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Dragonborn are back. "Warlords" are back. Nonsense suspension-of-disbelief destroying gamist mechanics are back, breaking player assumptions about D&D verisimilitude. Failing to see a clean break with 4E here.

Yep. They made a mistake, thinking they could reinvent and retcon D&D at will, and now don't seem willing to retract it. Removing gnomes was a mistake too - they just don't seem to have understood that D&D is a universe of it's own with a past, and not one they can ignore by slapping the D&D...

You don't need a dial for this. You need a switch, that eliminates the unwanted race from references in rules, artwork, the lot. Traditionally this was done by ghetto-izing monstrous, offbeat or niche races into a supplement. Doesn't matter if they're unique in the campaign - if one turns up...

Thunder Rift, seriously, as both default and sample setting. It's built for this purpose, even down to "Temple of Law" type stuff in the towns for theological unobtrusiveness. And it's small enough to provide that common experience thing.

D&D 5E cannot "embrace" all editions by kitchen sinking the core with stuff that was a mistake to include in the core in the first place. I can't make a vintage FR or GH with 4E implied setting stuff running around, as the invasive attempts to revise those settings prove. You've un-unified D&D...

It has nothing to do with revenge, just a rollback of what was arguably a mistake to introduce as a core game element. Your preferences don't have to be present in the core to be present in the game. I like PC sprites and pixies, but wouldn't push them as core, nor force them into every...

2E had more class/race "innovations" (really, options) than I can list, but had the wisdom to keep them out of the PHB. Playing core books only (in the PHB1/DMG/MM sense) was an "out" where vanilla D&D could be returned to when the supplement crush of unbalanced rules and quirky aesthetics...

That's because your edition has rent D&D asunder, and now one of it's arguably least attractive aspects and most hard to ignore (it's implied setting) is returning for another round. Why can't we keep 4E's refinement to certain mechanics, and ditch the maverick stuff that drove so many away...

No. Compare the 1E PHB to the 3E PHB, and with the exception of maybe the barbarian from Unearthed Arcana, and perhaps the sorcerer, the races and classes are the same. Heck, 1E even had a bard in the back of the book. 4E rather violently breaks with that tradition, and you're pretending twas...

This old canard. Art is cyclical, not evolutionary. D&D has more in common with the fashion industry than Darwinism, but certain styles are timeless and generally always look classy, whereas others are a flash in the pan and make people say "what were we thinking?" in hindsight. And to pursue...

3E didn't screw up the implied setting with dragonborn warlords in Hommlett like your game did. Yes, I understand that mechanics are more important than aesthetics for many 4E-ers. It can even be detected when the designers talk - the fluff is an afterthought. Well guess what - that shows...

Why? If a bollocksed-up implied setting wrecked 4E for me and is returning for 5E, exactly how have things changed, and why do your preferences for reams of dragonborn to be retconned into the FR setting and D&D artwork, or shout-heal "warlords" to romp all over the homebrew landscape, trump my...

Oh, and I understand their logic regarding "The Excluded Gnome Principle". I just don't agree that the conclusion they have drawn (kitchen sinking in everything, a mistake they've already made before with Eberron IMO) is the correct conclusion to draw. For instance, what if people who stayed...

You make a good argument save for setting retcons required, of the "gate a kingdom of dragonborn into FR" type. Slight fly in the ointment, that. Then there's adventure NPCs and their roles & stats, artwork, build discussions etc. The status of "core" does infect a lot of other material.

I think I'd liken it more to the "Rime of the Ancient Mariner", with WOTC as the Mariner, D&D of past editions the albatross, OGL & OSR the dead sea things, 4E the maid-in-living-death, and D&D's former audience as the wedding guest.

Yes, there are compelling arguments as to why the rogue/thief and cleric should be excluded from the game. Your example is mainly an exercise in reductio ad absurdum though. If the design team did not like the warlord, it would probably not be there, whatever you or I thought. Doesn't make...

[Indiana Jones]It belongs in a supplement![/indiana jones] But yes, a "Soul Caliber" exotic weapons supplement would be cool.

That statement seems reminiscent of the notorious "you're all just watching the clouds" blog post from one of the 4E designers in the lead-up to that game. The subtext is, you're powerless and your opinion doesn't matter. I think the D&D audience kind of proved that hubris for what it was...

I'd also add that because it's usually been a suboptimal choice unless you wanted an illusionist in 1E, mechanically, that gnome-o-philes must be especially sincere in their enthusiasm for the race. Call me a cynic, but given that dragonborn look as ugly as a sack of hammers (IMO, YMMV), I've...

A lot of that is probably mechanical, given the mindset that 3E and 4E draw people into. Gnomes always have been written as min/max also-rans, whereas I've played tieflings solely for the ability score bennies, as I'm sure have countless others. This makes their core status particularly...