D&D 5E 5th Edition and the "true exotic" races ...

[Ilbranteloth]

There's also the question of whether that's a self-fulfilling prophesy, i.e. FR sells more because more FR material is produced and promoted. If I have a choice of setting, I won't pick FR. However, I picked up the Baldur's Gate game for Xbox because I wanted a D&D game to play. Some of the sales are just people settling.

True, but the same can be said for any game world, which again just points to questioning how you can measure something like that.

Ilbranteloth

 

[Nellisir]

Defaults primarily exist for the benefit of new players, who aren't comfortable creating their own worlds yet. If you just had a bunch of races and said that they all might exist in a world - without any guideline for where to start - new players could get overwhelmed.

Did you get overwhelmed? Because if not, it's a bit presumptive to say it was alright for you, but other people can't hack it. 1e AD&D had 7 core races, not including subraces (which...hang on...3 dwarf, 6 elf, 2 gnome, 3 halfling, 1 half-orc, 1 half-elf, 1 human...bumped up to 17 total subraces after Unearthed Arcana).

 

[Nickolaidas]

I am not saying that Dragonborn should be as common as humans in frequency and in numbers. That's like saying I want to see as many mind flayers as there are orcs in an adventure.

BUT, having - for example - the 'orc' in the monster manual, and then seeing *every* published WotC adventure purposefully excluding it from any kind of story element or encounter, gives a bad taste in my mouth. As other posters said previously, either CLEARLY state that every race or monster is equally optional, or state that they're equally important.

Oh sure, I can change it, if I want to. But having WotC avoiding to use mind flayers in any kind of setting, book or adventure other than a two-page info/stat on the Monster Manual severely cripples the importance, legacy, and potential of the monster. No matter how many players would come out and tell me "Mind Flayers weren't really liked by the players, so the guys at WotC put them there as an option for those who wanted to use them".

And *if* WotC purposefully avoids using non-famous/not-loving monsters and races, what does that mean for the writers who want to put them in a soon-to-be-published adventure? Seriously, this gives me the impression that the kobold press wanted to put Dragonborn in Hoard of the Dragon Queen, but WotC told them "You know what? No, put half-dragons instead, because old-school players hate Dragonborn". It gives me the impression that certain species are 'banned' by WotC itself, and that just rubs me the wrong way.

This is just a hypothesis, of course, but in the end, I think that races which are OFFICIAL options for a player to have his character born as, should be presented equally in the books. A player who makes a Dragonborn character won't find ANYTHING Dragonborn related in any of the books (other than four pages), while a player who makes a dwarf sees references, pictures, NPCs, specific-tailored gear ... He feels that his choice of picking a dwarf is validated, it matters. While the player who made a Dragonborn feels left-out, feels isolated, unsupported, feels as if he made the wrong choice. It's all in the head, of course, but it *is* there.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Did you get overwhelmed?

Kind of, yeah. When I'm trying to figure out how the world works, I just don't have room for that many sentient species to evolve independently of each other, which is why I only have 6 different humanoid races in total (including two non-playable "always evil" races).

 

[Demetrios1453]

We've seen no forest gnomes yet.

Well, they are a secretive race, after all...

 

[The Grassy Gnoll]

What bothers me, as a gnome fan, and as a DM to a human Druid, human Wizsrd, gnome Ranger, and Dragonborn barbarian, is the impossibility of finding minis for the gnome and Dragonborn.

I use cardstock minis for villains, but we would all like to have proper minis for the party. But short of hero forge (where apparently the paintable versions are so fragile as to be all but useless), I cannot find the range of figures to find a decent match for either of the 'exotics'.

Which probably has somewhat to do with the law of supply and demand, sure, but still after all this time you'd think there would be actual Dragonborn figures rather than lizard/Draco clones. You can semi fudge them both but it'd be nice to find an actual proper range.

Beyond that, fwiw, you make your own world. My setting is a bastardised FR and, mainly due to a PC gnome, gnomes feature strongly, but Dragonborn are very rare (which helps drive that PCs bond, which is basically to 'find the entwives' and locate a female to help his dying clan). But I could've gone the other way and had lots of dragonladies but no gnomes.

I personally am not a huge fan of Dragonborn conceptually but the player loves them, so I allow it.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

If you don't have defaults, then you don't have a game; you just have a set of parts that could be used to build a game.

