I know you said you were going to an extreme, but I kind of have a problem with this idea. it gets uncomfortably close to badwrongfun.
I don't think that this is badwrongfun. IMO, it's something else entirely. I'm not saying that people are wrong for having fun with/liking redundant/"unjustified" races/lineages, monsters, and classes. I don't think that it's wrong to like something that I see as redundant. I just see it as unnecessary. IMHO, those are distinct. It's absolutely fine and valid to like a style of play that includes a vast slew of creature options that are just humans with funny hats or slightly differently painted versions of the same creature, and I support anyone that plays in that style, I just find it (I'm not sure if there's a better word for it)
wasteful.
I'm not going to waste my time and resources creating a race and racial mechanics for Ocelotfolk and Tiggers when Tabaxi already exist. I'm not going to include Sea Elves, Merfolk, and Koalinths in a world that I have Tritons, Sahuagin, and Simic Hybrids (which I flavor as Krakenspawn in my world). If I have Lizardfolk, and Yuan-Ti, I don't need Crocodilefolk,
Legless-Lizard-folk, and Pythonfolk (I could get behind Geckofolk, however).
I would never fight against people having the options that they want, I just want the distinctions to be
meaningful. If there are going to be 3 different types of Birdfolk in the game (Aarakocra, Kenku, and Owlins), they'd better have mechanically and culturally distinct identities (Aarakocra being connected to the Elemental Plane of Air, Kenku being connected to Grazzt, the Raven Queen, or some other previous master and having lost their wings and voice through betraying them, Owlins through having magical sight, and being inclined towards scholarship).
A lot of people (me included) prefer to have some options that "don't justify their existence", so we can make them our own more easily. Roleplaying games don't need to have every nook and cranny curated and justified, and D&D is big enough to handle a lot of thing differently.
And I get that. And that's perfectly valid for people who don't feel the need or want to have to carefully pick and choose the races of their world and their role in their campaigns. I've included aspects of that in my world. However, in my experience, it often helps me tell stories (or at least, the type of stories I like) when I'm carefully picking and choosing what roles different creatures and races fill in my world and handcrafting their story and connection to the setting than just dumping literally every option in the game inside my world without thinking about it. It helps me create fun dilemmas for the story and characters when I can think "okay, what would this race do in this circumstance", and weave a compelling and fairly complex tale of their role and place in the world (like my world's Felshen and their relationship to the Yikkan Goblinoids).
One of Eberron's principles is "If it exists in D&D it can exist in Eberron". That doesn't mean it has to be justified in the setting, but that Eberron is open enough for you to put it there somehow. Keith Baker even says that he prefers not to have every race and class justify their existence and impact the world's culture. Sometimes you just want to play a tiny human with hairy foot, and that's ok.
IMO, that's not what that principle of Eberron means. It doesn't mean "every part of D&D
does exist in Eberron", it means "if you want it to, you can, and here are some tools to include them [Mordain the Fleshweaver, the Mourning, Xen'drik, Manifest Zones, etc]". There's a reason there are creatures and player races that are purposefully left out of Eberron (Goliaths, Firbolg, Yuan-Ti, Kenku, Centaurs, Satyrs, etc), and that's to not have to deal with the deluge of massively redundant races and creatures. It provides options for including them, but Keith Baker has often recommended against adding literally everything in D&D to Eberron without a second thought, because that would severely hinder parts of the world's story(ies).
@AcererakTriple6 I really like most of your takes in this site, and I think we agree on most things, but I don't understand why sometimes you take the stand of "this shouldn't exist" and in fact it's just something you don't like.
It's not "this shouldn't exist", it's "this has no purpose in existing".
And the rebuttal to that will always be "anything that people like has a completely valid purpose existing in D&D, because D&D is a game where the purpose is to have fun, and anything that enhances that for someone is good enough to be in the game".
And the people that say that are absolutely right. I've used that justification several times for some smaller aspects of the game that I didn't feel the need to write up a huge, intricate story for them existing in my world. "I think they're cool, so they're in my world/campaign" is the perfect response to "why do you want this in the game?/I don't think these are necessary in the game for X-reason." IMO, D&D's official game designers really should use that excuse more instead of trying to lore-force things into different worlds. If they had just said "Dragonborn exist now in Toril, because they're cool and people want to play dragonfolk" in 4e, maybe things would have gone a bit better than they did through the Spellplague excuse. However, tastes are subjective, and some people will be more inclined to use this justification in their world for different aspects than other people.
If someone wants something to exist in D&D that I don't thematically like, I'm 100% willing to accept that and let them play and run their campaigns how they want to. However, I don't think that it's badwrongfun to ask why things like this exist, and I also don't think that it's wrong for people to use the "fun" justification. I just often prefer when there's more thought to it than "because hobbits are cool!" in my worlds.
