I am not saying that Dragonborn should be as common as humans in frequency and in numbers. That's like saying I want to see as many mind flayers as there are orcs in an adventure.
BUT, having - for example - the 'orc' in the monster manual, and then seeing *every* published WotC adventure purposefully excluding it from any kind of story element or encounter, gives a bad taste in my mouth. As other posters said previously, either CLEARLY state that every race or monster is equally optional, or state that they're equally important.
Oh sure, I can change it, if I want to. But having WotC avoiding to use mind flayers in any kind of setting, book or adventure other than a two-page info/stat on the Monster Manual severely cripples the importance, legacy, and potential of the monster. No matter how many players would come out and tell me "Mind Flayers weren't really liked by the players, so the guys at WotC put them there as an option for those who wanted to use them".
And *if* WotC purposefully avoids using non-famous/not-loving monsters and races, what does that mean for the writers who want to put them in a soon-to-be-published adventure? Seriously, this gives me the impression that the kobold press wanted to put Dragonborn in Hoard of the Dragon Queen, but WotC told them "You know what? No, put half-dragons instead, because old-school players hate Dragonborn". It gives me the impression that certain species are 'banned' by WotC itself, and that just rubs me the wrong way.
This is just a hypothesis, of course, but in the end, I think that races which are OFFICIAL options for a player to have his character born as, should be presented equally in the books. A player who makes a Dragonborn character won't find ANYTHING Dragonborn related in any of the books (other than four pages), while a player who makes a dwarf sees references, pictures, NPCs, specific-tailored gear ... He feels that his choice of picking a dwarf is validated, it matters. While the player who made a Dragonborn feels left-out, feels isolated, unsupported, feels as if he made the wrong choice. It's all in the head, of course, but it *is* there.
That's not a hypothesis, it's an opinion. Your opinion is that they should be presented equally. Their opinion/decision is different.
And I don't think they "avoid" it. It has to do with the setting, combined with the fact that in that given setting, just like the real world, there are things that are common and things that aren't. How many published adventures over the history of D&D publications by TSR/WotC have actually used a dragon? Were there any before Dragonlance? And that's in the name of the game.
There have been hundreds of monsters and races that were never featured in an adventure or novel. Part of that is simply because there are too many. Many of them were designed for specific settings. Maintaining those differences is part of what makes those settings interesting. Monsters aren't more or less valid because some are common, some are uncommon, some rare, very rare, or even unique. Of course, they've eliminated those designations, which I think is problematic. Without them, one might think that ancient red dragons are as common as goblins. Or bears.
Nor do I agree that every race is equally optional. Sure, at it's core you don't have to use any of the common races in your campaign, and they have had a few that have eliminated or drastically changed some of the core races. But at what point does it stop being D&D and become a different game? You could use the same rule set and run a campaign in the Star Wars universe. Is that D&D or is it a Star Wars RPG?
When somebody sits down at a table to play D&D for the first time, there are some expectations that are set regardless of the edition of the game (4e notwithstanding). It would not be unreasonable to expect that I could play an elven wizard. In fact, it's probably expected that somebody will. It's not expected that there will be a warforged. Or kender. Or gully dwarf.
The ruleset is only part of what makes D&D D&D. You are playing their game, and possibly in their worlds. They define what the game is, although they've done that by looking at the history of the game itself. That identity, the ties back to the beginning, are important.
Frankly, I don't think that the notation that some are more common than others matters. As I've noted before, the majority of players in my campaigns who have played an "exotic" race did so specifically because they were exotic and rare. Nor have I
ever run into somebody playing a gnome, dragonborn, or other rare race feel isolated, unsupported, or that they made the wrong choice. So no, it
isn't there. Maybe it is for some people, but I hardly think that reading of it is universal.
Are there some that complain that they can't play their favored race in a given campaign. Sure. I don't allow the vast majority of the races that have been published over the years. If somebody came from Dark Sun and wanted to play a Thri-Kreen in my Realms home campaign, they are out of luck. Sorry, there just aren't many campaigns for thri-kreen lovers. If that's your favorite, then you'll have to find a different group. A Dark Sun one is a great option.
But that's not any different than the person who comes to D&D expecting GURPS, MERP, or some other flavor of RPG. D&D can do those things, but not as well as those things do.
My preference is a world that not only has common and uncommon races, but deep, well thought out race relations. Not to mention acknowledging physiological differences. Armor made for an elf shouldn't fit a dwarf. I'd rather see dragonborn as more draconic, semi-bipedal, with wings and tails, and a culture alien to humans. They're carnivores, not farmers. Do they even use armor or steel weapons? What would drive a dragonborn to develop such technologies when they have breath weapons and (should have) natural weapons. Do they develop mining technologies? Much technology, such as mining, followed agriculture so people could subsist in a single location rather than following migratory prey. Not sure a carnivorous race would develop along the same fashion. Sure, they could potentially develop husbandry and domesticate or semi-domesticate animals. But developing farming to feed your herds of animals when you can fly and they can't? Hunting when you can kill and cook your prey at the same time? Not as difficult as a human taking down a bison with their bare, unclawed hands.
