AND ANOTHER THING!
The Lamia/Graz'zt/Jackalwere connection is solid (and I hope it plays into the shedu/lammasu/celestial thing!). I'm actually pretty excited about it, it adds quite a bit to those creatures. Basically gonna yoink that right now.
But satements like this get a bug in my bonnet:
James Wyatt said:
When players explore the Forgotten Realms setting or the rest of the multiverse, it's important that they have a consistent, coherent experience. We want to present orcs in all those games and expressions that are recognizable, so if you move from Neverwinter to the tabletop game, for example, you see orcs you recognize.
Dafuq did I just read there, Wyatt? What I need from you guys running the D&D game is not a consistent experience. What I need form you guys is the tools to give my players and I
the experience WE want. Which, I can guarantee you, is going to be wildly inconsistent, because sometimes we want Tolkeinesque flowery high fantasy and sometimes we want to kill a T-rex and make wang jokes all night and even I don't know what it's going to be until I'm doin' it. That absolutely means giving us a sort of an "example orc." But the distinction I made earlier between an example and a default is
critical, because that orc is not to be your assumption, it is to be your "you can do it like this, and we think this is pretty cool."
An FR elf can be a default elf for FR, but the FR elf is not a default elf for Dark Sun, or Dragonlance, or whatever weird Lost World game I want to run. You get to give me an example of an elf that you think is good and that I might use if I want. I probably will. You do not get to tell me that "All elves are like this, except when we TWIST YOUR EXPECTATIONS!" because that doesn't match how I
actually play this game. All design is local. My elves are mine. They might be yours, they might not, but the quicker you realize that you do not get to brand my home games from Redmond unless I choose to bear your brand myself, the smoother this whole edition's gonna go for all of us.