Right, right, right.
That's what I don't get. It's fundamentally a subjective opinion argument, so if we discount that, there's little of substance left.
I believe what GMforPowergamers is getting at is that everyone here is making an argument which, whether overtly or covertly, extends beyond subjectivity. E.g., my frustration with the "oh we couldn't possibly, we didn't include all the stuff Tolkien wrote about them" excuse is, very specifically, that it is trying to ground a subjective personal choice on the authors' part (something with zero normative force, but also which cannot really be
argued with) in an
objective quality of the work. Again, it's that idea of "oh we couldn't possibly do that." A disclaiming of making a choice at all--because even if they'd
wanted to make orcs (they didn't, but hypothetically
if they had) it would be impossible to do so because you can't include something rooted in Tolkien without bringing in all that extra context and baggage that isn't part of
Dragonlance. Yet they were comfortable porting in enormous chunks of Tolkien's work wholesale, including things lifted
directly from it, not just mediated through the filter of "oh well that's just a thing D&D did." D&D doesn't have "the Kinslaying,"
Dragonlance and Tolkien's legendarium do.
Hence, for me, it doesn't matter if they
also made motions in the direction of "we had our reasons, this was an authorial choice." In saying what they said, they are trying to pass off the subjective as the objective, that something which was fully and completely "we just chose not to because it seemed better that way" is being re-framed as though it were
actually "well we really had no choice at all, there wasn't any way we
could have done it differently." I dislike sophistry of this kind intensely.
Like I've said, I would have no problem
if their
only argument had been, "We just thought elves sounded cool, and wanted to tell a story centered on dragons. Draconians came out of that dragon-centered story, and they filled up the niche orcs would fill, so we went with draconians." They were not making
only that argument. They did say other things, sure. But they were also making a "we couldn't possibly" argument. And the fact is, no, they really could possibly. They just chose not to.
I "care" what other people do at their tables only in the senses that (1) I wish other people well and thus hope that they do things which I consider conducive to good gaming, and (2) I like to hear what others do, even if it radically differs from my approaches, because that's how I learn new things. I "couldn't care less" in the sense of wanting to
make people play any specific way. But I do think it's important to encourage behaviors I consider constructive and discourage behaviors I consider destructive.
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