Tiefling and half-orc should not be in the PHB

[TwinBahamut]

I'd be really annoyed by a PHB that was limited down to the Tolkien races... I don't even like Halflings very much outside of Tolkien's works (well, except for Eberron halflings, they're fine). I don't really want a torrent of half-hearted stuff like tieflings (much rather see playable demons), either, though.

There are a ton of great things out there for fantasy races that D&D should tap into. Orcs, Merfolk, Faeries, talking animals, Centaurs, werebeasts, Minotaurs, Dryads, Demons, Angels, Dragons, Giants, and so on... I bet a lot of D&D's racial options would be more popular if they stopped diluting concepts and forcing people to play the half-human version of everything. If you're going to play something that is mostly just a re-flavored human, then you may as well just play a human.

Anyways, I think people need to wake up and realize that it is fine for D&D to move past Tolkienesque fantasy. It's 2012 already. We don't need to be slaves to a single view of fantasy that was published 75 years ago. Heck, I grew up reading Chronicles of Narnia and the Dragonriders of Pern. Where are my talking animals and rideable dragons?

 

[avin]

Anyways, I think people need to wake up and realize that it is fine for D&D to move past Tolkienesque fantasy. It's 2012 already. We don't need to be slaves to a single view of fantasy that was published 75 years ago. Heck, I grew up reading Chronicles of Narnia and the Dragonriders of Pern. Where are my talking animals and rideable dragons?

Couldn't agree more.

At least there should be respect for those who want more than LOTR.

 

[avin]

On another side note, how can somebody hate Dragonborn???

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wr-buV4tYOA]Skyrim: The Dragonborn Comes - Female Cover by Malukah - YouTube[/ame]

 

[Herschel]

I've always hated half-orcs and the 'spawn of evil acts" stuff but the game would not seem right without them.

 

[Mallus]

Anyways, I think people need to wake up and realize that it is fine for D&D to move past Tolkienesque fantasy.

People need to realize D&D wasn't pure, Tolkienesque fantasy way back in 1979.

 

[IanB]

People need to realize D&D wasn't pure, Tolkienesque fantasy way back in 1979.

OK, so I didn't imagine those Boot Hill crossover rules right there in the core 1e DMG.

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On the 'I'VE SEEN THINGS IN MY DAY' front:

Come July, I'll have been playing D&D for 30 years, and if there's one thing I feel like I can say definitively, it is that nobody ever plays haflings. I've played with dozens of people, I expect I've seen close to a thousand characters all told, and I can think of exactly 3 (EDIT: 4! I just remembered another one) halflings, in all that time. The idea that they're 'popular' just baffles me.

Craploads of humans and elves and halfelves, lots of dwarves, a good number of gnomes and half-orcs, probably a dozen tieflings... but halflings? Literally almost none. So few that they stand out, really, like the one time someone played a minotaur in 1e.

 

[Dausuul]

Anyways, I think people need to wake up and realize that it is fine for D&D to move past Tolkienesque fantasy.

I've been saying this for years. The thing is, D&D was never built to emulate Tolkien and epic fantasy. It was inspired by sword-and-sorcery fiction--the works of Michael Moorcock, Robert E. Howard, Jack Vance, Roger Zelazny, et al. The Tolkien races were jammed in so D&D could piggyback off the success of the Lord of the Rings, but they've never meshed very well with the rest of the D&D oeuvre.

I would really like to see all nonhuman races get moved to the Uncommon level or higher in the Common/Uncommon/Rare scheme. Get rid of the expectation that every D&D game is going to have elves and dwarves.

 

[BryonD]

I've been saying this for years. The thing is, D&D was never built to emulate Tolkien and epic fantasy. It was inspired by sword-and-sorcery fiction--the works of Michael Moorcock, Robert E. Howard, Jack Vance, Roger Zelazny, et al. The Tolkien races were jammed in so D&D could piggyback off the success of the Lord of the Rings, but they've never meshed very well with the rest of the D&D oeuvre.

Gygax pretty well mocked the idea of playing Hobbits.

 

[TwinBahamut]

I've been saying this for years. The thing is, D&D was never built to emulate Tolkien and epic fantasy. It was inspired by sword-and-sorcery fiction--the works of Michael Moorcock, Robert E. Howard, Jack Vance, Roger Zelazny, et al. The Tolkien races were jammed in so D&D could piggyback off the success of the Lord of the Rings, but they've never meshed very well with the rest of the D&D oeuvre.

I would really like to see all nonhuman races get moved to the Uncommon level or higher in the Common/Uncommon/Rare scheme. Get rid of the expectation that every D&D game is going to have elves and dwarves.

Well, to be honest, I could say just as much that D&D could be served well by moving past the likes of Moorcock, Howard, and Vance.

I'd like to see D&D move more into the realm of fantasy that I'm familiar with from tons of videogames. I mean, look at one of the games I'm playing right now: Tactics Ogre (the PSP remake). The main story of that game is built around ethnic conflict, ethnic genocide, murky morality, conflicting imperialism and nationalism, and so on all between humans (who don't even look that different from each other). At the same time, any random group of highwaymen is likely to have two dragons, three faeries, and a handful of undead skeletons in their midst. The main list of useable species include people with wings, lizardmen, lamias, orcs (who are explicitly demonic), gryphons, giant octopi, cockatrices, cyclopses, golems, demon imps, skeletons, ghosts, angels, and dragons. And there are no elves, dwarves, or accursed halflings in sight. I absolutely love it.

 

[Li Shenron]

Death to all racial feats!

I agree that they are the worst sort of rules bloat. I love having all the races available. But racial feats and powers mean that vast stretches of print are completely irrelevant for most players in any one group.

Class features, feats and powers can always provide some interest, because players can multi-class. But your race is fixed.

Besides which, racial feats and powers only reinforce the min-max approach to races.

Well, if you have no racial feats/powers, no racial prestige classes or equivalent, no racial weapons and so on, then races are just fluff and ability modifiers (plus some inborn abilities for some). That's certainly one way to make a race easy to ignore/remove/refluff.

But my idea of an interesting race, especially if it is civilized and allowed for PC, is that it has a culture represented also by options for character development, and it has a history represented by some role in the world/society and relationships with other races. A well-done setting (for my tastes) has PC races well integrated therefore difficult to ignore or modify, and since I wish for WotC to publish only well-done settings then I prefer they stick with more traditional races.