feared), he was very good at disarming others with his sense of humility and humor. Instead of him being a simple, yet aggressive and intimidating figure, he was just silly sometimes.

[Tanarii]

It's worth noting that the "cosmic" distribution of PHB races seems to be, per the Reincarnate spell, about 1/4 human, 1/2 elf/dwarf/halfling (even distributed), and 1/4 other (even distributed). That's way too heavily balanced for my liking, I want humanity to be at least half if not 2/3 of the PC race population in the world.

Otoh in terms of pitchforks, any campaign world with a distribution relatively like this is probably going to reserve them for the Team Bad Guy races: Humanoids (Orcs, Goblinoids, Kobolds), Drow, and more exotics like Yuan-Ti, etc.

[Dr.Samurai]

I think you're actually conflating two concepts here: races with negative reputation, and races with no reputation. Based on the OP (especially the clarification in post #4) I believe they were thinking more of the latter, but I'll address both. After all, a setting that only allowed core races might be a way for them to avoid "kitchen sink" - but could still allow playable Drow and Tieflings as they are core races.

Races with controversial histories like Drow, Orcs, Yuan-Ti and Tieflings can have a negative reputation in several settings, sure. I'm not at all saying you can play one of those and expect to waltz through every village or even every city unaccosted or with the trust of those around you, and that possibility should be ironed out between the player and DM before the character is finalized. But even for those races - support networks, safe havens, NPC specimens and open-minded individuals exist. You might have to pull your hood up in high society, but there are many places (particularly the underbelly of a big city) where you'll be relatively unremarkable.

Other races however, e.g. Aarakocra/Owlins, Warforged, Tortles, Harengon and Plasmoids may be completely unheard of in a given setting. But that doesn't mean they will immediately have a throng of gawking onlookers following them around everywhere or running to light torches either. My overarching point is that, if a player wants to play something uncommon, don't let the odd boggling yokel NPC be a barrier to that; it's perfectly reasonable that most people in a setting don't care about even something they haven't seen before - especially if you're obviously an adventurer or mercenary, professions that tend to attract weird types to begin with. Allowing such as a PC does not mean you have to rewrite the fabric of your setting's reality in other words.
I guess where I deviate is that I don't think it takes a boggling yokel to have a suspicious attitude toward these types of creatures. Maybe if you see them walking through a busy city street, especially if accompanying someone else, you can sort of assume that they're okay to be there.

But if you're a farmer in some village and have to fend off owlbears from eating your flocks, I'm not sure that seeing an owlin walk into town won't raise some hackles. Similarly with warforged, who can be mistaken for golems, which are mindless constructs under the control of a spellcaster. Plasmoids might look like any old ooze that might swallow you or melt you. What differentiates a harengon or tortle from other human/animal creatures like gnolls and lycanthropes and minotaurs?

It seems to me a rewrite of your setting IS necessary, even if not overt. But the populace would simply have to have some knowledge of these beings already in order to not be suspicious on sight, or just be very trusting. Which doesn't really jive for me, but I don't run many games so :smalltongue:

[Psyren]

I guess where I deviate is that I don't think it takes a boggling yokel to have a suspicious attitude toward these types of creatures. Maybe if you see them walking through a busy city street, especially if accompanying someone else, you can sort of assume that they're okay to be there.

But if you're a farmer in some village and have to fend off owlbears from eating your flocks, I'm not sure that seeing an owlin walk into town won't raise some hackles. Similarly with warforged, who can be mistaken for golems, which are mindless constructs under the control of a spellcaster. Plasmoids might look like any old ooze that might swallow you or melt you. What differentiates a harengon or tortle from other human/animal creatures like gnolls and lycanthropes and minotaurs?

It seems to me a rewrite of your setting IS necessary, even if not overt. But the populace would simply have to have some knowledge of these beings already in order to not be suspicious on sight, or just be very trusting. Which doesn't really jive for me, but I don't run many games so :smalltongue:

I think a "suspicious attitude" isn't unreasonable. However I don't think such an attitude should be a barrier to allowing these races in the first place.

Like, yeah a random farmer is probably going to be wary around an owlin wizard... but then, they'd probably have been wary around a human wizard too. And if they think a warforged might be the attaché/golem of some dangerous mage somewhere, in most cases that's cause to just leave it alone. I think a lot of these NPCs have just come to accept the idea that their world is full of things they may never meet or understand, and that's fairly easy for the DM to convey through play. Certainly I don't believe it would necessitate a setting rewrite.

[Catullus64]

I do have to admit that it's the sheer number of animal people which start making a given game feel kitchen-sinky to me more than anything else. I don't have a lot of love for the concept unless you're running a game where everyone is an animal person. (They also tend to be the source of a lot of irritating one-note joke characters, but that's another matter.)

As BRC pointed out, most games will have a divide between People, who inhabit civilized areas and are not presumed to be hostile, and Monsters, who inhabit dungeons and wild areas and are viewed as fundamentally alien. Making something available as a PC race shifts it at least implicitly towards the former category and away from the latter. Large numbers of bizarre species being 'just plain folks' rather than alien and dangerous is, to me, a hallmark of the fantasy kitchen sink setting.

Again, this circles back to the question of choosing to include all this stuff at your table, a different part of the discussion. And it's here where I think the game could do better in setting up that selection process as a significant part of the game. I think part of this comes from (again citing BRC in agreement):


these days there's a lot of just...joy in Character Building as a form of expression in of itself, which in turn increases the use of less-human races like Tieflings and Dragonborn, both from an Aesthetic standpoint, and from a standpoint of playing something a bit more Fantastical than "A Short, tough human that likes beer and mining".

Grrrr... joy...

I'm increasingly feeling like that culture, wherein character creation is viewed as an act of personal expression, and where the character that you create is invested with a lot of value and meaning before they ever see play, is the source of my frustration; that, and a related tendency of the game design to increasingly focus on making your character a Super Cool Dude all the time with a minimum of friction. The Fantasy Kitchen Sink is often just a byproduct of that. The more your character is the strange and fantastical, the less impactful the other strange and fantastical elements of the world and your adventures are rendered.

(I realize that this is starting to morph into a slightly different point from 'Fantasy Kitchen Sink.' Reading people's responses has changed and refined my own thoughts a little bit.)

[KorvinStarmast]

Hence the shift to "kitchen sink", where you can walk into a tavern and bump into a warforged, a plasmoid, a shardmind, and a loxodon and wonder where all the humans and elves and dwarves went. You can do Mos Eisley, but IMX that really didn't grab hold until Planescape. (2e)

[Psyren]

It's worth noting that the "cosmic" distribution of PHB races seems to be, per the Reincarnate spell, about 1/4 human, 1/2 elf/dwarf/halfling (even distributed), and 1/4 other (even distributed). That's way too heavily balanced for my liking, I want humanity to be at least half if not 2/3 of the PC race population in the world.

Otoh in terms of pitchforks, any campaign world with a distribution relatively like this is probably going to reserve them for the Team Bad Guy races: Humanoids (Orcs, Goblinoids, Kobolds), Drow, and more exotics like Yuan-Ti, etc.

I don't think Reincarnate is the best yardstick for any setting, even one limited to the races it covers. It's designed first and foremost to have a dramatic result in play (and note that even "staying what you are" can be dramatic too as the player sighs in relief or regret), not to be/reflect some kind of accurate metaphysical distribution.

Also, it's closer to 1/5 human, and in fact your chances of ending up as some flavor of elf are actually slightly higher than your chances of being human.

[KorvinStarmast]

Also, it's closer to 1/5 human, and in fact your chances of ending up as some flavor of elf are actually slightly higher than your chances of being human. Grumble grumble "{censored} elf games" grumble grumble.

[BRC]

As BRC pointed out, most games will have a divide between People, who inhabit civilized areas and are not presumed to be hostile, and Monsters, who inhabit dungeons and wild areas and are viewed as fundamentally alien. Making something available as a PC race shifts it at least implicitly towards the former category and away from the latter. Large numbers of bizarre species being 'just plain folks' rather than alien and dangerous is, to me, a hallmark of the fantasy kitchen sink setting.

The Fantasy Kitchen Sink is something a lot of people enjoy, the idea of a world where "Just Plain Folks" can mean a wild variety of different types of beings is a form of fantasy in of itself.

The other hand is the innate problems with the idea of the "Monster People", where there are sentient people out there who are Inherently Evil by birth, and where the world is divided into Civilized and Evil people, just doesn't sit right with a lot of people.



Grrrr... joy...

I'm increasingly feeling like that culture, wherein character creation is viewed as an act of personal expression, and where the character that you create is invested with a lot of value and meaning before they ever see play, is the source of my frustration; that, and a related tendency of the game design to increasingly focus on making your character a Super Cool Dude all the time with a minimum of friction. The Fantasy Kitchen Sink is often just a byproduct of that. The more your character is the strange and fantastical, the less impactful the other strange and fantastical elements of the world and your adventures are rendered.

(I realize that this is starting to morph into a slightly different point from 'Fantasy Kitchen Sink.' Reading people's responses has changed and refined my own thoughts a little bit.)

There are solutions to these, but they require Worldbuilding, and communication.


The first is to make sure there's a consistent Tone to the character building. It's kind of awkward when your party is Rogath, Human Fighter, Elithe, Elven Wizard, and Thunder-rocks, the Earth Genasi Storm Sorceror with hair made of purple crystals.



The second, is to do a three-stage worldbuilding process. First, sketch out the setting loosely. Then, ask your players for their character concepts, then finish worldbuilding by making sure your PC's have a place in the world, keep a decent list of what sorts of People exist in this world, or at least in close proximity to where the campaign is taking place, and what role they play.

If somebody wants to play a Dragonborn, work out what it means to be a Dragonborn in this setting? Is there a Dragonborn nation somewhere? Or do Dragonborn just happen? Maybe Dragonborn are what happens to humans born near ancient dragon burial grounds?

It also helps if your "Setting" is one location in an otherwise wide world, so a nonstandard race can be a rare sight, but not unheard of, as they hail from a distant land.


I think one cause of the "My Character is the Super Specialist Character Ever!" is character building in a void. People want to express themselves through a character, and that means either grounding a character in the setting as it exists, or just coming up with the Coolest Idea Ever. If the Player has little idea about the setting, or what sort of campaign it's going to be, they can't really ground the character in the setting. They could build a character that they know won't clash, but that usually comes out as "I am a HUMAN FIGHTER who works as a MERCENARY" type stuff.

People want to express themselves, and if given nothing to start with, yeah they're gonna look through the list of player races and build The Coolest Thing they can base largely on aesthetics and "That Sounds Neat", because with no knowledge of where the story might go, they have to get excited about who their character Is just by itself, instead of how they might interact with the story.

If you want to avoid Shiny Special Peoples, work with your players, figure out what they're excited about. If they really want to play a Shiny Special Inhuman Fantasy Race, make sure that race has a known and established place in the setting. They'll stand out as a Foreigner, rather than an Alien.


(The other option for In-a-Void PC's is the classic Novel Of Backstory character. I'll take a thousand purple tieflings here to engage with this campaign over "Gorb Son of Grok, the 1st Level Fighter who journeyed across the land and killed a conclave of dark sorcerers)

[animorte]

I find that a lot of NPCs tend to be wary on a regular basis, but far more often than that, they're just so intrigued by the new folk in town. "Might have heard of ya before but never in all my life imagined one of ya would walk up in my shop and request a basket of fruit. You're just like the rest of us."

[Pixel_Kitsune]

The 5e line of D&D products, in responding to the demand for more and more player options, increasingly pushes its game settings, and particularly its PC parties, towards a Fantasy Kitchen Sink.

Does it push for Kitchen sink? Isn't it in the hands of the DM to decide what's allowed or not allowed? I mean, I don't allow people to play Wookies in my games, because it's not Starwars, but I wouldn't hesitate to block any official race if it didn't work for the game. I have one game I play in based on Legend of Zelda, the Racial Options are essentially High Elf, Shadar-Kai, Lotusden Hafling, Goliath, Triton, Aarakokra. No one batts an eye or tries to demand being a Tabaxi or such.


"PCs are meant to be exceptional" is, I think, an inadequate response to this criticism.

Not sure how this applies to the other. PCs ARE meant to be exceptional, which has nothing to do with if a setting has a specific race or thing in it.


"D&D has always been a fantasy kitchen sink", while true, is another common response I find somewhat lacking. There's still a noticeable trend.

I'm unsure how this isn't the end of the discussion, since Eberron the idea of everything existing somewhere has been a serious aspect of the game. But again, Ultimately the DM decides what's there or not.


I don't think that the reactionary response, calling for the trimming down of the options which create this phenomenon, is likely, feasible, or a good idea.

I find the flaw here is the idea that because you (Generic you, not necessarily you, Catullus64) want a more restrictive situation somehow the whole game should cater to that instead of it being on you to limit the options at your table to get the result you want.


The game should increasingly focus, moving forward, on character and party-building as a collaborative exercise between players and DMs to help parties be reflective of any given setting, rather than the more individualistic process it tends to be now.

Unsure how this relates to Fantasy Kitchen Sink.

[KorvinStarmast]

Unsure how this relates to Fantasy Kitchen Sink.
Adventurer's League: the PHB+1 reasonable restraint has now been lost.

[Pixel_Kitsune]

Adventurer's League: the PHB+1 reasonable restraint has now been lost.

Stepping aside from the fact that Adventurer's league is not universal D&D, just one way of playing. The official word is below. They didn't just remove the restriction and say "Everything is legal!"

"Faced with these challenges, the Adventurers League chose the simplest path and are removing the PHB+1 rule entirely. Instead, they are designating certain sourcebooks as being allowed in any campaign, and other works will be limited to which campaigns they can be used in. The universal resources are:

Player’s Handbook
Volo’s Guide to Monsters
Xanathar’s Guide to Everything
Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes
Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything"

Other books are allowed based on the overall campaign being run. I imagine we'll see Volo and Mordenkainen being replaced with MotM, But either way all that's really changed in Adventurer's league is that you no longer have to use PHB races to use Non PHB Subclasses and vice versus. It's not the huge change you seem to think it is.

[Tanarii]

I do have to admit that it's the sheer number of animal people which start making a given game feel kitchen-sinky to me more than anything else. I don't have a lot of love for the concept unless you're running a game where everyone is an animal person. (They also tend to be the source of a lot of irritating one-note joke characters, but that's another matter.)

As BRC pointed out, most games will have a divide between People, who inhabit civilized areas and are not presumed to be hostile, and Monsters, who inhabit dungeons and wild areas and are viewed as fundamentally alien. Making something available as a PC race shifts it at least implicitly towards the former category and away from the latter. Large numbers of bizarre species being 'just plain folks' rather than alien and dangerous is, to me, a hallmark of the fantasy kitchen sink setting.

Again, this circles back to the question of choosing to include all this stuff at your table, a different part of the discussion. And it's here where I think the game could do better in setting up that selection process as a significant part of the game. I think part of this comes from (again citing BRC in agreement):
This has been a problem since WotC moved away from humans the most desirable race. Arguably, it was even an issue in 1e/2e for tables that never expected to hit the level limits, making non-humans more desirable races than humans.

I'd be very happy if they went back to humans being the default pick, with other races being playable if you really wanted to, but being on par at best with humans, and only then in a limited number of 'builds'. And the more exotic the race, the fewer areas they'd be on par in. And the on par part is important, it can't be excelling, or you'll just end up with all Ranger bowmen being elves, and all acrobat-rogues being Tabaxi and all Paladins being Dragonborn or whatever.

But then again, my favorite edition was BECMI and setting Mystara. Humans were the only class that could level beyond expert, and the known world was basically completely human dominated ... except the dangerous monster areas.

[animorte]

I'd be very happy if they went back to humans being the default pick

They pretty much made this a thing with Variant Human getting 1st-level feat. Especially for all those folk coming from 3.5e being used to always having a feat at first level. Naturally the most common thing for players to do is to make a PC that is very different from themselves. Living vicariously and such.

Otherwise, I get what you mean. There are a lot of imbalanced features in newer playable races, flight being the main one.

I've referenced this (http://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?485976-Racial-Traits-Point-Buy) fairly often and it gives a decent base-line for race expectations.

[Leon]

I'd be very happy if they went back to humans being the default pick.

And be like every other Human centric game... no thanks, its a strength of D&D to have the great variety by not being in a fixed setting where humans are the dominate choice to play, that they have to make them more attractive to play by sprucing them up with feats/skills etc is telling that they are the blandest choice on the smorgasbord of options

[Amnestic]

This has been a problem since WotC moved away from humans the most desirable race. Arguably, it was even an issue in 1e/2e for tables that never expected to hit the level limits, making non-humans more desirable races than humans.

We must be playing a different edition, because v.human is still, even now with all the additions we've seen, one of the most desirable playable races.

[Psyren]

I imagine we'll see Volo and Mordenkainen being replaced with MotM,

It has been: (https://yawningportal.dnd.wizards.com/blog/monsters-of-the-multiverse-update/)


If you possess a character with one of the race options presented in Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse, you must update your character to the new entry as presented in that product. This has always been the policy of D&D rules usable with D&D Adventurers League campaigns.

However, we also understand that a large number of playable races have been impacted by the changes. We ask that Dungeon Masters and fellow players with access to Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse exhibit some patience as players spend some time updating their characters to the revised races' mechanics.

[Witty Username]

Adventurer's League: the PHB+1 reasonable restraint has now been lost.
So I suppose this is a tangent, but I personally found the PHB +1 stuff kinda weird in practice. It doesn't actually limit the options available at the table much since it every player gets to have different books. I personally prefer the 5 book list approach (I say 5 because that was what I used in 3.5, your number may vary), where you agree to a short list of books that the table uses for the adventure (say for 5e: PHB, Xanathar's, Volo's, Mordenkienen's, Tasha's) that way I don't have to be thrown off by a player using a book I am not familiar with. And that cuts down the number of weird options alot, like Tortle, Aarocokra, and Winged Tiefling.
I have since abandoned that even since the options aren't neatly split between the books (Goliath fit nicely in my game, but Kenku don't for example).

[BRC]

So I suppose this is a tangent, but I personally found the PHB +1 stuff kinda weird in practice. It doesn't actually limit the options available at the table much since it every player gets to have different books. I personally prefer the 5 book list approach (I say 5 because that was what I used in 3.5, your number may vary), where you agree to a short list of books that the table uses for the adventure (say for 5e: PHB, Xanathar's, Volo's, Mordenkienen's, Tasha's) that way I don't have to be thrown off by a player using a book I am not familiar with. And that cuts down the number of weird options alot, like Tortle, Aarocokra, and Winged Tiefling.
I have since abandoned that even since the options aren't neatly split between the books (Goliath fit nicely in my game, but Kenku don't for example).

I feel like it would have made more sense in earlier editions, where there were a lot more character options spread across a lot of books, and a lot of nonsense was enabled by an interaction between two options from different books that were not written with each other in mind.

On a practical level, it cuts down on the amount of rules referencing that each player needs to do. A player can have everything they need with just PHB+their one other book.

[KorvinStarmast]

I'm increasingly feeling like that culture, wherein character creation is viewed as an act of personal expression, and where the character that you create is invested with a lot of value and meaning before they ever see play, is the source of my frustration; Yes, the point of the character, I've felt, is to discover what they become in play once the 'starting position' is established. (And I agree with you that this is probably it's own, separate topic.


Stepping aside from the fact that Adventurer's league is not universal D&D, just one way of playing. Yes.

Player’s Handbook
Volo’s Guide to Monsters
Xanathar’s Guide to Everything
Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes
Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything" The kitchen sink. :smalltongue: Xan's and Tasha's are clearly spelled out as optional rules ... but that's another separate conversation.
(And power creep is its own topic as well).

