Unpopular opinions go here

[Gammadoodler]

D&D settings are worse when they include humans.

 

[TerraDave]

Arneson did not actually do much from a design or production standpoint and it is pretty clear that without Gygax there would have been no product called D&D.

EGG also created a bunch of iconic adventures, monsters, spells, and magic items. No one else comes close.

 

[Aldarc]

The roleplay of players who engage in roleplaying games from primarily a pawn perspective are just as valid as the roleplay of players who engage in roleplaying games heavily from an in-voice actor stance.

 

[QuentinGeorge]

The Forgotten Realms is kitchen sink crap.

[Edit: I'll still play in D&D games set there but it's my least favorite D&D setting.]

My unpopular opinion is that the problem in the Forgotten Realms is not drawing from real-world analogues, but that those analogues are used in completely ridiculous ways, which leads to situations where cultures that should interact never do.

The real-life Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphates were multi-ethnic and multi-religious empires that sat at the crossroads of Europe and Asia, effectively acting as the bridge between east and west. So where is Zakhara on Toril.... on an isolated peninsula which doesn't interact on any appreciable level with either Faerun or Kara-Tur.

The great urban centres of the Sword Coast, Amn et al are on the completely wrong coast to be as influential as they are. The atlantic ports of Britain and Portugal only started to become important with the forging of paths to the New World, before that being a Mediterranean port was far more important. Forgotten Realms' problem is poor world building, going all the way back to Greenwood, not that there's a fantasy Egypt there.

 

[CreamCloud0]

D&D settings are worse when they include humans.

This is just the ‘humans are boring I don’t want to play a human’ argument applied on a world building level, but it still has the same response: being a tiefling isnt a personality or what makes your character/world interesting.

A not insignificant percentage of the most famous stories were made only using humans in their words, Sherlock holmes wouldn’t of been more interesting if he were an elf and watson a halfling or a dwarf.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

1. No D&D world benefits from official metaplots and D&D settings would be better off if they never existed in the first place. One of the best design decisions for Eberron was avoiding building a metaplot into the setting.

2. Dragonlance and the Forgotten Realms are both extremely overrated.

3. Gygax is held in too high regard by much of the D&D fanbase, especially the ones who have been around since the TSR era.

4. People who act like D&D died after TSR are at best viewing the past through nostalgia-tinted glasses, and at worst ageist and elitist gatekeepers who wish to act superior to newer players because they play a different style of D&D than they're used to/familiar with.

5. The expectation that canon for a D&D setting will be consistent forever is unrealistic and shortsighted. Change can be, and often is, a good thing. And moral outrage at the fact that they changed a minor detail about Archsorcerous Melfwinster the Bravulous is both silly and immature.

6. Dragon Age: Origins is the best D&D video game ever made. And it doesn't take place in a D&D world (even though the setting is better designed than the majority of D&D worlds).

Mod Note:

Posting unpopular opinions is perfectly fine. Lobbing rhetorical grenades like “ageist”, “elitist”, and “immature” crosses the line into (probably) insulting other posters.

Please don’t repeat this kind of posting.

 

[TerraDave]

The thing is, if you were playing at the time, it was obvious that Gygax's opinions changed with the wind, often due to whatever was happening on the business end with TSR and were essentially the same kind of things you'd hear from the crank down at your local game/comic shop and should be respected or ignored in the same way you'd handle those opinions.

I don't know when people stuck him up on a pedestal, but it's definitely weird to see. He was just another gamer, and depending on how you view the history of RPGs, not even the first roleplayer.

He put the gnome--and the gnome illusionist--into (A)D&D. No other "gamer" did that.

 

[mamba]

D&D settings are worse when they include humans.

they sure beat having Dragonborn or Tieflings

 

[Moonmover]

I hope you're trying to be funny.

Anyone who knows me will tell you that I am never funny.

Some of my best sessions have involved betrayals and conflicts between PC's. As long as the players (not necessarily the characters) involved all consent to it, it's good fun.

 

[Reynard]

He put the gnome--and the gnome illusionist--into (A)D&D. No other "gamer" did that.

To his ever lasting shame and our ever lasting suffering.