D&D (2024) How did I miss this about the Half races/ancestries

[Chaosmancer]

There can always be other reasons. And sure you can be more creative about anything in the game. But killing goblins works and is fun. If you think it is better to go another way, instead of making it compulsory or trying to create a moral or artistic ought for it, show people the joy of going beyond killing goblins, kobolds and orcs. The issue is this is a very simple thing that just works int he game and makes it easy to pick up and play. A lot of people like that, and they don't care if posters on a gaming forum find their enjoyment of it sufficiently creative. I think there is also something to be said for why going into the darkness of a dungeon or wilderness and killing orcs resonates with people, and that something has a lot less to do with colonialism and a lot more with myth and legend.

Do you understand how trivially easy it is to make a supervillain and have people understand they should fight them?

"Hey, this guy named The Evil Lich King is planning on killing everyone in the world and raising them as his undead servants. Will you stop him?" Make perfect sense to people who grew up with super hero stories (you know, modern myths) all around them. Being a hero makes sense to people. You don't need to kill orcs or goblins for simply existing when you can trivially just steal supervillain plots and they work just fine.

 

[Maxperson]

Okay, cool. So WoTC should be forced to make Dark Sun to entertain you?

Forced? No. Is their reason bupkis? Yes. Are there MANY others besides me? Also yes.

They shouldn't be allowed to work on another property until they have released a Dark Sun product that meets your standards?

Sure, why not. As long as we're being ridiculous, they should consult me, yes.

Or are they allowed to make decisions about the types of properties they want to make?

Companies are allowed to make bad decisions and do so all the time. We are allowed to call them out on those bad decisions.

 

[Chaosmancer]

The PHB and DMG races.

Monsters of the Multiverse and Theros Races

I didn't say WOTC doesn't put any effort into balancing races. Just not tons of it.

So how much did they put in? How many man hours went into it? How many internal revisions did they do?

WhatI suggested is the same thing @Remathilis suggested: treat hybird like Hexbroods and Dhampirs. A race you layer on top of another.

Okay, but those don't layer on top of anything. Those replace. It literally says the only thing you keep are movement speeds and skills. So if I took the Dhampir and "layered" it over the One DnD dwarf... I'd lose everything. Maybe I might be able to argue to keep the tool proficiencies, but RAW those aren't skill proficiencies, so I'd lose them.

So, how is that any different from the current version?

 

[Maxperson]

You could literally replace it with "I'd just as soon kiss the Tauntaun" and it'd be exactly the same.

Talking to a wookie like that is moxie. Saying you'd sooner kiss a tauntaun is not.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I keep saying you seem to have a problem with criticism because your entire thrust seems to be "be careful about criticizing art, or else people might stop making art." You literally say it right here by stating that the state of culture (ie telling people it is no longer acceptable to continue making certain things) is such that people can't make the type of art they want to make. But, again, that is just... how the world works.

And again, criticism is fine it is free speech. But people also get to respond to critiques. My issue, like I said before isn't so much with individual critics as the state of the culture around criticism and how that has blended with things like cancel culture. If these things don't bother you, they don't bother you. And if you aren't trying to stop content or tropes, I don't think you and I have much disagreement. On the other hand, people who are calling for Dark Sun not to get remade with the original setting material, and similar calls, I do think are participating in a censorious movement in the hobby. Now to be fair, WOTC doesn't have to respond to that. And this is where 'the state of the culture' is more at issue for me. Unfortunately companies are responding to it, and I think it is making for a very constrained creative environment. If you feel otherwise fair enough. We may not see eye to eye on that.

This has literally been true for all of human history that the state of culture has made making certain types of art something that certain artists don't do. Your Piss Christ example would never have happened in the 1400's because the man who did it would have been stoned to death. Alternatively, a character like Harley Quinn could never have existed in the 1600's because a woman acting like that would have been seen as improper. Your literal point is we might be able to shape culture, and we shouldn't do so, because we might make it bad.

That isn't my point. My point is free expression should be a higher priority than most of these other things, because all of our rights hinge on our ability to express ourselves freely. And just having lived through periods where art was more constrained and when it wasn't, I vastly prefer living through less constrained periods.

Yes the state of the culture makes things not always possible. Which is the point. I don't want to return to 1400s or 1600s thinking in this respect. It is an issue of having an orthodoxy that is hard to challenge

 

[Justice and Rule]

Talking to a wookie like that is moxie. Saying you'd sooner kiss a tauntaun is not.

And again, criticism is fine it is free speech. But people also get to respond to critiques. My issue, like I said before isn't so much with individual critics as the state of the culture around criticism and how that has blended with things like cancel culture. If these things don't bother you, they don't bother you. And if you aren't trying to stop content or tropes, I don't think you and I have much disagreement. On the other hand, people who are calling for Dark Sun not to get remade with the original setting material, and similar calls, I do think are participating in a censorious movement in the hobby. Now to be fair, WOTC doesn't have to respond to that. And this is where 'the state of the culture' is more at issue for me. Unfortunately companies are responding to it, and I think it is making for a very constrained creative environment. If you feel otherwise fair enough. We may not see eye to eye on that.

This is such concern trolling. Who has been cancelled? What has been lost? The whole hullabaloo about "getting cancelled" is so overwrought as to be a non-issue in this case. The people who actually get cancelled generally aren't because they didn't write something sufficiently woke, but rather because it was perceived as woke. Hell, we're living through one of those surreal situations right now.

That isn't my point. My point is free expression should be a higher priority than most of these other things, because all of our rights hinge on our ability to express ourselves freely. And just having lived through periods where art was more constrained and when it wasn't, I vastly prefer living through less constrained periods.

