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See above, but my response is essentially, "Will they?" With Aragorn, Gandalf, Frodo, etc. all dead, it seems that the War of the Ring becomes a conclusive victory for either Sauron or Saruman, if the latter is in fact capable of wielding the Ring properly. (I'm personally skeptical of this and...

I find it's a hard sell to come up with a completely different group that somehow manages to be all the things needed, without any of the connections the previous group had. If Frodo and the rest of the Fellowship die trying to take the Ring to Mount Doom...it almost certainly gets acquired by...

I do think there is a slightly greater temptation to prevent any loss that actually stings in a linear campaign. When there is no endpoint except what the players are interested in doing, a TPK is just a consequence of biting off more than they could chew. When you're Saving The World, a TPK is...

Personally, I'd call that an aspect of the callous. "I know it's terrible, but I want to avoid trouble" is a way to compartmentalize those feelings so you don't feel bad about not doing something. In the context of a D&D setting, I think this can be particularly useful if one wishes to have the...

Exactly. There is at least one more category. Possibly two. One is, "I couldn't be bothered." They are callous, not casually cruel--they are simply unmotivated by the suffering of others, or at least the suffering of others unlike them. Cruelty requires the desire to harm. Callousness simply...

I mean that literally actually is what I was just told. It literally just is "a deity of pure evil made them, all of them, and they're just like that now." There literally isn't more to it, which is one reason among several why I find the new lore so boring.

They had a single look and a single origin, yes. They actually DID something with that, instead of just having a generic "well I guess evil made them". That's the difference here. Variety solely for variety's sake with no effort or thought behind it doesn't add much. I personally didn't care...

There really doesn't. Especially since you're exploiting two different senses of the term here. One sense is "most likely" as a clear, unequivocal majority decision--what almost everyone does. The other sense is "most likely" as "well, technically, it's statistically almost certain that some...

This is a good point, and I think "rollercoaster" is a good word for the good kind of experience that isn't a railroad, but is cut from the same cloth, just as I had previously articulated "wasteland" as the bad kind of experience that isn't a sandbox, but is cut from the same cloth. Both words...

Let us see. Did @Crimson Longinus say that there should never be choices where there isn't an obvious, correct choice? Did they say that absolutely all situations ever must be so ambiguous, so utterly intractable, that it's impossible for anyone to even begin to claim that it has one solution...

Rule 34, SFW corollary. "If it exists, someone's into it." The larger the population grows, the closer to 100% true this statement becomes. Every new sapient soul is a new chance for some kind of unexpected niche interest...including romantic ones.

Well, at least for my part, I do (and always will) draw the line at liches, people who willingly became vampires, and illithids, that sort of thing. At least in 4e, illithids can essentially "go vegan" and eat the products of a form of moss. That they choose to kill people instead indicates...

I would argue that your opposition is a matter of desiring contrast. "They're Just Always Evil, get over it" is a rejection of contrast. But by that same token, "they're all Beautiful Individuals Who Must Be Individually Judged" also takes out contrast. Having Lolthsworn Drow who are people...

All I'm saying is, I have seen--from canon WotC sources--stuff that indicates it does not have to happen that way. Couldn't care less beyond that. Also, for the record, if my bias goes in any direction with regard to tieflings vs minotaurs....it's in favor of minotaurs. I dislike the fact that...

I agree that they like playing smart. I disagree that this then means there will be one and only one dramatically more common response to any given situation. Some players are severely risk-averse (like my current ones) and will accept an inferior result if it protects them from danger. Others...

Let me rephrase. Do you really think that most situations in real life have a singular, obvious, correct solution? Do you really think it is good storytelling to have characters that consistently see the singular, obvious, correct choice? Because that excludes the possibility of temptation...

6e.

I don't think you've taken @Crimson Longinus at their word. Notice the operative bit you left out, bolded for emphasis: "Some situations are like that, but I think it is poor adventure building if every situation has one correct and obvious answer, and yeah, to me that is rather railroady."...

Conversely: TTRPGs are the only place where we can have the two parts of that actually, truly, interact dynamically. Video games cannot be flexible enough to adapt like that. And pure freeform roleplay is all about not having rules. It's only in the TTRPG space that you can get things where...

No. They aren't. Because some were affected by a person using warlock magic near their mom when she was pregnant. The connection you're asserting isn't there.