Unpopular opinions go here

[Micah Sweet]

If a player wants to build a traditional elf, they still can with floating ASI.

The player who wants to play a non-traditional elf shouldn't be forced to play a traditional elf.

This whole thing gets way, way too close to racial essentialism. It's kinda gross.

I knew someone would refrain a game design argument as a social issue. It's inevitable

 

[Bedrockgames]

@Bedrockgames complains that I characterized it as tyranny. Well, if the shoe fits. I just don’t have any sympathy left for gamers who seem to think that they should be able to tell everyone else at the table what their character should look like. If you play an X, I will only enjoy the game if C is limited to what I like is an incredibly toxic attitude to take.

you are treating game design preference (literally a difference of opinion over stat bonuses) as a failure of character bordering on evil. There is nothing toxic about thinking D&D is a better game if it has stat bonuses baked into race selection. I have no problem with you disagreeing. We don’t all have to like the same thing. I do have a major issue with his done people are framing this preference

 

[Cadence]

I’d point out the bigger issue for me here.

The floating ASI is not a problem for the player of that character. No. It’s a problem for someone else at the table who thinks you should only be allowed to create your character in a way that they approve of.

Remember, they aren’t the ones playing the character. The people objecting to floating asi’s are doing so because someone else at the table might play their character differently and in a way that somehow hurts their verisimilitude or suspension of disbelief or whatever. A strong halfling isn’t a problem for the person who chose that character. It’s only a problem from someone else sitting at the table who disapproves of a strong halfling.

Like I said. I have zero sympathy for that person sitting at that table anymore.

As long as in your D&D game my human sniper can have a Barrett model 82, Spas 12, and ceramic/kevlar armor, my friend Jeff can play a Wookie with a bowcaster, bandolier of grenades, and access to a ship, and my friend Sean can play a Toreador with lots of points in presence and celerity, then it all sounds all good.

(And by D&D, I mean every single one ever if they want).

 

[Bedrockgames]

Remember, they aren’t the ones playing the character. The people objecting to floating asi’s are doing so because someone else at the table might play their character differently and in a way that somehow hurts their verisimilitude or suspension of disbelief or whatever. A strong halfling isn’t a problem for the person who chose that character. It’s only a problem from someone else sitting at the table who disapproves of a strong halfling.

This is simply an issue of playstyle, not morality. Some players and GMs like it when players have more input into the way the setting can accommodate their character concepts, some players like more limits placed on that for things like setting fidelity and balance. There is nothing wrong with either of these positions. No one is trying to control anyone else, they are just trying to advocate for design choices they enjoy in D&D. That is all this is about

 

[Bedrockgames]

And by comparing it to rewriting the entire character generation system I believe is a huge slippery slope argument. We can’t have floating asi’s because there’s no difference from a point buy character generation? C’mon.

What you are saying here is reasonable but it is also reasonable to draw a comparison to point buy in that, this sort of change does feel to some like it is removing an important class based character choice in character creation and shifting it to customizable attribute bonuses. There is nothing wrong with games that let you do that. But a lot of people like how in D&D those kinds of character creation choices tend to be tied to race and class selection

 

[Tony Vargas]

As long as in your D&D game my human sniper can have a Barrett model 82, Spas 12, and ceramic/kevlar armor, my friend Jeff can play a Wookie with a bowcaster, bandolier of grenades, and access to a ship, and my friend Sean can play a Toreador with lots of points in presence and celerity, then it all sounds all good.

TBH, I've played in GURPS games like that.

my friend Jeff can play a Wookie with a bowcaster, bandolier of grenades, and access to a ship,

 

[hawkeyefan]

I think the idea of specific stat bonuses by race should have gone away with rolled stats. When stats were randomly determined, they made a little more sense to raise the floor and ceiling of the stats associated with the race. Like, a dwarf’s Constitution would only be so bad, and was likely to be better than average. And so on.

But once point buy became the more common method, the need for this practice faded.

With a point buy system, if a player wants to play the standard dextrous elf or sturdy dwarf, they can place their points or static ASI into Dex or Con, respectively. Likewise, the GM can create any NPCs with these traits in mind.

As such, it really does seem to me like the issue os more about the GM trying to maintain control over the setting. Trying to enforce some concept that simply doesn’t need to be enforced.