But if I design these races, and the world they live in, is it D&D? Or more specifically, if a bunch of strangers respond to a sign I put up in a store to join a new D&D campaign, is it what they expect when they show up to play D&D? Some of them might like it, but that's irrelevant. It's not what they expected.
When Dark Sun was under development, they weren't planning on incorporating the core races. But they had concerns that it wouldn't be D&D without them. So they added them, but with very different histories and descriptions, including some limitations. And no, they weren't all equal. But that twist defined the setting. Would it have been D&D without those races? Hard to say. But it's one of the settings that had significantly different rules in 2e, to the degree that it made development more difficult since they used psionics heavily in the world. The 4e homogonized the world quite a bit (like others) although from what I understand it still received a good reception. I think this is partially because the 4e rules system fit the setting beautifully. Wouldn't it have been interesting to have seen Dark Sun and 4e written together as a new distinct game? Focusing only on the world, races, and psionics and magic of that world.
Sure, an individual will have their own personal (and unpredictable) opinion of what D&D is. But as a group you can predict with reasonable certainty that the responses to what race do you play in D&D will fall along certain lines.
The vast majority of players I've had in any of my campaigns don't buy the supplements, didn't subscribe to Dragon or Dungeon, and don't read the novels. Some of them have, but the vast majority, no.
Of course, there are those that buy them, and that's a risk of the ever-expanding line of settings and splat-books. Some of the stuff you throw out there will stick. Some becomes popular enough that it helps define the game. Barbarians, sorcerers and other classes that have been added are popular enough to make the cut. Others (cavalier anyone?) didn't. Same thing with races. Although in this case they've drawn a new line between the common and uncommon races and half-elves have moved. Dragonborn and tieflings are popular enough to be in the core book, but different enough that they would change the core settings significantly if they were anything other than uncommon.
I think they did the best they could. Sure there's always room to quibble with specific sentences or presentation, but overall they did a great job. There are a lot of people (like me) who don't want dragonborn in our campaign at all. But it's unreasonable for me to insist that they be removed from the game as a whole. The game is not made for just me. But there is a sizable group that feel the same way. Dragonborn and tieflings are obviously popular enough to warrant being in the game, they are featured in a few novels. But players, particularly new players, should also know that not all campaigns allow them. I don't know what percentage it might be, but I'd be safe in saying that the number of campaigns that don't allow dragonborn is significantly higher than the number that don't allow elves.
Maybe that's narrow-minded of me, and the many others that feel that way. But I don't think it's any more so than saying I don't want jedi in D&D game either. Not just my D&D, but in the core books.
And before you point out that dragonborn have a history in D&D and jedi don't. Not only were some races more common than others in AD&D, races other than humans had significant limitations. Want to play a gnome? You could be up to a 6th level fighter, a 7th level illusionist, an 8th level assassin, or any level thief. In fact, thief was the only class that any race had unlimited advancement. Except half-orcs, they could rise to any level assassin (which had a max of 15 anyway).
And if you were that gnome, dwarves considered you with goodwill, otherwise you were tolerated, except for with humans who were neutral, and half-orcs who hated you. Half-orcs? Humans and halflings for some reason viewed them neutrally, otherwise it's all antipathy or hatred. Neutrally = "some suspicion is evidenced."
Of course, these were written before any campaign settings had been released. Grayhawk and Forgotten Realms largely followed these guidelines, but other settings made many changes. By the 2nd edition it would appear that they left most of the determination to the settings, but there were still common and uncommon races.
By 4e, everything was core, and despite the fact that dragonborn had never appeared in the Realms for thousands of years, they are now common and fully accepted in society. I don't buy that. They aren't equally optional, nor equally important. The core races in the Forgotten Realms are vastly different than those in Dark Sun, and there are races in Dark Sun that don't appear in the Realms at all.
My complaint is that all too often, game design decisions have impacted the settings in ways they shouldn't. Introducing a new race option to the game shouldn't automatically introduce that race in that fashion to all published D&D campaigns. The settings should have their own consistency and feel. The core rules should be the narrowest selection of what's in most (it will never be all) D&D campaigns, and then let the settings handle the things that are different, like additional races. The common races fit that description very well. Since dragonborn and tieflings had already been introduced (and canonized in novels), they needed to be part of the core, but with a disclaimer that they don't appear in all of the D&D published worlds. That may very well hold true in what WotC chooses to publish going forward, and license things like Dark Sun to somebody else. In which case the common races will appear in all WotC published material.
So my preference would be to present all races without disclaimers, but only if dragonborn and tieflings were eliminated from the PHB (and probably half-orcs). Those races could appear in other supplements as options, and not presented as core. But I also think that approach would have reduced potential sales, at least until those other races were made available. Excising them from the PHB but releasing them simultaneously as a free supplement would also have worked. Not sure if that would have appeased the dragonborn and tiefling players.
But again, I think that the way they chose seems to have worked really well for them. So no real need to change it, other than I have to work a little harder to make clear what is allowed in my campaign.
The half-dragon thing didn't make any sense to me either. I can come up with a half-dozen justifications/explanations for it, but ultimately none of them make sense. They didn't even define a half-dragon race, and the couple of NPCs read just like they are dragonborn since they don't have descriptive text that differentiates them. The only thing that makes sense is it was some sort of mistake.
Ilbranteloth
