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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 6828319" data-attributes="member: 2067">The meat of your objection seems to be the uncommon races box, most notably that "uncommon" races don't exist in every D&D world, but, by implication, the "common" races do.My impression of this box is that it is one of those attempts (like with the multiverse model) to establish the boundaries of what the designers intend to do - they might publish a world without Dragonborn. They probably won't publish a world without Dwarves.Likely, this is based on their research on what races people actually play (years of data, and likely better customer research than any other RPG company out there), and an effort to direct design effort to support those races first and foremost that most people play. It's also probably based on D&D history - you might expect that Dark Sun not have Gnomes because that's one of the things about Dark Sun. Likewise, you wouldn't expect, I dunno, a Birthright reboot to suddenly make tieflings a prominent race. But even Ravenloft would still have halflings. An alternative might be a 4e-style "everything is core" model, where every new setting and new book features all the races in the PHB. I think 4e's own struggles there would show the flaws in that model.Another alternative might be a "nothing is core" model, but, likely based on that market research, WotC knows that people like making elves and halflings and dwarves, and expect to when they play D&D (though they might not expect to be able to make a tiefling or a half-orc), so they're interested in making products with those races in 'em to cement the brand identity and give people race options. Dragonborn and half-elves just don't have that pull.In a practical sense, that paragraph is irrelevant. In actual play so far, you're either in FR and doing the presumed default thing, where there are dragonborn and tieflings and gnomes, or you're doing a homebrew, which is explicitly doing its own thing anyway. So if you're disappointed that WotC won't likely spend a lot of development money on making sure that gnomes have a special and unique place in The New D&D Setting That Is Maybe Coming, and maybe won't even exist, I can understand your disappointment, but I can also understand why they might want to spend that money on developing a unique sub-race of the Core Four, for instance, which is more likely to see play. That they don't lavish attention on Your Favorite Race should be understandable, at least, if Your Favorite Race isn't most peoples' favorite race.If you're worried about What's Officially Supported, there's not much need to worry - as long as FR is the presumption, all the PHB races get included.If you're worried about individual tables not allowing Dragonborn or something, that has been as it always was - up to the individual DM. An individual DM could ban or accept whatever they want, it doesn't matter what some sidebar in the PHB says. If "I Forbid Race X" is a dealbreaker for you, well, that seems a bit sensitive to me, but whatever, find a DM who isn't persnickety about races.</blockquote>

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