NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 9411544" data-attributes="member: 2067">Eh, quality of design and financial success aren't super closely correlated, IMXP. Players don't value pristine design all that much. Folks still play Monopoly. A game can be real janky and still get a lot of popularity. And, FWIW, I still don't like most of what's going on with the species, and I think there's some pretty iffy stuff here. Most of what I'm seeing reads like a team that lost track of the psychology and the fantasy and prioritized making this choice of species to be a low-impact choice, when that's not really how the choice of species lines up in the minds of players. In the story I'm telling, a dwarf fighter is as much dwarf as they are fighter. And being a mountain dwarf is distinct from being a hill dwarf. The dwarfishness - and the variety of dwarfishness - is important. In the game design of D&D, though, the dwarf fighter is a fighter like every other fighter, with a few mostly aesthetic differences. Class is by far the most significant load-bearing weight. 5e just goes further in the direction that we've been leaning into for several editions, now: you being a dwarf isn't much of an impact, it's you being a FIGHTER that is important.I don't think that's bad design, but I think it's worth questioning that direction, because it's not lining up with how I think a lot of people approach D&D, and that seems like a mismatch to me. Might be worth exploring some products outside WotC that make species a more significant character choice, I'd be interested in seeing some innovation there.</blockquote>

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