D&D (2024) No Dwarf, Halfling, and Orc suborgins, lineages, and legacies

[Paul Farquhar]

That why they need us, not why we need them. Are they paying us? How can I get in on that?

No, it’s why we need them. Without WotC promoting D&D there would be no game. It would have folded with TSR. And we aren’t paying them. At least not enough for them to be particularly profitable. The IP is worth far more than the tabletop game, they only keep it alive as a loss leader, to keep the IP popular.

All those third party publishers are basically piggybacking on Hasbro’s marketing budget.

 

[DammitVictor]

Again, all of these are awesome. So many better ideas in this thread than anything WotC might publish.

Why do we need them again?

We don't. I'm not trying to slag the developers over at Wizards of the Coast, but you couldn't assemble the dev team of your wildest dreams out of every current and former employee of TSR, WotC, and/or Paizo-- any of their third-parties, any top shelf OSR, anyone-- that could make D&D good enough to make up for the fact that the Official Dungeons & Dragons Game is owned by a single corporation that will only fund a single development team.

The biggest, brightest D&D team that Wizards of the Coast could possibly put in the field will never be able to produce more and better D&D than their mere existence will prevent from being created. Terrible crying shame for people who love D&D so much, who put up with all the corporate BS because all they wanted was to make D&D for a living, and make the best possible D&D they could.

 

[Micah Sweet]

No, it’s why we need them. Without WotC promoting D&D there would be no game. It would have folded with TSR. And we aren’t paying them. At least not enough for them to be particularly profitable. The IP is worth far more than the tabletop game, they only keep it alive as a loss leader, to keep the IP popular.

Ok. Why do we need them, anymore?

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Ok. Why do we need them, anymore?

Because without marketing money, the brand would die.

And it’s not an unlikely scenario, Hasbro is currently exposed to hostile takeover, due to depression in the toy market. And any potential buyer is unlikely to be interested in tabletop gaming. Those print books are increasingly uneconomic to produce at a price anyone is willing to pay. There is a fair chance D&D could become a computer gaming only brand IP, like Final Fantasy.

 

[DammitVictor]

Because without marketing money, the brand would die.

We don't need Hasbro money. The D&D brand can get all of the marketing we'll ever need from people who'll pay for the privilege.

I know it's a pipe dream, but a private holding company that only owned two things (Hasbro stock and cash money) could eventually own enough of both that it could force Hasbro to sell Wizards of the Coast to it. The only actual staff the "D&D Brand" needs after the initial setup is skeleton crews to apply errata and order reprints for the major "SRD families" of D&D (B/X, BECMI, Advanced, 3.X, 4e and 5e) and the licensing department. The latter pays for everything else and pays out profit share to the (still private, invite only) shareholders of the holding company.

Where does the "new D&D" come from? Everyone who owns any portion of the D&D-- by invitation only-- has the full unilateral right to publish "official D&D" supplements for any of the SRD families. Official D&D trade dress, official D&D edition trade dress, their own publisher trade dress. And SRD or not, anyone who can publish official D&D can use official D&D in their official D&D products. Once a decade, staggered, the shareholders update the SRDs and the core rulebooks with new material and publish a "new edition" (AD&D 1e -> 2e or 3.0 -> 3.5; not 2 -> 3 -> 4 -> 5) and decide whether or not the family tree needs new branches.

Larian wants to make Pirates of Realmspace 2, Owlcat wants to make Pathfinder: Serpent's Skull, they don't pay out massive licensing fees to Official D&D, they're shareholders. Their marketing budget is our marketing budget, the tie-ins are organized in advance, and the open license third-party ecosystem is a constant source of new blood for the-- invite only-- Official D&D brand.

 

[Hussar]

We don't need Hasbro money. The D&D brand can get all of the marketing we'll ever need from people who'll pay for the privilege.

I know it's a pipe dream, but a private holding company that only owned two things (Hasbro stock and cash money) could eventually own enough of both that it could force Hasbro to sell Wizards of the Coast to it. The only actual staff the "D&D Brand" needs after the initial setup is skeleton crews to apply errata and order reprints for the major "SRD families" of D&D (B/X, BECMI, Advanced, 3.X, 4e and 5e) and the licensing department. The latter pays for everything else and pays out profit share to the (still private, invite only) shareholders of the holding company.

Where does the "new D&D" come from? Everyone who owns any portion of the D&D-- by invitation only-- has the full unilateral right to publish "official D&D" supplements for any of the SRD families. Official D&D trade dress, official D&D edition trade dress, their own publisher trade dress. And SRD or not, anyone who can publish official D&D can use official D&D in their official D&D products. Once a decade, staggered, the shareholders update the SRDs and the core rulebooks with new material and publish a "new edition" (AD&D 1e -> 2e or 3.0 -> 3.5; not 2 -> 3 -> 4 -> 5) and decide whether or not the family tree needs new branches.

Larian wants to make Pirates of Realmspace 2, Owlcat wants to make Pathfinder: Serpent's Skull, they don't pay out massive licensing fees to Official D&D, they're shareholders. Their marketing budget is our marketing budget, the tie-ins are organized in advance, and the open license third-party ecosystem is a constant source of new blood for the-- invite only-- Official D&D brand.

I'm almost sorry for the laugh, but, good grief this is just so bad it's funny.

Owners by "invitation only"? Umm, you realize that's gatekeeping by definition right? Who gets to decide who gets to "own" a portion of D&D? You? Me?