[Pixel_Kitsune]

The kitchen sink. :smalltongue: Xan's and Tasha's are clearly spelled out as optional rules ... but that's another separate conversation.
(And power creep is its own topic as well).

How is that the Kitchen Sink?

Sorry, when I think Kitchen Sink I'm imagining throwing every D&D supplement, Humblewood, Southlands, etc. Having Warforged and Modrons partying with an Anthromorphic Squirrel and a Wemic.

Which I have no problem with. But the fact that there's a few non generic humanoid Races hardly changes anything.

[LibraryOgre]

A kitchen sink is a fully-stocked kitchen.

If you're making a pie, the trick is to choose the right tools, not dirty everything in the kitchen.

No matter what my wife says. :smallbiggrin:

[Dr.Samurai]

Which I have no problem with. But the fact that there's a few non generic humanoid Races hardly changes anything.
A few huh?

Bird people, at least two (more if you count MTG)
Angel people
At least three different types of goblinoids
Centaurs
Minotaurs
Hippo people
Elephant people
Doppelganger people
Dragon folks
Reborn, Dhampir (and vampires if you include MTG)
Fairies and Tritons and Firbolg
Elemental people
Ugly greenish yellow desiccated people (who would ever play these though?)
Frog people!
Rabbit people!
People with... hex... blood or something
Lizard people
Little lizard dog people
Goat folk
Lion folk
Little cat folks
Devil people
Turtle people
Snake people (and SNAKE people if you include MTG)
Robot people

If WotC made "anthropomorphic squirrel" or wemics it would hardly be out of place. In fact, it seems odd it's not already there. I'm not sure how this isn't trending toward kitchen sink, especially if the sentiment is "NPCs are more interested in all these monstrous races, not scared or suspicious...". Every campaign setting is "cosmopolitan".

[Catullus64]

A kitchen sink is a fully-stocked kitchen.

If you're making a pie, the trick is to choose the right tools, not dirty everything in the kitchen.

No matter what my wife says. :smallbiggrin:

I'll see your analogy and raise you another. A cookbook with lots and lots of good recipes is a good cookbook. A cookbook the bulk of which is dedicated to describing ingredients is not.

Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft, a book I have myriad problems with, was actually trending in the right direction with its writeups on horror genres, clumsy though many of them were. The 'flavors of fantasy' section in the DMG, which tries something similar, is well due some reinforcement, and I hope it gets new attention in the 2024 re-works of the core rulebook.

[Pixel_Kitsune]

A few huh?

Yep, a few. First of all, I already made it clear earlier that the idea that it's better for the published info to be limited to make people who want limited games happy is nonsense compared to publishing everything with interest and expecting DMs to cater their world. Second of all, we're talking at this point just Volo/Mordenkainen, not every splatbook printed.

Third.. Well, let's look at your list and how you paint them vs the reality.

Bird people. Yep, that's a non-standard humanoid. Who is perfectly at home in worlds like Hyrule. But I'll give you a point.

Angel people completely humanoid save when they show off powers. In line with the Angels in Supernatural and ultimately don't hurt the idea of a "normal" world.

Goblinoids. Part of the standard D&D setting, date back to before Tolkien. Not super strange or out of place in a "Normal" world.

Centaurs. Part of Standard D&D settings and books dating back to Mythology. Not super strange or out of place in a "normal" world.

Minotaurs. Repeat from Centaurs.

Hippo people. Not in MotM

Elephant people. Not in MotM

Doppelganger people. Of all the things to complain don't fit in a "normal" world, people that blend in perfectly?

Dragon folks. I'll give you this. 2 points so far.\

Reborn, Dhampir. Altered people, are humanoid or non-humanoid as the race they came from, non-issue for this debate. Also not in MotM

Fairies. Small humanoids, if you're fine with Halflings and Gnomes, you don't get to have issue here.

Tritons. Sea folk who other than blue tinged skin look normal, how is this out of place in a fantasy setting "normal" world?

Firbolg. I point you to the Ogier of Wheel of Time. It's not out of place or vastly different from a normal humanoid.

Elemental people. You didn't list Tieflings and complain about them, so you don't get to complain here either.

Ugly greenish yellow desiccated people. I have no idea who you mean, is this the Gith? They're a standard D&D race and have been in the game since 2nd Edition, this isn't opening the kitchen sink, this is continuing to build lore on a long standing trope. Are you going to complain about Orcs as well?

Frog people. Not in MotM

Rabbit people. Three points.

People with... hex... blood or something Same as the Reborn and Dhampir, not out of the norm and not in MotM.

Lizard people. Standard race since the start of D&D.

Little lizard dog people. Standard race since the start of D&D

Goat folk. Is this Satyr? Standard of Greek Mythology and not out of place in a Fantasy world.

Lion folk. Not in MotM

Little cat folks. 5 points.

Devil people. Oh, you did include the tieflings. Alright. Still not sure how they're out of place in a standard fantasy world.

Turtle people. 6 points.

Snake people look completely normal and aren't out of place in a standard fantasy world.

Robot people. Not in MotM.

So, you have 6 out of 39 total races in the PHB + MotM. Not sure how that's forcing weirdness. You did mention 8 races unique to specific worlds, of course only 5 of them were odd and each is appropriate for the world they come from.

Again, how is this Kitchen Sink? Between 76% and 84% of the races are perfectly "normal" for generic vanilla fantasy stories. The other 16%-76% are all almost all uniquely suited to the worlds they appear in.

[Pixel_Kitsune]

I'll see your analogy and raise you another. A cookbook with lots and lots of good recipes is a good cookbook. A cookbook the bulk of which is dedicated to describing ingredients is not.

Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft, a book I have myriad problems with, was actually trending in the right direction with its writeups on horror genres, clumsy though many of them were. The 'flavors of fantasy' section in the DMG, which tries something similar, is well due some reinforcement, and I hope it gets new attention in the 2024 re-works of the core rulebook.

But which books are ones with the bulk being ingredients? I don't see any. Xanathar's and Tasha's have new PC options up front, then tons of other rules and options that apply to the game as a whole. MotM has 32 out of 288 pages that are races.

[LibraryOgre]

I'll see your analogy and raise you another. A cookbook with lots and lots of good recipes is a good cookbook. A cookbook the bulk of which is dedicated to describing ingredients is not.

Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft, a book I have myriad problems with, was actually trending in the right direction with its writeups on horror genres, clumsy though many of them were. The 'flavors of fantasy' section in the DMG, which tries something similar, is well due some reinforcement, and I hope it gets new attention in the 2024 re-works of the core rulebook.

I don't agree with that analogy, because it assumes that the rules are a cookbook, not an ingredients list.... they are the fully stocked kitchen, which the cook will use to create a dish.

The cookbook was inside you all along. Do you want robots? Sprinkle in some warforged. How about dragon people with boobs? Add a dash of dragonborn. Don't want your dragon people to have boobs? Take out the boobs.

[Catullus64]

I don't agree with that analogy, because it assumes that the rules are a cookbook, not an ingredients list.... they are the fully stocked kitchen, which the cook will use to create a dish.

The cookbook was inside you all along. Do you want robots? Sprinkle in some warforged. How about dragon people with boobs? Add a dash of dragonborn. Don't want your dragon people to have boobs? Take out the boobs.

If this cooking analogy can hold any more weight, I'm a pretty good cook, but recipes are how I learned to do that. If you follow a recipe enough times, sure, you can develop your own understanding of how to better it. You'll become a good cook much faster that way than by throwing stuff together.

Putting together a setting, campaign, or individual adventure is often a question of restraint. You can throw in anything, so it's a question of what don't you include. So yeah, I would prefer the recipe book to the kitchen pantry.

[LibraryOgre]

If this cooking analogy can hold any more weight, I'm a pretty good cook, but recipes are how I learned to do that. If you follow a recipe enough times, sure, you can develop your own understanding of how to better it. You'll become a good cook much faster that way than by throwing stuff together.

Putting together a setting, campaign, or individual adventure is often a question of restraint. You can throw in anything, so it's a question of what don't you include. So yeah, I would prefer the recipe book to the kitchen pantry.

I mean, recipes are modules and campaign settings... here's how to set up ingredients. And they can make things so much easier! In my library games, with a very fluid gaming group, I mostly run a combination of B2/T1... Keep on the Borderlands and Village of Hommlet. I stick it in the Realms. It's the refrigerator soup of gaming, combining all of those pre-made recipes into one meal that the players eat.

If someone wants to flavor that dish with a warforged, or with a warlock, or other ingredients that I haven't foreseen, that doesn't have to ruin the meal.

[Dr.Samurai]

Yep, a few. First of all, I already made it clear earlier that the idea that it's better for the published info to be limited to make people who want limited games happy is nonsense compared to publishing everything with interest and expecting DMs to cater their world. Second of all, we're talking at this point just Volo/Mordenkainen, not every splatbook printed.
Interesting. You defined "Kitchen Sink" in part as "throwing in every D&D splatbook", but now you're saying we're limiting our conversation to two splats. So you've defined your way into a rhetorical victory, congratulations...


Third.. Well, let's look at your list and how you paint them vs the reality.
"The reality" here meaning "how Pixel_Kitsune thinks races fit into settings".

As an example, you say that goblinoids have always existed and are not out of place in a "normal" world. That's an interesting way to describe it. You fail to mention that they were always adversaries. That the meta has been shifting, lore has been shifting, player options have been shifting. You refer to Tolkein, as if goblinoids would be a suitable player race where you can, as was previously mentioned, walk into a hamlet and have someone say "oh wow, I've heard of your kind before but never knew you were around here, you're just like us". If a goblin walked up to some village in Rohan he'd be dead before he could say "Hello fellow that's just like me, how are you doing neighbor?"

So this is not a "Dr.Samurai vs Reality" thing. It's a "Dr.Samurai pointing out Reality" thing. Snake people are "completely normal"... AS VILLAINS lol. The yuanti are monsters, with evil cults dedicated to them.

Shifting things so that every race can now walk into a tavern and order a drink at one of the tables without so much as a Huh? from any of the patrons is a shift toward kitchen sink. Uniting all of the campaign settings into a multiverse is a shift toward kitchen sink, especially when you include MTG settings.

What would it take for you to consider us moving toward kitchen sink? Because you mentioned splatbooks and a handful of weird races, and I just quoted a bunch from different splatbooks but they don't seem to meet our criteria.

[Tanarii]

How is that the Kitchen Sink?

The PHB was already trending race kitchen sink, including Dragonborn and Tiefling and optional Drow.

Volos makes it a full blown fantasy race kitchen sink menagerie if it's allowed in full.

[Pixel_Kitsune]

Interesting. You defined "Kitchen Sink" in part as "throwing in every D&D splatbook", but now you're saying we're limiting our conversation to two splats. So you've defined your way into a rhetorical victory, congratulations...

There's two aspects of discussion there. The idea that there's too much in the game as a whole and that there's too much in Adventurer's league. You'll further note that I acknowledge both figures and point out that about a quarter of the total races don't fit into "Humanoid with a different hat."

I find it funny that you claim I didn't address the entirety of the line versus the AL status when I acknowledge both numbers at the end, suggesting you didn't read so much as skim.


"The reality" here meaning "how Pixel_Kitsune thinks races fit into settings".

As an example, you say that goblinoids have always existed and are not out of place in a "normal" world. That's an interesting way to describe it. You fail to mention that they were always adversaries. That the meta has been shifting, lore has been shifting, player options have been shifting. You refer to Tolkein, as if goblinoids would be a suitable player race where you can, as was previously mentioned, walk into a hamlet and have someone say "oh wow, I've heard of your kind before but never knew you were around here, you're just like us". If a goblin walked up to some village in Rohan he'd be dead before he could say "Hello fellow that's just like me, how are you doing neighbor?"

And a game could be made dealing with that. People were sketchy of Nott in Wildemount. Just because you CAN be a race that's not standard bog human doesn't mean it's easy automatically. But that's the DM's job, not the game ruleset. Much like the decision of what races to allow in the first place.


So this is not a "Dr.Samurai vs Reality" thing. It's a "Dr.Samurai pointing out Reality" thing. Snake people are "completely normal"... AS VILLAINS lol. The yuanti are monsters, with evil cults dedicated to them.

Yuan-ti pure bloods can blend in, they always could, so no, no reason you can't play one in the rest of society.


Shifting things so that every race can now walk into a tavern and order a drink at one of the tables without so much as a Huh? from any of the patrons is a shift toward kitchen sink. Uniting all of the campaign settings into a multiverse is a shift toward kitchen sink, especially when you include MTG settings.

I love that so far your arguments all stem around "But they used to be always evil XP fodder and now they're not and that's bad." Kind of not the best approach to take all things considered.

But really, "Uniting all campaign settings into a multiverse is a shift towards kitchen sink"? What shift. D&D has been a Multiverse where EVERYTHING is there since at least 2nd Edition. Do you not remember Planescape and Spelljammer? Or how Lord Soth or Vecna got stuck in Ravenloft, or how the Githyanki tried to invade Darksun? There's been crossovers forever, it's not new. So unless your argument is that D&D has promoted this for decades and you now want to argue it...


What would it take for you to consider us moving toward kitchen sink? Because you mentioned splatbooks and a handful of weird races, and I just quoted a bunch from different splatbooks but they don't seem to meet our criteria.

The closest thing they could do to move towards kitchen sink would be to throw open AL type scenarios to allow everything no matter what and trying to suggest the game was supposed to be run that way. As stands they have a large number of books with different OPTIONS and then trust the DM who is supposedly running and creating the story to pick and choose what works for their story.

I've mentioned my spouse's Zelda themed game that only has Elves, Halflings, Aarakokra, Tritons and Goliaths. I've run Darksun games that absolutely do not have most of the fantastic races and are missing some of the regular ones too... I don't allow Loxadon in my Eberron game and I've never seen a Leonin outside of Theros so far...

The closes thing 5e is going to have to Kitchen Sink is SpellJammer and it's SUPPOSED to be Kitchen Sink Fantasy in Space.



The PHB was already trending race kitchen sink, including Dragonborn and Tiefling and optional Drow.

Volos makes it a full blown fantasy race kitchen sink menagerie if it's allowed in full.

Drow are elves, Dragonborn and Tieflings are a little bit outside generic Tolkien but not outside of fantasy as a general fiction. And again, you're talking 2/3 races out of 9/14, So again, around a quarter.

[Psyren]

I mean, recipes are modules and campaign settings... here's how to set up ingredients. And they can make things so much easier! In my library games, with a very fluid gaming group, I mostly run a combination of B2/T1... Keep on the Borderlands and Village of Hommlet. I stick it in the Realms. It's the refrigerator soup of gaming, combining all of those pre-made recipes into one meal that the players eat.

If someone wants to flavor that dish with a warforged, or with a warlock, or other ingredients that I haven't foreseen, that doesn't have to ruin the meal.

Agreed. Modules and setting locales are the tools (recipes) to make you a better cook faster through focused repetition. Expecting WotC (the supermarket) to only stock the ingredients (splat) to make a given recipe is not only unrealistic, it would make the entire supermarket worse.

[Pex]

Just because something is published does not mean it has to be used. The extremes are DMs who going into specific detail of what is and is not allowed, the circumstances in which a thing may only ever exist in the game, and diktats if you use this you must do this and may never do that and DMs who allow anything and everything that was officially published and even 3rd party homebrew is allowed on a case by case basis. Good restrictive DMs have rich worlds of culture and wonder to explore, and what the PCs do have great impact. Bad restrictive DMs only allows PCs to do what they the DM wants and self-righteously dismiss anyone who disagrees with them. Good anything goes DMs have fantastical worlds of wonder and can adapt whatever the players throw into the mix into a Narrative of Concept players couldn't dream of. Bad anything goes DMs have no campaign structure, just throw encounters at the players and see what happens. Nothing the PCs do matter.

[Amnestic]

I
Shifting things so that every race can now walk into a tavern and order a drink at one of the tables without so much as a Huh? from any of the patrons is a shift toward kitchen sink. Uniting all of the campaign settings into a multiverse is a shift toward kitchen sink, especially when you include MTG settings.

What would it take for you to consider us moving toward kitchen sink? Because you mentioned splatbooks and a handful of weird races, and I just quoted a bunch from different splatbooks but they don't seem to meet our criteria.

Didn't we already have the multiverse with Planescape (Sigil)/Spelljammer? Didn't we already have friendly goblins and orcs and drow and whatnot in Eberron and also FR and also elsewhere? These aren't new developments. Eberron's two decades old and I think Planescape is almost twice that.

It's hard for me to say that they're 'moving towards' a Kitchen Sink when the examples given predate 5e's release by many years and at least one edition.

[Psyren]

Bad anything goes DMs have no campaign structure, just throw encounters at the players and see what happens. Nothing the PCs do matter.

I don't think the first part is inherently bad, nor necessarily leads to the second.

Rather, I'd say a "bad anything goes DM" is either one who only pretends to allow anything and then devotes significant time to invalidating the players' choices ("Sure you can be an Aarakocra!" *all fights are indoors with 5'-10' ceilings*), or one whose permissiveness impacts their ability to design and run meaningful challenges. ("Sure you can be an Aarakocra!" *All fights are outdoors against melee foes who can't do anything to hurt that player, causing them to steal the spotlight in every fight.*)

Throwing totally random encounters at the players might actually be preferable, as at least some of them will probably emphasize the weaknesses of a given player at any given time, provided you're using appropriate challenge ratings.

[Catullus64]

Didn't we already have the multiverse with Planescape (Sigil)/Spelljammer? Didn't we already have friendly goblins and orcs and drow and whatnot in Eberron and also FR and also elsewhere? These aren't new developments. Eberron's two decades old and I think Planescape is almost twice that.

It's hard for me to say that they're 'moving towards' a Kitchen Sink when the examples given predate 5e's release by many years and at least one edition.

My sense (informed by an admittedly imperfect knowledge of the history) is that it's more of a cyclical process within editions, dictated by the ramping up of content releases. At least as far as concerns the WoTC editions of the game.

When a new edition is released, it generally has more focus because the number of options included in the core books is necessarily limited. This was especially noticeable for 5e, which marketed itself as being in many ways a return to fundamentals. More character options get released over the years because those tend to be very popular. Without a DM pushing directly against it to curate his or her own setting, the kitchen-sinkification sets in again.

Of course I think that sort of DM curation is good where possible, but it's not equally possible at all tables. It's a luxury at pretty much any kind of open-to-the-public table, which includes but is not limited to AL. And even at some private tables it's a source of conflict, because I think the game still under-emphasizes that this curation of elements should be a normal part of every game. Everyone is ok with it until their favorite toy is taken off the table.

5th Edition is still nowhere near the overwhelming torrent of bloat that characterized 3.5. I hope you'll note that I've tried to abstain from any language indicating that this is somehow a catastrophic trend that will ruin D&D forever. But it is a trend that I observe nevertheless. And the effects of the cycle do have knock-on effects in subsequent editions; Dragonborn and Tieflings are both enshrined as core races now.

[LibraryOgre]

The PHB was already trending race kitchen sink, including Dragonborn and Tiefling and optional Drow.


Just a personal preference, but I like the new variety. AD&D had three flavors of short, two flavors of willowy, and one of ugly. Two of the short ones were resistant to poison, all three resistant to magic. One short and one willowy were naturally sneaky. Most of them saw in the dark exactly the same way. Heck, how many people are "I don't see a point to gnomes"? While they're one of my favorite races, in AD&D they don't have a mechanical point to existing, save that they let short people be one kind of wizard, and talk to animals.

