D&D 5E Am I no longer WoTC's target audience?

[MGibster]

It's rather easy to fit in dragonborn and tieflings (the two most mentioned races from the PHB), since Ravenloft has stuff from everything (Lord Soth from Dragonlance is in it). Of course, the CoS adventure was basically just Barovia and didn't include all the other demiplanes within the Mists.

I didn't think a race like the aarakocra, dragonborn, or even a tiefling were good fits for the setting even if their presence could be justified. Putting them in Ravenloft just reinforces my belief that race really doesn't matter a whole lot in D&D. Heck, the inclusion of orcs in the second Ravenloft module, The House on Gryphon Hill, felt out of place to me.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

When an IP is old, there is a conflict between adding new things and keeping the old lore. If nothing changes the complains will be "it is always the same, without innovation", but if we risk to add new things, then a "jump the shark" may happen. This is as the old fable of the miller, his son and the donkey. You can't satifie everybody.

My suspects are they are working in the crunch and after the lore will be remade or reseted to allow an easier incorporation of the new races and classes. We don't know their plans about future classes, and they don't know what classes and how we want. All those discussions about an concept or archetype should be a base class or only a subclass.

Some players would rather the world of Oerth as a sandbox, with empty spaces to be filled by their own ideas for future campaigns, but others want lore about the Oriental countries as the Celestial Empire. Some players, for example, would like an Oriental Adventures books with lots of things inspired in Japanese culture and mythogy, but other wish more things from Chinese, or Korean, civilitation.

* Tielfingsare popular because it is as wearing the monster Halloween costume. If tomorrow somebody writes a fiction title about an aasimar whose people is good folk but rejected as ugly little duckling by the rest by cause of the tall poppies syndrome then lots of players will want to play aasinars with noble heart from a fallen house victim by envy and betray.

* In Ravenloft somebody remade dragonborn as gargoyles. In the demiplane of the dread a reincarnation in a "wrong" race may be easier (or safer) than a resurection.

 

[Eric V]

That may be true. But I thibk I’d err on the side of putting out a book that might actually appeal to the majority of a settings supposed fans.

In these recent threads, it seems like everyone clamoring for a new Greyhawk has different ideas in mind. And
many seem very rigid about what they’d accept in a GH Setting. It just seems like a bit of a quagmire that WotC can simply avoid.

Could be true. Then again, other than AiME, I am done with 5e and even I would pre-order a GH setting book, fully with the knowledge that it wouldn't be based on my favourite stuff (the Carl Sargent era).

A GH book that doesn't match 100% what people want out of GH is still a hell of a lot more than nothing.

Eh, I could be wrong.

 

[QuentinGeorge]

I thought it'd be interesting to see exactly which campaigns "banned" PHB races in the past and found that, once you correct for edition, there actually isn't that many races banned.

Basic: Mystara (All Races)
1E: Greyhawk (All PHB Races), Forgotten Realms (All PHB Races), Dragonlance (No Halflings or Half-Orcs, but functionally Kender and Half-Ogre fill identical niches)
2E: Spelljammer (All PHB Races), Dark Sun (No Gnomes), Al Qadim (All PHB Races), Planescape (All PHB Races), Birthright (Not that familiar, but I can't recall any races that weren't allowed)
3E: Eberron (All PHB Races)
4E: Dawn War (All PHB Races)

Notably which races are or aren't allowed seems more a function of edition that anything else. And Dragonlance forbade more PHB races than Dark Sun did!

 

[hawkeyefan]

I thought it'd be interesting to see exactly which campaigns "banned" PHB races in the past and found that, once you correct for edition, there actually isn't that many races banned.

Basic: Mystara (All Races)
1E: Greyhawk (All PHB Races), Forgotten Realms (All PHB Races), Dragonlance (No Halflings or Half-Orcs, but functionally Kender and Half-Ogre fill identical niches)
2E: Spelljammer (All PHB Races), Dark Sun (No Gnomes), Al Qadim (All PHB Races), Planescape (All PHB Races), Birthright (Not that familiar, but I can't recall any races that weren't allowed)
3E: Eberron (All PHB Races)
4E: Dawn War (All PHB Races)

Notably which races are or aren't allowed seems more a function of edition that anything else. And Dragonlance forbade more PHB races than Dark Sun did!

This is all accurate, as far as I recall. The issue seems to he with the races that became PHB or core races in later editions. So that’s what people are going to focus on. Which is mostly the tiefling and dragonborn, but a few other race options, too.

Personally, I think the importance of restricted races by setting is overstated. I get the idea, and sure that stuff can reinforce themes a bit....but to me, “no gnomes” is pretty far down my list when it comes to explaining why Dark Sun is different from standard D&D.

I mean, if a gnome showing up somehow lessens the themes that should be present in a Dark Sun campaign, then you’re probably Dark Sunning wrong, and should be dragged into the street and shot.

I think the best way to handle it is to simply allow for all races, present them and their place in the setting, and then add a sidebar about possibly limiting playable races and exactly what that may achieve.

 

[QuentinGeorge]

Yeah, I prefer the more creatively interesting method of refluffing a race to make it fit. So I'm all for gnomes in Dark Sun, but just make sure they fit the setting.

 

[oreofox]

The last couple of pages is a great example of the problems WotC is going to have with fan pushback on a GH release pretty much no matter what they do with it. No judgement, we all like what we like, but yeah, issues.

It's just like my comment earlier in the thread. Though nerd rage was probably overstating it, but more like extreme stubornness. Just read the tiefling in Grayhawk here, and you get what I am talking about.
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I am one of those players and DMs (mostly DM) who likes the more "anything goes" stuff you get in the more recent years. I prefer the "our orcs are different" trope (warcraft orcs vs tolkien orcs), especially when it comes to D&D orcs. A lot of the early D&D stuff had some (to me) unfortunate corollaries with some bad views within historical US periods. All the PHB races are "pretty", civilized, mostly European, while the orcs and goblins and ogres and so on are ugly, uncivilized, tribal, and not very European. This is probably mostly on me, and could be very wrong, but I get the impression that the evil monster enemy races of early D&D had some strong native american vibes (or how they were viewed at the time) like in the westerns on tv and film.

So in my own setting, due to those impressions (it's also what I disliked about Golarion for Pathfinder, keeping the enemy races being always evil tribal rampaging enemy races), I completely did away with that.

 

[QuentinGeorge]

Mutual distrust and hatred between sedentary and nomadic groups is pretty universal across history and all cultures, just so you know. The Chinese didn't look anymore favourably on the Mongols or Jurchens than the Europeans did on the Huns, or the Levantine Arabs did on the Turks, etc.

 

[Zardnaar]

Not gonna support this edition as in not in the target audience. Yells at cloud.

I'll just tile my floor

 

[FlyingChihuahua]

Mutual distrust and hatred between sedentary and nomadic groups is pretty universal across history and all cultures, just so you know. The Chinese didn't look anymore favourably on the Mongols or Jurchens than the Europeans did on the Huns, or the Levantine Arabs did on the Turks, etc.

that doesn't make it okay, or good.

and I highly doubt they were thinking about that when creating them.