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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dykstrav" data-source="post: 3215443" data-attributes="member: 40522">I have to say I'm kinda disappointed with alot of players viewing D&D as a blend of Tolkien and generic European fairy-tale fantasy. The directions that the game can take are only limited by how far players want to push the boundaries. But instead of viewing the generic D&D world incumbent in the core rulebooks as a starting point, it's often viewed as a set of strictures.One of the things that has always stuck in my craw has been the Tolkienesque races. I originally didn't have elves at all in my ancient-world setting, I had dwarves living in volcanos who were forgemasters in the Hephaestian vein. But the players that weren't happy only playing elves and halflings in Greyhawk kept bitching and moaning about it that I put in an elf race modeled after nymphs and dryads. I stuck by my guns on halflings, I won't let them in until someone gives me a firm classic mythology basis for it.Still, I hear about how this particular game isn't D&D because there aren't elves living in places like Lothlorien and dwarves with Scandanavian helms and battleaxes. These particular players usually get red-faced as they wax poetic about how I need to play in Burt's game from 1983 to see how dwarves are really done.Screw all that. D&D is supposed to be a set of rules supplemented with options. It's not supposed to be some checklist of what's fantasy and what's not.</blockquote>