4e and later (some earlier, but usually optionally) you have variety. I don't like the homogenization of tiefling appearances and abilities, but "person with demon blood" is a neat story element, if you want it to be. "Dragon People" has a neat bit of variety. And they've worked to differentiate the "standard" races, as well.


Agreed. Modules and setting locales are the tools (recipes) to make you a better cook faster through focused repetition. Expecting WotC (the supermarket) to only stock the ingredients (splat) to make a given recipe is not only unrealistic, it would make the entire supermarket worse.

There's something to say for the big supermarket v. the small local market approaches, but if I want kimchi, I'm gonna go to the Korean market, not Kroger. But if I want to shop for the next couple weeks, it's probably gonna be at Kroger. (I'd say HEB, but all y'all're heathens from forsaken lands, not Texas).

[Psyren]

Just a personal preference, but I like the new variety. AD&D had three flavors of short, two flavors of willowy, and one of ugly. Two of the short ones were resistant to poison, all three resistant to magic. One short and one willowy were naturally sneaky. Most of them saw in the dark exactly the same way. Heck, how many people are "I don't see a point to gnomes"? While they're one of my favorite races, in AD&D they don't have a mechanical point to existing, save that they let short people be one kind of wizard, and talk to animals.

4e and later (some earlier, but usually optionally) you have variety. I don't like the homogenization of tiefling appearances and abilities, but "person with demon blood" is a neat story element, if you want it to be. "Dragon People" has a neat bit of variety. And they've worked to differentiate the "standard" races, as well.

And just to add - Dragonborn being a core race now makes perfect sense, dragons are integral to the game's very identity/brand.


There's something to say for the big supermarket v. the small local market approaches, but if I want kimchi, I'm gonna go to the Korean market, not Kroger. But if I want to shop for the next couple weeks, it's probably gonna be at Kroger. (I'd say HEB, but all y'all're heathens from forsaken lands, not Texas).

Kroger owns Harris Teeter now so I feel camaraderie by proxy :smallbiggrin:

[KorvinStarmast]

My sense (informed by an admittedly imperfect knowledge of the history) is that it's more of a cyclical process within editions, dictated by the ramping up of content releases. At least as far as concerns the WoTC editions of the game.
TSR bloated also. If you are making money on book sales, bloat is bound to happen. That's where (IMO) settings and adventures are the better product for keeping bloat in check ... but I am not the Hasbro/WoTC marketing wiz, am I? No, just a customer.

5th Edition is still nowhere near the overwhelming torrent of bloat that characterized 3.5. It's bloating, and I hope that they can curtail it.

And just to add - Dragonborn being a core race now makes perfect sense, dragons are integral to the game's very identity/brand. But Tieflings not so much. :smallyuk:
As to HEB: thumbs up from here. :smallsmile: (Their Central Market brand is the only milk we've bought for about five years).

[Psyren]

It's bloating, and I hope that they can curtail it.

It's nowhere near PF1 which was still loved. MOAR!

At the very least we could use some flavor of archetype or ACF system where you can swap out subclass features for either other subclass features or feats.

[Amechra]

So... D&D is generally a kitchen-sink-y kind of game — it always has been.

The problem with 5e is that it doesn't have any of the really weird and wacky stuff that makes a kitchen sink fun. This is partially a result of their much saner release schedule — the writers aren't churning out a book a month, so you don't get stuff like the sourcebook for deserts giving you SAND MERMAIDS and CYBORGS POWERED BY SPACE CRYSTALS as player options (Sandstorm for 3.5 was an... interesting... book).

At the same time, though, I get the real sense that WotC is playing it safe (outside of books where they know they have a market, like the MtG settings). Which is a bit frustrating, if I'm completely honest.

[LibraryOgre]

TSR bloated also. If you are making money on book sales, bloat is bound to happen. That's where (IMO) settings and adventures are the better product for keeping bloat in check ... but I am not the Hasbro/WoTC marketing wiz, am I? No, just a customer.


This is, IIRC, something that TSR ran into... modules are great, but only DMs buy them. Setting books are better, but they're a fragmented market (I'm not buying anything for Spelljammer, for example). Core books, with some setting material, are for everyone, and those contribute to bloat.

[Catullus64]

So... D&D is generally a kitchen-sink-y kind of game — it always has been.

The problem with 5e is that it doesn't have any of the really weird and wacky stuff that makes a kitchen sink fun. This is partially a result of their much saner release schedule — the writers aren't churning out a book a month, so you don't get stuff like the sourcebook for deserts giving you SAND MERMAIDS and CYBORGS POWERED BY SPACE CRYSTALS as player options (Sandstorm for 3.5 was an... interesting... book).

At the same time, though, I get the real sense that WotC is playing it safe (outside of books where they know they have a market, like the MtG settings). Which is a bit frustrating, if I'm completely honest.

That's very insightful, and something I didn't know I was grappling with until you said it.

I've played games that are built for the kitchen sink, which embrace and structure themselves around their disjointed weirdness. D&D is still fundamentally a game of adventure fantasy in worlds coded like the real historical-mythological past, and the kitchen-sinkiness implied by its sheer breadth of options feels at odds with that.

[Dr.Samurai]

I love that so far your arguments all stem around "But they used to be always evil XP fodder and now they're not and that's bad." Kind of not the best approach to take all things considered.
I'm not saying it's "bad". But you can't say there isn't a shift when clearly there has been and continues to be one. I started in 3rd edition. My PHB did not include drow as a playable race, or dragonborn or tieflings. Now it does.

And I'm not sure why this wouldn't continue further.

Shifters and changelings and warforged were Eberron races in 3rd edition, until they were included in MM 3.

Genasi, goliaths, and Aarakocra were all in the Companion for Princes of the Apocalypse. Now they're in Monsters of the Multiverse.

Do I think when Plasmoids appear in Spelljammer that they will only ever be in Spelljammer games and supplements? No, I don't.

This will continue to occur, and it should, for business reasons. But why claim that it isn't happening?

As to your insinuation, I'll confirm it for you... I am the last person to wring my hands over the depiction of make-believe creatures in a fantasy tabletop game so... take that for what you will, I'm sure it will be in the worst way possible :smallbiggrin:

[Pixel_Kitsune]

I'm not saying it's "bad". But you can't say there isn't a shift when clearly there has been and continues to be one. I started in 3rd edition. My PHB did not include drow as a playable race, or dragonborn or tieflings. Now it does.

Tieflings were added in 2nd edition Planescape. Drow were around since 2E as well. As of Eberron the idea of not all evil everything exists, which was in 2004 in 3.X. Nothing new happening now. Dragonborn were essentially in both Darksun and Dragonlance under different names.


As to your insinuation, I'll confirm it for you... I am the last person to wring my hands over the depiction of make-believe creatures in a fantasy tabletop game so... take that for what you will, I'm sure it will be in the worst way possible :smallbiggrin:

No insinuation, saying it's a bad stance to take. If you think the concern is the idea of those poor make believe creatures vs the idea that it sets a precedent for stereotyping and behavior, then you're not looking at the Nuance. As for taking it the worst way, without going further into the discussion than is smart here, no, I have no idea which way I would take it. It is, at best, a stance made from a certain level of privilege and misunderstanding, but that's not automatically bad.

[Dr.Samurai]

Tieflings were added in 2nd edition Planescape. Drow were around since 2E as well. As of Eberron the idea of not all evil everything exists, which was in 2004 in 3.X. Nothing new happening now. Dragonborn were essentially in both Darksun and Dragonlance under different names.
I think you're missing the part where we're pointing out that they are now in the PHB. In the core books. That's the shift. No one is claiming these races never existed before now or weren't even playable before now.

I forgot to speak to the multiverse bit earlier that you and Amnestic pointed out.

I don't think the settings/lore were as unified as they are being made now. Elves in Eberron are not a part of Corellon Larethian, and drow are not related to Lolth in any way. But now they are. (I should note someone didn't think this was the case so this may be a wrong take based on faulty memory, but I thought 5E was meshing everything together so that what's true for one setting/world is true for the others, even if it doesn't seem that way. So elves in Eberron may not know they come from Corellon, and the name is completely unknown on that world, but they still are.)

No insinuation, saying it's a bad stance to take. If you think the concern is the idea of those poor make believe creatures vs the idea that it sets a precedent for stereotyping and behavior, then you're not looking at the Nuance. As for taking it the worst way, without going further into the discussion than is smart here, no, I have no idea which way I would take it. It is, at best, a stance made from a certain level of privilege and misunderstanding, but that's not automatically bad.
Yes yes yes, my position is not nuanced, I come from a place of privilege, you are smarter and more thoughtful than the people that don't see things your way, etc etc.

Not very compelling in the least, but doesn't make it any less commonplace these days :smallsigh:. Keep fighting the good fight against fantasy races on behalf of people like me. I can feel my life improving in real time :smalltongue:.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I'm someone who likes having lots of races.

But I'm also someone who doesn't want those races in core necessarily. Races are so thoroughly tied to settings (or should be, IMO, to make both setting and race consistent and coherent) that races should be, by default, setting-restricted with only the most generic options in core. And then have lots of racial variants, extra races, and general racial customization in setting-specific books.

And the whole multiverse thing should be shot out of a canon-cannon into the sun and forgotten. Except in setting-specific books like planescape/spelljammer. There should be no expectation or concept that an elf in FR is in any way related to (mythologically or cosmologically or anything) to an elf in Eberron or anywhere else. But that's my opinion, and I realize the devs have gone all in on the "everything is actually one setting and no you can't make any distinctions beyond purely cosmetic ones in published works" model. It still irks me.

[Pixel_Kitsune]

I think you're missing the part where we're pointing out that they are now in the PHB. In the core books. That's the shift. No one is claiming these races never existed before now or weren't even playable before now.

Not super relevant though. Also, the 5e PHB sets it up with Dwarf, Elf, Hafling and Human as the "normal" races with Dragonborn, Gnomes, half bloods and Tieflings are the less common side. Again, an option existing at all is not a bad thing or a demand for use.


I don't think the settings/lore were as unified as they are being made now. Elves in Eberron are not a part of Corellon Larethian, and drow are not related to Lolth in any way. But now they are. (I should note someone didn't think this was the case so this may be a wrong take based on faulty memory, but I thought 5E was meshing everything together so that what's true for one setting/world is true for the others, even if it doesn't seem that way. So elves in Eberron may not know they come from Corellon, and the name is completely unknown on that world, but they still are.)

Yes they were. Notice all your examples are Eberron. Eberron WAS separate from the rest of the cosmology, on purpose, to keep it as a distinct and different animal. So yes, Eberron was completely different. Everything else connected. Kara Tura, Forgotten Realms, Al'Qadim and a few others were all one planet, Spelljammer connected all the Prime worlds, Planescape connected the rest. Even DarkSun and Ravenloft became places you could get to if through great challenge.


Yes yes yes, my position is not nuanced, I come from a place of privilege, you are smarter and more thoughtful than the people that don't see things your way, etc etc.

Not very compelling in the least, but doesn't make it any less commonplace these days :smallsigh:. Keep fighting the good fight against fantasy races on behalf of people like me. I can feel my life improving in real time :smalltongue:.

I literally said I wasn't getting into it and stated I didn't automatically assume the worst. And you respond with snide quips and insults. And you specifically again make a claim that no one has ever made (that we're fighting the good fight for fantasy races).

I'm letting this part go, I'd recommend you choose the same.

[Dr.Samurai]

I'm someone who likes having lots of races.

But I'm also someone who doesn't want those races in core necessarily. Races are so thoroughly tied to settings (or should be, IMO, to make both setting and race consistent and coherent) that races should be, by default, setting-restricted with only the most generic options in core. And then have lots of racial variants, extra races, and general racial customization in setting-specific books.

And the whole multiverse thing should be shot out of a canon-cannon into the sun and forgotten. Except in setting-specific books like planescape/spelljammer. There should be no expectation or concept that an elf in FR is in any way related to (mythologically or cosmologically or anything) to an elf in Eberron or anywhere else. But that's my opinion, and I realize the devs have gone all in on the "everything is actually one setting and no you can't make any distinctions beyond purely cosmetic ones in published works" model. It still irks me.
I think this is where I'm at too. Thank you for saying it so well.

The canon-cannon made me laugh :smallbiggrin:

[KorvinStarmast]

It's a "Dr.Samurai pointing out Reality" thing. Snake people are "completely normal"... AS VILLAINS lol. The yuanti are monsters, with evil cults dedicated to them. That is their best fit into D&D.

Races are so thoroughly tied to settings (or should be Still agree.

And the whole multiverse thing should be shot out of a canon-cannon into the sun and forgotten. Legendary item or artifact? :smallconfused:

[PhoenixPhyre]

Legendary item or artifact? :smallconfused:

Depends on the setting. Some settings need them to be Common, just to handle the constant yeeting (see, I can do hip lingo like them kids!) of canon due to constant retcons. Others, they're more Artifact (owned by the over-gods and used at their sole pleasure).

[Amechra]

Honestly, my problem with the "wacky races" in 5e is that they all feel kinda flat... because they're mostly presented as archetypes for players.

I want to play a Tiefling? Cool, it gives my character a neat look and a snappy premise of "you're part fiend and you look like it" — I can work with that. I'm a DM and I want to put Tieflings in my setting? WotC just goes "they live in slums and do crimes!". Which doesn't help me as a DM, because how do I make the Tiefling quarter of a city feel distinct? Like, do Tieflings have the same diet as everyone else? Do they dress the same? Worship the same deities?

"THEY LIVE IN SLUMS AND DO CRIMES! THAT'S ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW!" is the answer I get from WotC. And that kinda sucks, if I'm going to be honest... I mean, I would probably ignore most of what they wrote for my home games (because fantasy cultures are actually my favorite part of worldbuilding), but I play with a bunch of people who would 100% use that information — both when DMing and when fleshing out their character's backstory.

[Psyren]

I'm someone who likes having lots of races.

But I'm also someone who doesn't want those races in core necessarily. Races are so thoroughly tied to settings (or should be, IMO, to make both setting and race consistent and coherent) that races should be, by default, setting-restricted with only the most generic options in core. And then have lots of racial variants, extra races, and general racial customization in setting-specific books.

How do you decide what's "generic" though? Humans and elves would probably get broad consensus. But for the rest, what do you use? Tradition? Half-Orcs are commonly found in core, but you can't really get those without Orcs, so shouldn't they be "generic" too? Fey like Satyrs and Fairies have been part of fantasy forever. And some major fantasy RPG settings don't even have playable dwarves, halflings or gnomes. Millions if not billions of people are familiar with Tamriel for instance.

It's all arbitrary, so erring on the side of stagnation feels like a losing game to me.



And the whole multiverse thing should be shot out of a canon-cannon into the sun and forgotten. Except in setting-specific books like planescape/spelljammer. There should be no expectation or concept that an elf in FR is in any way related to (mythologically or cosmologically or anything) to an elf in Eberron or anywhere else. But that's my opinion, and I realize the devs have gone all in on the "everything is actually one setting and no you can't make any distinctions beyond purely cosmetic ones in published works" model. It still irks me.

No offense meant but this is a little ridiculous. You're trying to claim that elves in Eberron/Krynn/Ravenloft/Faerun/etc have no relation to one another despite every last one of them sharing the same racial traits, whether those are biological or metaphysical or a combination - clearly there must be *some* kind of commonality in their origins or creation. It strains disbelief otherwise.

Certainly you can change elves in any of those settings to be different from one another and break that linkage if you want to, but saying it exists by default just makes sense.

[Catullus64]

How do you decide what's "generic" though? Humans and elves would probably get broad consensus. But for the rest, what do you use? Tradition? Half-Orcs are commonly found in core, but you can't really get those without Orcs, so shouldn't they be "generic" too? Fey like Satyrs and Fairies have been part of fantasy forever. And some major fantasy RPG settings don't even have playable dwarves, halflings or gnomes. Millions if not billions of people are familiar with Tamriel for instance.

It's all arbitrary, so erring on the side of stagnation feels like a losing game to me.

My general metric for what I consider strange is fundamentally humanocentric. The closer to human appearance and behavior a species is, the less outlandish it feels when they're a player option.

The Satyrs and Fairies example strikes me as strange. Surely those work best as non-player creatures rather than core options for player characters? It seems like a false dichotomy to say you'd be cutting out an iconic fantasy element by pruning them as player races.



No offense meant but this is a little ridiculous. You're trying to claim that elves in Eberron/Krynn/Ravenloft/Faerun/etc have no relation to one another despite every last one of them sharing the same racial traits, whether those are biological or metaphysical or a combination - clearly there must be *some* kind of commonality in their origins or creation. It strains disbelief otherwise.

Certainly you can change elves in any of those settings to be different from one another and break that linkage if you want to, but saying it exists by default just makes sense.

I can say without difficulty that there's no biological or mythical common origin between Martin from Redwall and Reepicheep from The Chronicles of Narnia, despite both being sword-wielding, bipedal, talking mice. (Which, I'm sure, if they were made today, would be size Small or Medium.)

[BRC]

No offense meant but this is a little ridiculous. You're trying to claim that elves in Eberron/Krynn/Ravenloft/Faerun/etc have no relation to one another despite every last one of them sharing the same racial traits, whether those are biological or metaphysical or a combination - clearly there must be *some* kind of commonality in their origins or creation. It strains disbelief otherwise.

Certainly you can change elves in any of those settings to be different from one another and break that linkage if you want to, but saying it exists by default just makes sense.

Only if you assume the existence of a multiverse. It's possible to run Eberron/Krynn/Ravenloft/Faerun/Greyhawk/Homebrew Fantasy Setting without positioning it within a Multiverse. If your setting isn't part of a multiverse, there is no "Commonality" between your Orcs and Faerun Orcs because Faerun Orcs don't exist in your setting.

[Psyren]

My general metric for what I consider strange is fundamentally humanocentric. The closer to human appearance and behavior a species is, the less outlandish it feels when they're a player option.

So you'd be fine with core Aasimar then? Kalashtar? Dhampir? Shifters? They all look pretty human by default.


The Satyrs and Fairies example strikes me as strange. Surely those work best as non-player creatures rather than core options for player characters? It seems like a false dichotomy to say you'd be cutting out an iconic fantasy element by pruning them as player races.

Again, why? So long as there are CR 1/4 specimens, why would they be more suitable as nonplayable monsters? The game won't evolve so long as we're unwilling to challenge this kind of narrative inertia.


Only if you assume the existence of a multiverse. It's possible to run Eberron/Krynn/Ravenloft/Faerun/Greyhawk/Homebrew Fantasy Setting without positioning it within a Multiverse. If your setting isn't part of a multiverse, there is no "Commonality" between your Orcs and Faerun Orcs because Faerun Orcs don't exist in your setting.

I'm not saying your setting/campaign needs to assume a multiverse. But I think it's a good move that theirs does, and not just from a business standpoint. The default mechanics support this narrative, because no one is going into a Ravenloft game expecting their Elf to have different traits than the one they played last month in FR.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Again, why? So long as there are CR 1/4 specimens, why would they be more suitable as nonplayable monsters? The game won't evolve so long as we're unwilling to challenge this kind of narrative inertia.


The game already gave us what the most generic ones are. In the Basic Rules. Human. Hill Dwarf. High Elf. Lightfoot Halfling.

Everything else should be setting-specific, even if it may exist in more than one setting. Because fundamentally, culture varies by setting. And culture is more important than biology. Whether half-orcs are even a thing is a per-world setting. Are orcs playable? Do they exist? Setting-by-setting. Saying that there is really only one set of creator gods and one fixed metaphysics basically makes all settings identical down to the window dressing.

