Unpopular opinions go here

[Reynard]

Gnomes are the worst race, utterly pointless except for their stupid hats.

 

[payn]

routinely refer to the "«Better Left Forgotten» Realms"

Its actually Forgettable Realms.

 

[aramis erak]

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.

Other than, as is proven by draft manuscripts, write the core mechanics, which Gygax made less intelligible... (See also the Dahlun manuscript and other surviving drafts.)

Gygax real value was as the guy able to get the thing in print. As an editor, he sucked. As a creative on the rules side, well, many better games than his still have fanbases, while his non-D&D games tend to be almost unknown.

His D&D adventures are well known, both for being iconic, and for lots of save-or-die traps. For many, they're exemplars of what Not to do.

 

[Celebrim]

D&D settings are worse when they include humans.

This is another one of those where, even though I think it is wrong, I still see your point.

 

[Gammadoodler]

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.

Nah. It's not a boredom thing. It's a "constrain the imagination" thing.

Humans add a reference point to Earth reality that doesn't belong. When they're included, people think less about how races compare to each other, and instead how they compare to humans.

It allows designers to bring in assumptions about how biology, physics, economics, psychology, etc. that need not have any actual precedent in the fantasy worlds they build.

And including humans doesn't change the quality of the stories you can tell.

Sherlock Holmes may not be any better as a Dwarf, but I don't think it'd be worse either. And if the world of Sherlock Holmes had no humans, I'd wager that the world it described would have been a hell of a lot.more fantastical.

 

[Celebrim]

It allows designers to bring in assumptions about how biology, physics, economics, psychology, etc. that need not have any actual precedent in the fantasy worlds they build.

I got your point immediately. I see what you are going for.

But at the same time, in 40 years of play witnessing dozens and dozens of players, I'd guess 80% of all players can only play themselves. And, I've yet to see a player whose play really made me feel that his character was inhuman and that the race really was so different than human that it was something more than human with bumps on their forehead or funny ears.

The problem with your assertion is that it's hard enough to get a player who can actually play different characters with different motivations and bring those concepts to life. To ask of a players that they play a character where their own experiences of biology, physics, economics, psychology and so forth don't hold, is to ask of them to be deep scholars of your world the way Tolkien was a deep scholar of his world. And for that, they need years of study in order to build the necessary understanding and you need years of world building to give them something deep to study. It's just too much to ask of a player to really demand that they play an alien even if you have put in the writing a novel scale demands of describing one.

So what your high ideals are going to accomplish in reality is you have declared that there are no humans in your campaign world, but that all your characters are humans playing dress up.

 

[Gammadoodler]

I got your point immediately. I see what you are going for.

But at the same time, in 40 years of play witnessing dozens and dozens of players, I'd guess 80% of all players can only play themselves. And, I've yet to see a player whose play really made me feel that his character was inhuman and that the race really was so different than human that it was something more than human with bumps on their forehead or funny ears.

The problem with your assertion is that it's hard enough to get a player who can actually play different characters with different motivations and bring those concepts to life. To ask of a players that they play a character where their own experiences of biology, physics, economics, psychology and so forth don't hold, is to ask of them to be deep scholars of your world the way Tolkien was a deep scholar of his world. And for that, they need years of study in order to build the necessary understanding and you need years of world building to give them something deep to study. It's just too much to ask of a player to really demand that they play an alien even if you have put in the writing a novel scale demands of describing one.

So what your high ideals are going to accomplish in reality is you have declared that there are no humans in your campaign world, but that all your characters are humans playing dress up.

To be fair players who choose "humans" in a D&D setting are still "humans playing dress up"

And you don't need them to be scholars of your world. You just need them to be able to let go of assumptions they bring in from theirs and be ready to ride the ride.

EDIT: and of course the worldbuilder needs to give the players the lowdown on differences when they are important.

Either way, I'm ultimately less concerned with the players and more with the worldbuilders. The players will be players either way. At least the settings they play in could be more interesting

 

[mamba]

Gygax real value was as the guy able to get the thing in print.

as someone (Jon Peterson? not sure) said “without Arneson no one would be playing D&D, without Gygax only one group in a Twin Cities basement would”

 

[innerdude]

D&D settings are worse when they include humans.

Whereas my equally unpopular opinion is the exact opposite --- fantasy settings had better have a clear, overwhelmingly salient "internal causal basis" to include anything BUT humans in the setting.

Racial heritages are 1) a boring way for designers to move tedious trait bonuses around "for variety" and 2) a short-hand, lazy way for players to select a cliched approach to their character's personality.

Seriously, try limiting your players' choice of heritage to human for one campaign and notice how literally nothing changes in play other than your players no longer have to point out that they're special snowflakes because they have pointy ears and glowing purple eyes.

 

[Faolyn]

Gnomes are the worst race, utterly pointless except for their stupid hats.

Elves, dwarfs, halflings, and (half-)orcs were stolen from Tolkien, but D&D's creators likely didn't have a similar source for gnomes. They should have leaned into their mythical origins as earth elementals--but it's possible that Gygax & Arneson didn't know gnomes were earth elementals, and it's also possible that if they did, that they thought elemental gnomes would be too OP in comparison to the other races.