Faolyn
(she/her)
What original story? A race whose entire point is to say that ugly & deformed = cursed outcasts? Why is that something that deserves to remain intact?
D&D 5E First World: Possibly One of the New D&D setting?
Micah Sweet
Level Up & OSR Enthusiast
Historical reasons. Plenty of people around the world believed that, and pretending otherwise is disingenuous. If you wanted to run a game where most people behaved in a historical manner, that would be valuable to you.
Doesn't sound far off from the 5E tiefling lore, funny enough. (Though I wouldn't be surprised to see that get revamped in 2024.)
dave2008
Legend
3PP can do anything they want,* we were talking about WotC. In that instance you are wrong. From the DMG sidebar on Divine Ranks:
Greater gods are: "...beyond mortal understanding." They can't even truly be harmed by mortals at all. Also, notice it says gods can have different ranks on different worlds.
They even upgrades lesser gods recently as Tiamat's avatar in Fizban's is a CR30 mythic monster (which = 2 level 30 monsters). Still not as epic as my CR 32 Tiamat.
* Am actually working on a 5e version of the old Immortal Rules called Ascension, The Codex of Exalted. It is very much a WIP. However, in this supplement gods control Authority and can shape reality to their will with this power. A powerfully enough god can create or destroy a reality with one use of their Authority. It is a limited resource.
Parallel universes do mirror some scientific theories. The pop culture references tend to be off base too. I particularly hate the pop culture approach that discribes a new reality being spawn whenever we make a decision. That is so utterly ridiculous I have a hard time being rational about it!
I prefer things that don't make complete sense. It should not be fully explained or understood IMO. In fact, we can't fully explain or understand it. In 4e, they sometimes had conflicting bits of cosmologic lore. It didn't try to say this was the one true way. It said simple that this is what some people think. That is all you need. You absolutely do not need to be concrete.
dave2008
Legend
I don't know that I can explain it, but I am the same way as @Faolyn . Often, the things I like the most are the ones I find myself the most likely to modify. When something sparks my imagination I invariably find my imagination flows in a slightly different direction than what is written (or on the screen) and I strive to make it more what I want. It seems so natural to me. I can get into more specifics if you want, but that is generally the idea. I love something, and yet dislike the parts of it that seem off to me.
dave2008
Legend
No one has a license to produce "official" epic stuff for 5e. DMsGuild stuff and things produced under the OGL are not "official" D&D content in any way. Official = WotC approved, recognized, & canon.
For example Epic Characters is a 3PP supplement to take characters from lvl 20-30. This is in no way official. WotC is under no obligation to abided by any mechanics or lore provided in this book, or any other 3PP supplement.
What do you mean by "official?"
The only parts of D&D myth worth being true are the dragon bits
Faolyn
(she/her)
First, Ravenloft isn't the real world and doesn't have real world history. If you care that much about "history," then you should also remove every trace of magic and all non-human PC races, since they're not historically accurate.
Secondly, it's incorrect, because real-life people who have birth defects like kyphosis (the technical term for hunchback) are not magically cursed, no matter what some people in the real world may have believed. It's deeply insulting to say that they are--just like it's insulting to say that just because some people believe that actual Romani are all thieves with powers of divination and the evil eye, that the Vistani should all be like that. Actual, real people have deformities. Edit: They shouldn't be treated as magically cursed for it.
Thirdly, by your logic, why not make sexism, homophobia, and skin color-based racism an official part of the game? I mean, it used to be part of Ravenloft, because that was part of Falkovnia: Vlad Drakov had a disdain of women and "effete" men which he enforced throughout the entire country, and there was a higher Outcast Rating for humans that came from domains with darker skin colors. Are you upset they removed that as well?
And fourth, if you really cared about what people believed and wanted the stats to reflect that, you'd better throw out the entire Monster Manual. "Historically," there was really no difference between demons, undead, and lycanthropes. And fey.
And finally, fifth, "historical reasons" are an incredibly stupid reason to keep something around.
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Azzy
ᚳᚣᚾᛖᚹᚢᛚᚠ
That's not how that works.
Levistus's_Leviathan
5e Freelancer
I'd rather have a setting be "disingenuous" or "not faithful" to its original content than have it include racist, sexist, homophobic, and ableist content (which many popular older settings have). I'd rather have people that like the base ideas of those settings be able to play them in a slightly different way from the original than doom the original to be forgotten or force WotC to publish the older setting exactly as originally published with all of its problematic/outdated content. I'd rather have fun with a slightly changed version of an older setting than never get to experience that setting in my preferred ruleset because some older players get grumpy at me for not playing how they want me to.
I'd rather D&D prosper and evolve than stagnate and die because someone on the internet complained about minor changes.
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