That's not breaking from narrative inertia, it's reinforcing it. Throwing in a bunch of random races just to pad the count just makes settings incoherent. Because races have narrative niches to fill. And jamming a bunch into that same niche just makes things not work.

I know why WotC chose to do the whole multiverse thing. To sell more books. I'm saying that from an aesthetic and design perspective, that sucks. It's taking a steamroller to any possibility of interesting, diverse, sensible settings by flattening the whole thing into a homogenous paste.

Edit: and as far as similarities, they could just say "Elf is what we call those people who live a long time, are generally tall and graceful, and don't sleep much" (except phrased better for whatever traits they want to give the generic version). This implies nothing about genetic or mythological commonalities, it's purely phenomenological. An elf from setting 1 and and elf from setting 2 might not really look or act much the same. But they have similar enough basic traits for game purposes.

[Dr.Samurai]

Again, I think we're missing the difference between "it's always been in the game" to "now these are player races and they're in generic books or even in core".

Many moons ago, I was in a Return to Castle Greyhawk game playing a kickass fighter (4th edition). We encountered a cambion in the dungeon that set an ambush for us and nearly killed the party with mind control. My character executed him after the encounter was over. One of the other players threw an absolute conniption over it. They were playing some worlds-spanning planeswalking traveler with every modern perspective that you can fit in a character. My fighter was a knight from the Shield Lands that fought against Iuz and his forces, led by Cambions.

Conversation went OOC and I explained that cambions are dangerous and evil and it wouldn't make sense to travel the dungeon with someone that literally just tried to kill us, almost did, and can control our minds. The player talked about how their character is from Sigil and they have seen all sorts of different creatures and monsters that defy the tropes and blah blah blah. It was clear that the player felt very strongly about this so I offered to undo the execution and walk around with a ticking time-bomb in the dungeon, DM willing. DM agreed but the player rage-quit because of my backwards position on cambions.

I can't roll my eyes hard enough. So Iuz is a cambion and has all these cambions in his army but also... tieflings are just a core race now walking around alongside everyone else. Cool...

I'm in a BG:DiA game now and we've encountered several philosophizing demons, embodiments of chaos and evil,that haven't attacked us because they're exploring their existence and the nature of violence. Another hit his head and now wants to be peaceful. Meanwhile... I'm ready to roll initiative and hit that Combat portion of the game but... these immortal spirits of pure wanton destruction aren't your ordinary tanarii. They're special and different and have more in common with you than you think :smallwink:.

Needless to say, I'm over this stuff. There's a time and a place for it, but I don't want to see every setting just casually accept dragonians and cambions and everything else under the sun. As I said before, it winds up not making sense. Either the DM has to have the same suspicious attitudes over and over and over again, which someone mentioned previously will get old very fast, or the world literally has to change so that people are not suspicious of what look like lycanthropes, dragons, and devils, etc.

And I agree with Phoenix on reinforcing the narrative inertia through this shared multiverse origin lore.

[Psyren]

Everything else should be setting-specific, even if it may exist in more than one setting.

In a word - no.

And to be clear, I'm not saying we should open the floodgates and mandate 20+ playable races in every campaign - but limiting the default to 4 is way too few.



I know why WotC chose to do the whole multiverse thing. To sell more books. I'm saying that from an aesthetic and design perspective, that sucks. It's taking a steamroller to any possibility of interesting, diverse, sensible settings by flattening the whole thing into a homogenous paste.

I'm not denying that the primary benefit was likely revenue-driven. But it's far from the only one. For example, making a concerted effort to encourage playable Orcs as a default in most settings for instance, gets D&D away from the kind of historical othering that's led to their more problematic portrayals in past editions. There's also greater synergy between race and class concepts - Sure you can say your draconic sorcerer gnome has dragons in their ancestry and there's nothing wrong with that, but for an excited new player who wants to be the dragoniest dragon to ever dragon, they're going to leap at the chance of being something like a dragonborn draconic sorcerer instead.

In short, something can be done for the purposes of making money, and still be good for the game and its customers in other ways too.

If that doesn't fit your vision for a given campaign - that's fine, as the DM you have control. But that shouldn't be a barrier to WotC finding new avenues to introduce new content or to be progressive.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Again, I think we're missing the difference between "it's always been in the game" to "now these are player races and they're in generic books or even in core".

Many moons ago, I was in a Return to Castle Greyhawk game playing a kickass fighter (4th edition). We encountered a cambion in the dungeon that set an ambush for us and nearly killed the party with mind control. My character executed him after the encounter was over. One of the other players threw an absolute conniption over it. They were playing some worlds-spanning planeswalking traveler with every modern perspective that you can fit in a character. My fighter was a knight from the Shield Lands that fought against Iuz and his forces, led by Cambions.

Conversation went OOC and I explained that cambions are dangerous and evil and it wouldn't make sense to travel the dungeon with someone that literally just tried to kill us, almost did, and can control our minds. The player talked about how their character is from Sigil and they have seen all sorts of different creatures and monsters that defy the tropes and blah blah blah. It was clear that the player felt very strongly about this so I offered to undo the execution and walk around with a ticking time-bomb in the dungeon, DM willing. DM agreed but the player rage-quit because of my backwards position on cambions.

I can't roll my eyes hard enough. So Iuz is a cambion and has all these cambions in his army but also... tieflings are just a core race now walking around alongside everyone else. Cool...

I'm in a BG:DiA game now and we've encountered several philosophizing demons, embodiments of chaos and evil,that haven't attacked us because they're exploring their existence and the nature of violence. Another hit his head and now wants to be peaceful. Meanwhile... I'm ready to roll initiative and hit that Combat portion of the game but... these immortal spirits of pure wanton destruction aren't your ordinary tanarii. They're special and different and have more in common with you than you think :smallwink:.

Needless to say, I'm over this stuff. There's a time and a place for it, but I don't want to see every setting just casually accept dragonians and cambions and everything else under the sun. As I said before, it winds up not making sense. Either the DM has to have the same suspicious attitudes over and over and over again, which someone mentioned previously will get old very fast, or the world literally has to change so that people are not suspicious of what look like lycanthropes, dragons, and devils, etc.

And I agree with Phoenix on reinforcing the narrative inertia through this shared multiverse origin lore.

To be fair, cambions =/= tieflings.

However, I find the "all tieflings are tied to <these specific devils>" thing to be incredibly narrow and confining. Personally, I run tieflings (and aasimar and genasi and even most dragonborn) as touched by forces. People of normal parents born in areas heavily influenced by various forces. The children of two fiend warlocks are more likely to be "hells-touched"; the children of two clerics or celestial warlocks are more likely to be "heaven-touched". But only slightly, and the children of two tieflings is just as frequently a normal human. Powerful dragons (those of Legendary status) influence the world around them--the various groups that serve and worship them (which aren't just kobolds, aka dragon-touched goblins) become, over time, dragon-touched. Except for the "true" dragonborn, whose ancestors were artificially created by infusing fragments from dragon souls into unborn children[1] and breed true without dragon involvement. But are few in number and limited in geographic reach.

[1] using demonic blood magic to chip pieces off the souls of captive dragons; the babies were of unwilling mothers, conceived in factory-like conditions. Tibor Imperia (the magitech empire that created them) wasn't exactly nice at that point in history, and fell soon after due to the utter revulsion of the populace to the methods used to create these new "super soldiers". The fall involved magic "nukes" that ended up creating the halfling race out of goblins mutated by the "radiation." The things you can do when you're not shackled by the multiverse and its rigidity and narrative blandness....

[Catullus64]

So you'd be fine with core Aasimar then? Kalashtar? Dhampir? Shifters? They all look pretty human by default.

Eh. Aasimar I could take or leave, Dhampir are ok for a very specific type of campaign but feel a little too OC-ish, Shifters are definitely more high-weirdness. All of them have a clearly and conspicuously present supernatural origin, much more so than, say, Dwarves.

The point isn't that any of these races in isolation constitutes a problem, just that having them all present in the same setting (something a multiverse encourages) is discordant because of how different their origins are.

That's also part of what I was getting at by talking about magical subclasses: that having most PCs have magical powers of wildly different origins is part of what creates the feel of the kitchen sink for me; it reminds me of superhero crosssovers, where characters with strongly distinct themes and aesthetics in their own solo series are suddenly thrust into the same story, often with deeply bizarre results (something I like about superhero comics, and respectfully dislike in fantasy.)



Again, why? So long as there are CR 1/4 specimens, why would they be more suitable as nonplayable monsters? The game won't evolve so long as we're unwilling to challenge this kind of narrative inertia.


Satyrs and Fairies are less human-like than Elves or Dwarves, I don't think that ought to be a controversial statement. The inherent mysticism of a creature is diminished by opening it up to players, so I tend to be cagey in most instances about doing it with established creatures. And there's no getting around the fact that some PC races have the weight of tradition* behind them and others don't. Your language of "narrative inertia" and D&D needing to "evolve" has me thinking we don't place the same value on tradition for its own sake.

A very simple statement of a complex topic. D&D's history is, as many have pointed out, very weird, and the place of 'Creature PCs' within that legacy is weirder still. Worth discussion in its own right!

[Dr.Samurai]

To be fair, cambions =/= tieflings.

However, I find the "all tieflings are tied to <these specific devils>" thing to be incredibly narrow and confining. Personally, I run tieflings (and aasimar and genasi and even most dragonborn) as touched by forces. People of normal parents born in areas heavily influenced by various forces. The children of two fiend warlocks are more likely to be "hells-touched"; the children of two clerics or celestial warlocks are more likely to be "heaven-touched". But only slightly, and the children of two tieflings is just as frequently a normal human. Powerful dragons (those of Legendary status) influence the world around them--the various groups that serve and worship them (which aren't just kobolds, aka dragon-touched goblins) become, over time, dragon-touched. Except for the "true" dragonborn, whose ancestors were artificially created by infusing fragments from dragon souls into unborn children[1] and breed true without dragon involvement. But are few in number and limited in geographic reach.

[1] using demonic blood magic to chip pieces off the souls of captive dragons; the babies were of unwilling mothers, conceived in factory-like conditions. Tibor Imperia (the magitech empire that created them) wasn't exactly nice at that point in history, and fell soon after due to the utter revulsion of the populace to the methods used to create these new "super soldiers". The fall involved magic "nukes" that ended up creating the halfling race out of goblins mutated by the "radiation." The things you can do when you're not shackled by the multiverse and its rigidity and narrative blandness....
All fair, but it's less if cambions are tieflings and more that tieflings can look just like cambions.

I like the campaign world to have things that are weird and strange and fantastical. Unseen until the PCs arrive at it or discover it, etc. When "everything is normal" I feel like the setting loses that wonderment.

Cambions as rare and unique creatures that advance the schemes of fiends is great. But if they exist, why would townsfolk not balk at a tiefling walking into the square? Red skin? No pupils? Horns? Tail? Wings? Fangs? Uh... why are we not getting out the pitchforks exactly??

All that said... I do have a particular type of game that I like, and that's one where the PCs are heroes but they still react to the setting with... fear or unease or surprise, etc. Like Aragorn being disgusted by the Mouth of Sauron or Sam looking up at the cave troll and taking in its massive height. In games I play in, someone will inevitably quip to the Mouth of Sauron that he should try Sensodyne toothpaste teeheehee, and there's this sense that nothing can shock or awe the PCs because they're basically video game avatars roflstomping through the setting.

But I recognize that's my own personal hangup so...

[Psyren]

As I mentioned at the start of this tangent, I think slackjawed yokel villagers who dive for pitchforks the moment something with an unearthly skin tone walks into town is unimaginative. Even if they have comparable mental faculties, a Faerun or Krynn commoner is almost nothing like one from medieval Europe, and that divergence only grows as you arrive at truly unearthly settings like Ravenloft, Ravnica, or even Eberron.

[Catullus64]

As I mentioned at the start of this tangent, I think slackjawed yokel villagers who dive for pitchforks the moment something with an unearthly skin tone walks into town is unimaginative. Even if they have comparable mental faculties, a Faerun or Krynn commoner is almost nothing like one from medieval Europe, and that divergence only grows as you arrive at truly unearthly settings like Ravenloft, Ravnica, or even Eberron.

You know what else feels unimaginative? Rural farmers with technology that peaks at the water-mill, living on the edge of wilderness teeming with magical stuff that wants to kill them, who are nevertheless very cosmopolitan and tolerant when it comes to people who look and act differently from them, such that they never threaten to be uncomfortable to contemporary sensibilities. Both are lazy and generally boring extremes.

I don't accuse you of advocating for this latter condition, but that's what I think people are talking about when they say that these writing and design shifts water down the sense of the world as a real place.

And, I have to admit, if I had to choose between either of those unimaginative extremes, I'd take the pitchfork-wielders, because they at least create drama.

[Pixel_Kitsune]

Honestly, my problem with the "wacky races" in 5e is that they all feel kinda flat... because they're mostly presented as archetypes for players.

I want to play a Tiefling? Cool, it gives my character a neat look and a snappy premise of "you're part fiend and you look like it" — I can work with that. I'm a DM and I want to put Tieflings in my setting? WotC just goes "they live in slums and do crimes!". Which doesn't help me as a DM, because how do I make the Tiefling quarter of a city feel distinct? Like, do Tieflings have the same diet as everyone else? Do they dress the same? Worship the same deities?

"THEY LIVE IN SLUMS AND DO CRIMES! THAT'S ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW!" is the answer I get from WotC. And that kinda sucks, if I'm going to be honest... I mean, I would probably ignore most of what they wrote for my home games (because fantasy cultures are actually my favorite part of worldbuilding), but I play with a bunch of people who would 100% use that information — both when DMing and when fleshing out their character's backstory.

Pick the setting. The PHB says rougher parts and end up towards crime. So I'd probably pattern them similar to what we see of latinx crime families. Somewhat ruthless at the top, but ultimately people trying to survive who love their families and are trying to do their best for those around them in a horrible situation. There's a ton to work with there beyond the generic "They live in the slums and do crimes".

But the PHB is not a campaign setting, it's a generic quick reference on top of the rules. If you look to other settings you get unique spins on them based on their location. To mind Exandria has a whole spin on them different from "They be criminals".




No offense meant but this is a little ridiculous. You're trying to claim that elves in Eberron/Krynn/Ravenloft/Faerun/etc have no relation to one another despite every last one of them sharing the same racial traits, whether those are biological or metaphysical or a combination - clearly there must be *some* kind of commonality in their origins or creation. It strains disbelief otherwise.

Certainly you can change elves in any of those settings to be different from one another and break that linkage if you want to, but saying it exists by default just makes sense.

I agree with you 100%, but a thread I've seen a lot is the whole "It's magic, there's no automatic evolutionary or linkage in the past." To whit, Athasian Elves would have the same or similar stats to other elves and are genetically.... halflings. Which is true of every race in DarkSun. Fantasy lets realistic issues go out the window.

[Dr.Samurai]

Well, let's just point out that the traits I mentioned (and the traits of many other races) go way beyond "unearthly skin tone", so we're not really engaging with that point.

With regards to being different from real medieval people, I suppose it's a question of how and to what degree.

Real medieval Europe didn't actually have demons and devils and hags and the sort, but people, that look just the same as their fellows, had very bad things done to them under suspicion of being those things or under the influence of those things.

So in make believe Toril or Krynn, those creatures are actually real and have very powerful abilities. And now these races look like them and/or are descended from them.

To say that the people of these worlds would be less suspicious and more accepting seems to me to assume the exact opposite of what would occur.

[awa]

At least in my opinion the problem is less that their are cosmopolitan societies its that now every society is cosmopolitan as the default assumption. The diversity of al qadim and planescape use to be part of what made them special and different. But if people who look like demons wander around in any given town and no one bats an eye its not special anymore.

It also limits the type of stories you can tell, its very hard to try to convince a player that the dead rising is something their character is supposed to be afraid of if the player is undead or demonic themselves.

[KorvinStarmast]

"THEY LIVE IN SLUMS AND DO CRIMES! THAT'S ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW!" is the answer I get from WotC. And that kinda sucks, if I'm going to be honest... I mean, I would probably ignore most of what they wrote for my home games (because fantasy cultures are actually my favorite part of worldbuilding), but I play with a bunch of people who would 100% use that information — both when DMing and when fleshing out their character's backstory. It's almost as though WoTC is trying to force the edgelord schtick onto the tiefling. (My problem is that the mandatory horns and tail is aesthetic garbage, particularly if they are trying to fit into the underworld ... while standing out like a sore thumb. Lose the horns and tail, for starters).

Only if you assume the existence of a multiverse. It's possible to run Eberron/Krynn/Ravenloft/Faerun/Greyhawk/Homebrew Fantasy Setting without positioning it within a Multiverse. If your setting isn't part of a multiverse, there is no "Commonality" between your Orcs and Faerun Orcs because Faerun Orcs don't exist in your setting. Bingo, award this poster a cigar. :smallsmile:

but the player rage-quit because of my backwards position on cambions. Sounds like an upgrade for the group.

Needless to say, I'm over this stuff. There's a time and a place for it, but I don't want to see every setting just casually accept dragonians and cambions and everything else under the sun. As I said before, it winds up not making sense. Because trope subversion is so original and clever. Wait, no, it's trite.

And, I have to admit, if I had to choose between either of those unimaginative extremes, I'd take the pitchfork-wielders, because they at least create drama. And makes the calm emotions spell into something useful. :smallsmile:

[Dr.Samurai]

At least in my opinion the problem is less that their are cosmopolitan societies its that now every society is cosmopolitan as the default assumption. The diversity of al qadim and planescape use to be part of what made them special and different. But if people who look like demons wander around in any given town and no one bats an eye its not special anymore.

It also limits the type of stories you can tell, its very hard to try to convince a player that the dead rising is something their character is supposed to be afraid of if the player is undead or demonic themselves.
I agree with this.

It's like... in Eberron, yes, you're going to see more goblins around than in other settings because they occupied the land long before the ancestors of the current inhabitants. You're going to see warforged because they were purchased in various nations from the war. But the monstrous stuff is mostly going to be seen in Sharn and some of the other larger cities/institutions. You're not going to see Gargoyles and Gnolls and Ogres and Minotaurs in every city and town.

And one of the reasons this may be more tolerable in Eberron is because there's actually mass communication in the form of newspapers and Speaking Stones, and "trains" to help elevate the thinking of the populace. But even in Eberron you have a history of a Lycanthropic Plague. Shifters, which look pretty human, are distrusted to some degree. So imagine if you look like a Tabaxi or Leonin. Or a tiefling, that might have wandered out of a Fernian manifest zone, or across the Icehorns from the Demon Wastes, or crawled up from out of Khyber.

Either these races are common enough that people just don't care, or people just don't care because we just want to be able to play any race without having to deal with the in-world stigma.

Like the tiefling.

I'm descended from evil incarnate, a spirit of malevolence. I am marked by the taint of my heritage, my spirit torn between the morality of my mortal mother, and the infernal black void that manifested my father, a devil so vile his own duke bound him for a thousand years.

How's that working out for you?

Oh, you know, apprenticeship at the smithy. Ol' Ben works me hard and I've learned a lot, but I think it's time for me to spread my wings and strike out on my own, maybe do some adventuring.

Oh well we're all going to miss you here in our little hamlet, you've just been the best ever since you came here!

It's just having your cake and eating it too.

[meandean]

So IIRC, we've seen in this thread or similar ones people who:


Think anything other than humans should be rare, period
Want to stick to the Tolkien/OD&D crew
Want to stick to the 5E Player's Handbook crew
Would disallow species traditionally associated with "evil"
Would allow species traditionally associated with "evil", but only under the proviso that the player's experience will be entirely different than other species
Would disallow the "anthropomorphic animal" species (e.g. tabaxi, tortle)
Would allow those, but would disallow species who don't resemble humans in terms of size/stature (e.g. fairy, minotaur)

etc. etc. etc.