How in the world is WotC bad for D&D? On what planet is D&D doing badly? It's more popular, more played, more ubiquitous than it ever has been in the history of the hobby. You have a thousand choices for how to play D&D - face to face, organized play, online via any of a dozen or more virtual tabletops - and more. You can find, connect, and play with anyone around the world, tomorrow.

Me? I'm ecstatic that WotC is owned by Hasbro. They produce a game I enjoy playing and have enjoyed playing for a couple of decades now. If I wasn't happy playing WotC D&D, I have any number of other options and communities to join.

It has never been a better time for the hobby. Full stop. This is better than it has ever been. All the whining about "corporate greed" and spinning every little thing as negatively as humanly possible doesn't change that. Maybe, just maybe, if the folks who are incessantly banging the drums of negativity and insisting on this bizarre notion that D&D is somehow bad, would just step back and shut up for just a minute or two, things would be far better.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

We don't need Hasbro money. The D&D brand can get all of the marketing we'll ever need from people who'll pay for the privilege.

I know it's a pipe dream, but a private holding company that only owned two things (Hasbro stock and cash money) could eventually own enough of both that it could force Hasbro to sell Wizards of the Coast to it. The only actual staff the "D&D Brand" needs after the initial setup is skeleton crews to apply errata and order reprints for the major "SRD families" of D&D (B/X, BECMI, Advanced, 3.X, 4e and 5e) and the licensing department. The latter pays for everything else and pays out profit share to the (still private, invite only) shareholders of the holding company.

Where does the "new D&D" come from? Everyone who owns any portion of the D&D-- by invitation only-- has the full unilateral right to publish "official D&D" supplements for any of the SRD families. Official D&D trade dress, official D&D edition trade dress, their own publisher trade dress. And SRD or not, anyone who can publish official D&D can use official D&D in their official D&D products. Once a decade, staggered, the shareholders update the SRDs and the core rulebooks with new material and publish a "new edition" (AD&D 1e -> 2e or 3.0 -> 3.5; not 2 -> 3 -> 4 -> 5) and decide whether or not the family tree needs new branches.

Larian wants to make Pirates of Realmspace 2, Owlcat wants to make Pathfinder: Serpent's Skull, they don't pay out massive licensing fees to Official D&D, they're shareholders. Their marketing budget is our marketing budget, the tie-ins are organized in advance, and the open license third-party ecosystem is a constant source of new blood for the-- invite only-- Official D&D brand.

This far more fantastical that Mordenkainen riding a dragon through Gandalf’s smoke rings.

Sorry, we live in the real world and in the real world D&D needs corporate money, and it could well end up with a far worse owner than Hasbro.

 

[Corinnguard]

that is exactly new rules. They also imply that these categories can be mixed and matched, which are new rules for creating characters.

Categories aren't rules. And even if they were, there is no rule saying that you must absolutely use them in your setting. Feel free to come up with your own rules if you aren't crazy about the official rules.

ou don't see how rules whose purpose is to allow players to make characters that combine any ancestry with any other ancestry, or that allow characters of any ancestry to replace their "cultural" abilities with the cultural abilities of any other heritage are going to be used to combine any ancestry with any other ancestry? People looking for mechanical advantage or just trying to make a "unique" character are going to make their ancestries as ridiculous and meaningless as they made classes in 3.5.

While these rules do allow the players the choice of making characters of mixed ancestry, the DM has the final say on whether or not they'll allow the players to have them. If I was a DM and I had a player who wanted to play a character of mixed ancestry just for the mechanical advantage or the uniqueness, I would ask that character to convince me by coming up with a convincing backstory of how they came to be. I would also look over their character's mixed ancestry traits to see if any of them were OP on their own or as a whole.
Alternatively I could create a setting where none of the races were capable of creating mixed ancestries with one another. You are the overdeity of your setting.

It's not a new idea at all. Third-party products have been doing it in Fifth Edition D&D for years, third-party products did it for 3.5, and other fantasy games have been doing it for decades.

Well I just failed that Perception and Investigation check. I was going by what Level Up had for mixed heritages. Pick a heritage and then pick the heritage gift (which is essentially a first level racial feat) belonging to another heritage. If you wanted to play a Half-Elf in Level Up, you have you two ways to create one.

1. Pick the Elven heritage and a Human heritage gift.
2. Pick the Human heritage and an Elven heritage gift

The first one will give you a Half-Elf that more or less resembles the Half-Elf in 5e. The second one will give you someone like Aragorn from Lord of the Rings. Now while Level Up allows you the choice of picking up any heritage/heritage gift combo, some will be sought out more than others.

 

[CreamCloud0]

you know what a cool dwarf subclass would be? a poison dwarf, have it be that they leant into their natural poison resistance hard and eventually developed full on immunity, with their bodies adapting to start creating it's own poisonous bio-cultures at levels other species couldn't handle.

 

[Corinnguard]

you know what a cool dwarf subclass would be? a poison dwarf, have it be that they leant into their natural poison resistance hard and eventually developed full on immunity, with their bodies adapting to start creating it's own poisonous bio-cultures at levels other species couldn't handle.

I like to think the Dwarves developed a resistance to poisons because of their love for forging. Think about it, in RL the forging of metals creates poisonous by-products. While there are ways in RL to protect yourself from these poisonous by-products, the Dwarves in a fantasy setting don't really have them. They had to build up a resistance to them over the course of several Dwarven generations. And it's a possibility that this resistance eventually spread to other kinds of poisons.