 

[Emberashh]

Should be noted there is a massive difference between racial essentialism and bioessentialism, and that even bioessentialism isn't inherently negative.

The negative traits with these ideas are rooted using race or biology as a way to deny agency to certain groups, including for that matter cis white males (though in a different way than it is for literally everyone else), and instead frame their behaviors and outcomes in life as something out of their hands. That creates a rather distorted view of how humans actually behave and why.

The question of bio or racial essentialism, however, becomes incredibly muddy when you start to talk about fantasy worlds.

To start, in the vast majority of fantasy worlds, race as we use it in real life is a false equivalence with how race is used in fantasy. The latter is typically more appropriate to call species, though there's a lot of names you could use instead.

So right off the bat, trying to invoke racial essentialism in a fantasy world is ridiculous.

That aside, bioessentialism is applicable to fantasy worlds, and this is where it gets muddy.

For one, even in real life humans, earlier Human species did have different cielings and floors from us in terms of physical and mental capability, and while we're continually finding evidence that many of them were closer to us than we previously thought, many of them weren't and unless we make some pretty shocking discoveries to the contrary, they most likely couldn't ever have been.

For two, in fantasy worlds even if one assumes a given species evolves to have a similar capacity to do these things as to humans, ie such as having vocal coords and an ability to share languages, the fact that they are fundamentally different species is going to have exponential effects on how they behave at an instinctual level, and how their culture develops over time.

Bird people in isolation aren't going to be anything like humans, even with similar capabilities, and what similarities will be there will likely be true of any species that reaches this stage of development. After all, within humans you can see the same phenomenon with isolated populations. They're still just as human, but culturally they only resemble whatever group they split off from thousands of years prior, and are now unique.

But, species most likely wouldn't live in isolation. Bird people and cat people and humans all living together and having intertwined histories is going to change how all three of them develop.

Not only will the bird and cat people be closer to humans on that basis, the humans themselves aren't going to be as close to us in real life as they usually are depicted as a result. Trying to anchor fantasy humans as always being us is a big worldbuilding issue and has a lot to do with why these issues crop up. (Most aren't going to be making allegories when even the humans, if they're even called that, are fantastical)

And thats all just if we're assuming a world that developed all these species through evolution.

Most fantasy worlds, within their own universes, are intelligently created, and so too are the species that inhabit them.

At this point you can't really claim bioessentialism to be a strict negative, because a god who creates an entire species out of whatever is clearly going to be able to dictate everything about them.

One might find it interesting to explore if said god exists but doesn't have that power specifically, but that isn't what fantasy worlds have done and certainly isn't what the world we're all thinking of does.

So as much as one may not like the trope that all Orcs or Dark Elves are evil, in the context of most fantasy worlds, its not a question of essentialism, a philosophy applied to deny agency to minority groups and even to their oppressors.

Its cold hard fact. Gorignak the Defiler birthed the entire race of Orcs and by his decree they know only violence, malice, and contempt.

The actual issue with this trope isn't some essentialism malarkey, its actually that its just a shallow trope that doesn't leave a lot of room to tell stories with.

The one Orc who defied Gorignak and becomes a hero instead is a compelling story. That you can realistically only tell once.

Hell, in a way, LOTR only got away with this because it told the Hobbit over again four different ways in four different contexts simultaneously. A very difficult feat to pull off in a funny elf game where the tropes are far more obvious and deliberately invoked.

 

[Hussar]

you are treating game design preference (literally a difference of opinion over stat bonuses) as a failure of character bordering on evil. There is nothing toxic about thinking D&D is a better game if it has stat bonuses baked into race selection. I have no problem with you disagreeing. We don’t all have to like the same thing. I do have a major issue with his done people are framing this preference

I’m sorry. Your game design preference is based on telling other people that they can only play the game the way you feel it should be played.

And you think I’m framing this too negatively?

 

[Hussar]

As long as in your D&D game my human sniper can have a Barrett model 82, Spas 12, and ceramic/kevlar armor, my friend Jeff can play a Wookie with a bowcaster, bandolier of grenades, and access to a ship, and my friend Sean can play a Toreador with lots of points in presence and celerity, then it all sounds all good.

(And by D&D, I mean every single one ever if they want).

Whoosh. Now THAT is a slippery slope argument. Impressive.