Even if one of these describes your exact feelings, isn't it pretty obvious to you that you're not Inherently Correct? (Ehh, probably not, because people don't work that way, but, it should be.)

The fact that it's entirely a matter of quirky individual taste is exactly why all the options should be on the table, and the resolution is "whatever the DM's quirky individual taste is."

[Witty Username]

I can say without difficulty that there's no biological or mythical common origin between Martin from Redwall and Reepicheep from The Chronicles of Narnia, despite both being sword-wielding, bipedal, talking mice. (Which, I'm sure, if they were made today, would be size Small or Medium.)

I am pretty sure Reepicheep was Small in the made for TV movies, and I think Warwick Davis in a costume.

[Psyren]

Real medieval Europe didn't actually have demons and devils and hags and the sort, but people, that look just the same as their fellows, had very bad things done to them under suspicion of being those things or under the influence of those things.

So in make believe Toril or Krynn, those creatures are actually real and have very powerful abilities. And now these races look like them and/or are descended from them.

To say that the people of these worlds would be less suspicious and more accepting seems to me to assume the exact opposite of what would occur.

1) Okay, so at best you've justified hating Tieflings on sight. What about bird people, rabbit people, cloud people and robots?

2) I think there's a lot of daylight between "accepting people" and "pitchforks." Acceptance isn't a binary, it's a spectrum where things like indifference fall towards the middle. And keep in mind another massive difference between D&D settings and our world, i.e. a global language that everyone knows. I'm not saying every village the PCs walk into will garland them with wreaths and sing kumbaya, but defaulting to "you have to be a human/elf/dwarf because anything else will get run out of town on a wagon and I don't feel like RPing that" is lazy, end of.


You know what else feels unimaginative? Rural farmers with technology that peaks at the water-mill, living on the edge of wilderness teeming with magical stuff that wants to kill them, who are nevertheless very cosmopolitan and tolerant when it comes to people who look and act differently from them, such that they never threaten to be uncomfortable to contemporary sensibilities. Both are lazy and generally boring extremes.

I don't accuse you of advocating for this latter condition, but that's what I think people are talking about when they say that these writing and design shifts water down the sense of the world as a real place.

And, I have to admit, if I had to choose between either of those unimaginative extremes, I'd take the pitchfork-wielders, because they at least create drama.

See #2 above.

[Dr.Samurai]

So IIRC, we've seen in this thread people who:


Think anything other than humans should be rare, period
Want to stick to the Tolkien/OD&D crew
Want to stick to the 5E Player's Handbook crew
Would disallow species traditionally associated with "evil"
Would allow species traditionally associated with "evil", but only under the proviso that the player's experience will be entirely different than other races
Would disallow the "anthropomorphic animal" races (e.g. tabaxi, tortle)
Would disallow races who don't resemble humans in terms of size/stature (e.g. minotaur, fairy)

etc. etc. etc.

Even if one of these describes your exact feelings, isn't it pretty obvious to you that you're not Inherently Correct? (Ehh, probably not, because people don't work that way, but, it should be.)

The fact that it's entirely a matter of quirky individual taste is exactly why all the options should be on the table, and the resolution is "whatever the DM's quirky individual taste is."
I think it's a question of... to what degree are these races expected to be allowed?

Eberron is a pretty tight setting, where everything has an explanation and attempts are made to fit it in in an organic way. Eberron goes out of its way NOT to be kitchen sink and have anything exist solely for the sake of "options". So often if there is a question about how x race fits in the setting, natural suggestions would be "hidden tribe from Xendrik", "magebred", "experiment of Mordain", "influenced by Manifest Zone", etc. The point being that it is rarely "oh you're a goliath because goliaths are just a race of people that live in the mountains of Khorvaire".

Being so unique, you would expect for people to react differently to you throughout the game world.

In Krynn, where draconians are minions of the forces of chaos, why would dragonborn be accepted as totally normal and okay? In Greyhawk, where there is a conquered nation called the Empire of Iuz ruled by an evil cambion with his cambion commanders, why would tieflings not be mistrusted?

Drow have a reputation in Faerun for conducting night raids where they slaughter everyone in their path and those that don't get killed are taken as slaves and dragged back into the night world of the Underdark. Shouldn't that have some heads turning when one walks into town?

Settings change when you have these core race options. Again, going back to Eberron, in 4th edition an explanation had to be given for who and what dragonborn and tiefling were in the setting and many people chose simply not to include them because they weren't a thing in Eberron before. But just by including them in the PHB the conversations were had and the explanations presented. See also the lore shift for Drow to make them more inclusive as PC races, because it's difficult to have a PC race when they are associated with evil acts.

It simply can't be denied that making options like this core changes the setting. It absolutely has to.

And you're forgetting some options like "some people want every race to be available" or "some people think it should be setting dependent".

[KorvinStarmast]

Either these races are common enough that people just don't care, or people just don't care because we just want to be able to play any race without having to deal with the in-world stigma.

It's just having your cake and eating it too. Yes.

The fact that it's entirely a matter of quirky individual taste is exactly why all the options should be on the table, and the resolution is "whatever the DM's quirky individual taste is." As a DM, I am of course a man of wealth and taste. For my world I am inherently correct. Your point on "we are arguing about a matter of taste" is correct (inherently or otherwise). :smallsmile:

[Lord Raziere]

It's almost as though WoTC is trying to force the edgelord schtick onto the tiefling. (My problem is that the mandatory horns and tail is aesthetic garbage, particularly if they are trying to fit into the underworld ... while standing out like a sore thumb. Lose the horns and tail, for starters).


you speak like a criminal underworld is a bunch of masters of disguise pulling off genius plots or something. or that like someone who thinks law enforcement always works perfectly. not only will gangs form ties to people who are ethnically similar to them, some gangs will deliberately tattoo themselves with all the same tattoo despite it being a identifying mark for the law. why? its a social thing. its to control the person getting the tattoo so that they are in the life for good, to cut off their options of asking the authorities for help with anything. it turns a criminal life from something they're experiencing alone to something shared.

you don't get tieflings cutting off their horns to get into human gangs. you get tieflings finding other tieflings and going "screw that human gang over there, they hate us, lets band together and kick their ass and rule their territory instead", showing off their horns, red skin and tails as mark of pride while dressing to mark them as a gang member so that people know not to screw with them. the entire point of such organized crime is to get people to accept it as something that just happens and not to get involved with it, rather than hiding it. it gets so entrenched and built up, the law can't do anything to control other than work out a deal with them to stay out of each others business while the organized criminals regulate themselves with self-imposed rules to make sure the police don't get on their case. after all if they hate you, why join them? ain't gonna be nothing but pain and its not as if everyone knows the alchemical/herbal compound combinations for the makeup to disguise oneself, and definitely not everyone knows magic. and if your living in the slums, well the constables will probably assume your a criminal just because your living there anyways, so really makes no difference if your tiefling or not.

that and if they truly hate you, the people around you will beat you up the moment the deception is revealed for "trying to be higher than where your supposed to be" or something like that. if your honest, on the other hand they will leave you relatively alone because "you know your place". why take the risk? no one likes a liar, the difference is that criminals will be more violent about it. you steal a valuable diamond while pulling off a deception, the constables will merely arrest you, the other members who didn't get the cut of their pay on the other hand, they might kill you, if they don't beat you to find out where the diamond is first.

the most successful tieflings of course, are the mafia. they dress well, speak politely have an office not even hiding their business, give you a business card when they meet you, and no one wants to cross them, not even the law.

[Catullus64]

So IIRC, we've seen in this thread or similar ones people who:


Think anything other than humans should be rare, period
Want to stick to the Tolkien/OD&D crew
Want to stick to the 5E Player's Handbook crew
Would disallow species traditionally associated with "evil"
Would allow species traditionally associated with "evil", but only under the proviso that the player's experience will be entirely different than other races
Would disallow the "anthropomorphic animal" races (e.g. tabaxi, tortle)
Would disallow races who don't resemble humans in terms of size/stature (e.g. fairy, minotaur)

etc. etc. etc.

Even if one of these describes your exact feelings, isn't it pretty obvious to you that you're not Inherently Correct? (Ehh, probably not, because people don't work that way, but, it should be.)

The fact that it's entirely a matter of quirky individual taste is exactly why all the options should be on the table, and the resolution is "whatever the DM's quirky individual taste is."

The tendency to, at every turn, say "just do what you want at your table" is frustrating to me. A Dungeon Master is not an absolute monarch. Every game takes place under social conditions that limit what the players will and won't accept. I pointed out in an earlier post that I play a lot under social conditions (store games, lots of strangers and brand-new players, store wants to sell sourcebooks) that sharply limit my ability to curate player options and niche setting choices, and that without the power to do so, the game tends to slide into the kitchen sink real quick.

I'm not interested in legislating other people's games, but I am interested in interrogating to what extent the game books themselves contribute to this effect, to a sense of player entitlement to play whatever they want all the time. Because while my circumstances aren't universal, I hardly think I'm alone in having play conditions that don't just let you be the unilateral auteur-DM who can just decide to disallow everything that doesn't suit his taste.

[KorvinStarmast]

Acceptance isn't a binary, it's a spectrum where things like indifference fall towards the middle. That's how I tend to run it, but that takes more effort for some people to accommodate internally. For example, my salt marsh campaign tries to reflect that folks from the Capital of Keoland are more cosmopolitan but a lot of the fisherfolk/townsfolk in salt marsh proper are very provincial in outlook, and tend to be wary of, or distrust "them outsiders" reflexively. It thus takes a while for them to warm up to the PCs. Since there is a scripted (in the published adventure) tension between those more loyal to the Crown (the dwarf miners, the Eliander, a few others) and the local faction, that is one of the ways to reflect that: their attitudes towards strangers in general, but the party still made a very good first impression at a tavern (Empty Net) on their first night there and won some immediate friends/positive points of contact as a result of that interaction (even though that tavern is a veritable fount of 'localist/don't like outsiders' sentiment).

One of my players tried to characterize the folks in Salt Marsh as 'racist' - which was a case of that player utterly missing the point and the nuance. But it may be that this player has no experience in dealing with people from small towns, fishing communities in remote places, etc ... and thus had no RL point of reference to draw on.

We got that sorted out through play, though, in terms of getting the feel and the nuance across.

[BRC]

As I see it, a properly built setting should Fall into one of three categories

1) Deliberately Kitchen Sink. Anything that can hold a conversation is a Person, and people won't bat an eye if you're a walking turtle or your hair is made of fire or what. The wild nature of the setting is built into it.

2) A Divided World: There are "Mundane" races, that are basically just People, and other groups that are specifically something Different. An example might be a world where you've got Humans, Halflings, orcs, and Dwarves as ordinary Mortals, and then various forms of Fae: Saytrs, Genasi, Changelings, Tieflings, goblins, Rabbitfolk, ect exist, but they are different types of Fae. It's not "Some people in this world are Rabbitfolk" it's "Some people in this world are Fae. One type of Fae is Rabbitfolk", and "The Fae" have a different place in the world than mortals. You can encounter, say, a group of Gnolls or whatever, but the Gnolls are a form of Fae, and arise through different means than mortals.

In such a world, you can play a Fae PC, but that does effect stuff. Rather than needing a whole list of rules for "How will people react to each individual possible player race", you just have "How will people react to A Fae"

3) A strictly limited world. There is a set list of sentient species, each one of which has a history and place in the world. Anything outside of that is an Exception (For example, Ogres might not exist, but Goblin Alchemists might have a technique for turning some goblins into giant, musclebound brutes that use Ogre statblocks).


One thing to remember when worldbuilding is that your "Set list of races" doesn't have to be the "Humans but slightly different" ones. You could have Humans, Halflings, and Psionic Hermit Crabs that inhabit suits of armor as your "Normal" races. "Normal" doesn't have to mean "Humanlike".

I'm personally a fan of the 30-30-20-20 Worldbuilding method.
First, do about 30% of your worldbuilding, outlining the world, describe this to your players.

Then, figure out who your PCs are going to be, do your next 30% with them. If one of your players wants to play a Dragonborn, build out what the Dragonborn are in this setting and what it means to be a Dragonborn. Build out the next chunk of the setting in response to what your Players are playing.

Then, do another 20%, now that the world is more in place, build things out. If Dragonborn are a culture of Highly spiritual mystics who seek harmony with Elemental forces, how might they relate to industrialist Halflings, or haughty Elves who seek Arcane Power as a way to control the natural world.

Leave your last 20% for during the campaign itself, filling in gaps and expanding on things as needed.

[Sorinth]

Honestly, my problem with the "wacky races" in 5e is that they all feel kinda flat... because they're mostly presented as archetypes for players.

I want to play a Tiefling? Cool, it gives my character a neat look and a snappy premise of "you're part fiend and you look like it" — I can work with that. I'm a DM and I want to put Tieflings in my setting? WotC just goes "they live in slums and do crimes!". Which doesn't help me as a DM, because how do I make the Tiefling quarter of a city feel distinct? Like, do Tieflings have the same diet as everyone else? Do they dress the same? Worship the same deities?

"THEY LIVE IN SLUMS AND DO CRIMES! THAT'S ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW!" is the answer I get from WotC. And that kinda sucks, if I'm going to be honest... I mean, I would probably ignore most of what they wrote for my home games (because fantasy cultures are actually my favorite part of worldbuilding), but I play with a bunch of people who would 100% use that information — both when DMing and when fleshing out their character's backstory.

All I see is an opportunity for you the DM to flex their creative muscle and provide that which at least to me seems like most of the fun of world building to begin with.

Now I could see the argument of providing something like 4-5 different takes to help with inspiration, but hey a cool picture is a thousand words right?

[Pixel_Kitsune]

You know what else feels unimaginative? Rural farmers with technology that peaks at the water-mill, living on the edge of wilderness teeming with magical stuff that wants to kill them, who are nevertheless very cosmopolitan and tolerant when it comes to people who look and act differently from them, such that they never threaten to be uncomfortable to contemporary sensibilities. Both are lazy and generally boring extremes.

The two are not related. If a society grew up around more diverse groups it doesn't get the issues of xenophobia, or rather the xenophobia takes a different form.

Also, Farmers with tech peaking at the Water-Mill living near magical stuff that wants to kill them? So what you're saying is you're focused on unrealistic worlds. Because the reality is, that if you have a world where magic is functional and people can develop it, you don't get Rural Farmers with Water mills as the best they have. You get Rural Farmers with Magewrights and Clerics that keep the peace and provide things like healing and magical light and... And as soon as you make it normal for "Oh, Tim? He's the village handyman, can fix almost anything, repairs stuff, keeps the lights on at night.." It suddenly is not automatically a big deal for there to be other fantastic things.

Eberron did it right. And I know people want to say "Well not every place is like Sharn" No, it's not, and some places will be backwards. But for the most part, Monstrous Races will be met with Caution, not immediate freak outs.




The fact that it's entirely a matter of quirky individual taste is exactly why all the options should be on the table, and the resolution is "whatever the DM's quirky individual taste is."

100% this.



I think it's a question of... to what degree are these races expected to be allowed?

They are expected to be allowed to the degree the DM chooses to for their game and table. Again, Spouse's Zelda game, no humans allowed. Not weird and humans being in the PHB doesn't somehow make an issue of it.


Eberron is a pretty tight setting, where everything has an explanation and attempts are made to fit it in in an organic way. Eberron goes out of its way NOT to be kitchen sink and have anything exist solely for the sake of "options". So often if there is a question about how x race fits in the setting, natural suggestions would be "hidden tribe from Xendrik", "magebred", "experiment of Mordain", "influenced by Manifest Zone", etc. The point being that it is rarely "oh you're a goliath because goliaths are just a race of people that live in the mountains of Khorvaire".

So... because Keith made a lot of effort to explain lore it's no longer kitchen sink? Weird stance, but okay, in that case your argument dies, because no official D&D setting published currently just "Has" races, they all have lore that fits them in.


In Krynn, where draconians are minions of the forces of chaos, why would dragonborn be accepted as totally normal and okay? In Greyhawk, where there is a conquered nation called the Empire of Iuz ruled by an evil cambion with his cambion commanders, why would tieflings not be mistrusted?

In Krynn, they would be accepted in the same way Warforged are in Eberron. That is to say, not entirely well, but people are trying to move past stereotypes and racism. Same with Tieflings in Oerth. But, and here's the fun aspect, again. The PHB does NOT assume Oerth or Krynn, it barely assumed Toril. What the PHB does is say "Here's a bunch of rules and some generic lore fluff to act as a base, the DM will have the details on your world."

Look, the PHB has Gnomes. If I run a Darksun game, guess what you can't be? Does that suddenly make a big issue? No, it doesn't, because the individual table or world takes precedence over the generic ruleset. That's even part of 5e Design philosophy, Specific trumps General.


Drow have a reputation in Faerun for conducting night raids where they slaughter everyone in their path and those that don't get killed are taken as slaves and dragged back into the night world of the Underdark. Shouldn't that have some heads turning when one walks into town?

It is currently 1492 in the Faerunian calendar. The Church of Ellistrae was established in 1372. There's been 120 years for some level of acceptance to move forward. In Eberron it's only been 2 years since warforged were deemed living beings with rights. If Eberron can handle Warforged after only 2 years then Faerun can be expected to handle non evil drow after a century and change..


Settings change when you have these core race options. Again, going back to Eberron, in 4th edition an explanation had to be given for who and what dragonborn and tiefling were in the setting and many people chose simply not to include them because they weren't a thing in Eberron before. But just by including them in the PHB the conversations were had and the explanations presented. See also the lore shift for Drow to make them more inclusive as PC races, because it's difficult to have a PC race when they are associated with evil acts.

Again, There has been MORE time passing between the start of non-evil drow IN WORLD than there was for Warforged having rights. How is it unrealistic?

[Dr.Samurai]

The two are not related. If a society grew up around more diverse groups it doesn't get the issues of xenophobia, or rather the xenophobia takes a different form.

Also, Farmers with tech peaking at the Water-Mill living near magical stuff that wants to kill them? So what you're saying is you're focused on unrealistic worlds. Because the reality is, that if you have a world where magic is functional and people can develop it, you don't get Rural Farmers with Water mills as the best they have. You get Rural Farmers with Magewrights and Clerics that keep the peace and provide things like healing and magical light and... And as soon as you make it normal for "Oh, Tim? He's the village handyman, can fix almost anything, repairs stuff, keeps the lights on at night.." It suddenly is not automatically a big deal for there to be other fantastic things.
*poof* And just like that, the setting changed...

You can't make this stuff up.


They are expected to be allowed to the degree the DM chooses to for their game and table. Again, Spouse's Zelda game, no humans allowed. Not weird and humans being in the PHB doesn't somehow make an issue of it.

The issue of player expectations was already brought up.

Not directed at you but it is interesting which threads sport the "the DM is all" attitude, and which threads sport the "then screw that DM and go find another table" attitude. In this case, the DM is the end all be all and whatever expectations your players have toward core races is completely irrelevant. This has the convenient effect of shutting down complaints about various elements of the game becoming core.

So... because Keith made a lot of effort to explain lore it's no longer kitchen sink?
Not what I said but I'm not sure how much of a "neutral" conversation you're looking for here.

Eberron is not intended to have the PCs run into tribes of goliaths and firbolgs and loxodons. The lore around these races WILL be changed to fit them into Eberron if you're looking for WoG. Of course the DM is free to do whatever they want.

