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<blockquote data-quote="Remathilis" data-source="post: 6290876" data-attributes="member: 7635">I think its even &quot;simpler&quot; than that. Imagine you gave a new player a set of core rules and ask him to make a character. He decides (for whatever reason) to play a dwarf. Then he asks you a simple question: &quot;What are dwarves like?&quot; How do you answer? The &quot;Generic&quot; Answer would be &quot;They are hardy, resistant to poison, good at crafting stuff, and make good fighters&quot; (the stuff you can pull out of the stat block). Useful, but really enough to go off of as a character. A stat block does not a character make. The &quot;traditional&quot; answer would give more: love gold and drinking, wear beards, scottish accents, grumpy and dour, hate orcs, dislike elves and use axes and hammers. The distilled essence of dwarfdom, but not always true (for example, Dark Sun dwarves and Eberron dwarves don't abide all these traits). Yet the classic dwarf does. This is what I'd prefer; a default assumption that the DM can use, change, or ignore. The &quot;specific world&quot; answer, where D&amp;D had a default setting like Nerath, Oerth and Faerun, would talk about Moradin, gold dwarves, the Great Rift, dwur, and so on in the PHB write up. This is kinda what 3e/4e did, where you have a default set of proper nouns you can swap out but is much closer tied to one of the worlds in the D&amp;D quiver. It also seems to be the opposite of what they are going for.The &quot;multiple choice&quot; option KM is advocating would mean you explain to them they could be like Tolkien dwarves, Eberron dwarves, Gully dwarves, Athaisan dwarves, or anything else the player/DM dream up. The problem is, at best their eyes are going to glaze over an the nuances of different dwarves, or at worst you'll have a beardless dwarven gladiator roaming around Faerun. While an experienced player can move and shift parts, a novice needs a little more structure, lest he pick and choose &quot;at random&quot; and create a truly Frankenstein world of Kender, warforged, muls, star elves, and half-vistani all living in the same kingdom as normal.So I'm advocating a &quot;traditional&quot; answer with a big bold block text (size 72 font) that says &quot;A DM might change this to fit his vision, don't treat anything as gospel until the DM says otherwise&quot;.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Remathilis, post: 6290876, member: 7635"] I think its even "simpler" than that. Imagine you gave a new player a set of core rules and ask him to make a character. He decides (for whatever reason) to play a dwarf. Then he asks you a simple question: "What are dwarves like?" How do you answer? The "Generic" Answer would be "They are hardy, resistant to poison, good at crafting stuff, and make good fighters" (the stuff you can pull out of the stat block). Useful, but really enough to go off of as a character. A stat block does not a character make. The "traditional" answer would give more: love gold and drinking, wear beards, scottish accents, grumpy and dour, hate orcs, dislike elves and use axes and hammers. The distilled essence of dwarfdom, but not always true (for example, Dark Sun dwarves and Eberron dwarves don't abide all these traits). Yet the classic dwarf does. This is what I'd prefer; a default assumption that the DM can use, change, or ignore. The "specific world" answer, where D&D had a default setting like Nerath, Oerth and Faerun, would talk about Moradin, gold dwarves, the Great Rift, dwur, and so on in the PHB write up. This is kinda what 3e/4e did, where you have a default set of proper nouns you can swap out but is much closer tied to one of the worlds in the D&D quiver. It also seems to be the opposite of what they are going for. The "multiple choice" option KM is advocating would mean you explain to them they could be like Tolkien dwarves, Eberron dwarves, Gully dwarves, Athaisan dwarves, or anything else the player/DM dream up. The problem is, at best their eyes are going to glaze over an the nuances of different dwarves, or at worst you'll have a beardless dwarven gladiator roaming around Faerun. While an experienced player can move and shift parts, a novice needs a little more structure, lest he pick and choose "at random" and create a truly Frankenstein world of Kender, warforged, muls, star elves, and half-vistani all living in the same kingdom as normal. So I'm advocating a "traditional" answer with a big bold block text (size 72 font) that says "A DM might change this to fit his vision, don't treat anything as gospel until the DM says otherwise". [/QUOTE]

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