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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ilbranteloth" data-source="post: 6828566" data-attributes="member: 6778044">No, it's not the whole point. The "rulings not rules" is part of the concept of simplifying the rules. That too many options, and a rules system that is too complex, pushes out potential players. Recognizing that since the middle of 2e, and really as far back as AD&D, that they split their potential customer base with a great many groups still playing the older editions, or switching to an alternate option (primarily Pathfinder), in part because the rules were more complex. How do we get those people to buy the new game? Make it one that they want. Simplify. Focus on the core of what D&D is, rather than what it has evolved into. Allow anything, but build a standard, a base, that the majority will play with anyway.I doubt they lost many players because half-orcs were uncommon. Not to start an edition war, it's just a simple fact that veering too far from the earlier editions in 4e drove a lot of players away. Many to Pathfinder, many just stopped buying new stuff and used what they had. Others just stopped playing. This isn't really new, 2e and 3e had a similar effect, if smaller. Some people just stuck with what they liked.So the point of this edition wasn't to build what you want out of it. The point was to find the common ground that players of OD&D through 4e, along with Pathfinder players, and those no longer playing. The point was to build a game that would satisfy all of those groups enough to buy the new edition. And to bring in new players. There is no way to satisfy all of those groups 100%. So they found the things that would satisfy all of those groups 80% or whatever. That's what's common. Everything else is optional.Frankly, I'm surprised that they kept the warlock as a core/common class. I think that was a nod to the group that wanted spellcasters to be able to cast more than a fixed number of spells a day.Dramatically more useful to who? This presumes that most people who play D&D should know better, and that the core concept as presented is not the way it should be played. And that the designers' goal is to promote that "anything is OK" design rather than a baseline that describes a majority of D&D campaigns, as well as one that narrows down to what makes the generic D&D world unique to other fantasy pastimes. It is factual that most of the time when you sit down at a D&D table, that humans, elves, etc are common, and dragonborn and half-orcs are not. Self-fulfilling or not, that's what most people think of when they think of D&D. They are more heavily weighted in part because those people playing OD&D through 2e won't even have dragonborn or tieflings available as an option when asked what they play or like to play. Part of the goal was to make a game that you can sit down with a group of friends for the first time, and be playing in an hour or so. A baseline makes this much more possible. When you go to a store and say "let's play D&D", that baseline makes it easier. It puts the onus on the DM to say "hey, in my world we don't have halflings, but we have gnomes" instead of all of the players having to ask "so which races, classes, and rules did you choose from column A and column B?"Basically, with a baseline, you can assume that things are as presented unless told otherwise. Again, the assumption that a "rubber-stamp" effect is bad. While D&D has had a lot of published game worlds, only two have been the core world in the actual core books. Grayhawk and Forgotten Realms. Again, self-fulfilling or not, this is the base that they went with. Again, this sets a useful baseline.But my experience is the opposite. I generally DM in the Forgotten Realms now, and I admit that I play in an older version of it where tieflings are difficult to detect, and dragonborn don't exist. I do provide a booklet that details the races, classes, optional rules, and house rules that are acceptable. Basically the common races plus half-elves and gnomes. It specifically states these are the races available, and that dragonborn are not. In the initial group for the last campaign I started it included two dragonborn and a warforged.I've never run into anybody outside of this thread that takes the descriptions in the PHB and assumes that they aren't acceptable. In my experience it's been one of two things, either they are playing a dragonborn, drow, tiefling, etc. because they are rare and exotic, or they don't think they are rare at all.There's an entire thread on dragonborn in the Forgotten Realms and apparently I'm the only one who thinks that, as published, they are rare and exotic. Yes it's self-perpetuating. But also by design. Like it or not, other game systems, other game worlds, etc. have come and gone. In D&D the majority (whether self-perpetuating or not) has remained consistent, with lots of other things thrown on top. Part of the design is to make a statement that this is D&D, at least in regards to generic D&D.Licensed worlds are irrelevant, other than to point out that a 3rd party publisher is free to diverge from the generic D&D approach. And this is called out specifically in the PHB on pg 6,"...but each world is set apart by it's own history and cultures, monsters and races...""Some races have unusual traits in different worlds. The halflings of the Dark Sun setting, for example, are jungle-dwelling cannibals..."And goes on to say that the DM is the authority, even in published campaigns, so check to make sure that options you want are OK.Unless you (or they) consider the races, classes, and magic system as important as the rules in identifying what D&D is. I don't think they have any idea at all. While nothing of this nature is "probable", the movies, comics, novels, and the core books themselves have all found their