That's what D&D is about--at least according to 5e, remember? Rulings not rules? I thought the whole POINT was being able to build what you wanted out of it.

Defaults primarily exist for the benefit of new players, who aren't comfortable creating their own worlds yet. If you just had a bunch of races and said that they all might exist in a world - without any guideline for where to start - new players could get overwhelmed.

I second Nellsir's response, but there's another side to this. The stuff presented in the PHB isn't a guideline. It's a set of flat statements: this IS how the world is. It's presented as matters of universal fact--when it is neither, except in a uselessly tautological sense (old things are old and have therefore been used for a long time; new things are new and therefore have not been used in as many works as old things have).

Actual guidelines would be chucking all this "common" and "exotic" nonsense, and using the leftover page-space to talk about how different worlds make use of these things. Yes, even in the PHB: a sidebar saying, "Many worlds feature D/E/Ha/Hu--which have had a presence in fantasy literature for 60 years or more. But there are also many worlds where one or more of them are absent entirely, whether because they were never there, or because they died out for one reason or another. Because D&D has been around for many years, it has added new options over time. Some players and DMs place a lot of value in the most traditional options, typically D/E/Ha/Hu, while others prefer newer additions, and some accept them all the same. Talk to your DM while thinking about your character. Not every campaign will feature every race, not even humans. Further, there may be specific tweaks or flourishes that you'll want to consider before making your choice--this book presents only one perspective on these races, not the infinite amount of possible alternatives."

That would directly communicate the idea that all of these things, even the nigh-universal humans, are options that the DM may or may not provide, that the player needs to communicate with the DM rather than make assumptions based on the text of the book, and that even if the book does make strident claims (as it very frustratingly does), they may or may not hold for any campaign you join. Instead of overwhelming the player (though, again, see Nellsir's response on that), it directs them to the person who should know how to answer their questions, questions that should be asked. And it would be a guideline, in that it would guide the player, rather than presenting this information as factual and unquestioned when it is neither. Then, there could be (as I had suggested during the playtest) a couple of pages spent in the DMG talking about how you can cultivate different kinds of fantasy "feel" through curating the list of available races (and classes, for that matter). THAT would be a guideline--and dramatically more useful.

A more relevant question might be, why would anyone care if there's a default setting, once you're advanced enough to create your own?

Two reasons. (1) The "rubber-stamp" effect on new players creates a self-fulfilling prophecy; anyone that gets inducted to the hobby gets told that dragonborn should be rarely (if ever) seen, while dwarves and elves have to be there for it to be "a world of D&D," so future expectations are shaped not by what's actually interesting or creative or challenging, but primarily by received notions. (2) It contributes to ongoing division and hostility within the medium, privileging one specific strain of imaginative thought as better, truer, more right, when there is not and cannot be such a thing.

Look, the rulebooks are full of assumptions. For example:
How dare they say that ALL dwarves in ALL worlds MUST follow these rules!

Another example:
Isn't that untrue in Eberron and Planescape?

What you say with irony, I say with conviction. Yes, how dare they...without also clearly stating, ANYWHERE in the book, "By the way, you should talk to your DM, because not a single word of this culture stuff has to be true in your world." See below for my response to your PHB example quote.

But the rulebooks also tell you it's okay to change the assumptions. Appropriately, most of this is in the Dungeon Master's Guide:

Your PHB example doesn't cut the mustard. Not memorizing the rules and details =/= "You should check with your DM because the way we describe races, e.g. dwarves, may be completely different from what your DM uses." Both of the others are purely DM-facing, and so cannot be expected to avert the rubber-stamp effect.

But really, there are two reasons why the "common" races are separate from the "true exotics." One of them has been brought up multiple times already. The other one is that they are the only 4 that have been in every edition and almost every setting that has ever borne the D&D logo. Within the context of officially published D&D worlds, the phrase "They don't exist in every world of D&D, and even where they are found, they are less widespread than dwarves, elves, halflings, and humans" is simply a true statement.

Only, as I said above, in a vacuously true sense: "old things are older than newer things, so old things have been used more." And, as I believe I've said to you before, that becomes self-perpetuating. That which has been used before is set above that which has not been used before. It's the employment catch-22: you can't get hired if you don't have experience, and you can't get experience if you can't get hired. That which has not been used as much is painted as less or worse (e.g. has strings attached) compared to that which has been used more...which means it will continue to be used less, and thus continue to be less and worse forever. You could also liken it to the sci-fi ghetto: science fiction is always pulpy trash so it can't be good literature; good literature can't be sci-fi because it isn't pulpy trash.

