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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 6866189" data-attributes="member: 6790260">@<a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/member.php?u=6785785" target="_blank">hawkeyefan</a>  @<a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/member.php?u=6802951" target="_blank">Cap'n Kobold</a>You guys have been good sports, so I hate to cut out on the discussion now, but...to be honest this is dredging up memories of the playtest period I'd rather forget--and getting me a little worked up as a result. I think it's probably for the best if I take my exit from the conversation. If I remember (which is, unfortunately, rather unlikely) I will PM you guys later to try to answer your fair questions.Though, about the "where is it in the books," I'll be honest: some of it *isn't* really in the books, so much as the stuff said *about* and *around* the books. Which means it wasn't fair of me to say the books themselves are the problem--some of the time. The opening page of the Races chapter is pretty bad though, as is (for example) spending a quarter of the page-space in the Dragonborn entry to talk about how all the "exotic" races are totally cool to be marginalized in those few "worlds of D&D" where they appear (except Gnomes, because of course Gnomes are everyone but  @<a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/member.php?u=6799753" target="_blank">lowkey13</a>'s friends <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" />). But surely we can say that something of this stuff--the "culture" 5e's developed so fantastically quickly--is supported, legitimized, by the books themselves.As for my own interests, since I can at least lay those on the table:[sblock]I'm a pretty serious fan of Dragonborn. I think they're one of the most fantastic additions to the D&D milieu of the new millennium. It gave me a proud warrior race that wasn't stupid, or ugly/brutish, or naturally malevolent. The effort put into articulating the culture of Arkhosia--as little as it was--painted a beautiful picture in my mind. Seeing how shafted they were both mechanically[sup]1[/sup] and narratively,[sup]2[/sup] well...it's hard not to feel marginalized. Especially when I, a lone non-designer throwing a few minutes of free time at it, saw *several* alternatives I considered distinctly superior, even for the specific milieu 5e was going for. For example, expressing that every world is different, that there are no hard-and-fast rules about what is or isn't fantasy like the absence of Dwarves and Halflings from TES and Warcraft, and that the options in the PHB are meant as a palette with which a DM will paint a world--and explicit advice on how to make different "flavors" of fantasy through picking and choosing class and race options, without ghettoizing any of them or setting any above the rest.I'm also a huge fan of giving "martial" characters Distinctly Nice Things. I've never actually played a Warlord (in part because I've had tragically few opportunities to play 4e, as I only play online), but hearing the devs SAY they'll include them, up to and including martial healing abilities even as late as August 2013...only to have those options completely disappear, replaced with a pale facsimile and total silence from the devs[sup]3[/sup] definitely made me feel like one of my key interests had been ignored. Even if I never personally play a martial character who has mechanical and strategic depth that isn't completely outclassed by any possible spellcasting class, the knock-on results of including such options in the game contributes substantially to stuff I really care about, like pushing everyone to actually employ teamwork while ALSO having their own meaningful, personal contribution. Such characters--mechanically deeper than at least SOME forms of casters--don't exist in 5e, even though the devs explicitly talked about that several times during the playtest. As I said before, these things are tacit, not explicit, because they're about what isn't included, and the way it isn't included, rather than what actually is there.Believe it or not, originally I was a 4e hater. All my friends played 3.5e, and repeatedly bitched about how terribad 4e was and that it was purely a cash grab--so I followed along, not knowing any better. Thankfully, I wasn't active on any tabletop forums at the time. As I got exposed to 4e content, though, I found myself surprised at its quality; as I read the designers' statements about the flaws of 3.x that they tried to correct, I found myself nodding along. I fell in love with 4e slowly, but I did indeed fall in love, and seeing the stuff I loved ignored, forgotten, or marginalized definitely made me feel like WotC didn't want me as a customer anymore, didn't think I belonged in the D&D that allegedly took "the best parts of every edition."1: Compare the features list of Dragonborn to, say, Elves or Dwarves; I know few who can call that 'balanced,' particularly when you factor in subrace benefits. It doesn't help that a Dragonborn can be, in effect, summarized completely by color (since that gives the only non-stat racial/subracial features).2: Outside of metropolitan areas, the book explicitly says dragonborn should expect racist (speciesist? specist?) or even violent reactions (emphasis in original): "But the small towns and villages that dot the countryside are different. The common folk aren't accustomed to seeing members of these races, and act accordingly. Dragonborn. It's easy to assume that a dragonborn is a monster, especially if his or her scales betray a chromatic heritage. Unless the dragonborn starts breathing fire and causing destruction, people are likely to respond with caution rather than outright fear." Which implies outright fear IS a perfectly reasonable reaction, and that "the common people" never includes a single exotic race. Incidentally, it also says, categorically, that there are no "worlds of D&D" in which Dragonborn or the other "exotics" are ever more numerous than any of the "common" races. It's strident crap like that that drives me up the wall; it's exactly the opposite of inclusive.3: They don't even include Warlord on their surveys of "what classes would you like to see?" questions, for instance; haven't since pretty much exactly the time they stopped talking about the Warlord and the Tactical Combat Module.[/sblock]</blockquote>

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