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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9843337" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Unfortunately [USER=467]@Reynard[/USER] this is entirely correct. I have seen it over and over again. The fact that dragonborn were included in the PHB was absolutely declared to be oppression of people who don't like and don't want to play dragonborn. That was a huge deal. There really was an article about it where an actual designer of D&D 5e talked about how they had to appease both people who like dragonborn, and people who are offended by the very presence of dragonborn. This is not a joke. This is not an exaggeration. They literally did say that they had to give equal consideration to "I would like to play dragonborn" and to "Dragonborn should never be part of D&D."You can read <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20120430050846/http://community.wizards.com/dndnext/blog/2012/04/27/tone_and_edition" target="_blank">the thing yourself here</a>.But the highlight is this (bold added for emphasis; "D&D;" is present in the original text):We’ve tentatively agreed that D&D; is big enough to accommodate the various Player’s Handbook classes and races, and we want to make sure these options are available when the next version comes out. Although this move will certainly appeal to the audience who think dragonborn and tieflings kick ass, I wonder if their inclusion will offend people with opinions that matched mine a few years ago. I’d love to say that we’re all reasonable people and finding a tiefling in the next version of the game doesn’t mean they have to appear in every world or campaign, but, being an unreasonable person myself, I can understand how such a thing might be upsetting to people who have a clear vision of what D&D; ought to be. Likewise, I think people who dig the Nentir Vale and the 4E cosmology would be livid if we ripped out the dragonborn and tieflings, whose fallen empires are so important to shaping the land. Is this a no-win situation?So....yeah. The official position of WotC is, or at least was, that they have to appease the people who hate the very presence of things, or else they're being exclusionary. They have to avoid offending people who think that Dragonborn being in the PHB at all is offensive.For reference, the above was written by Rob Schwalb. I am not trying to cast aspersions on the man himself, he sounds quite reasonable (despite his claims otherwise). But the position he is presenting here...is exactly what I summarized above. WotC has to placate jerks who demand that other people never be allowed to enter the so-called "Big Tent" edition.Which is a big part, incidentally, of why I do not see 5e as a "big tent", and never have. It was never a big tent. It was simply a capitulation to the victorious edition warriors.</blockquote>

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