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Message: <blockquote data-quote="hong" data-source="post: 4192993" data-attributes="member: 537">The barrier is not the history ingame, but the lack of history out of game.Nobody said anything about lone 25 year-old D&D anachronisms.Like in this case.Because it results in one idiosyncratic D&Dism with no reason to exist, and hence less barrier to entry.Exactly. And hence if they could go, so can this.While it is indeed true that I love Mearls with all of my body including my pee-pee, I do not ascribe to him traits of omniscience, knowledge of revealed truths, or authorship of a divinely inspired 5-year-plan whose subtle workings we can never fully comprehend. Nor Rich Baker, nice guy though he is.Precisely. Rakshasas as tigers with backwards hands fail the general zeitgeist litmus test.This ignores the potential Eberron fans who do not care one whit about rakshasas as tigers with backwards hands.Only fanbois <3 the dumb rakshasas by definition, because only fanbois can be aware of, and care about, the dumb rakshasas.So... are we saying that Eberron is D&D?Correct. It is a continuing process of self-renewal, and one that is not helped by clinging on to stupid monsters out of sentimentality.It prevents reasonable monsters from being designed to replace them in the zeitgeist.Most of which will remain obscure, because the existing monsters are the ones who get all the love.I fully agree that if you think it's stupid, you don't have to use it. Insert comment about paying for stuff which you don't use.This is because your opinion is informed by D&D players who are already familiar with rakshasas as tigers with backwards hands.Stupid monsters are just one part of D&D that keep it from being current to the mainstream. As long as such monsters and associated accidents of history remain, players will look at D&D and see 25 years of cultural detritus accumulated into an unsightly mass not worth climbing.If there are rakshasas who do not have tiger's heads and backwards hands, this will be a suitable first step.One should realise? That the use of rising inflections? Is not particularly illuminative?And they can continue to be the major villains in that setting, without having their signature feature be tiger heads and backwards hands.Nobody said they couldn't preserve cash cows.Shadar-kai are a new addition to the game, and one that is moreover being given a revamp to make it more relevant to pop cultural trends. They have nothing in common with tigers with backwards hands, who were quite irrelevant even 25 years ago.But some are more relevant than others.Nobody said anything about getting rid of them.Of course barriers to entry exist. As long as there are people out there playing WoW and not D&D, that is ipso facto evidence of barriers to entry.The suitability of Eberron to continued milking is entirely unaffected by whether rakhasas are tigers with backwards hands.Tell me where Blake said anything about backwards hands.The design team has already killed enough sacred cows that one more shouldn't be too much work.D&D can easily be developed as distinct from the general fantasy milieu without perpetuating pointless idiosyncrasies which fail to resonate with people outside the game.So. Why do you care about rakshasas so much?If D&D needs Eberron to sell its core monsters, then D&D has failed.The game remains "Dungeons and Dragons", not "Eberron fantasy gaming". And thank god, or we'd all be riding lightning trains.This has what to do with rakshasas as tigers with backwards hands...?</blockquote>

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