Weird stance, but okay, in that case your argument dies, because no official D&D setting published currently just "Has" races, they all have lore that fits them in.
*with one final swing, Pixel defeats the giant strawman they erected*

In Krynn, they would be accepted in the same way Warforged are in Eberron.
Warforged were neutral beings used on all sides of the war.

Draconians are evil, and fought for the forces of Takhisis. The two are not the same.

That is to say, not entirely well, but people are trying to move past stereotypes and racism.
Huh? What people? Are you talking about people in these game worlds? Says who? The Eberron books even have a picture of commoners wielding signs with anti-warforged propaganda on them...

Same with Tieflings in Oerth.
You're just asserting stuff that isn't necessarily true, without providing support for it. Can you elaborate one why tieflings would be accepted in Oerth as people try to overcome stereotypes?

But, and here's the fun aspect, again. The PHB does NOT assume Oerth or Krynn, it barely assumed Toril. What the PHB does is say "Here's a bunch of rules and some generic lore fluff to act as a base, the DM will have the details on your world."
Yes, the PLAYER'S handbook tells the PLAYER they can play as tieflings and dragonborn, that is correct.

It is currently 1492 in the Faerunian calendar. The Church of Ellistrae was established in 1372. There's been 120 years for some level of acceptance to move forward.
Meaning... what, exactly? Have all the drow stopped performing night raids and murdering people in their sleep as they dragged their loved ones below ground? Did they all become converts to Ellistrae? What are you saying here exactly? Drow shouldn't be feared or shunned anymore because some... handful(?) are different now?

In Eberron it's only been 2 years since warforged were deemed living beings with rights. If Eberron can handle Warforged after only 2 years then Faerun can be expected to handle non evil drow after a century and change..
The irony of treating the drow as a monolith after they've been split into distinct cultures to indicate they aren't all the same and evil...

And Keith has said that the Treaty happened at a very tense and vulnerable time because people have questioned why warforged were afforded those rights in the first place. But as I said before, the warforged have a different history than the drow. It's inappropriate to compare the two in this way.

[Catullus64]

The two are not related. If a society grew up around more diverse groups it doesn't get the issues of xenophobia, or rather the xenophobia takes a different form.

Also, Farmers with tech peaking at the Water-Mill living near magical stuff that wants to kill them? So what you're saying is you're focused on unrealistic worlds. Because the reality is, that if you have a world where magic is functional and people can develop it, you don't get Rural Farmers with Water mills as the best they have. You get Rural Farmers with Magewrights and Clerics that keep the peace and provide things like healing and magical light and... And as soon as you make it normal for "Oh, Tim? He's the village handyman, can fix almost anything, repairs stuff, keeps the lights on at night.." It suddenly is not automatically a big deal for there to be other fantastic things.


It's true that realism is not a significant concern for me. Nor am I concerned with creating settings that answer the question "what would the world realistically look like if dragons and magic." I usually start from the position of "what did the world look like in the minds of real people who believed in dragons and magic."

It's can't be that absurd for magic and tech peaking at the water-mill to coexist, since plenty of people in the past believed in magic while still living at or below that technology level. If such a world seemed consistent to those actually living in it, it can be made believable for people playing in it for a few hours a week.


Eberron did it right. And I know people want to say "Well not every place is like Sharn" No, it's not, and some places will be backwards. But for the most part, Monstrous Races will be met with Caution, not immediate freak outs.

Also we... agree? About caution and suspicion rather than immediate violence, at least. I thought that what I said was that 'cosmopolitan peasants' and 'something different, grab the pitchforks' were both uninventive and dull extremes, and that right now the game fiction trends more towards one extreme than the other.

[Spore]

In my opinion it is up to the DM and the players to coordinate a setting where not everything goes. We cut down races to the typical core races (humans, dwarves, elves, gnomes, halflings, half-orcs) or calmed down our backstories a bit (maybe your 1st level wizard is an apprentice looking for an easier way than studying for decades, rather than an accomplished perfect student) or themed our builds a bit (gothic horror does not work with a fey warlock of the pink unicorn) and it works WONDERS for the games.

A game where everything goes is quickly turning into a weekly meme fest. There is nothing wrong with that, but I feel this is best enjoyed in one or twoshots.

[BRC]

It's true that realism is not a significant concern for me. Nor am I concerned with creating settings that answer the question "what would the world realistically look like if dragons and magic." I usually start from the position of "what did the world look like in the minds of real people who believed in dragons and magic."

It's can't be that absurd for magic and tech peaking at the water-mill to coexist, since plenty of people in the past believed in magic while still living at or below that technology level. If such a world seemed consistent to those actually living in it, it can be made believable for people playing in it for a few hours a week.



Also we... agree? About caution and suspicion rather than immediate violence, at least. I thought that what I said was that 'cosmopolitan peasants' and 'something different, grab the pitchforks' were both uninventive and dull extremes, and that right now the game fiction trends more towards one extreme than the other.


I think we have to get into the difference between Learned Prejudice and Xenophobic Panic.

Learned Prejudice is where you have a pre-existing idea about some group (Drow are evil spider-worshipping slave raiders), and that informs your interactions with them. You see a Drow, you treat them like you would treat an evil spider-worshipping slave raider, because that's what you assume all Drow are.

Xenophobic Panic is where you see something so strange and outside your level of familiarity that you don't know what to do. Maybe you just stare, maybe your fight-or-flight reaction kicks in and you throw whatever you have on hand. It's also possible that when a Dragonborn walks into a village that has only ever seen humans and asks to buy a loaf of bread, a slackjawed baker just, numbly goes through the transaction unsure of what is happening.

You also have to consider the idea that fantasy NPC's, even villagers who never go farther than the market town, Do live in a fantastical fantasy world. They may have never seen a Dragonborn before, but they likely know that Dragonborn exist, or at least know that there are Lots Of Weird Types Of People Out There. Unless they're specifically Xenophobic, they're more likely to react with curiosity than anything.

If a party of Special Snowflake adventurers shows up in Human Village #532, I'd imagine a reaction similar to, say, if a bus full of actors in full costume pulled up to a 7-11 and started buying chips and sodas and asking to use the bathroom. Some stares and unasked questions, but all in all the interaction would probably go pretty smoothly.


There's also the Doylist explanation. Cosmopolitan Villagers just make the game better because you don't have to go through some variation of "WOW You are STRANGE AND UNUSUAL and I HAVE NEVER SEEN ANYTHING LIKE YOU with every new town the PC's encounter".

[Psyren]

Also we... agree? About caution and suspicion rather than immediate violence, at least. I thought that what I said was that 'cosmopolitan peasants' and 'something different, grab the pitchforks' were both uninventive and dull extremes, and that right now the game fiction trends more towards one extreme than the other.

Can you elaborate on how you expect the peasants to behave then? Because I'm okay with a lot that isn't pitchforks or cosmopolitan.

[Pixel_Kitsune]

The issue of player expectations was already brought up.

Not directed at you but it is interesting which threads sport the "the DM is all" attitude, and which threads sport the "then screw that DM and go find another table" attitude. In this case, the DM is the end all be all and whatever expectations your players have toward core races is completely irrelevant. This has the convenient effect of shutting down complaints about various elements of the game becoming core.[/QUOTE]

Those aren't contradictory statements. The DM is the arbiter of what's allowed at that DM's table. Which means if you don't like that DM you absolutely can not participate at that game. I'm very confused where the hiccup is for your understanding.

Also, this isn't using Rule 0 to ignore problems in the game. This is something that HAS to be Rule 0. The DM is the one running the game. If they don't want certain things it's on them to limit. What it is not is WotC's job to cater to people who want less.


Eberron is not intended to have the PCs run into tribes of goliaths and firbolgs and loxodons. The lore around these races WILL be changed to fit them into Eberron if you're looking for WoG. Of course the DM is free to do whatever they want.

Goliaths are Half Giants, right at home coming from Xen'drik. Firbolgs are technically Giant kin as well, Xen'drik. Loxodan are not officially in Eberron.

What is your concern here?


Warforged were neutral beings used on all sides of the war.

Warforged were fancy PROPERTY until 2 years before the start of the Game Setting. Seeing one wandering on its own prior to 2 years ago is weird and a potential problem. Yet in 2 years the world managed to at least deal with the fact that they're people on some level. If you can accept that, then the rest isn't any harder.


Draconians are evil, and fought for the forces of Takhisis. The two are not the same.

You're adding extras as your argument gets dismantled. Let me be clear. It is not realistic by real life history to think that something goes from being property in the eyes of people to sentient being with rights in the span of 2 years. Yet we accept it in Eberron. If you can accept that, you can accept the same type of leap for Dragonborn in Krynn.

Of course, we haven't actually SEEN how 5e Dragonlance looks yet, it's not out. So are you a time traveler to know how they wrote the situation?


Huh? What people? Are you talking about people in these game worlds? Says who? The Eberron books even have a picture of commoners wielding signs with anti-warforged propaganda on them...

Speaking general terms. Not that Warforged are universally accepted, but they are reliably PEOPLE in the setting, not property. They are clearly a parallel for real life anti slavery and racism issues.


You're just asserting stuff that isn't necessarily true, without providing support for it. Can you elaborate one why tieflings would be accepted in Oerth as people try to overcome stereotypes?

So are you, since we have no official 5E Oerth or Krynn at this time. As for your question. Can I? Yes. Do I have the official word on it? Nope, because, as I said, there is no 5E Oerth. Let me know when it comes out, until then it's ALL DM Fiat.


Yes, the PLAYER'S handbook tells the PLAYER they can play as tieflings and dragonborn, that is correct.

And yet if I run a Darksun game I'm going to say no to the Tiefling and the Gnome of all things and there's no problem, because the Setting's specific world trumps the generic PHB. What's the issue?


Meaning... what, exactly? Have all the drow stopped performing night raids and murdering people in their sleep as they dragged their loved ones below ground? Did they all become converts to Ellistrae? What are you saying here exactly? Drow shouldn't be feared or shunned anymore because some... handful(?) are different now?

Have ALL the drow stopped? No. But at this point we've had a century and more of people like Drizzt, Qilue and others making it clear that Drow are not a monolith. Some places will be skeptical and dangerous, some won't. It's almost as if... The DM has to decide. But again, the idea that 120 years is not enough time to start pushing a narrative other than "All Drow bad" is nonsense. Town A distrusts Drow because they are subject to raids from the underdark, meanwhile Town B has a Cleric of Ellistrae living with them and know the Drow are just elves. All depends on where you go in the plot and what the DM writes.

Just like I bet Eberron has places where Warforged are still treated like Property... Yet the game setting as a whole sets them up as a playable race with rights.


The irony of treating the drow as a monolith after they've been split into distinct cultures to indicate they aren't all the same and evil...

One of us is making a monolith, it's not me. I say Drow are fine in the PHB because they're not a universally evil Lolth Cult in a bunch of settings and the one official setting they are has had 120 years to change perceptions. You say they shouldn't be in the PHB because one official setting has Evil Drow...


And Keith has said that the Treaty happened at a very tense and vulnerable time because people have questioned why warforged were afforded those rights in the first place. But as I said before, the warforged have a different history than the drow. It's inappropriate to compare the two in this way.

I'm not comparing them literally. I'm pointing out that if you can accept a fantasy world where something managed to move from Full slavery and property to recognized with rights in 2 years, but you can't accept the idea that a race isn't hated everywhere for the actions of some of them when there's been 120 years of time for work to be made. There's a significant issue there and it's your perception, not the game design.

[Dr.Samurai]

I think we have to get into the difference between Learned Prejudice and Xenophobic Panic.

Learned Prejudice is where you have a pre-existing idea about some group (Drow are evil spider-worshipping slave raiders), and that informs your interactions with them. You see a Drow, you treat them like you would treat an evil spider-worshipping slave raider, because that's what you assume all Drow are.

Xenophobic Panic is where you see something so strange and outside your level of familiarity that you don't know what to do. Maybe you just stare, maybe your fight-or-flight reaction kicks in and you throw whatever you have on hand. It's also possible that when a Dragonborn walks into a village that has only ever seen humans and asks to buy a loaf of bread, a slackjawed baker just, numbly goes through the transaction unsure of what is happening.

You also have to consider the idea that fantasy NPC's, even villagers who never go farther than the market town, Do live in a fantastical fantasy world. They may have never seen a Dragonborn before, but they likely know that Dragonborn exist, or at least know that there are Lots Of Weird Types Of People Out There. Unless they're specifically Xenophobic, they're more likely to react with curiosity than anything.

If a party of Special Snowflake adventurers shows up in Human Village #532, I'd imagine a reaction similar to, say, if a bus full of actors in full costume pulled up to a 7-11 and started buying chips and sodas and asking to use the bathroom. Some stares and unasked questions, but all in all the interaction would probably go pretty smoothly.


There's also the Doylist explanation. Cosmopolitan Villagers just make the game better because you don't have to go through some variation of "WOW You are STRANGE AND UNUSUAL and I HAVE NEVER SEEN ANYTHING LIKE YOU with every new town the PC's encounter".
Good post.

The "curiosity" interaction doesn't really sit right with me, but I understand where it's coming from.

If we take into account all the things listed as monsters in the various Monster books, bipedal and otherwise, it just seems unlikely to me that NPCs would react with curiosity of all things, unless that race has a history/reputation in the world, which is where I say the setting is changed to accommodate the race.

[Catullus64]

Can you elaborate on how you expect the peasants to behave then? Because I'm okay with a lot that isn't pitchforks or cosmopolitan.

If the odd person walking into the village is a member of a group about whom the villagers have negative ideas, but are basically familiar? Then it's going to be a lot of little things, like withholding your name from an elf so she can't steal it, or overcharging a dwarf because he is assumed to have a lot of hidden gold. (The former of those is actually a legitimate concern in one of my current campaigns).

If the odd person walking into the village is like nothing the villagers have ever seen before? People are going to steer clear of that person, probably lay hands on weapons just in case. After all, even normal-looking strangers are dangerous. Someone will go fetch the village wise woman, who might know what this creature is. Suspicions will abate slightly if said creature uses words and speaks the local language properly. (Which is why every species in the universe speaking the same human language is so bogus.)

If it's a member of a group with whom that villages are familiar but have a hostile relationship, they'll probably be told to keep walking, or at least to be about their business and then get gone.

[Anymage]

The tendency to, at every turn, say "just do what you want at your table" is frustrating to me. A Dungeon Master is not an absolute monarch. Every game takes place under social conditions that limit what the players will and won't accept. I pointed out in an earlier post that I play a lot under social conditions (store games, lots of strangers and brand-new players, store wants to sell sourcebooks) that sharply limit my ability to curate player options and niche setting choices, and that without the power to do so, the game tends to slide into the kitchen sink real quick.

I'm not interested in legislating other people's games, but I am interested in interrogating to what extent the game books themselves contribute to this effect, to a sense of player entitlement to play whatever they want all the time. Because while my circumstances aren't universal, I hardly think I'm alone in having play conditions that don't just let you be the unilateral auteur-DM who can just decide to disallow everything that doesn't suit his taste.

To me this goes a lot deeper. The expectation through most of D&D is that the player makes their character on their own, and then brings their creation to the table with everybody else's character to go off and do adventures. While this makes sense for something like organized play or other PUGs, it tends towards narrative shallowness because nobody has any reason to be attached to the other characters or the world around them. Ideals/bonds/flaws/backgrounds help a bit, but they don't explain why your character has any reason to be invested in the other PCs or have reason to interact with the world beyond adventuring for gold and glory. I wonder how things would be different if the 5.5 PHB said anything about a session zero to discuss party cohesion and people's tastes for setting and tone before the first mark is made on a character sheet. Giving additional mechanical heft to intraparty ties would be nice, but I can't think of any way to reasonably fit it into 5e's system.

A cat person, a dragon person, a devil person and a robot simply existing isn't problematic. Nor is a "human" who looks like a human but can dash and climb like a tabaxi as well as any other tabaxi features the player can justify. (The latter being an idea I quite like for "low fantasy" to still give players a mechanical breadth of options.) Three players among them wanting LotR, wuxia, and Monty Python will cause some serious friction, though.


All I see is an opportunity for you the DM to flex their creative muscle and provide that which at least to me seems like most of the fun of world building to begin with.

Thanks, but no thanks. I already have to do a ton of prep work, I don't want to have to justify a whole new culture of rabbit people just because someone thinks that harengon look cool. Especially if I just went through the trouble of having to add a group of mute bird people for someone else's kenku that they then quickly got bored of.

I'm happy to work with players to add details to my world. But having to be ready for anything that shows up in a book demands either a super cosmopolitan setting where anything can show up (which makes setting demands all its own), or having to wing it as whole new groups get added to the map at a moment's notice. That's a lot to ask of anyone who DMs.

[BRC]

Good post.

The "curiosity" interaction doesn't really sit right with me, but I understand where it's coming from.

If we take into account all the things listed as monsters in the various Monster books, bipedal and otherwise, it just seems unlikely to me that NPCs would react with curiosity of all things, unless that race has a history/reputation in the world, which is where I say the setting is changed to accommodate the race.
Eh, I don't think "Curisority" is unreasonable.

It's not like being human is a guarantee a visitor isn't a hostile either. Unless we hold that the village is very specifically xenophobic against non-humans in GENERAL, rather than the specific non-humans they know to be threats, Curiosity and Caution are a reasonable response.


Like, okay, you work at a convenience store out by the highway. You know that various Gangs occasionally rob some places, and that such gangs can be identified by how they dress. You know how to identify biker gangs by their leather jackets and heavy boots, street gangs by the matching bright colors they wear, organized crime by their expensive watches and symbolically significant tattoos, ect. If somebody comes in wearing normal street clothes, they might still be here to rob you, but they're not identifiably a member of a Gang.

Now, one day somebody walks into your store wearing something that isn't Ordinary Street Clothes, but ALSO isn't a look you associate with any of the local Gangs. They're wearing, I dunno, lederhosen (in this world you, the store clerk, don't know what Lederhosen are). You are aware that here are clothing styles in the world that you may not recognize, that do not belong exclusively to criminals.

Do you assume
A) This person is a criminal here to rob you

B) This person is foreign, weird, and/or eccentric, but they probably just want to buy a bag of chips and some soda.

You might not TRUST that person, but so long as their behavior keeps within the bounds of what you expect from a customer, you'll go along with it.


Which is to say, the Dragonborn in the village that has never seen dragonborn is probably fine so long as they stick to just buying things and maybe renting a room for the night.

[Psyren]

If the odd person walking into the village is a member of a group about whom the villagers have negative ideas, but are basically familiar? Then it's going to be a lot of little things, like withholding your name from an elf so she can't steal it, or overcharging a dwarf because he is assumed to have a lot of hidden gold. (The former of those is actually a legitimate concern in one of my current campaigns).

If the odd person walking into the village is like nothing the villagers have ever seen before? People are going to steer clear of that person, probably lay hands on weapons just in case. After all, even normal-looking strangers are dangerous. Someone will go fetch the village wise woman, who might know what this creature is. Suspicions will abate slightly if said creature uses words and speaks the local language properly.\
...

If it's a member of a group with whom that villages are familiar but have a hostile relationship, they'll probably be told to keep walking, or at least to be about their business and then get gone.

I'm totally fine with all that. None of these are a barrier to play.


(Which is why every species in the universe speaking the same human language is so bogus.)

The gods can talk to each other, why not their creations? But in any event, removing Common isn't a big deal either if you feel the need to do that. Hell, FR doesn't actually have a universal "common", instead having Chondathan, Damaran et al.

[Dr.Samurai]

Those aren't contradictory statements. The DM is the arbiter of what's allowed at that DM's table. Which means if you don't like that DM you absolutely can not participate at that game. I'm very confused where the hiccup is for your understanding.
The OP is concerned with player expectations based on how the game is promoting a kitchen sink setting. The DM has to either say no to the player, modify the world to accommodate "exotic race #14,358", or roleplay some sort of interaction as the type described by BRC whenever it's called for, which is likely often.

