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Message: <blockquote data-quote="GM Lent" data-source="post: 8191922" data-attributes="member: 6798775">Not so much part of the goal as part of my concern. I'm reminded of a conversation I had months ago with someone, in which I was griping about the physical redesign Thri-Kreen underwent in the WotC era. For the uninitiated: under TSR, Thri-Kreen were distinctly insectoid and ahuman, with long bodies, huge thoraxes, and art that represented them as very mantis-like (hence their nickname, mantis warriors).[ATTACH=full]132385[/ATTACH] In WotC publications, Thri-Kreen stand upright and are smaller, making them distinctly more human-like. [ATTACH=full]132386[/ATTACH]The first D&D character I ever played was a thri-kreen, and I loved leaning into their strangeness. But the response of the person with whom I was discussing the situation was "I don't want to play a giant bug."Fair enough, but I wonder if that kind of sentiment a) led to the redesign of the thri-kreen - something I think is very likely given WotC's very research-based approach to game design - and b) is common enough to curtail similarly unusual PC options. Ultimately, I feel that as long as a setting has a human default, people will find characters to play. And I hope that the non-human options I develop will be compelling enough on their own. But my hunch is that the sentiment expressed in my conversation months ago is ingrained enough to spook most setting designers away from creating anything farther away than the almost-human Tolkien archetypes.</blockquote>

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