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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 6794146" data-attributes="member: 2067">I do think part of the cool thing about FR's DB in 5e is that the civilization they hail from isn't one of "lost glory," it's one they're happy to be away from. You're invited to play a DB who has no home, who is making one by dint of their own efforts in the place they currently find themselves. As the Real World struggles with refugee crises and immigration policies, it's interesting to be able to play a character in a game who you can play as struggling with the (imperfect) fantasy analogy of that experience. I think there's maybe two things at work here.The first is that play has goals, and someone whose goal is to tell a Tolkein-esque story through their play isn't going to be interested in any options to do otherwise. You may as well ask them to go play cricket. It's just not the experience they're looking for. That doesn't mean they dislike the option, just that the option isn't for them. The mild annoyance of resisting the Default is a mild annoyance you didn't have to deal with back in 2006, and it's not like people COULDN'T play dragon-people back then, it's just that resisting the default fell on THEIR shoulders, not YOURS. You made the minor effort to include them if you wanted, and you didn't have to make the minor effort to exclude them if you didn't want them (and saying YES! to ideas always feels better than saying NO!). No one was banned, but it was opt-in, not opt-out. The second thing keys off of that default effect, and has more to do with the assumptions of the setting and the push of the marketing materials. If you don't like them, but the game is pushing them and the marketing is pushing them and you see illos of them everywhere and they're on the cover of the book and they get their OWN book and they feature as NPC's...that's just a constant reminder of this annoyance. It's like an annoying pop song you just can't avoid or a super-annoying ad that pops up everywhere - the mental effort to dismiss it becomes great, and you start asking why you even HAVE TO expend such effort. You start to question why this is so important to everyone else, why you see it everywhere, why you're constantly being asked, "Hey, I know you said no before, but...how about now?....how about now?....what about now?...Hey! Um...how about now?". It might even be worth the effort to switch games just so you don't have to deal with the mental load of constantly saying no because you're not interested. Again, this might be why their presentation in 5e is gentler. They're an option, they exist, but they don't dominate the conversation the way they might've seemed to in early 4e. Even in FR, you can utterly avoid the DB storyline without hurting your Sword Coast stories at all. So I don't think it's about forbidding others from playing it.I think it's about how much brain-space is eaten up by saying "no" to it. Not just in play, but even in reading the books and setting materials.</blockquote>

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