way into pop-culture enough that the concept of elves, dwarves, wizards, dungeons and dragons are "known" parts of the game and brand. More importantly it doesn't really matter what the general public knows or not. Most people don't have any idea what D&D players use polyhedral dice for, but they know they use them. Most don't have any idea that there are other RPGs outside of D&D. To most people if you said "I play Pathfinder" and they asked what that was, it would basically sum up as "D&D."It matters what the designers perceive as what the brand is or should be. The evidence of what they determined, based on surveys and play-testing, along with looking at the history, is plainly visible in the results - that is the books they published. In other words, what the designers have published is their statement as to what they feel D&D is. They are entitled to do that, since it's their game.Which is fine. You don't have to care what the bulk of the players think. But WotC do. That was made very clear with the reaction to 4e. What other games have done is also irrelevant. Other Sci-fi settings have gone way beyond what Star Trek did. But if you want to talk about, watch, or even play a Star Trek game you expect that you'll get Star Trek races and such. Again, this seems to be what they are trying to do with D&D. Put a stake in the ground and say this is the core of what is D&D. You can take it any direction you'd like to go from here, and we (and others) will publish materials that will help you go that direction. But if you're just playing D&D, generic pick up a PHB and an adventure (plus the free supplements for the DM) that's all you'll need and this is what you can expect. A DM doesn't even need a MM or DMG anymore.What makes it "exceptionally important"? They are publishing a game. That's it. This is the game we designed, and the DM is in charge of making sure things run smoothly. If you have a question, ask them. If everybody acknowledges the DM is responsible for making a ruling when something is unclear, or for letting you know what races are available, then it makes the game work better. Your opinion as to what a "far more important goal" is irrelevant again. Their goal, their #1 above all else goal, is to sell more books. Period. They design the game in a way that they think will do that. They have (wisely) chosen to look through D&D's history and try to distill the essence of D&D into what they think best represents the game, and design a rule system that makes it easy for new people to pick up and play. They are not in the business of fostering player imagination. They are selling a game. To as many people as possible. That includes roping in as many past players, and players playing earlier editions or competing games.Sales figures have everything to do with it. They obviously designed a game that people want to play and buy. Older editions of D&D were much worse in wording when it comes to things. Anything written by Gygax in AD&D was full of "musts" and "shall" and a great many negatives. It became part of the quirky charm of the rules while everybody ignored them. Until 3e not only were numerous races presented as more or less common, but it was codified into the rules. The same thing with classes. Level limits, minimum and maximum ability requirements. Actually 3e even complicated the issue with racial level modifiers. To me it's a simple situation of the developers identifying what the majority agreed is part of D&D, and then allowing the other popular options to remain as, well, options. Because of the way D&D has been presented since the beginning, in terms of generic adventures, the core books, and the most popular campaign worlds (Grayhawk and Forgotten Realms), what is presented as common and uncommon is a fact. It's no more or less self-perpetuating than the presence of jedi and sith in Star Wars. It's what is expected in a general presentation about D&D. And Salvatore's FR novels alone have sold 15 million copies. That's just one series of novels. The various editions of PHB have sold millions, in dozens of languages around the world. D&D spawned an entire industry, and arguably WoW wouldn't exist without it. I would guess that if you stopped people on the street, and asked them what D&D is and what WoW is, D&D would be more known.I don't. Not for this discussion. Other than to say that once again you are free to do anything you want with the D&D rules, and so are they. They will undoubtedly publish or license many worlds that are different from the "standard" D&D world(s). That is explicitly stated in the PHB. The PHB is just setting a baseline for the most common type of D&D world, whether published or home-grown. That a great many people are playing earlier editions, and that the sales of splat books (all the way to the beginning, including things like the 1e Unearthed Arcana), are to a much smaller percentage of players, the core, common races remain the same. Gnomes, half-elves, and half-orcs have been 'demoted' in a sense. But I'm sure that is, at least in part, the results of their surveys and the number of people actually playing those races. I think that from the beginning they had already decided that things like dragonborn were optional or uncommon because the farther things veered from the traditional in D&D, the more it split the player base.I totally support your dislike of the core concept. That's a beautiful thing about D&D, that it is so malleable. But it's also a mass market game, and is presented as such. This is D&D, but you can make it anything you want. If you aren't going to go any deeper than the PHB or maybe the three core books, then this is what D&D is like. It's what it was originally designed to be like. That brand continuity is very important to them because it's what sells books.Ilbranteloth</blockquote>

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