You Don’t Have To Leave Wolfy Behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' Your Companions Level Up With You!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jgsugden" data-source="post: 8511923" data-attributes="member: 2629">Fast and the Furious is a great example, as is Cannonball Run.  Jokes that are funnier in my head aside, D&D is an RPG.  A role playing game.  Characters play a role in a story - and each element of your game world should facilitate better story telling.In the past, we'd look at hertiages likfe Halfling, Tiefling or Goliath and make them an analogy for something.  In the modern day, reducing an entire heritage to an analogy for something is not considered acceptable.  So what purpose do these different heritages serve if they're not going to be a shorthand to mimic a real world heritage or personal trait?  If we don't want to have a greedy heritage, an evil heritage, a barbaric heritage, etc.... what purpose does the heritage serve? The answer is: Not much.  If we decide that there is in't anything that we want to make inherent to a heritage, the heritage has no inherent specialness.  They just become a collection of characteristics.  The heritage will do little to define the identity of the PC, leaving more space for us to design that freely independent of the heritage.  That is appealing to many.Now, there will be some exceptions.  If you want to tell the story of someone that comes from a corrupt origin and is striving to get away from the world they were born into, there is an inherent advantage to the tiefling heritage for telling that story that is hard to divorce from the heritage.  You could do it with any other heritage, but the origin of the tiefling and core description of it make it a more obvious choice.  However, for most heritages, we're trying to move away from the stereotypes.  You can have an elven miner, a dwarven farmer, a halfling cannibal, a half-orc librarian, a gnome sailor, or a goliath dressmaker.  My campaign world has always been more of a community with an amalgamation of heritages in it. There are no elven towns, for example.  Mountain tribes may by 30% orc, 30% human, 20% half-orc, 10% elf, 5% dwarf and 5% minotaur.  My underdark cities will be ruled by a family, but they'll have residents of many heritages within it.  I have an Aspect of Demogorgon that rules over many tribes of gnolls, but it also has goblinoids, humans, and a variety of other beasties amongst their ranks.  In each of these situations, I have a central concept and I imagione how that concept would organically come together in my world - and that rarely results in mono-heritage situations.</blockquote>

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