You say we should have the right to express ourselves freely, but are consistently always afraid and complaining about people's ability to critique and express their opinions on a work.

You always have the ability to express yourself through your work. You are not protected from criticism. You are not being constrained, sometimes people just don't like your work.

Yes the state of the culture makes things not always possible. Which is the point. I don't want to return to 1400s or 1600s thinking in this respect. It is an issue of having an orthodoxy that is hard to challenge

But you're the one who wants to constrain through orthodoxy. The people you are arguing with are saying the hobby has moved past the idea that you just kill things and take their stuff. You are not arguing on behalf of the constrained, but rather are the one trying to hold things from moving on.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Oh joy, we get to play the "but I never said that" game. This is my favorite. Let's take "gruel" for $300 Pat

I am not going to be able to respond to the entirety of this post as there is simply too much so I will take what I can. But I just want to say here, like I said to the other poster, happy to have a conversation with you, but I am not going to punish myself here if you are going to be impolite or mischaracterize what I say. It is always possible I am wrong about what I said (either misremembering something I stated, or saying something in a way that I didn't intend to mean) and I am happy to examine that and offer clarification. I just won't be responding to anymore posts that start out like this.

Pablum: (Noun) bland or insipid intellectual fare, entertainment, etc.

Oh, but maybe I'm not reading you closely enough. You aren't saying EVERYTHING will be bland, just that some stuff will be bland. Maybe, oh.... 90% of it? Cause, you know, there is this little thing called Sturgeon's Law which states that about 90% of everything is crap.

So as you can see I wasn't saying everything would be bland. But yes I strand by the statement that each thing you take out is a step towards pablum. That has been my point across these discussions. I don't know that I could put a percentage on it. I just know when there are more restrictions, especially moral ones, there seem to be a lot fewer interesting works (at least for me).

The Simpsons was revolutionary TV. It got bland after 20 or 30 seasons, and every show that just copied the Simpsons formula was fairly bland. This isn't because we imposed new moral limits on TV, we didn't put an emphasis on wholesomeness and responsibility. No, the reason was because they were derivative and not as good. And frankly, the sheer number of "edgy" shows really makes me think that it would be bad to have some actually wholesome content on occasion. We are drowning in cynicism and doom, it isn't a bad thing to have a story about hope on occassion that doesn't turn around and say "and you were stupid for believing in such childish nonsense!"

Oh sure, moral censorship isn't the only path to pablum.

But I am not so sure edgy has the currency it did say when walking dead and game of thrones were at their peak. The culture, and gaming, seem to have moved past that. I am not saying all content should be edgy (nothing wrong with edgy but only doing edgy gets dull too). I just think it is unwise to jettison so many crucial RPG tropes.

So, no, I'm not terribly worried that every time we criticize and remove something racist from the content we like, that we are inevitably sliding into a world of insipid and bland fair, because we always have a large serving of insipid and bland fair.

Fair enough. But I would argue we aren't actually removing racist content number one (just removing content because some people mistakenly believe it is racist). And number two, a lot of the content people are asking to tone down, remove, etc is stuff I think makes RPGs more interesting and less bland.

 

[Bedrockgames]

But you're the one who wants to constrain through orthodoxy. The people you are arguing with are saying the hobby has moved past the idea that you just kill things and take their stuff. You are not arguing on behalf of the constrained, but rather are the one trying to hold things from moving on.

I am not concern trolling. I am just giving my opinion

In terms of this bit, I am not advocating for an orthodoxy (i don' want the hobby to just be about dungeon crawls and killing things and taking their stuff). I want the new elements too. I just don't want to discard these very useful elements because people think they are tropes tainted by history or racism (when I think that just isn't the case).

 

[Bedrockgames]

20 years ago the idea that gay marriage would be legal was a joke. 20 years ago the idea of Russia threatening nuclear war if we don't allow them to conquer a sovereign nation would have been seen as paranoia. Time changes things. The world moves, and what was once invisible becomes visible. Hell, when I was growing up I didn't even know the word "gay", the idea of homosexual people wasn't something I encountered until College. You keep acting like the fact that these things wouldn't have happened a decade or two ago somehow means that them happening now makes them invalid. It doesn't. "But this wouldn't have been taken seriously 20 years ago" is not an argument that they should not be taken seriously NOW.

Times change doesn't justify everything. History isn't a straight upward trend towards the good. New bad ideas emerge even after old bad ideas are eliminated or abandoned (and old bad ideas come back, new bad ideas die, etc). True you make a valid point that just because people wouldn't have entertained these criticisms a decade or two ago, that doesn't mean they aren't valid. I suppose my point there was people understood those critiques in an academic way. But when they moved into the broader culture, they became extremely simplified and you started seeing things like equating dungeon delving with colonialism (which I think is a very big simplification and reductive). So fair enough, it not being a thing twenty years ago, doesn't make it bad, but it being a thing now also doesn't make it good. Times change doesn't justify anything we happen to do in the present.

 

[Bedrockgames]

And it isn't equally a dice game where you play warriors, wizards and thieves, nor entertaining, if you kill Ghouls? It just isn't as carthatic to kill Kruthiks? It does actually go beyond the game if you kill Oozes?

Your argument here could literally apply to any monster in the monster manual, so what's special about Goblins?

No it is definitely entertaining if you are killing ghouls and oozes and if there are an abundance of threats. One of D&D's strengths is being built around all these monsters to challenge the party. But I also do think there is something classic about these monstrous and intelligent humanoid threats like orcs and kobolds.