Those are not "worlds of D&D," which is what the D&D books are focused on. I'm sure a book about Azeroth would have Azeroth-specific assumptions.

Actually, there was a licensed D&D version (two, in fact) of World of Warcraft; the first came out in July 2003 (same time as the 3.5e revised PHB, more or less), and it bore the D&D logo on the cover...so, in fact, Azeroth is a world of D&D. Nearly 13 years as one, in fact!

And yes, they do need a default. One of the major goals of 5e was returning to old-school D&D traditions, and I think the success of that strategy speaks for itself.

That the mechanics are more similar to old editions does not justify putting only the oldest, most traditional options on a plinth above the plebeian rabble of the new options or new cultural ideas. More on that later.

Yes. Because like it or not, they are a building a brand. To you and I, D&D can be anything. But to the general public, the uninitiated, and the potential new gamer, the best bang for their buck is something recognizable as D&D.

So, what percentage of the general public do you think even knows that "campaign settings" are a thing at all, let alone that D&D has a specific one as its "brand" (to say nothing of what that setting is)? I guarantee you that my mom is aware of D&D, even that there are other similar games that aren't D&D, but she wouldn't have the first clue what a "Forgotten Realm" is, let alone why there would be a group of them. The plural of anecdote is not data, but you are again resorting to unproven (and I'd argue unprovable) assertions about what the general public knows or thinks or can do...and assertions that WotC wouldn't have the first idea about, since all their surveys and reports were from people already in the hobby.

A big part of that is what has been D&D. What do the bulk of the players consider core? What's recognizable to the outside world?

I don't give a rat's ass what the bulk of players think--in part because of the rubber-stamp effect. As for the outside world? "I wanna cast a SPELLLL! I cast...MAGIC MISSILE." *That's* what's recognizable to the outside world. And *extremely* popular video games--that aren't courting the "traditionalist" parts of the D&D community--have used numerous races that are much further afield than elves and dwarves or even dragonborn, have even said, "Nope, sorry, in this universe there are no dwarves. Play a Nord if that's what you're into, but you'll be human." Or games like Guild Wars 2, with huge horned-lion-bear people and (in-setting) brand-new plant people and weird sorta-alien-looking magitech pseudognomes, that are all equally as numerous and influential as humans or half-giants Norns.

People are a LOT more able to process the weird, unusual, and fantastic than you give them credit for.

Tradition in the business world isn't for its own sake, it's too make money. Consolidating into a coordinated presentation makes good business sense. Asking longtime players also makes sense.

Sure. But the language they used also acts counter to their exceptionally important goal of empowering DMs to act as they see fit, and counter to the (IMO far, far more important goal) of fostering player imagination rather than imprinting the new and impressionable with the cookie-cutter, rubber-stamped Approved Traditional Choices (oh hey and also there are these other things but they have lots of problems and may not even be available).

There are a lot of factors at play, but the fact that 5e seems to appeal to players of nearly all prior editions along with new players and especially players would indicate they are on to something.

Ilbranteloth

Sales figures have nothing to do with whether it was better, or wiser, to use slightly different wording that supports the diversity of choice for both players and DMs. The PHB has trans-supportive wording, even though that's never been a part of Traditional D&D, and people were happy about that. (Note, I am not even in the LEAST trying to say that the issues faced by trans individuals is the same as my desire for a different presentation of the races; they're actually oppressed, I'm just mildly annoyed. I am only citing that as an example of something with precisely 0 specific note in prior editions' books, yet which is generally considered a good choice on the writers' part.)

Also, in regards to the most popular fantasy worlds, I'm not sure how you even measure that. The number of novels sold in the Forgotten Realms alone would put it near the top of any published world. Combine that with the video games, Dragonlance, comics and all of the D&D worlds, books and media it's got to be in the top 10, if not much higher.

Ilbranteloth

Mostly I was going off a few facts I am aware of:
WoW had 11 million active subscriptions at the time Cataclysm launched, and is popular enough to secure a movie deal and appearances in numerous TV shows. As much as D&D is the "face" of tabletop roleplaying across the US, WoW is the "face" of MMOs.
According to Steamspy, there are over 11 million owners of Skyrim on PC (which requires Steam, that's their DRM solution) as of February 2016, and according to this Polygon article it has sold 22.7 million copies total in all forms as of November, 2015. And it, too, has been referenced in a handful of other games and media platforms--it may not be the "face" of single-player games (that's probably Mario or maaaaaybe Halo), but it's definitely a Known Thing.

