So I feel pretty much the same way than you about tired Tolkien pastiches (though I love Tolkien,) but what I don't get why you care so much about what other people do. I was bored of tolkienism and medievalism too, and I made a setting that is not at all like that. And I know you have as well. But if other people find classic Tolkien-inspired fantasy to be appealing, why does it matter to you? Let everyone do what they want.
Oh, sure. Whatever you want in your home game. Knock yourself out and I'll do the same.
But, whenever we start looking for something to buy - some a la carte setting option - it's hard to find stuff that isn't very traditional where each race/species has it's place and, while there might be a couple of exceptions, pretty much everywhere in that setting, every supplement for that setting, every module for that setting, follows that same traditional rut.
And, to top it off, if some writer wants to deviate from the formula and change something up in one of those settings, the canon police descend like big, heavy stone things and scream bloody murder. Thou Shalt NOT have Dragonborn in this setting. Heck, just getting a fairly cosmopolitan location that's made up of PHB races, never minding the weirder stuff, is practically impossible. I mean, good grief, the very first scene in Waterdeep Dragonheist the party is in the Yawning Portal, a place that should be very cosmopolitan, and this is the introduction to the scene:
Waterdeep Dragon Heist P 21 said:
You sit around a sturdy wooden table lit by a brightly burning candle and littered with plates cleard of food and half-drained tankards. The sounds of gamblers yelling and drunken adventurers singing bawdy songs nearly drown out the off-key strumming of a young bard three tables over.
Then all the noise is eclipsed by a shout: "Ya pig! Like killin' me mates, does ya?" Then a seven foot tall half orc is hit by a wild swinging punch from a male human whose shaved head is covered with eye-shaped tattoos. Four other humans stand behind him, ready to jump into the fray. The half-orc cracks her knuckles, roars, and leaps at hte tattooed figure - but before you can see if blood is drawn, a crowd of spectators clusters around the brawl. WHat do you do?
((Note, typos mine))
Again, five humans? These are Xanathar thugs. Very much zero reason why there'd be five of them. Then, after the dust settles, you meet with Volo (human), the seven "Yawning Portal Friendly Faces" NPC's that you can meet are six humans and a half-orc, and about the only actual non-PHB NPC in the place that's actually talked about is a bloody troll that crawls up through the floor.
For a "Cosmopolitan" center, it seems awfully human.
