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Eberron is the only truly kitchen sink setting, and the guy in charge of the design of that was also the guy in charge of the design of 4E. No surprise that ill-founded kitchen sinking is present in both. Unfortunately there's a lot more damage to be done with the core implied setting than with any specific setting like Eberron.
There is nothing wrong with a kitchen sink setting, as long as it's done right. Fading Suns is a kitchen sink setting, and it's awesome. So is Shadowrun. And Eberron is pretty cool, too.
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In comparison, I quite like the look of Tieflings, though I think they need clearer guidelines to their artists regarding tail size; they appear to vary wildly.
Well, tail length could vary significantly from person to person... and you just know that the males will take pride in their tails if they are especially long.
What the females might do with their tails I will leave to the exercise of the reader...
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I think my group of casual players are a good bellwether for this question.
Although they have been playing DND for a decade plus, they remain very casual and know little about DND-space. They would read fantasy occasionally, but not DND fantasy and would rarely read the fluff in the DND books.
I did not run Planescape in 2e or 3e and did not buy any spats during 3e, just the core books. They have not been exposed to half-Dragons or tieflings before fourth edition.
We've been running our current 4e group for nearly a year now and these are characters they created themselves. They have tiefling (rogue) and a dragonborn (fighter) in the group, and they love them to bits. They did not pick the races for mechanical reasons as they arn't very mechanically-minded.
The races definitely have traction here, for me personnaly the Dragonborn has more traction.
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I wonder if the length of this thread just shows that discussing worth and unworth of Dragonborn or Tiefling has gained traction, or that the races itself gained traction?
Friction they definitely cause, though I'd say the Dragonborn "enjoys" it the most. :silly:
I am not necessarily strongly interested in playing a Dragon or Dragonhumanoid, but the Dragonborn did a lot for me thanks to their noble warrior culture. Orcs and Half-Orcs are more savage and brutal, Hobgoblin are evil and cruel. Dragonborn fill a niche I felt unadequately filled before. They remind me of Klingons. (My first Dragonborn character was therefore named after a character from a Star Trek novel by John M Ford - Krenn Rustazh).
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Even if one isn't a fan of Dragonborn they also have fun racial mechanics. So it can always be reskinned. In my Vodou-esque setting the Dragonborn is simply humans from a different culture, trained in folk-magic/alchemy.
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This is not the place to discuss Eberron's default design assumptions, guys. Thanks to folks who are helping keep the thread on-topic.
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Probably because it's not what I said. I said it doesn't deserve a place in the core of any D&D milieu worth being called such. No problem with specific settings, but as a default for all settings it's a poor choice.
I'm not exactly sure how you're using milieu here. If you mean it to be the sum total of D&D as taken from the books, regardless of setting, I don't really get how there are multiple milieus: there's only the one, which started with OD&D and will keep going past 4e. If you can differentiate between editions, then how are you not differentiating between settings as well? There were no default gods in 2e, for instance, and basic D&D didn't have the Great Wheel; those imply a non-shared setting.
I don't agree anyway, though. A game that has seen rust monsters, thouls and digesters has seen a lot worse than dragonborn. (And I love thouls, but come on, troll-ghouls that are dead ringers for hobgoblins are silly.)
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I don't agree anyway, though. A game that has seen rust monsters, thouls and digesters has seen a lot worse than dragonborn. (And I love thouls, but come on, troll-ghouls that are dead ringers for hobgoblins are silly.)
If you start dissing gas spores or gorbels, Ethan, you're dead to me.
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I don't really get how there are multiple milieus: there's only the one, which started with OD&D and will keep going past 4e.
Arguably the BECMI and AD&D ones are a bit different (e.g. no mind flayers, half orcs or flumphs in BECMI), and got recombined to an extent with 3E. 4E rewrites a lot of assumptions about the D&D universe and it's inhabitants, such that it's probably the most radical departure from the traditional milieu yet. The non-optional PC races and their fluff, plus myriad other devils in details and disconnects are enough of a change that I don't see it as a continuation of the old implied setting anymore.
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I don't agree anyway, though. A game that has seen rust monsters, thouls and digesters has seen a lot worse than dragonborn. (And I love thouls, but come on, troll-ghouls that are dead ringers for hobgoblins are silly.)
It has, but no thoul was ever a core PC race, assumed by default to be played in every campaign. PC races get a massive amount of screentime, whereas a thoul will generally last rounds, and the campaign moves on. Thouls are also easy to "ban" - as DM you simply choose not to use them (although such a move would be very thoulish, IMO).
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Last edited by rounser; 4th May 2009 at 03:05 PM..
I think it says (and I am not entirely a reliable source ) that you cannot re-define a race.
