Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="GreenTengu" data-source="post: 8030668" data-attributes="member: 6777454">Does it even matter what someone who has been dead for years originally intended? We can't ask him, plenty would skeptical of his answer were he to answer, he can't really defend himself. He also can't hurt anyone.Even if he at 82 years old were to be staunchly against making a single further alteration to the system-- why does it matter? He isn't here to see it. The game is for those who are playing it and want to play it today. It would be one thing if it were a painting, a movie, a book or otherwise a fixed piece of artwork that can be stuck up in a museum and kept as a part of history. It is a living, ongoing hobby that ought to change with the time. No one need go back and edit the books that he wrote-- those stay as they are. It is about what the next book someone else is going to create is going to be.I don't think he ever intended or envisioned D&D reaching as far as it has. The initial ideas, though rough, certainly had a spark of brilliance. And for that he deserves praise. But the whole thing wasn't perfect-- it was admittedly deeply flawed and when through revision after revision. D&D also borrowed heavily from the fantasy of 1940s-1970s. And that's fine-- but it isn't 1977 anymore and the fantasy genre has moved on and grown and changed. If modern D&D is going to appeal to modern audiences then it should pull from the fantasy that is relevant in pop culture today much as the original pulled from what was popular then.If people feel off-put by something, even something entirely unintentional, then by all means-- change it. D&D is pretty far behind the times with regards to the idea that good and evil are defined by one's race rather than one's allegiances. At this point "hero Orcs" and "hero Goblins" are such a super common thing that it feels awfully weird that D&D-- the game determined entirely by imagination and no graphics and modeling team need to be involved to alter the game-- remains one of the few hold outs on the "this race is evil, you can tell because they aren't fair skinned, and thus we will kill them all on sight. And you can't be one-- or you can, but you have to take many big penalties."Even Tolkien, according to a private letter, felt a little bad about making Orcs entirely irredeemable bad guys years after he wrote his famous books. Not that he wrote a single word to change that within his official canon work, even the unpublished stuff.And, really, I do got to wonder why all the attention is on the Drow anyway. Good Drow have become almost too common ever since the Drizzt books became popular. There was even an entire good Drow pantheon in Forgotten Realms. The reason "good Drow" seemed kind of like cheating to me is because, for whatever negative traits one might claim for the Elves, the Drow were the only elves who ever got to be the villains. Its awfully strange to me that the only evil version of the pretty good guy race is the only bad guy race to ever become good in huge numbers. But I think that's less that I necessarily want less good Drow so much as I really, really want a whole lot more evil Wood Elves and High Elves-- and maybe just aspects of their cultures that just edge on evil and easily become slippery slopes for them to become villains.But where are the good Orcs that don't have to be "half-human"? Where are the good Hobgoblins? Where are the good Kobolds? Where are the good Ogres? Or the good Trolls?Also-- why is it too much to ask for them to be designed with decent PC stats that don't effectively penalize you severely compared to every other race unless you are playing only one specific class?</blockquote>

Verification