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And then... "No. This is too much exactly the same as the old thing. Get rid of it and give us a new thing." "No. This is too new. It's not exactly the same as the old thing. Get rid of it. Give us something exactly the same!" It needs to be exactly the same but with none of the faults and...

Not at all. It's precisely in keeping with what 5e is.

Which is why I still advocate merging halfling and gnome into a single species which represents a type of land-bonded fey--gnome, halfling, Bergmännlein, "Kobel" (similar to but not the same as koblin/goblin/kobold), etc.--with the different subspecies linked to different terrain types...

The cover image is gorgeous...but does it have any particular relevance for the content within? Or is it just a pretty paper sculpture?

4e gave them a pretty solid benefit, in that your second wind was a minor action rather than a standard. That opened up some significant options for both defensive and offensive combinations.

Well, er, they really aren't? That's part of why I mentioned what I mentioned. Per DDB, they were in 4th place behind elf/half-elf and ahead of tiefling, for the final two sets of data put out. They're in 4th place on this chart--just above tiefling, well behind elf/half-elf. The last time we...

The Underdark is Fantasy Australia.

You may come up with alternative explanations if you wish, but the data we got out of DDB, before they stopped sharing it, backs this assertion up. Human was by far the most common. After that, Elf (all collected together) and Half-Elf duelled for second place. And then Tiefling had been 4th...

Hell, we know Gygax was perfectly comfortable having a freaking depowered balrog and a juvenile dragon as PCs, so long as the player was comfortable with having their power grow over time, starting from near-zero like everyone else. People have been playing non-human options for ages.

Exactly. Sometimes, growing up in a loving home full of resources makes one yearn for the thrill of adventure over a quiet life. Sometimes, growing up in a terrible place where you're barely scraping by makes you afraid to leave, lest you lose what little you have.

It occurs to me, you could potentially get proper dragonborn (rather than draconians) by having a group of rebel draconians get their hands on the Greygem and wish for "a life of our own, free from the way we were born" or the like. They are dragonkin reborn--hence, dragon-born, not dragon-hatched.

More or less the same thing here. Your answer indicated that getting a list was supposed to be evidence of those three things--coherency, distinctiveness, shapefulness--when they are not evidence of that in the first place. At best, they're orthogonal. Hence, if you are now saying that that...

I have never mistaken ban lists for coherency, distinctiveness, or shapefulness. The vast majority of banlists are all about keeping things as generic and shapeless as they can--by making it so you only play the Extremely Traditional Options, in Extremely Traditional Worlds, using Extremely...

Okay. Why should a laundry list of restrictions be inspiring to me as a player? Why do GMs act like this should be some ultra-exciting thing to hear, rather than looking like "alright, here's all the cool things I'm taking away from you".

This raises a very good point. A lot of GMs present their settings as a laundry list of things they aren't allowed to do, aren't allowed to play, as though that is an inherently cool and inspiring thing. I still to this day do not understand that perspective. "You aren't allowed to do X, Y, Z...

Given those very people are the ones who killed the really creative and interesting Sorcerer and Warlock concepts from the "D&D Next" playtest? Whether it is a healthy attitude to have, we are still under its effects now. We are still shackled with that burden fifteen years on, and are likely to...

But how can I be an outraged GM ranting about the entitlement of players in that paradigm? How can I be an outraged player ranting about the Viking Hat in it? No no, this simply will not do. Far too reasonable. We'll fix it in post.

Unfortunately, WotC listens to them. Y'know, given they were the ones who won the edition war.

Not what I said. People get angry when they feel their preferences have not been placed on, at the very least, top-equal billing.

If you wish to use such a jaundiced description, that's your bag. I see it as choosing to be 44 yards wide, 44 yards long, and 44 yards deep (44.147^3, if you prefer). A cube, the thing which minimizes surface area for a fixed cuboid volume. As opposed to being a foot on either side, and 440...