Levistus's_Leviathan
5e Freelancer
Fully agree there. An approach like Eberron or Exandria or even like the Percy Jackson series works better than the FR approach, from my experience and in my opinion.
D&D 5E How do you hope WotC treats the upcoming classic settings?
Hussar
Legend
Well, first off, the author's intent isn't an issue. Author's intent is only important if we want to start placing blame. I don't care, personally. "Oh, well, they didn't really mean to be ((insert issue here)), so it's okay." isn't really a defense of anything. A lot of this is just an artifact of the time. It was the 70's and 80's.
But, let's roll back to kender for a moment. Now, according to DL canon, kender were created by the Greystone of Gargath from gnomes. Which mutated the gnomes into Kender. So, ok, that's fine so far. Let's lean into that. Instead of celebrating the fact that these people are the victims of horrendous magical mutation, let's portray them for what they are. So, instead of kender kleptomania being a cute thing that kender do, it's an affliction. Kender, because of the chaotic magic poured into them, become insanely inquisitive (based on their gnomish roots) and cannot help themselves but start pilfering people's stuff.
At least this way, we aren't celebrating mental illness, but, rather treating it as something to be dealt with. Change the narrative from "Oh, look how cute that mental illness is." to, "This is a person who might need some help. What can we do?"
Granted, I'm a piss poor writer, so, I'm sure someone else could do a much better job. But, I hope I got the basic idea across.
DarkCrisis
Reeks of Jedi
Why? Even real world mythology has the greek gods and norse gods etc involving themselves directly with humans. Why cant fantasy gods in a fantasy world?
Future Modern D&D in the way you describe seems bland AF, IMO. Every culture needs to be the same, every god needs to not exist etc.
Faolyn
(she/her)
Not if they're actually written well.
Take the defining kender trait of stealing everything in sight. First off, why? Mostly for comedy reasons, because they're so "innocent" that they don't know that they're doing bad things--but honestly, that's neither funny nor a show of innocence (especially since they lie about stealing). Give them a legitimate reason for stealing stuff. Say that they have a philosophy--or even a non-theistic religious belief--that says it's OK to have personal property, but it's always wrong to hold on to it selfishly if someone else needs or wants the thing. Say that kender either don't care that other cultures think differently or that kender actively believe that other cultures are wrong when they hold onto things.
So what this means is that you will have kender who accept this philosophy blindly and "handle" things whenever they want to; those who accept the philosophy but also realize that they shouldn't inflict their beliefs on other people; those who reject the philosophy; and those who come up with variants on that philosophy. More importantly, this prevents the kender from being a one-note annoyance because it is literally a choice as to how the player wants to deal with the handling, not just how much of a jerk the player wants to be.
This is just one way to "handle" kender (hur hur) without turning them into "just halflings."
Heck, you could leave kender as-is if everyone else realized they were a punch of pack-rats and treated them as such, instead of having the books insist that humans think they're adorable.
Take the gnome trait of building overly complicated things that don't work right and shunning anyone who actually makes something that works well. Realistically, this was for two purposes: to make them a "funny" race, and to keep their inventions from actually making radical technological changes to Krynn.
Again, lots of ways to do this without making them a comedy race. Let them build technological wonders. But say that they don't share technology with outsiders except in very rare cases, and stealing a bit of gnome tech means they'll send an army to retrieve it (or assassins). Or say that they've skipped clockwork and steam and gone right to internal combustion, but nobody else has the materials (including oil) necessary to build such an engine (heck, you could also go with steam and just say nobody else has been able to make a boiler that doesn't leak or explode) or is willing to pay to build such engines. Or borrow a page from Eberron and Sharn and say that the tech only works around Mount Nevermind but not outside of it, due to the magical nature of the place.
Faolyn
(she/her)
I think Acererack was talking about the gully dwarfs. Ugly, dirty, smelly, stupid, diseased, unable to count above 1, and according to one wiki, think the holiest objects are those that do nothing--like rotting fruit and broken sticks.
Scribe
Legend
Because in FR, those Fantasy Gods actually exist.
Levistus's_Leviathan
5e Freelancer
. . . And that makes them better for storytelling . . . how exactly? Just because a lot of older authors and storytellers were lazy in the same way as many modern authors/storytellers, that doesn't make this aspect of their storytelling any better. "Traditional storytelling" =/= "good storytelling".
It's not "can't", it's "should". Should gods be doing Deus Ex Machinas all the time in the worlds that they exist in? Should the PCs be constantly invalidated because a god can just swoop in and save the day in a campaign world? Should the changes to a setting's lore just be swept under the rug by saying "A Wizard/God Did It!" every time that the lore changes?
To me, the clear, obvious answer to all of those questions is a flat-out no. Of course they shouldn't. That's just lazy story telling and world building. It's not that you or WotC "can't" do those things, it's that they really shouldn't, because they're boring and are basically cop-outs.
No one has said that. Literally no one. Stop with the strawmen, please.
People have certainly argued that humanoid races, which are almost always depicted as having free will, shouldn't have cultural mechanics in their racial stats, and that it should be moved to Background or a separate Culture part of your character. No one has said "Every Culture needs to be the same", though. That would be bland. However, none of us are asking for that, so you're attacking a position that doesn't exist.
Argyle King
Legend
FWIW, I see Dragonlance as dealing heavily with interpersonal relationships. That includes abusive romantic relationships, the horrors of constantly watching yourself grow old and die (Raistlin's eyes always looking at his twin withering and dying,) the challenges of being a biracial individual, slavery, and etc.
Irregardless, I don't feel there's value in attempting to measure some sort of comparative harshness of a literary category.
At most, it was an anecdotal perception of mine. I don't feel that it has added much in terms of progressing the overall conversation forward.
I'll admit that aspects of Dragonlance can be silly. Even compared to other books I had read around the same time, it's softer in some areas. Something like Neate to the Rescue probably takes a closer look at day-to-day social issues. Dragonlance is, I think, a romantic fantasy story first and other things second.
In terms of how that's handled by WoTC:
I hope that the focus on interpersonal relationships is highlighted.
I also hope that there's not a perceived need to find a way to shoehorn every option into every setting. I think it should be valid for the default view of a setting to be that certain things do/don't normally exist in certain worlds. A home group can certainly do whatever they want, but I feel that the best way to approach having different settings is to allow them to be different.
Irregardless, I don't feel there's value in attempting to measure some sort of comparative harshness of a literary category.
At most, it was an anecdotal perception of mine. I don't feel that it has added much in terms of progressing the overall conversation forward.
I'll admit that aspects of Dragonlance can be silly. Even compared to other books I had read around the same time, it's softer in some areas. Something like Neate to the Rescue probably takes a closer look at day-to-day social issues. Dragonlance is, I think, a romantic fantasy story first and other things second.
In terms of how that's handled by WoTC:
I hope that the focus on interpersonal relationships is highlighted.
I also hope that there's not a perceived need to find a way to shoehorn every option into every setting. I think it should be valid for the default view of a setting to be that certain things do/don't normally exist in certain worlds. A home group can certainly do whatever they want, but I feel that the best way to approach having different settings is to allow them to be different.
Scribe
Legend
So much this, but I honestly worry Wizards isn't interested in doing this anymore.
If someone who is actually from a group that I'm not part of says "this thing portrays my group in a hurtful or tone-deaf way", than that opinion has more weight than mine. I can still like whatever I like in the privacy of my own mind, but I'm not going to demand the wider world continue to support that.
