Remathilis
Legend
I'm 100% with you in terms of content, KM, but when it comes to rhetoric I'm just not convinced the opt-in/opt-out effect applies in this scenario. I think @Remathilis is right: if you detail a race in a roleplaying book, it is the default. If you want to call it "the most popular," instead, that's fine -- then it's the default by default.
But I want to be clear that this is not the argument I am having with you. We are all 100% in agreement that whether we include the language, "this is THE dwarf, you may have different dwarves," or the language, "this is A dwarf, you may have different dwarves," we end up with most dwarf players playing the dwarf in the book. Maybe that majority is slightly larger in the former case because of the opt-in/opt-out effect -- I don't know. It doesn't matter.
My position is that I /believe in/ the idea of a default D&D, and think such a thing should be reflected in the text. If my goal were simply to /have/ a default, I would be just as happy with your suggested language, because to my eye there is no functional difference.
This is pretty much my point.
All the time I played 3.5, I didn't give much thought to the default deities, assumptions, races, or like. I used what I wanted, trashed what I didn't, and nobody ever told me I was doing it wrong. So while I assumed next would have its default assumptions (dwarves aren't 12 feet tall and eat nothing but tar) they weren't necessarily going to assume Moradin, the Great Rift, or other setting details. A compromise of specific & generic.
Anyway, is probably gone on longer than needed and the books already heading towards the printers. Time to drop the semantic's argument.
