Aaron L said:
/snip
I really despise the "20,000 varieties of sapient humanoid species with every member as an overblown stereotype of a certain aspect of human nature or historical human culture," which has become the norm in fantasy, and unfortunately especially in D&D. I find it especially stupid that, in the really poorly written tripe that passes for fantasy nowadays (and especially D&D based stories) only the human race has more than one culture or language, every member of a non-human race speaks the same language, and every different culture requires a specialized variety of the race (snow dwarves, desert gnomes, jungle halflings, Japanese katana elves, ad nauseam.) I think it's very cheesy and really drags the entire genre down.
Umm, become the norm? You haven't read a whole lot of 60's and 70's era fantasy have you? I suggest starting with Moorcock. Considering he's made an entire career out of what you're talking about.
And, as far as "poorly written tripe that passes for fantasy", I highly recomend Steven Brust (sp), Steven Erikson (a lot of Steve's), China Mieville, to start off with. I'm more than willing to stack any of those three against any modern fantasy author.
3E got really bad about it with all the splatbooks with a new type of elf, dwarf, and lizardperson in it, and it got to the point of emulating poor anime (and I like anime, so this isn't a knee-jerk "D&D sucks because it's emulating anime" argument) or children's books more than any fantasy I've ever read... but I was able to ignore a good deal of it because it was relegated to splatbooks and supplements. However, 4E is making it impossible to ignore by making it a central element of the default setting and including dragonpeople and whatever-the-Hell Teiflings are supposed to represent in the main PHB, and I also find it fairly distasteful. It really makes me throw-up a little bit in my mouth.
Young adult fantasy is a HUGE genre right now. It's hardly surprising that D&D would try to bring in stuff from there. Wander over to your local bookstore and the YA fantasy section is massive. More titles than you could possibly read in a year. And some really excellent stuff too. I recommend checking it out. There's some really great YA fantasy out there - Jonathan Shroud's Bartemaeus trilogy is loads of fun, for example.
Never minding the Harry Potter thing.
However, I realize that I am free to ignore it, and if other people enjoy it, well, more power too them. Unfortunately, the big problem for me is that my DM is a really tight "whatever's in the PHB is written by God and altering it is blasphemy" type, and now, since it's in the PHB, it is now Gospel, and I have to like it or lump it. And I suspect that a lot of other people have this same problem, where it has to be accepted as default because it's in the PHB and their DMs aren't imaginative enough to create a setting for themselves.
Two points here. Since you are not DMing, how does this actually affect you? You don't like the races, so, don't play them. Why whiddle in someone else's Cheerios just because they want to play something you don't?
Secondly, and this is off topic, but, not wanting to create settings frequently has nothing to do with a lack of imagination. It might, but, not necessarily. If you feel so strongly about this, I suggest you create your own setting and run the game.
I really wish things like dragonpeople and demonpeople would have been relegated to a specific setting. This is purely personal taste, I realize. But now, since they have been included in the PHB, I will be forced to gag myself from commenting on how stupid I think they are every time I play D&D, and for my first 4E game I will be the sole human in a party full of dragonpeople and demonpeople. Unfortunately, I have to either accept this or not be able to play at all. (Much as with a lot of 4E, because it's become near blasphemy to say that one prefers the way things were done in 3E nowadays.)
I really miss the days when elves were exotic.
Elves were never exotic. I played back in the day. Elves were the powergamers wet dream and that was about it.
Again, why should your tastes trump the table? This sounds much more like a group issue, rather than a game one. If your play style differs so radically from your group's, it's time to change groups. "I can't play otherwise" is a piss poor excuse. Virtual Tabletops, starting another tabletop game - there's a million options out there.
And, let's face it, if you are willing to run the game, I'll guarantee that people will follow your ideas much better than if you sit back and piss and moan about how someone else's game isn't what you want.
