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Its a problem D&D needed to solve 30+ years ago. Its too late now. But the side effect of TSR deciding D&D didn't need a default setting is that everyone will have different ideas of what D&D is, and that will forever be a source of player/DM mismatching expectations.

CR used the 4e default deities (plus a Pathfinder one). If anything, Critical Role is the only place the original RQ is left and its status as being owned by CR/Darrington means its status in the multiverse is wholly dependent on the continued colab between the two companies. But for settings...

The strength of not having an identity is that everyone paints there own identity on it. Every DM doing things differently means there is no sense of overarching continuity. You can't just tell me "make a character" and direct me to the PHB and expect me create a full fleshed-out, well...

And I'm saying D&D's problem is having too many settings to be able to buy into. D&D needs one maybe two, fully developed settings, not 12 official and countless homebrew and 3pp. The opposite effect though is the generic PC so divorced from the setting that he could walk through a portal from...

The biggest problem was she was a deity who was far more popular than the setting she was created for, and she couldn't fill her role as a death goddess when every D&D setting already has a bespoke death god or goddess. So they tried to make her a planar entity and the rest was history.

Do they? I started playing D&D in the 90's and even in that paleothilic era, my intro to fantasy was Final Fantasy, not Lord of the Rings. I knew more about moogles than hobbits. And when I did start playing D&D, it was through BECMI where there was exactly one type of elf. A player today...

Golarion is IMHO world building done to perfection. Rather than a multiverse of settings that don't have anything in common, you have one world where each region gets it's own unique genre and flavor and crossing the streams is as easy as walking to the next region over. It would be amazing if...

Aka: "the first step to designing an interesting D&D setting is to first remove D&D from it."

That players rarely buy and read. Especially if it's for a single game and they have no interest in any mechanical elements in said setting book.

I'm not talking about rules, I'm talking about the lore, the tl;dr part the players skip. The player who read just the PHB now has supplemental reading: where do elves fit into Krynn, who is Paladine, what is the nature of priests on Krynn. It's even worse if you roll up that elf cleric of...

Not really. Because Elves in Oerth aren't the same as elves in Krynn, Eberron, Athas, or Ravenloft. So if I read in the PHB how elves worship Correllon and then decide make an elf cleric of Corellon, he's not going to be playable in Krynn (which has its own strict pantheon), Eberron (ditto, and...

Cait Sith? Spiders Man?

Like most things, there is some nuance to the discussion that gets glossed over. There is a world of difference between "why even have species, they are just humans in hats" and "I want to play a half-ooze feyborn giantkin". Most players* will try to find a middle ground between those, and that...

It's ok. You're not supposed to. Everyone is different. I look at it the same way when people argue that X shouldn't be a class. You (editorial) may not see the utility in a separate barbarian class, but lots of other people do.

It comes back to the fact that playing Vampire (or Cyberpunk or Star Wars) the setting is in the rulebook. It's really hard to design a character that doesn't either fit with the setting unless you are intentionally trying to be contrarian. But D&D? The fact it has no single setting but a dozen...

Because people want them to? This isn't an intricate delve into the human psyche. People want to play a pretty elf or a stubborn dwarf or a edgy tiefling. They want to look different, have a few cool powers, and be something a little different from what they see and do everyday. They want to...

I still think that's a tall order for a couple of people sitting at a table eating snacks and rolling dice. An elf has all the basic thoughts and emotions of a human. They love, laugh, fear, cry, ponder, doubt and hate the same as a human because they are being played by a human. If you wanted...

Gone with the Wind would have been infinitely more interesting with tieflings in it.