D&D 5E Am I no longer WoTC's target audience?

[billd91]

I would say that there's nothing wrong with a player creating a PC that feels like an outcast or struggles with (potentially real) internal demons. But you could do that with any race, you don't have to be a tiefling. To me, if there are too many PC races, race becomes just a costume. I try to make it mean more than that.

Worse than being a costume is being just a set of stat bonuses that help to min-max the character, if you ask me. If the race is just a costume, it's taken with no tangible benefits other than how you want to portray the PC and be perceived.

 

[Maxperson]

Worse than being a costume is being just a set of stat bonuses that help to min-max the character, if you ask me. If the race is just a costume, it's taken with no tangible benefits other than how you want to portray the PC and be perceived.

Maybe, but if the player then roleplays the race chosen, I really don't care if the selection was for mechanical reason.

 

[HarbingerX]

It all starting going downhill when they allowed non-humans to have a class to satisfy the min/max players who wanted get all the benefits of a demi-human and a class. The game was originally archetype based - fighter, magic-user, elf, dwarf, hobbit. Ok, cleric was a weird but not unheard of addition.

I'm only joking, but what I'm saying is that the game was originally 'what trope do you want to play' and creating a class to match.

However, coming from 1e, I think magic and cleric dwarves are an abomination. They were the original 'anti-magic' race with bonuses to save because they were so non-magical.

 

[Umbran]

I'm only joking, but what I'm saying is that the game was originally 'what trope do you want to play' and creating a class to match.

And then we realize that "originally" is now just about "half a century ago", and that leaning on that may not be the strongest position to take. 50 year old things tend to be... arthritic

 

[Arilyn]

And what's wrong with that?

There's always a need for more thieving scoundrels...and who are you calling scruffy-looking?

What's wrong with it?! What's wrong with it?! Our young hobbits were healthy and happy, working the fields, smoking pipe weed and spending their evenings at the tavern. Then that GAME came. Now they spend hours and hours in our hobbit basements hunched over those strange dice. And although, they aren't casting real spells like the human and elf teens corrupted by this game, they are running away from home. Changing their names to halflings and stealing!

 

[jasper]

And then we realize that "originally" is now just about "half a century ago", and that leaning on that may not be the strongest position to take. 50 year old things tend to be... arthritic

AM NOT. Am not. Am not. Jasper pops 3 bayer as his fingers hurt.

 

[jayoungr]

Half-elves are straight from Tolkien

The concept of half-elves, perhaps, but not the implementation. D&D half-elves are far more common than in Tolkien, where there were, like, five of them ever. Also, D&D half-elves are midway between elves and humans in stats, while in Tolkien, they are physically indistinguishable from elves as far as we know but just potentially go to a different place when they eventually die (depending on what decision they make about that).

But GH needn't be limited to Tolkien, and in many ways is not well-suited to it because evil in GH is somewhat diffuse rather than all the result of the Fall.

If anyone said it should be, I missed it.

I think it should be quite possible to have a RPG that accurately represents JRRT's elves and is still quite playable.

Maybe, but the solution D&D came up with isn't that RPG. D&D changed elves, making them shorter and physically weaker than humans.

 

[JeffB]

Gary didn't really care for LOtR. He liked The Hobbit far better. He also didn't like Magic Users. I think this is pretty well known, but rules-wise he was going more based on Earth mythology, and not Tolkien mythology - adding that in as a secondary element to his human centric S&S fiction preference. That is why his version of Elves are shorter and not immortal.

He added the Tolkien bits because at the time it had a huge surge of popularity all over the country on college campuses. There were a lot of things Gary wrote into D&D not necc because he liked them, but because it was marketing and including/being inclusive of potential customers. Mini Wargamers/wargamers, Tolkien Lip Service, etc.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

However, coming from 1e, I think magic and cleric dwarves are an abomination. They were the original 'anti-magic' race with bonuses to save because they were so non-magical.

Dwarves could be clerics in 1st edition.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I think it should be quite possible to have a RPG that accurately represents JRRT's elves and is still quite playable.

MERP