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<blockquote data-quote="Mercule" data-source="post: 6747630" data-attributes="member: 5100">IMO, it's setting defaults for the genre or the &quot;standard&quot; table. Maybe I'm just old enough to remember when Human, Elf, Dwarf was actually &quot;standard&quot; and anything else was groundbreaking. I appreciate having a &quot;assume these unless you have reason not to&quot;. D&amp;D is interesting in that it has an implied setting without having a baked in setting. In this case, the &quot;common&quot; races really represent what is consistent across most officially published worlds. If you want to build your own, it's not a big deal to break that assumption.That said, the way it was done isn't necessarily the way I would have done it. Dragonborn and tieflings are fairly new to the D&amp;D &quot;core&quot;. I can totally see having them in a separate section. I, personally, have grown annoyed with half-human races and don't mind seeing them listed as optional, but they have long history in the and that is really kind of a weird way to do it. Also, I'm completely baffled as to why gnomes would be optional, which the incredibly bland halflings made the &quot;common&quot; cut.All that applies to the meta-game part of the racial listing. As far as calling out which races are common in the game worlds, that seems like something that should be done in a published setting guide, not the PHB. Maybe. Gygax had a way of adding flavor into the core rules without it feeling stifling that no one has duplicated.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Mercule, post: 6747630, member: 5100"] IMO, it's setting defaults for the genre or the "standard" table. Maybe I'm just old enough to remember when Human, Elf, Dwarf was actually "standard" and anything else was groundbreaking. I appreciate having a "assume these unless you have reason not to". D&D is interesting in that it has an implied setting without having a baked in setting. In this case, the "common" races really represent what is consistent across most officially published worlds. If you want to build your own, it's not a big deal to break that assumption. That said, the way it was done isn't necessarily the way I would have done it. Dragonborn and tieflings are fairly new to the D&D "core". I can totally see having them in a separate section. I, personally, have grown annoyed with half-human races and don't mind seeing them listed as optional, but they have long history in the and that is really kind of a weird way to do it. Also, I'm completely baffled as to why gnomes would be optional, which the incredibly bland halflings made the "common" cut. All that applies to the meta-game part of the racial listing. As far as calling out which races are common [I]in the game worlds[/I], that seems like something that should be done in a published setting guide, not the PHB. Maybe. Gygax had a way of adding flavor into the core rules without it feeling stifling that no one has duplicated. [/QUOTE]

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