Does anyone actually like Dragonborn and Tieflings?

[Kesh]

I absolutely adore dragonborn. The entire concept works for me, and I had at least three or four ideas for dragonborn characters reading the core books.

Tieflings I'm indifferent about. They're neat, but neither the design nor the fluff give me any real inspiration.

 

[williamhm]

I love the art of the amazing Tony Diterlizzi...but I don't like Tiefs or Dragonborn. I must admit though...if they still looked as they do above I might be more inclined to include Tiefs as at least they would retain a vaguely medieval, folkloric appearence.

My problem with the two new species are:

A) Dungeons & Dragons has become increasing distant from its medieval fantasy origins and these creatures just seem to reinforce that. I feel the starter book should have a more basic array of creatures and said beings should be a bit more classic. After looking through the 4E Player's Handbook, a non-gamer female friend said to me, "Are there any Dragons or Dungeons in this game? This looks like another planet. Its like Star Wars."

I imagine she is one of the people that WotC/Hasbro is trying to market to...a creative and intelligent young professional who doesn't buy their product but might. She is a history buff and a fan of classic literature but sees nothing of the mass market elements she expects to see that might interest her. It doesn't look like Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter. It looks weird and confusing. She's in consulting and marketing herself btw.

On the subject, I thought fantasy RPGs did better then SF ones because they are based on a recognizable past we can all reference the same way.

Of course this choice of a change in atmosphere is directly related to...

B) The art. I just don't like it that much but specifically I'm not a big fan of the designs of these two creatures. The Dragonborn do not look like Draogn Men to me but rather evoke images of Predator and D'Argo from Farscape. The Tiefling of late is a different colored Draenai. Not interesting to me at all as I've seen it before.

Maybe the next PHB will contain more species I can get a handle on, though I'm sort of expecting Warforged, Klingons and beings made of pure magical energy. Neat yes but not what I'm looking for.

AD

heaven forfend they change the race line up at all. Seriously these are based on myths and folklore as much as anything in dnd is. As I said before I like to see new things included. And frankly the fluff, and background for the two races is pretty cool. I think each of them add something unique. Change is good. Blindly following tradition is bad.

 

[Psion]

Change is good.

Not implicitly, no.

Blindly following tradition is bad.

So, if somebody doesn't like a change it's "blindly following tradition"?

 

[williamhm]

Not implicitly, no.



So, if somebody doesn't like a change it's "blindly following tradition"?

It is if the only reason they say that they dont like it is that it does not follow tolkien or traditional fanatasy.

 

[KoshPWNZYou]

Dungeons & Dragons has become increasing distant from its medieval fantasy origins

Is Cthulhu medieval fantasy? Genies? Ogre-magi? The Sphinx? All were there at the game's Gygaxian beginnings. D&D has always incorporated as many other genres as it could. It was never meant to be LoTR the Role Playing Game.

I mean ... a floating eyeball that shoots rays at you?

 

[DandD]

Yeah, true. Dragonborn are a stand-in for the butt-ugly half-orcs, and Tieflings are the new annoying evil-curious dudes and dudettes, who kicked gnomes in their hineys.

I wish they would get rid of Halflings, Tieflings, Half-whateverlings (go away, half-elves, half-dragons, half-ogres, half-giants, half-insects, half-catmaid, half-plant, half-freak).

Dragonborn is okay for me, as I played Wizardry 7+8. They were awesome games, and my Draconian Fighter kicked Savant Trooper tinplates and sprayed deadly acid to pesky Ratkin assassins.

Oh my gosh, D&D 4th edition is Wizardry... And Wizardry is a D&D-knock-off... Oh my gosh...

 

[Dice4Hire]

I really have no problems with either of them, especially as Tieflings are presented, as descendants of an evil group of nobles. I know the dragonborn are new, but they still make a lot of sense in D&D, and I'm surprised it took so long for them to appear.

Now, I know elves and such are staples, but I would have preferred getting rid of the elves, and keeping Elderin, as the Elderin seem a more reasonable race, overall.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

Am I just a grognard, or are Dragonborn and, to a lesser degree, Tieflings universally despised?

I can't answer the first, but you're wrong about the second, pretty clearly.

Both seem more "kewl" than "cool", more post-2000 World of Warcraft-esque fantasy than classic Lord of the Rings fantasy or New Wave Talislanta-esque weird fantasy.

This is some weird, stupid pejorative stuff going on here. What on Earth is wrong with Wizards of the Coast publishing an edition of Dungeons & Dragons informed by modern fantasy ideas instead of just the traditional Tolkienesque crap or the Eighties' version of "modern"? Talislanta is twenty-one years old, dude. It predates Second Edition AD&D by a few years!

But I guess I'm just a bit surprised they are both core; now I was out of gaming from about 2003-08, but it seems they kind of came out of nowhere in terms of centrality to the D&D ethos.

"Ethos" is a meaningless term as you use it here. Did you mean "mythos"?

In any case, they didn't come out of nowhere. Wizards of the Coast has previously stated that any book they publish with "dragon" in the title sells noticeably more than other books, so obviously dragon-related things are popular with the playerbase; likewise, it's pretty clear that tieflings have been popular player races since Planescape came out in 1994, so at this point - even if they are different in Fourth Edition than they were then - they've got a reasonably long history in D&D.

More to the point, D&D has to stay current. More and more players are coming to the hobby whose first ideas about fantasy aren't restricted to The Lord of the Rings, and it's a terrible idea for the game to offer them nothing other than the most staid and traditional fantasy ideas because it won't work to attract them. Even the highly successful films jazzed the damn story up with acrobatic action sequences inspired more by modern expectations than a desire to stay true to the tone Tolkien would have envisaged.

 

[The_Fan]

Going by the numbers so far, looks like there's a pretty close split on the Dragonborn (51% approve, 39% disapprove), while the Tieflings enjoy a slightly more comfortable 57% approval rating.

For my vote, I like them both. Tieflings slightly more than dragonborn, but both are good. These are such common archetypes among players, why NOT have them in core other than the fact that they've never been core? (argument from tradition)

 

[mhacdebhandia]

And I can only conclude that those who are OK with Tieflings and Dragonborn must not have any sort of established campaign world. Because AFAIK, no campaign world supported these kinds of races before 4th edition. These two races have no place in my world.

Or, you know, just maybe some of us were designing settings with wholly non-traditional races.

In point of fact I have kicked around multiple settings where tieflings were prominent minorities in the major human settlements (in the most recent case, born to human parents because of the lingering influences of fiendish armies destroyed in the area), which often also included non-antagonistic tribes of lizardmen. So, you know, pretty easy to adjust for Fourth Edition, if I wanted to.