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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Chaosmancer" data-source="post: 8824803" data-attributes="member: 6801228">I'm going to break this up, because a lot of your ideas don't flow together in terms of the topic at hand. .So, I don't really disagree here. The PHB includes races that are common archetypes. But. well, "Dragon Man" or "Devil Blood" is a concept most people are going to grok quickly. Living Robots is even easier, because they hit the trifecta of Fantasy, Sci-Fi and modern concern. I think it would be equally hard to describe to a random street person what a dwarf is compared to a Devilkin, ie Tiefling. The concept is super simple, and most people get the idea of horned evil spirits. Most people get Dragons, and so a dragon man makes sense. They are slightly more unusual in terms of how commonly they might be seen, but they aren't exactly the weirdest thingsI do want to focus here. Yes, the game started with Humans, Elves, Dwarves and Halflings. And you accurately describe the PHB. However, I think you are REALLY underselling how early the concepts we are talking about with "dragon-men" and "devilkin" being a thing. Cambions are the children of Devils and Humans, and could be seen as the proto-type before Tieflings, who were the descendants of Devils (and other outsiders) and humans. They are mostly different from Cambions solely in power. And cambions trace back to 1983. Even if we only accept playable Tielfings, like you say they were a key feature of Planescape in 1994. Similar story with Dragonborn. The Half-Dragon concept comes as early as 1994 again it looks like, with additional things like Dragon-kin as well. Now, to lay this out as a timeline, remember, the first edition of DnD was published in 1974. So, yes, Dwarves and elves and Halflings all appeared by 1974, but by 1983 about 10 years later, we have the children of mortals and devils. Then about 10 years after that, we get tieflings, half-dragons, dragonkin, Draconians. A lot of these concepts. So, from the beginning of the game, until the first time these ideas hit the official content is about 20 years. Then, in 4e, we get them in the PHB. And that is in 2008. Which was again, about 10 years afterwards. Maybe 20 if you want to count from Cambions instead of Tielfings. So it was fast to a degree, but... not really? Especially for Tielfings this was a really steady move. The concept existed 10 years after the game starts, gets playable ten years after that, gets in the PHB ten years after that. But here is the thing I've never understood about this argument. If we decided to count from the very first time a race became playable until now, we would have something like thisCore Four, Gnomes, half-orcs, ect -> 1974 - 2022 -> 48 yearsTiefling and Dragon man-> 1994 - 2022 -> 28 yearsIs three decades really still so "new" and "unusual"? Like, sure, they have only been in the PHB for 14 years, but... it has been 14 years. This is like saying that Youtube is new and unusual (2005) or Reddit (2005) or the iPhone (2007) Like, sure, they are "newer" to the PHB than the ones that have been around for 5 decades, but it allows feels weird to state that they are the new and exotic option when for people who started playing DnD in their teen years when these concepts first appeared, they are in their 40's now. We are looking down the barrel of these races being in the PHB for half of DnD's editions here soon.Which brings me to this. Yes, a decade and a half ago this happened. And? I don't want to sound dismissive, I honestly don't, for the people who lived through this it was a big deal. But it has been 14 years since 4th edition. We have had entire media empires rise and fall in that time. Is this really still a concern for people? Are people still just learning about Dragonborn being put in the Forgotten Realms over a decade ago? If you haven't adjusted yet, then that seems more likely that you never wanted to adjust than anything else. But this does lead us into points I agree with.I agree that this has been a disservice to those older races. They haven't been updated much while the "newcomers" have been getting a lot of glow-ups and work to fit them in. But... doesn't this just mean that we should look into giving more attention to those old guard, and finding new things to say about them? New concepts to work into them? We've identified a potential problem. The new races got a lot of attention while the old races didn't. Great, but if that is the problem, how is ignoring the old races and continuing to not change them a solution? That seems like it would just make the problem worseReally, if I accept everything you say above this as 100% true and we identify this as the problem, then the solution would seem to be to give them the attention and changes they've been lacking. If you have been gardening and you let your old south garden fall to weeds and lack upkeep because you've been focusing on your north garden, and you don't like that people have been complimenting your north garden more than your south, you don't leave the south garden to continue falling to weeds and refuse to upkeep it while you cover the north garden with a tarp and refuse to let people see it. So, if we agree to this point, why is there such a disconnect?How is this WoTC's responsibility to fix? They published a race. The player wants to use that race. The DM refuses because.... they don't like it? You seem to be presenting this as some sort of inherent problem, especially with the phrasing "Now, sure, these conversations could happen even with the the classic races." but there is absolutely nothing about Dragonborn or Tielflings that make them inherently more likely to be banned. There are a lot of DMs who ban them, but that almost feels more like them resisting changing and adapting for the last 14 years. It isn't Apple's responsibility to offer non-smart phones because there are people who don't like smart phones. WoTC has offered these races, they have been popular for decades, if a specific DM doesn't like them and bans them, then that is on that DM to resolve. And, you seem to acknowledge that as the issue here to a degree, " In my own campaigns, while I have a soft spot for the classic races, and always give them a place, I know damn well my players are going to want to play whatever strange races I add.  I always have mixed feelings about that, because I realize I didn't do anything new to make the standard races interesting." You always put elves, dwarves and halflings into your games. But you have mixed feelings about players picking the newer and exciting options, because you didn't do anything to make the standard options exciting. You've identified the problem. Again. The standard races are less exciting, and you haven't made them more exciting. So... why isn't the solution to make them more exciting? That seems to be obvious, right? That is the issue, so that is what should be fixed.But here is where we come to a cross roads. And one that, I think, should be really obvious. It is a DM's job to fix this for homebrew campaign worlds.It is WoTC's job to fix this for official settings.Again, if the DM is going in and changing things, then they have "voided the warranty" so to speak, and they are responsible for fixing everything that they changed. It would be silly to design a sword dragon that could be wielded by a Titan and then complain to WoTC when it is unbalanced. They didn't make it, so they don't need to be responsible for it. If you change things so that all Dragons are demonic in nature, but then that causes problems for your world-building, that isn't WoTC's problem, because you altered their initial design. However, if the initial design is flawed? If the initial design has problems? THEN that is WoTC's responsibility. They made that. They are in charge of that. So if something straight out of the PHB isn't as interesting as the entry two pages later, then WoTC needs to solve that problem. Because things should be made as good as possible, as interesting as possible, and as coherent as possible in the product we buy. We shouldn't be required to change it ourselves.</blockquote>

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