Does that help clear it up?

Also, this isn't using Rule 0 to ignore problems in the game. This is something that HAS to be Rule 0. The DM is the one running the game. If they don't want certain things it's on them to limit. What it is not is WotC's job to cater to people who want less.
Sure it is. Someone has to run these games right? If WotC's model is to keep churning out all of these races so I can play a 2-headed zebra-dog or a winged glow-in-the-dark iron boot, they are putting pressure on DMs to allow these races in the game. The allure of Dungeons and Dragons would be "look at all these things you can play as". Now in the core book you can play as a devil or dragon or emo elf! Yay!

The product is created to be consumed. The setting and game will change inevitably to adapt to that.

And as a reminder, it's been suggested in this thread that these various races appear in setting specific books. So if someone wanted to include them they still could, but it wouldn't be an expectation right from the core that they are available. That is hardly "people who want less" in the manner you're implying.

Goliaths are Half Giants, right at home coming from Xen'drik. Firbolgs are technically Giant kin as well, Xen'drik. Loxodan are not officially in Eberron.

What is your concern here?
I cannot roll my eyes hard enough...

Warforged were fancy PROPERTY until 2 years before the start of the Game Setting. Seeing one wandering on its own prior to 2 years ago is weird and a potential problem. Yet in 2 years the world managed to at least deal with the fact that they're people on some level.
It is a core part of the warforged identity that people do NOT in fact see them as "people". Many are in indentured servitude in Thrane and Karrnath. Many people distrust them and do not want them around. Others feel displaced in the workforce because of them. It's been made very clear that warforged are not just accepted as people, and "the world" didn't do anything, but monarchs did make a choice that everyone has to live with now.

If you can accept that, then the rest isn't any harder.
These are false equivalences though so...

You're adding extras as your argument gets dismantled.
Yikes lol

It's concerning you think you've "dismantled" anything lol.

If you can accept that, you can accept the same type of leap for Dragonborn in Krynn.
As you yourself have now repeated multiple times, the warforged were property.

The draconians are corrupted dragon spawn and made up the evil dragon army to conquer the world. They were the forces of evil set against all the goodly folk.

As I have already said, and you have conveniently failed to mention, the warforged are NOT accepted throughout Khorvaire. So imagine, if some former property can't be accepted, how will evil dragon spawn that just tried to conquer you be accepted?

They won't.

Of course, we haven't actually SEEN how 5e Dragonlance looks yet, it's not out. So are you a time traveler to know how they wrote the situation?
Why? Do you think............................................. .................

.................................................. .....................................

.................................................. .....................................

changes, might be made?

Speaking general terms. Not that Warforged are universally accepted, but they are reliably PEOPLE in the setting, not property. They are clearly a parallel for real life anti slavery and racism issues.
Well then you should know that in real life these types of changes were not immediate. Point to me, and I thank you for it.

Have ALL the drow stopped? No. But at this point we've had a century and more of people like Drizzt, Qilue and others making it clear that Drow are not a monolith. Some places will be skeptical and dangerous, some won't. It's almost as if... The DM has to decide. But again, the idea that 120 years is not enough time to start pushing a narrative other than "All Drow bad" is nonsense. Town A distrusts Drow because they are subject to raids from the underdark, meanwhile Town B has a Cleric of Ellistrae living with them and know the Drow are just elves. All depends on where you go in the plot and what the DM writes.

Just like I bet Eberron has places where Warforged are still treated like Property... Yet the game setting as a whole sets them up as a playable race with rights.



One of us is making a monolith, it's not me. I say Drow are fine in the PHB because they're not a universally evil Lolth Cult in a bunch of settings and the one official setting they are has had 120 years to change perceptions. You say they shouldn't be in the PHB because one official setting has Evil Drow...

There's a millennia of drow killing and enslaving people vs a century of some drow not doing that. And the point of how many is that the reputation of some drow that are good is not going to spread to and overcome all the places where evil drow are still doing evil drow things.

@BRC - I think the key is the focus on all the local gangs. If you're up to your neck in local gangs, then yeah, I think someone that looks weird (visually, in a way that could be a new gang) might get some hackles up. Similarly, the D&D worlds are teeming with strange and dangerous creatures that harm people. Eat them, curse them, enslave them, deceive them, etc. It's in that context that I think races that look too different would have to overcome some not so trivial hurdles when interacting with commoners.

[BRC]

@BRC - I think the key is the focus on all the local gangs. If you're up to your neck in local gangs, then yeah, I think someone that looks weird (visually, in a way that could be a new gang) might get some hackles up. Similarly, the D&D worlds are teeming with strange and dangerous creatures that harm people. Eat them, curse them, enslave them, deceive them, etc. It's in that context that I think races that look too different would have to overcome some not so trivial hurdles when interacting with commoners.

Well, that depends on the context.

You are a Store Clerk, you are aware of local gangs, and that criminals in other parts of the world ALSO dress differently. You are also aware that there are non-criminals across the world who don't dress in what you would consider ordinary street clothes. You're not especially worldly, but you're not so myopic as to assume that the culture you know is universal, you are aware that distant lands exist, you just don't know about them.

Somebody comes in and starts browsing the shelves. Do you assume that they are a criminal?



There is a difference between a town that is on-guard for attacks by monsters, and a town that assumes that views ANYTHING strange as a potential threat. I don't think we can assume the latter as a reasonable default, unless the town in question is continually menaced by a wide enough range of humanoid monsters that they've stopped bothering with pattern recognition besides "Not Human".

[Dr.Samurai]

It's just a reality that shopkeepers are on alert though. I'm in NYC and if I walk into certain shops I'll find a worker at the other end of the aisle standing by, and tailing behind me as I move through the store.

That's just a reality, and I don't have giant bat wings or tower over everyone else with rock skin or have fire for hair. I look like other people and I'm still distrusted.

I really think the difference here is just a matter of how much trust we each think other people reflexively give to strangers, and I'm ramping it down further for the medieval setting and the dangers of the D&D world.

[BRC]

It's just a reality that shopkeepers are on alert though. I'm in NYC and if I walk into certain shops I'll find a worker at the other end of the aisle standing by, and tailing behind me as I move through the store.

That's just a reality, and I don't have giant bat wings or tower over everyone else with rock skin or have fire for hair. I look like other people and I'm still distrusted.

I really think the difference here is just a matter of how much trust we each think other people reflexively give to strangers, and I'm ramping it down further for the medieval setting and the dangers of the D&D world.

So, how does a lack of trust represent itself, and, if we assume that our strange visitor's intentions are simple and honest, how much would this suspicion interfere with them? Somebody getting followed around the store might be offended, and reasonably so, that they're under suspicion just for standing out, but if all they want to do is shop the shopkeepers are not going to actually stop them.


Will the Guards bar our dragonborn from entering town because they might be an unknown type of attacking monster up to some subterfuge, or will they keep an eye on them. Will shopkeepers refuse to serve them, or is money from this weird creature as good as any.

Most importantly, does a DM who isn't especially interested in exploring themes of prejudice in this fantasy setting, but does want to represent a realistic setting, need to cause any actual trouble for an unusual PC? If they are greeted with Suspicion, but not active Hostility, is the GM obligated to make that a plot point.

[Dr.Samurai]

Good questions and up for the DM and player to work out. But I think the point is made that expanding racial options to be more kitchen sink raises these questions in the first place.

You can hand-waive it away, and then the setting is a world in which the inhabitants don’t bat an eye at weird beings.

[Witty Username]

The draconians are corrupted dragon spawn and made up the evil dragon army to conquer the world. They were the forces of evil set against all the goodly folk.

As I have already said, and you have conveniently failed to mention, the warforged are NOT accepted throughout Khorvaire. So imagine, if some former property can't be accepted, how will evil dragon spawn that just tried to conquer you be accepted?

They won't.


Quick, no one tell them about 3rd edition.

It depends on what you mean by "throughout" Krynn. In the third edition Dragonlance Campaign settings, and presumably the novels based on how the timeline was laid out, this got complicated. Baaz and Kapak were explicitly playable, Bozak, Sivak and Aurak had rules as monster races. They had some hurtles as a race in the intervening time (No kingdoms or gods for political support, complete lack of skills outside of military capacity, no women), over time though they sorted out most of this out, even building a couple of nations and blending in pretty neatly with the orcs and goblin sorts with actually somewhat better rep as mercenaries, kinda like how Minotaurs work out in Dragonlance, being less "those monsters" and more "those weird folks that live beyond the sea". The Death of Takhisis sort of cemented them as more in line with the Half-orcs of the setting, having rep of bad stuff but being able to move through a society tolerably.

[Pixel_Kitsune]

The gods can talk to each other, why not their creations? But in any event, removing Common isn't a big deal either if you feel the need to do that. Hell, FR doesn't actually have a universal "common", instead having Chondathan, Damaran et al.

"Common" is a convenience issue, feel free to ignore it, and watch the games bog.

You can see this type of call in Stargate and Starget SG-1

Daniel Jackson, along with being an archaeologist, is a linguist. He's supremely important in the movie and the first season of the show if for no other reason than he's the group's way of talking to people. But it just means you can't have the other characters have interesting conversations with various people because no one speaks English and only Daniel can communicate.

They phased this out throughout Season 2 and never looked back.



The OP is concerned with player expectations based on how the game is promoting a kitchen sink setting. The DM has to either say no to the player, modify the world to accommodate "exotic race #14,358", or roleplay some sort of interaction as the type described by BRC whenever it's called for, which is likely often.

Does that help clear it up?

That's not an issue. That's a reality of DMing every single time anyone ever DMs. Again. The BOOK having options is good, the DM placing limits for their own world is good. There's no issue here and the book isn't wrong to give options.


Sure it is. Someone has to run these games right? If WotC's model is to keep churning out all of these races so I can play a 2-headed zebra-dog or a winged glow-in-the-dark iron boot, they are putting pressure on DMs to allow these races in the game. The allure of Dungeons and Dragons would be "look at all these things you can play as". Now in the core book you can play as a devil or dragon or emo elf! Yay!

Except they really haven't. The individual settings have been the individual settings. Again, you're argument is "Because some DMs don't like options, they can't exist." vs the reality of "Options are good, the DM can then custom build their world from a lot of options and sources."

You know, just the other day I have an idea to play a Warforged in an upcoming game. I asked the DM and they said "It doesn't really work or fit in the story I want to tell, sorry." And... That was it. Where is the issue here?


It is a core part of the warforged identity that people do NOT in fact see them as "people". Many are in indentured servitude in Thrane and Karrnath. Many people distrust them and do not want them around. Others feel displaced in the workforce because of them. It's been made very clear that warforged are not just accepted as people, and "the world" didn't do anything, but monarchs did make a choice that everyone has to live with now.

You're either deliberately moving away from the argument or having trouble following. I haven't argued about the nuance of Warforged lore. You originally posited that it's so hard to included "wierd" races because it's unrealistic to accept them as normal and not a big deal in a game if the PCs pick them. Well, here we have a Race that is supposed to be a valid choice regardless of the lore and nature and who can absolutely play one without expecting to have to tackle the darker issues automatically.


As you yourself have now repeated multiple times, the warforged were property.

The draconians are corrupted dragon spawn and made up the evil dragon army to conquer the world. They were the forces of evil set against all the goodly folk.

Both of which would then not be "accepted" as a "Normal" thing in a game setting world. And yet there shouldn't be an issue to playing one if the DM allows them in the game.


Well then you should know that in real life these types of changes were not immediate. Point to me, and I thank you for it.

Did I ever say they were? I said if you can suspend disbelief to have the Warforged as far forward in progress as they are in 2 years, you can extend the same courtesy to something with 60 times more time.


There's a millennia of drow killing and enslaving people vs a century of some drow not doing that. And the point of how many is that the reputation of some drow that are good is not going to spread to and overcome all the places where evil drow are still doing evil drow things.

It's as if I never said it should all magically be good, but that it shouldn't be impossible to play one and not face issues every three seconds. Further, Millenia or not, PEOPEL have a lifespan measured in Centuries, not millennia. Drow on Faerun might have been largely evil for "Millennia" but let's look at Faerun's timline.

-9000 is the year the Drow went underground and Lolth became the full and complete dominant deity for them. So yeah, "Drow have been evil" for close to 11,000 years. But humans, the dominant race in Faerun, have lifespans of less than a century. The entirety of the last 2-3 generations of humans have been exposed to good drow.

To put that in contrast, it's been 102 years that women can vote in the US, it's only been 48 years since women were allowed to have their own credit cards without permission from their spouse. Yet most people can't imagine the idea of trying to oppress an entire gender that way.

[Anymage]

That's not an issue. That's a reality of DMing every single time anyone ever DMs. Again. The BOOK having options is good, the DM placing limits for their own world is good. There's no issue here and the book isn't wrong to give options.

Agreeing with you. But I also really wish the core PHB talked about getting base expectations down for the group before it talked about rolling up your vision of a character and bringing it to the DM's world.

There's also a bit of a problem when new options come out. They're interesting and exciting and I can understand that a lot of players would want to try out this cool new thing in the book they just found, but abandoning an established character in order to paste some whole new thing on the world punches some pretty big holes into narrative consistency. I don't know how that's fixable at all, though, and it certainly isn't something WotC can fix through anything less dramatic than stopping the production of new content.

[Pixel_Kitsune]

Agreeing with you. But I also really wish the core PHB talked about getting base expectations down for the group before it talked about rolling up your vision of a character and bringing it to the DM's world.

They do, just not in detail.

As an aside, the PHB on page 33 does specify that any race outside of Dwarf, Elf, Halfling, Human is going to potentially face persecution and challenges just based on what they are.

"In the cosmopolitan cities of the D&D Multiverse, most people hardly look twice at members of even the most exotic races. But the small towns and villages that dot the countryside are different. The common folk aren't accustomed to seeing members of these races, and they react accordingly."

So right there "Hey, if you're not one of the bog standard humanoids you have added risks and issues, be aware."

[awa]

humans remember negative interaction far more strongly than positive interaction.

More drow are evil than good and the evil they inflict is quite extreme. If your grand parents were taken by drow your father will teach you to hate and fear drow and more often than not that will be the correct view to take when confronted by a drow. Because the costs are lower if you see a good drow and immediately react with fear and suspicion you hurt his feelings. If hes an evil drow than maybe your action save your entire village from slavery and death.

If your a medieval peasant and you see a viking long boat approaching your small coastal community running or getting a weapon is the correct choice not wandering to the shore to see what these bearded men are up to.

For every drizzit their are a thousand sadistic murders, if you hear about drizzit your first thought is going to be at best while I guess hes the exception that proves the rule and at worst that he was probably gathering information for a drow raid or some other nefarious act.

At least logical speaking, the war-forged are simply not a good comparison.

[Brookshw]

Did I ever say they were? I said if you can suspend disbelief to have the Warforged as far forward in progress as they are in 2 years, you can extend the same courtesy to something with 60 times more time.


Huh? Keith Baker's novels around the time Eberron came out had them widely mistrusted, occasionally kidnapped as property/slaves and forced to fight for the amusement of the crowds, that hardly screams "progress". Heck, they weren't freed because they were recognized as people (whether they were, or had souls, was part of their tension), they were released as part of a disarmament treaty to end the war, because they were viewed as weapons. I'm skeptical any progress was made. Disclaimer, I haven't paid any attention to the setting since the original campaign setting was released, and maybe a dozen novels around that time.

[Dr.Samurai]

Somebody getting followed around the store might be offended, and reasonably so, that they're under suspicion just for standing out...
I was on my phone earlier but wanted to clarify where I'm coming from on all this, and I'm not suggesting anything about your position but as this comment brought it to mind I'm quoting it.

I do not get offended if I notice I'm being tailed in a store or watched. I don't assume that it's because of me personally. Instead, I assume it's learned behavior that makes sense for the shopkeeper to engage in based on their lived experiences.

I apply that same sort of benefit of the doubt to D&D NPCs. I don't think it's "wrong" or "offensive" to be suspicious of monstrous looking beings, when you live in a world full of hungry and dangerous monsters. I assume the NPCs want to survive, and when they see something like a drow they'll think "Holy Helm! Billy, go get Wil, and the Colson brothers, tell them dark elves are coming! Maggie, get your mum and the baby from the yard and hide in the root cellar!" as opposed to "Well... if it's the drow that I'm thinking of... we're probably all dead, but I'm going to take a chance that it might be one of them drow I guess I've heard about that follows that one goddess that I guess I've heard about that don't like to murder everyone and take slaves. Boy I really hope I'm right because if I'm wrong me and my family are dead, but if I'm right well... I'll avoid some embarrassing unpleasantness."

I don't find that offensive. I find it makes perfect sense. That an elf didn't kill Drizz't as he was freezing to death on the surface world speaks to the goodness and empathy in the elves of Faerun (or even just THAT particular elf), not to any sort of cosmopolitan worldview. And most people aren't so goodly and empathetic. They're more interested in getting by because life is tough and they don't have much. And Drizz't, despite how good and pure of heart he was, had to earn being seen as an ally, a protector, and a friend, every single time he met someone new. Because there's a long and deep reputation that his people have. Eventually, he created a reputation for himself. That's how things work, and that's why a setting with all of these races in them must have them be commonplace, otherwise why would people trust it?

For me, it takes away from the good and the bad when everything is just totally cool dude. Monsters are less monstrous because "they're all around us man and they're more human than you know, humanity, that's the REAL monster bro!" and compassionate and courageous allies are less so because everything is cosmopolitan so there's no leaps of faith, there's no overcoming stereotypes, following a hunch, actions speaking louder than words, etc. It's just a drow, they can be trusted, it's just a horned winged devil man, no biggie, it's just a towering 7ft tall lion. It could completely overpower you and bite your head off if it wanted to but... it probably won't, right?


Quick, no one tell them about 3rd edition.

It depends on what you mean by "throughout" Krynn. In the third edition Dragonlance Campaign settings, and presumably the novels based on how the timeline was laid out, this got complicated. Baaz and Kapak were explicitly playable, Bozak, Sivak and Aurak had rules as monster races. They had some hurtles as a race in the intervening time (No kingdoms or gods for political support, complete lack of skills outside of military capacity, no women), over time though they sorted out most of this out, even building a couple of nations and blending in pretty neatly with the orcs and goblin sorts with actually somewhat better rep as mercenaries, kinda like how Minotaurs work out in Dragonlance, being less "those monsters" and more "those weird folks that live beyond the sea". The Death of Takhisis sort of cemented them as more in line with the Half-orcs of the setting, having rep of bad stuff but being able to move through a society tolerably.
An apt blunder for being so strident and adding "They won't." at the end of my post :smallredface::smallsigh:

But I think my point stands even if I took it too far. "Complicated" and "hurdles" sounds less like "accepted" and more like "people don't trust them". I thought the noble draconians were the "playable dragons", I didn't know bog standard draconians went full "we're one of you". It makes sense though given that the next edition made dragonborn core as well.

But still, I don't think the warforged and the draconians are apt comparisons. Based on your comments though it sounds like warforged have it worse than draconians did lol.

[Pixel_Kitsune]

humans remember negative interaction far more strongly than positive interaction.

More drow are evil than good and the evil they inflict is quite extreme. If your grand parents were taken by drow your father will teach you to hate and fear drow and more often than not that will be the correct view to take when confronted by a drow. Because the costs are lower if you see a good drow and immediately react with fear and suspicion you hurt his feelings. If hes an evil drow than maybe your action save your entire village from slavery and death.