Even if only 5 million of those actually went to distinct people, and even if we assume it was the same 5 million people (fantastically conservative estimates), that's still an incredible number of customers compared to the entire TTRPG community, to say nothing of one single segment of it (no matter how large). Warcraft also has books and comics, plus numerous prior and concurrent games in its series. I don't have hard numbers for the Final Fantasy games (far too many titles spread over too much time), but given that it's been around since the NES, and was also big enough to land a movie deal (even if it flopped in the box office), I'd say it's up there too. Were any of the D&D movies set in FR? I know they've all been terrible, but if none have referenced the Realms, that would certainly reduce my wholly informal estimations of how well-known or popular the Realms are.

Really speaking, it is only the history of the D&D worlds that make them rare. We may see further down the line a world where Dragonborn have conquered the human kingdoms and become a dominant race or a world where tieflings rule their own nation and elves and dwarves are uncommon. Until we get new worlds, or unless we make our own, then these uncommon races will continue to be uncommon or flat out not exist.

Well, if you allow well-publicized but unpublished examples, then I can do you one better. Chris Perkins' Iomandra. The dragonborn didn't need to "conquer" any prior empire, as I understand it. So even the (incredibly tired) assumption of human superiority is dispensed with right from the beginning: it's a world that is, and has been, ruled by dragons and dragonborn. (Here's an unofficial summary, if you're interested.)

 

[EzekielRaiden]

[MENTION=6790260]EzekielRaiden[/MENTION] Thanks for posting that. The name was familiar so I must have heard about a it a while back but never actually read the overview. Sounds like an interesting world and is exactly the sort of thing we need more of.

My pleasure. And yeah, I completely agree. Now, of course, I'm absolutely predisposed to like it because dragonborn. But at the same time, it's a legitimately creative setting that isn't afraid to re-interpret things (like the origin of Tiamat, Bahamut, and their rivalry--as well as the times they've worked together), and that leverages unusual and unexpected ideas in neat ways (there aren't many settings that use the island-hopping idea, for example).

Now, of course, some might say, "Well that's just Perkins--he's the best GM around." And he is! But I think everybody can do this sort of thing, not just him. I also think that, with carefully-considered presentation, you can help people 'on the fence' about it move in that direction much more easily than they otherwise might.

My current shared world is basically a kitchen sink setting so everything can be found in it. Far from being uncommon, the dragonborn have a special place in it as they have an empire which is the equal of the combined kingdoms of the human, elves, and dwarves in the part of the world that we are playing in. Currently there is a break in hostilities between the human-elf-dwarf alliance and the dragonborn empire as both sides need to regroup and rearm. We may yet have adventures in the thick of another war.

Cool! Sounds like a great source of long-term tension. Simmering resentments, proxy skirmishes, potential future involvement for the party in actual military combat scenarios...cool stuff. I imagine that, if you have both at least one alliance-member PC and one dragonborn PC, there would be some major potential for internal rivalry, but of a good and spirited kind rather than the more common murderhobo (or worse, "for the evulz") kind. Even better if you've taken some pains to show there's no real 'good' or 'bad' side, just different sides, e.g. the dragonborn empire is monarchial/autocratic in nature, conscripts its people, has significant social stratification (presumably by scale color--those with the hide of a gold, silver, red, or black dragon are born to rule; those who have a hide of mud must till the land)...but considers slavery abhorrent and...some other good thing (perhaps the social stratification comes with both state-provided care during natural disasters, and an Aiel-like "ji-e-toh" concept of honor and duty to those both above and below you). Most of that is probably already set in stone now, so tweaking it at this point is probably impossible, but I enjoy coming up with stuff like that

 

[Herobizkit]

Everyone who remembers the D&D where Humans, Dwarves, Elves and Halflings were the _only_ races you could play, and three of those were actually CLASSES, raise your hand?

*raises hand*

5e is like a love letter to all the editions that came before; the specific calling to these four races hearkens back to the OD&D games in the colored boxes circa late 70's - early 80's.

 

[Nickolaidas]

But 5th edition can be so much more than just pampering to nostalgia ...