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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 6164772" data-attributes="member: 2067">Totally on-board so far! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />I think part of what the D&D brand is to me is Diversity. Because of the game's hyper-local nature, because each group of 5 people takes it in their own direction, because it is something you make with your friends, it reflects the user very intimately -- this is part of the emotional hook the game has on people. You make it your own. So, to a large degree, someone who comes at the D&D brand lookin' for orcs shouldn't see one consistent orc, they should see a million different orcs, because D&D is every orc you can imagine. It's whatever orc works best for you.As long as it remains true to that, D&D can be inconsistent, because it will remain authentic. The most valid cries of "This change is stupid!" arise because the proposed change lacks authenticity. It's inorganic, artificial, and top-down. It neglects to recognize the thing that people like about how it was before. You'll get cries of "this change is stupid!" no matter what, but the difference between Peter Jackson's LotR and the Star Wars Christmas Special, or between Christopher Nolan's Batman and Joel Shumacher's Batman is that the change is authentic and organic: it is true to its own local environment. Heck, even the campy 1960's Batman gets a pass for pretty similar reasons: it's honest about its origins and its goals. If there's a *reason* for Drizzt to be red (maybe you put Drizzt in an ancient Greek-style play where the colors are representative of emotional states? I dunno), it can be earned. If the reason is because red action figures sell better (or whatever), that's not organic or authentic, and you'll get more resistance, and more supported resistance.  An off-brand Lego Drizzt gets to be cartoony and blocky, because that's authentic to the Kree-O environment. A movie Drizzt can be played by Vin Diesel, because that's authentic to the movie environment. If you put Drizzt in a suburban sitcom, that might be jarring, because ?????, but if you put him in a weekly dramatic serial, that works more with the tone. Totes. But it's a little bigger than that. For one, the tone is set by you guys. When the game only shows one type of goblin, it is inferred that this is the type of goblin you are meant to play with in this game, it's the goblin the game is made for, the type of goblin that is supported. If that goblin's not for you, then maybe you start to consider playing other games. Changing things from the core assumptions is a lot of work, after all, and not always worth it if there's some other company doing most of the work for you.For two, there's licensing situations. It's probably above your pay grade, but things like the GSL's "you can't redefine elf" work in favor of that consistent feel, but strictly against the expectation that we ALL get to redefine "elf." It limits the products that can support D&D by supporting different ways to play D&D.For three, it demotes the changes we make to our own games -- the very changes that make those games so awesome -- to off-book, house-rule territory, to something players should worry about and be cautious of, to something like D&D fan-fiction. But D&D is itself kind of like fan-fiction, and rather than claim some sort of internal canon, it'd be smarter, I think, to embrace the idea that these things are varied and flexible and manifold. Which ultimately means that trying to tie D&D itself to a consistent feel seems inauthentic, driven more by brand fundamentalism rather than by the needs of the game, and so it's leading to a lot of "This is stupid!" cries against the idea. Trying to make D&D strictly consistent is like turning Drizzt into a wacky comedy sit-com dad. It violates some of the reasons that people like the thing.PS: Thanks for engaging, and apologies for the long-windedness, this is clearly a bit of an axe to grind for me personally for some reason. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" /></blockquote>

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