If your a medieval peasant and you see a viking long boat approaching your small coastal community running or getting a weapon is the correct choice not wandering to the shore to see what these bearded men are up to.

For every drizzit their are a thousand sadistic murders, if you hear about drizzit your first thought is going to be at best while I guess hes the exception that proves the rule and at worst that he was probably gathering information for a drow raid or some other nefarious act.

At least logical speaking, the war-forged are simply not a good comparison.

Yes, hence the PHB warning that there could be issues from playing them. Hence that not every town would be happy about them. But that's up to the DM. If the DM never wants to deal with that but has a Drow PC, they can easily write it off that the area they're operating in never had to deal with Drow Raids, but had a kind priest or a local hero around that made Drow not seen in such a negative light. And it'd be perfectly believable.

My point is never "The bad stuff doesn't exist" My point was always "The DM can write the story how they see fit and there's nothing in the Lore that would make it seem wrong."



Huh? Keith Baker's novels around the time Eberron came out had them widely mistrusted, occasionally kidnapped as property/slaves and forced to fight for the amusement of the crowds, that hardly screams "progress". Heck, they weren't freed because they were recognized as people (whether they were, or had souls, was part of their tension), they were released as part of a disarmament treaty to end the war, because they were viewed as weapons. I'm skeptical any progress was made. Disclaimer, I haven't paid any attention to the setting since the original campaign setting was released, and maybe a dozen novels around that time.

My apologies but... Is Nuance not a well understood concept? Context is everything here. Yes, warforged at the start of the campaign setting are mistrusted, kidnapped, forced back into slavery, etc. They don't have it great. BUT, a Warforged can also walk into Sharn and open a bank account, or stay at an Inn, or buy property. I'm saying the fact that a Warforged PC could take the lightning Rail to almost anywhere in Khorvaire and expect to be relatively okay in only 2 years is fairly significant progress. Similar real world situation took far longer to get to the same level.

Saying "This is a lot of progress for 2 years" is NOT the same as saying "This is really progressive for them."

[Brookshw]

My apologies but... Is Nuance not a well understood concept? Context is everything here. Yes, warforged at the start of the campaign setting are mistrusted, kidnapped, forced back into slavery, etc. They don't have it great. BUT, a Warforged can also walk into Sharn and open a bank account, or stay at an Inn, or buy property. I'm saying the fact that a Warforged PC could take the lightning Rail to almost anywhere in Khorvaire and expect to be relatively okay in only 2 years is fairly significant progress. Similar real world situation took far longer to get to the same level.

Saying "This is a lot of progress for 2 years" is NOT the same as saying "This is really progressive for them."

Tossing around "nuances" doesn't make the argument better. You list a lot of thing a warforged might be able to do, against a back drop of warforged hiding their identities and moving around in cloaks, and iirc, being refused those same services in canon [1] unless there was a human with them, in which case they were allowed like a piece of luggage.

[1] assuming we can take Keith's novels as canon.

[Pixel_Kitsune]

Tossing around "nuances" doesn't make the argument better. You list a lot of thing a warforged might be able to do, against a back drop of warforged hiding their identities and moving around in cloaks, and iirc, being refused those same services in canon [1] unless there was a human with them, in which case they were allowed like a piece of luggage.

[1] assuming we can take Keith's novels as canon.

Which all has nothing to do with what I said, which is that when I said Progress I clearly meant in context of how much time has passed.

{Scrubbed}

In 2 years in Eberron we have a Warforged who is the right hand of a king, we have Warforged pushing for their version of Trans rights (The reforged PrC), we have tons and tons of cities where Warforged ARE accepted. They're not where they need to be for true equality, but they are pushing forward relatively quickly.

Now please realize the main reason of why I even brought that up. I was comparing those 2 years and the progress they got vs the 120 years that good aligned drow have been working in Faerun. My entire point was never "Look at how far Warforged have progressed and how great they have it." It was "If you can accept that in 2 years Warforged are able to be played as a free race in Khorvaire, then why is it so hard to accept that in 120 years Drow can be played as a free race in Faerun?"

[awa]

and if drow were some poor misunderstood race being unfairly oppressed that would make sense. But unlike just about any real world example the overwhelming majority of drow really are that bad. The drow aren't oppressed they are the oppressors.

Their is no real comparison to the warforged who as far as i know never did anything bad and the persecution is just simple racism, while the drows evil is not some historical foot note it is the status quo and fear is a purely rational reaction.

[Witty Username]

But still, I don't think the warforged and the draconians are apt comparisons. Based on your comments though it sounds like warforged have it worse than draconians did lol.

Kinda, as a setting Dragonlance shifted forward in time as the editions transitioned, so this transition from dark foe of the world to begrudging acceptance is something like 50-70 years of time, if I remember the timeline correctly, I have the thing around here somewhere. Eberron doesn't have that shift forward, so 3.5 to 5th edition is still set within something like 2-5 years since the Last War, which the warforged were invented to fight. So, warforged are in the middle of it, while the draconians by 3rd edition (and hopefully now, fingers crossed) had been around long enough for the initial shocks to fade in memory. It helped that the first draconian nation was founded by a Bozak that was not a fan of authority (Chaotic Neutral by statblock) and got some points for draconians not wanting to follow up where the war of the lance left off, where the closest equivalent for the warforged is the Lord of Blades (only consistent character trait is bad news)

Still a stretch to compare the two.

[awa]

dragon lance also has a big thing about balance between good and evil that most setting don't as well as good and evil working together (wizards being a very easy example).

Its not a generic setting.

[Brookshw]

Now please realize the main reason of why I even brought that up. I was comparing those 2 years and the progress they got vs the 120 years that good aligned drow have been working in Faerun. My entire point was never "Look at how far Warforged have progressed and how great they have it." It was "If you can accept that in 2 years Warforged are able to be played as a free race in Khorvaire, then why is it so hard to accept that in 120 years Drow can be played as a free race in Faerun?"

So, "free race" meaning, "well, maybe, sometimes"? Sure, maybe sometimes (DM dependant of course) you could have a community that shrugs/warily accepts/whatever that drow might not want to gut them like fish for their own amusement. Otoh, the person who sees a tiger and runs has an evolutionary advantage over the person who sees one and thinks "well, sometimes tigers don't kill people".

Considering the thousands of monsters that exist and threaten civilizations, I'm inclined to think a lot of people aren't looking for friendly tigers :smallwink:

[Amechra]

Thanks, but no thanks. I already have to do a ton of prep work, I don't want to have to justify a whole new culture of rabbit people just because someone thinks that harengon look cool. Especially if I just went through the trouble of having to add a group of mute bird people for someone else's kenku that they then quickly got bored of.

This, really.

Honestly, one of the things I really appreciate about running a game for two players is that it's way easier to get characters to fit in with the wider world.

...

On a related note, the party in that game ran into a TPK when they went to meet with some goblins to figure out why they had suddenly broken the peace agreements and raided their village (it has to do with a recent leadership change).

We decided to add a third "shared" party member (because things are really swingy), and one of the ideas that got tossed around was a Goblin Bard... in the same party as a Barbarian whose motivation for adventuring is "GOBLINS MURDERED MY DAD". That got a chuckle and a "I don't think that's a very good idea" out of me.

And that's how we ended up with a party of a Half-Orc Barbarian, an Elf-Transtormed-Into-A-Dragonborn Paladin, and his Emotional Support Maiden (aka an Elf Celestial Warlock).

[Liquor Box]

I wonder if the difference of opinions about whether the whole kitchen sink of fantasy options should be available for players comes down to whether you are more mechanics focused or more story/roleplay focused.

Mechanically focused players might want the full range of options available so they can make the character that works the way they want. Their expectation is that the story/setting is framed around those options being available.

Story focused players prefer the story and setting to make sense. They expect the players will make characters that fit within the setting.

Some of the argument seems to be that setting can be made to accomodate a wider range of characters. It can, but characters can be made to work within a setting. The question is which should be adjusted to accommodate the other. The answer is that it's a matter of preference.

[Satinavian]

No, there are a lot of very story focused players out there who want to explore other things than (mostly) humans doing human things in human dominated settings.

And many of the traditional races are so mechanically nearly human and so embedded in human culture that it hardly feels different from playing humans, so of course the seemingly more interesting ones for those who want to play something else, are those who are either culturally or mechanically quite different.

[animorte]

That doesn’t mean everything is required to limit your story and your world to that concept of “human-like and acting human-like”. Get creative.

I’ve played a few campaigns and many one-shots with entirely different designs. There have been racial restrictions and class restrictions because they just didn’t exist in that environment.

The main thing I have encountered with these experiences is that running something so precise in this nature can be ephemeral, hence the many one-shots and few campaigns. The more far fetched it is, the more world building required. We need more work to allow the players (and often DM) to understand how anything functions. This is extremely fun in short bursts depending on your group.

Let’s be real here, nobody really likes restrictions. This is evident in the prominent discussions on Wizards and spell casters in general.

[Tanarii]

Let’s be real here, nobody really likes restrictions.
Disagree entirely. AL is very restriction free. When offered an alternative with fairly decent restrictions in place to limit optimizing and fantasy menagerie, players jump at it. It's a selling point, not something to apologize for. Nor a lack of creativity.

Anything goes with races or classes or Multiclassing or feats fine for one shots / single adventure games, but it's definitely not a strong selling for full blown campaigns. Or even for single party / group of players planning to play a series of adventure path / arc for an extended period of time.

[LibraryOgre]

However, I find the "all tieflings are tied to <these specific devils>" thing to be incredibly narrow and confining. Personally, I run tieflings (and aasimar and genasi and even most dragonborn) as touched by forces.

I tend to lean the same way, though I also have "sure, your greatx grandfather on this branch was a incubus, but your greaty grandmother on this side was a lemure, and your greatz on your mother's father's grandmother's side was a demodand, so now you just look sorta ****ed up and have a few powers because of it."

Not everyone is going to be the great-great-grandchild of Baphomet. Sometimes, you're a mutt of a bunch of different fiends, all 10+ generations in the past, and your family just has a tiefling or two every generation.

And, TBH, I like the human-descended plane-touched better than a lot of elves and dwarves and such... especially coming from AD&D, where the races were a lot more similar.

[animorte]

Disagree entirely.

Anything goes with races or classes or Multiclassing or feats fine for one shots / single adventure games, but it's definitely not a strong selling for full blown campaigns. Or even for single party / group of players planning to play a series of adventure path / arc for an extended period of time.

I agree that you disagree (I’m with you). I feel that statement of mine speaks for the majority. I’m one of the people that genuinely appreciates and enjoys finding efficiency within boundaries. One of the reasons I favor Warlocks.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I agree that you disagree (I’m with you). I feel that statement of mine speaks for the majority. I’m one of the people that genuinely appreciates and enjoys finding efficiency within boundaries. One of the reasons I favor Warlocks.

Yeah. Limits are great[1]. Limits enhance creativity. Limits provide meaningful choices at all scales. Limits are like the string on a kite--it appears to hold the kite down, but actually allows it to fly (to use a trite cliche).

[1] within reason, but we're nowhere near those boundaries for anything in 5e. If anything, we're way too far to the other side in most cases.

[zzzzzzzz414]

Yeah. Limits are great[1]. Limits enhance creativity. Limits provide meaningful choices at all scales. Limits are like the string on a kite--it appears to hold the kite down, but actually allows it to fly (to use a trite cliche).

[1] within reason, but we're nowhere near those boundaries for anything in 5e. If anything, we're way too far to the other side in most cases.

I also like limits, for a certain amount of stability and verisimilitude. But, crucially, as a DM, I like to set limits *on my own terms*. Which is a very different thing than the system taking it upon *itself* to impose limits across campaigns in order to reduce overall "kitchen-sink-ness", which a lot of the thread seems to be hoping for.

To pull from a suggestion some pages back, I don't much relish the idea of my (for example) exclusively elf, satyr, fairy and goblin setting being suddenly hamstrung because some designer at WOTC decided that the majority of DnD parties ought to be majority human, and placed onerous mechanical restrictions on the rest, or took certain species out of consideration for being playable characters entirely.

I'm all for certain restrictions created by individual groups as part of worldbuilding. I am much, much less enthused by the idea of 5E putting universal restrictions in, say, the PHB based on how prevalent certain species "should" be, overall, lest the DND games being played overall and expectations in general become too "wacky". I can build my own settings, WOTC really ought to stick to theirs.

[Tanarii]

And, TBH, I like the human-descended plane-touched better than a lot of elves and dwarves and such... especially coming from AD&D, where the races were a lot more similar.
The idea of mechanically variant "humans" due to being dragon touched or devil touched would be a lot more usable than Dragonborn or 5e Tieflings. Especially in classic D&D game.

Elves and Dwarves and 5e half-orcs already alien enough, but they can also be incorporated Shadowrun (or Shannara) style as extreme variant humanity. Dragonborn and 5e Tieflings might work as is in that kind of setting, extreme expressions of variant humanity.

Speaking of Alien PCs being allowed vs not allowed, the contrast I always found interesting in AD&D settings was Dark Sun, where Basin Thri-Kreen were a playable race ... but (Athasian) Gith weren't.

[Pex]

Disagree entirely. AL is very restriction free. When offered an alternative with fairly decent restrictions in place to limit optimizing and fantasy menagerie, players jump at it. It's a selling point, not something to apologize for. Nor a lack of creativity.

Anything goes with races or classes or Multiclassing or feats fine for one shots / single adventure games, but it's definitely not a strong selling for full blown campaigns. Or even for single party / group of players planning to play a series of adventure path / arc for an extended period of time.

Don't oversell it. There are plenty of full blown campaign players who enjoy multiclassing and feats.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I'm all for certain restrictions created by individual groups as part of worldbuilding. I am much, much less enthused by the idea of 5E putting universal restrictions in, say, the PHB based on how prevalent certain species "should" be, overall, lest the DND games being played overall and expectations in general become too "wacky". I can build my own settings, WOTC really ought to stick to theirs.

The problem is that WotC isn't sticking to their own settings. It's promoting and writing into core lore of the multiverse that all these things exist everywhere, whether you like it or not. That there are always ways to get from setting A to setting B, and that every elf, everywhere, is exactly the same and tied to this one god out there in exactly the same way. That what locals call gods are really just reflections of the real gods because they don't know any better.

The issue, for me, is one of expectations. By forcing all of these races into core, they're telling players "you should expect to see these in most games; restrictions on races are the exception." If, instead, they'd stuck with a policy of
a) generic, basic races in core
b) more specific races in setting-specific books
c) better instructions and guidance on creating your own races or variants of existing races
both sides could be happy. Those that want to play in a kitchen sink can allow races from all the sources. Those that don't or want to specialize have backup.

I don't want the PHB to say (unlike some others) "humans are the most common race". I do want them to say "the races you encounter will vary tremendously from setting to setting. Check with your DM for what works in their world. Here are some examples of ones common across many settings, even if they're different in different places." Give tools, not enforce a rigid "kitchen sink or die" mentality. Which is what they're doing.

I understand why they're doing it (money), but I don't like it.

[Witty Username]

I can see why races being restricted based on setting has value, I don't much like the concept of generic races though, since it slants the expectations in ways I don't care for either.

Like for example, if we used PHB as core and the not PHB as not core along with the expectation that not core is rare then I need to do more work to restrict things like gnomes, halflings, elves etc. When they could as easily not fit my settings as whatever else.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I can see why races being restricted based on setting has value, I don't much like the concept of generic races though, since it slants the expectations in ways I don't care for either.

Like for example, if we used PHB as core and the not PHB as not core along with the expectation that not core is rare then I need to do more work to restrict things like gnomes, halflings, elves etc. When they could as easily not fit my settings as whatever else.

When I say generic race, I mean basically everything not in the Basic Rules. Regular humans, hill dwarves, lightfoot halflings, high elves.

And "not core" =/= rare in any given setting. Core just means found in most settings to some degree. So a setting book may say
* All the elves here are <variant> and they're rare
* There are no halflings
* There are only <variant> dwarves and they're rare.
* Here are 42 other races that are each more common than all of the generic races. Use those instead.

[zzzzzzzz414]

The problem is that WotC isn't sticking to their own settings. It's promoting and writing into core lore of the multiverse that all these things exist everywhere, whether you like it or not. That there are always ways to get from setting A to setting B, and that every elf, everywhere, is exactly the same and tied to this one god out there in exactly the same way. That what locals call gods are really just reflections of the real gods because they don't know any better.

Well, to be clear, I am very much not a fan of that either, and plan on studiously ignoring it. Being told what's going on in my own homebrew setting, species and especially culture-wise, is really the main thing I take exception to. (Same reason I don't use suggested alignments, or those supposedly setting-neutral but bizarrely specific race descriptions in the PHB).

Of course, some things are easier to ignore than others. If some multiverse sourcebook says that technically my setting could be invaded by planeswalkers at any time, I can cut that out very easily by going "pfft, whatever" and then not having any planeswalkers show up. (Unless my players really want it, but that's what session 0 is for.) Having details like "humans are most numerous" (or "kobolds are inherently cowardly", to name a similar, existing issue) mechanically baked into the statblocks themselves is harder to work around. So that's the kind of thing that most concerns me when I hear talk about baking "limits" into the rules (rather than the settings), and why I went for that particular example.

Most of what you laid out I would consider relatively reasonable. Though honestly I would rate the inclusion of robust custom species/lineage rules and a bit of clear guidance on species selection during worldbuilding above almost anything else. Do that, and move the weirdly specific and essentialist descriptions into a setting book or something instead of the basic rules, and the generic/other split almost becomes irrelevant IMO. Which is good because, like Witty Username said, what's generic in one setting may be completely nonexistent in another, so it'd be nice to avoid having the small "generic species" pool on too much of a pedestal.

[Eldan]

Personally, I do it the other way around. My players and me usually have an extended session zero, where we build the world, or at least the basic concepts of it. Part of that is asking the players if they have any unusual builds in mind, which get incorporated into the setting. So if a player is an Aracokra, then I make Aracokra part of the world. If my players want a pirate campaign and really want to play as Dhampirs, I better make sure there's some vampire pirates. Or a vampire navy.

And yeah, generally I dislike more than maybe 5 intelligent races in most worlds, apart from some often singular intelligent monsters. Unless it's some kind of world-hopping game, like Planescape.

[Amechra]

And yeah, generally I dislike more than maybe 5 intelligent races in most worlds, apart from some often singular intelligent monsters. Unless it's some kind of world-hopping game, like Planescape.

Slightly off-topic, but there's a pretty neat OSR writing exercise where you make a setting with only 10 monsters total:


Some kind of (non-playable) humanoid.
Some kind of BIG humanoid.
Some kind of BIG lizard.
Some kind of undead.
Some kind of fey.
Some kind of creepy-crawly.
Something that flies.
Something that is aquatic.
Something from another dimension.
Something from mythology.


It could be neat to pair that with something like this thread (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?645029-Dumb-Though-Experiment-3-(Sub)Races-8-(Sub)Classes&p=25438203), and make some super-focused mini-settings.

[Tanarii]

Don't oversell it. There are plenty of full blown campaign players who enjoy multiclassing and feats.
Keep in mind that when I say campaign, I'm generally thinking of multiple groups of players with multiple groups of PCs. One group of players with a single group of PCs I'm usually considering at most an adventure part or adventure arc(s).

That also means the DM is deciding on the rules in advance of knowing who the players are and providing character building rules. Not sitting down and adjusting the world to the PCs, like they can for an adventure path/arc(s).

But yeah, you're right, I'm trying to oversell it a bit. But NOT liking full-blown "anything goes" makes for a very rich recruiting pool in official play that an enterprising DM can draw on.