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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 6828459" data-attributes="member: 6790260">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.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.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.<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8205kJSig4A" target="_blank">What you say with irony, I say with conviction.</a> 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.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.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.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 <a href="http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/wowwiki/images/0/0a/WarcraftRPG.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20070617200732" target="_blank">bore the D&D logo</a> on the cover...so, in fact, Azeroth is a world of D&D. Nearly 13 years as one, in fact!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.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.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 <s>half-giants</s> Norns.People are a LOT more able to process the weird, unusual, and fantastic than you give them credit for.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).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.)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 <a href="http://steamspy.com/app/72850" target="_blank">Steamspy</a>, 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 <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20151113201845/http://www.polygon.com/2015/11/10/9673936/elder-scrolls-bigger-than-fallout-sales-data-report" target="_blank">this Polygon article</a> 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.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 <a href="https://iomandra.obsidianportal.com/wikis/world-setting" target="_blank">an unofficial summary</a>, if you're interested.)</blockquote>

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