Conan wasn't really a D&D Barbarian either. It's why I'm of the firm opinion that D&D is in many ways its own thing. If you want to tell a fantasy story similar to Lord of the Rings, Conan, Wheel of Time, A Song of Fire & Ice, etc., etc., then you're only going to be disappointed with D&D.
Why not? At some point, I feel as though all the classes and subclasses will become burdensome. But since D&D is undermonetized, I envision a future where they try to sell us many as many species and (sub)classes as possible. Or maybe WotC will finally go full point buy like GURPS! GURPS still managed to sell splat books with stats for elves, halflings, orcs, etc., etc. even though the core book had rules for creating them.
True, but how distinctive were they? IME, after 3-4 sessions they were run no differently than Humans. Someone else noted here, and I believe its true, that most players run a version of themselves.
I miss splatbooks. Or maybe I just miss the idea of splatbooks. At their best, splatbooks were filled with all sorts of useful information that might serve as inspiration for a player or a GM, it might provide everyone with more options for character generation, and it might a GM some time by providing stats for bad guys or other NPCs. The Night City sourcebook for Cyberpunk 2020 is a good splatbook that offers all sorts of details about the city but there's still plenty of room for the GM to add their own stuff as well.
In D&D terms, Conan is a fighter/thief. His background is barbarian, not his class.
Gandalf is a cleric. He turns undead.
To be fair, I said we didn't need "dozens of bespoke races." The handful of examples in the PHB is plenty, along with the framework in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything.
Yeah, the first thing I've had to do to create a D&D game with LotR flavor for my coworkers (who only know 5E and, at this point, only want to try it) is to get out the machete and cut away a lot of D&D, including most of the monster manual and plenty of classes and races.
