That is absurd number of species. Some combination and streamlining is needed. But indeed a big book with rules and lore for several species seems like a good idea.5e currently has over 46 races. So we would be looking at over 46+ racial splatbooks or one very large tome.The Complete Tome of Races. I could see WoTC creating the latter, if they were inclined to do so. I don't see them creating the individual splatbooks again.
It means something in the context of fantasy gaming, and fantasy literature in general. There's dozens of examples of D&D derived elves that already exist in the fantasy space. D&D can leverage that concept without having to explicitly define it mechanically, and only present the distinctions from the assumed norm.
So again, that is an argument for getting rid of the rules for species altogether. And as same logic definitely applies to the classes, why not get rid of them as well?
What do you think D&D would look like if it didn't have any rules regarding class or race?
I don't think it means the rules need to be tossed. It think it means accepting that the rules are ambivalent about how much setting specificity can be extracted from them.
More like GURPS. We could of course keep the basic D20 mechanics, etc. even levels. But instead of choosing these splats that are packages of features, you would just choose from a pool of traits and features and then would get to choose some more once you level. I think it would be doable, but also pretty unrecognisable as D&D, so it is never gonna happen in the main game. I guess some third party might try it and quite possibly already has.
Does GURPS have a D&D-like setting?