Now, Goodman produced the rather nice dragonborn sourcebook. But I don't think they really changed the appearance of the race overall or its "role" in the game. They just provided a slightly different and more in-depth backstory, cultural details, and generally more involved fluff.
Not horribly helpful, I know.
Goodman have a similar book coming out for tieflings this spring, so I guess we will know soonish.
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If you start dissing gas spores or gorbels, Ethan, you're dead to me.
The dirtiest trick my cousin ever pulled in the course of DMing was make a gas spore laugh at us. Like, turn at us and chuckle. I mean, come on. That was just rude.
I've never used a gorbel, but now I'm tempted just as an intellectual exercise. I have an ugly craving to set them up like a Puzzle Bobble (Bust-a-Move) level and see if the players can pick out the right one to target to start the good chain reaction and not the bad one.
(Oh god now I am a step closer to using prinnies in D&D...)
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Originally Posted by rounser
Arguably the BECMI and AD&D ones are a bit different (e.g. no mind flayers, half orcs or flumphs in BECMI), and got recombined to an extent with 3E. 4E rewrites a lot of assumptions about the D&D universe and it's inhabitants, such that it's probably the most radical departure from the traditional milieu yet. The non-optional PC races and their fluff, plus myriad other devils in details and disconnects are enough of a change that I don't see it as a continuation of the old implied setting anymore.
Well, remember that from the perspective of someone who started with BECMI (or really just BE), an equally radical departure from the implied setting came when we picked up AD&D for the first time. Good and evil as alignments? Race and class tracked separately? Blue dragons and white dragons are evil now? (A particularly harsh blow to those of us who liked having them as potential allies.) Half-orcs? Gnomes?
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It has, but no thoul was ever a core PC race, assumed by default to be played in every campaign. PC races get a massive amount of screentime, whereas a thoul will generally last rounds, and the campaign moves on. Thouls are also easy to "ban" - as DM you simply choose not to use them (although such a move would be very thoulish, IMO).
Well, in my experience, you could get the exact same disconnect with gnomes. In the dawn times before Dragonlance or World of Warcraft, the only previous experience one could be expected to have with gnomes was lawn ornaments or the Gnomes art book, and the animated movie based on said book. There was really no other reason to see them — gut reaction only — as something other than silly little people with red hats beloved by children and old ladies. If you asked the prepubescent me of the time, I would have said I had no idea why they were considered possibilities for heroic sword-and-sorcery or high fantasy adventurers. And they're still controversial.
But having seen what people have done with gnomes since, I can't help but think that the problem with dragonborn is similar. They pose a stumbling block to some, seem like a good fit to others, and they react well to reskinning. They can also, of course, be banned — but I don't think that 4e is at all unworthy for including them as an option.
If anything, I think it's neat to have a core race that looks considerably more inhuman, because that opens up thoughts about not just what races you can play, but what you can do with race as a mechanic.
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There is nothing wrong with a kitchen sink setting, as long as it's done right. Fading Suns is a kitchen sink setting, and it's awesome. So is Shadowrun. And Eberron is pretty cool, too.
So are the World of Greyhawk and the Forgotten Realms. D&D has a long tradition of kitchen-sink settings. You could argue D&D invented them (or, rather, they were invented for D&D).
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In the dawn times before Dragonlance or World of Warcraft, the only previous experience one could be expected to have with gnomes was lawn ornaments...
They should have remained lawn ornaments!
Ahem, anyway...
... my group has no problem with dragon-men or devil-men. They fit our collective notion of D&D just fine. Our current campaign has a smattering of important Tiefling NPC's and one PC Dragonborn (mine).
Actually, we'll probably never have another Dragonborn PC after the way I characterized the race...
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This thread was never going anywhere but downhill from the start, but from my point of view, whatever gets a player excited is what goes in the game. Dragonborn and tieflings have featured heavily as PC's and as backstory NPC's, so they seem alright in my book. Campaign. Whatever.
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Yes, they have traction. Tieflings already did (although their concept seemed to dissapear for a while during 3E, but returned with 3.5E in all the groups I played in).
Dragonborn definitely have traction now in every group I play in, too.
I'm running a FR campaign and find it harder to delineate between Eladrin and Elves than dealing with Dragonborn and Tieflings, seeing how the setting still refers to them all as Elves (Sun, Moon, Wild, Wood, and so on).
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I understand, gnomes can be played horribly. And if you don't like trickster races, they can get very annoying. Much like kender. Actually, even as a gnome fan I rather hate the kender. And gully dwarves are right out.
Goodman have a similar book coming out for tieflings this spring, so I guess we will know soonish.
Yep! And I couldn't be happier. The Dragonborn book rocked. It really helped my dragonborn player develop an interesting and exciting background. I just told him "assume everything you read in here is true, I will integrate it somehow" and so far it has been successful.
) that you cannot re-define a race. 
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