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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Chaosmancer" data-source="post: 8824128" data-attributes="member: 6801228">There are a lot of different angles to unpack here, and I think this is a good discussion. For me, that first sentence I quoted feels fundamentally wrong. Because if it isn't the job of the PHB to make races interesting, then the only other published, official material that could do so are the setting books. However, you are not required to have the setting books to play DnD. Which means that we then look at one of two scenarios1) It is the job of the GM to make races interesting2) Races are not required to be interesting. #1 is problematic to me. It falls into the Oberoni Fallacy and basically says that the role of the GM is to rewrite the weakest parts of the rules. Which is not the job of the GM, because why else would a GM spend money on the books? Now, maybe if none of the races were interesting, there would be some weight to the argument, but some of them are interesting, and this means that you have a unbalanced set of options. #2 just reads wrong to me. Of course the races should be interesting, why else even have them existing? I also think you fundamentally nail a problem, but misidentify the source of the problem. Now, maybe I am not seeing which side of the fence you land on, because you go back and forth a little bit on this. But you (jokingly) point out that the PHB "fails" because they included very interesting races, that then the DMs will remove from the game. And that is a problem because players want to play the interesting races. Fundamentally though, that is not something to lay at the feet of WoTC, but at the DM's feet. If they are changing the baseline and the players are not happy about the changes to the baseline, then they have a self-created problem. You end up saying that you understand why DMs wouldn't want "a party full of exotic weirdos", but I think this gets back into what I discussed before. Fantasy is weirder these days. Dragonmen and Devilkin are not "exoctic weirdos" for a lot of us, but expected baselines. So, from the perspective of many players and GMs, the party that consists of these individuals isn't full of "exoctic weirdos" but just a normal party. But I think the biggest thing where we seem to agree is that you state: "I think it's also the DM's job to make players excited for the roleplaying opportunities of playing any race in their custom setting (just as it's the job of the setting designer to do so for premade settings)." If a DM is changing the baselines, then it is their job to make people excited for those changes. But it is also the job of the designer to do so for premade settings. And as much as there seems to be an idea that the PHB lacks any setting information at all... it doesn't. The PHB is the setting material for the GM that does not buy a setting book, so it is the job of the PHB's designers to make players excited for the roleplaying opportunities of ALL the races in that setting, and you seem to acknowledge that the Halfling certainly seems less interesting than quite a few of the other options, which is why people discuss changes.</blockquote>

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