D&D 5E (2024) Are you going to buy the new 2024 D&D Core Books

[UngainlyTitan]

I desperately wish for a tabletop equivalent of Mortismal Gaming's YT channel that provides reviews for adventures only after running them to completion.

Difficult given the time it would take.

 

[Reynard]

Difficult given the time it would take.

I know. I just hate how no one reviews them after playing or running them. The reviews are mostly just clickbait at release.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Yeah . . . we're done. Now you're just being an ass.

You got the facts that you based your argument on wrong.

The custom races rules from Tasha's have no similarities at all to the "take all stats from one race" approach of the UA Origins packet.

That you're trying to take the moral high ground because you said "as I remember" about something and you did not remember correctly, and got told that, is an astonishingly anti-discussion move. It's unfortunate we went discussed this so much before it became clear that you were misremembering.

To be clear, I've been factually in the wrong before many times and been called on it pretty hard, here and elsewhere. And you know what? I say "Oh crap, well I screwed up!". I don't try and make out I shouldn't have been called on it! It also means that I tend to fact-check myself (especially about dates of things and precise rules), rather than relying on my ADHD memory (which is incredibly detailed in some ways and hopeless in others).

 

[Ruin Explorer]

*I'm not exactly breaking out the books & checking word for word but they looked like an accurate quote I see no reason to doubt.

They are. I can source them with links and screenshots if required.

 

[tetrasodium]

They are. I can source them with links and screenshots if required.

I wasn't doubting, just leaving room for stray punctuation or whatever. No need

 

[Dausuul]

But that's not what they have in the 2024 UA. The rules there are are "Pick 1 race, in all mechanical ways, that's what you are". That is what I'm talking about as a peculiarly American and older sentiment. It's redolent of the one-drop rule and similar sentiments. That's why I'm saying that.

The new rule is written the way it is for a very simple and obvious reason: It allows you to create a character of any ancestry you like, without having to devise mechanics for splitting up or melding traits from the parent species (which would be a balance headache, take up extra page count, and generally be a pain in the neck).

To say that this is "redolent of the one-drop rule" is preposterous. The one-drop rule is the idea that having one drop of X blood makes you X. In the 1D&D UA, if you have one drop of X, you could be... anything at all. The only rule is that your species traits match those of one of your parents, and it says nothing about which parent.

Contrast AD&D, in which the rules for human/elf children were laid out in detail: 50% or more elf, you're a half-elf; less than 50%, you're a human; you cannot be an elf if you have one drop of human blood. That is what the one-drop rule looks like in a D&D context, and good riddance.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

The new rule is written the way it is for a very simple and obvious reason: It allows you to create a character of any ancestry you like, without having to devise mechanics for splitting up or melding traits from the parent species (which would be a balance headache, take up extra page count, and generally be a pain in the neck).

To say that this is "redolent of the one-drop rule" is preposterous. The one-drop rule is the idea that having one drop of X blood makes you X. In the 1D&D UA, if you have one drop of X, you could be... anything at all. The only rule is that your species traits match those of one of your parents, and it says nothing about which parent.

Uh huh, and I'd say your response is laughable, incredibly high-handed, and fundamentally exactly the kind of "who cares about the message, just think about the page or two a different system might take!" attitude I'm describing.

(This is particularly funny in the context of the 5E D&D rules, which no-one could accuse of making efficient use of page-count.)

And it's very funny that you say "Oh it's not the same because it could be either parent", which is just digging deeper into same fundamental vein of deeply American-style racism. To be clear, this whole "pick one race thing" starts but doesn't end with the one-drop rule. Racial thinking in the US has profoundly been based on "pick one race", "pick one identity" and so on.

It's not really how most of the world thinks, I would suggest, but I guess American exceptionalism leads one to the belief that the American way is obviously superior. You see this culture clash in human rights activism a lot when US activists attempt to export US versions of how things should be without considering that the non-US cultures may not fit well with that (and may in fact be less oppressive or restrictive in many cases than the US). Even in the UK, a relatively similar culture to the US, it's caused culture clashes with US activists and ideas. It's a complex and nuanced discussion, and perhaps for a different discussion space, but high-handedly dismissing concerns as "preposterous", seemingly primarily on the basis of page-count and apathy seems to me to be profoundly unhelpful and thoughtless as an approach.

Contrast AD&D, in which the rules for human/elf children were laid out in detail: 50% or more elf, you're a half-elf; less than 50%, you're a human; you cannot be an elf if you have one drop of human blood. That is what the one-drop rule looks like in a D&D context, and good riddance.

That's lore that hasn't been valid since, what, 2E at the latest? Sounds more like 1E though. So saying "good riddance" to something we got rid of in either 1989 or 1999 seems a tad fatuous.

From WotC's perspective, really they have a significant risk of getting rid of one problematic element, only to replace it with one that's also very problematic, but in a slightly different way, whilst simultaneously alienating a lot of players.

As an aside, I'd point out that the progressive work in this field in RPGs (and there has been a lot of it, much of it mentioned in this this thread) has absolutely 100% consistently eschewed the "you're only one race really" approach, so any claims that the Origins UA was particularly progressive here are rather obviously refuted by that. Which leaves the only real concern being "But the page count!" (as I've illustrated, D&D's races are not tightly balanced). And @Dire Bare himself suggested a good solution to the page count issue - which would be an upgraded version of the "custom race" approach from Tasha's. You could easily contain that to one page, one and a half if you were feeling expansive.

Doesn't it seem like it would be fair to allocate the same amount of space to mixed species characters as to just one specific species?

 

[Corinnguard]

It's not really how most of the world thinks, I would suggest, but I guess American exceptionalism leads one to the belief that the American way is obviously superior. You see this culture clash human rights activism a lot when US activists attempt to export US versions how things should be without considering that the non-US cultures may not fit well with that (and may in fact be less oppressive or restrictive in many cases than the US).

Hasn't every world power throughout human history felt that their way was superior to everyone else's at one point? Each one of them must have felt exceptional, and tried to export their version of how things must be done without considering how it may not fit with another culture's values and beliefs. The US is merely doing what other world powers have done before it.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Hasn't every world power throughout human history felt that their way was superior to everyone else's at one point? Each one of them must have felt exceptional, and tried to export their version of how things must be done without considering how it may not fit with another culture's values and beliefs. The US is merely doing what other world powers have done before it.

This is true, more or less.

 

[Dire Bare]

Hasn't every world power throughout human history felt that their way was superior to everyone else's at one point? Each one of them must have felt exceptional, and tried to export their version of how things must be done without considering how it may not fit with another culture's values and beliefs. The US is merely doing what other world powers have done before it.

EDIT: Politics.