Tiefling as a core race?

[ptolemy18]

Plus, races like Tieflings (HATE the name) are a more fantastic race than elves because they are built upon the assumption of strong extra-planer contact.

Not necessarily. You can always say "tieflings are rare and mysterious... but sure, player characters can be tieflings, no problem! Because you're the players and you're the exception!" Although I doubt they will actually go that route. :/

Jason

 

[ptolemy18]

And yet, when I wander the aisles of some of my favorite bookstores, the LotR books take up more space than all of the other great fantasy writers of yesteryear combined. Sometimes, I can't even find a single book by Lieber or Howard, etc., but I can find 4 different softcover editions and 2 hardcover editions of LotR.

Clark Ashton Smith should be a model for more fantasy RPGs. He's excellent. His stories have as much action as Howard and Leiber, and even more weird monsters and places. Hyperborea... Zothique... Poseidonis... ALL AWESOME! Unfortunately he has no "iconic heroes" like Fafhrd, the Grey Mouser and Conan because his stories almost always end with the main characters being eaten by monsters, tortured to death or otherwise dying horribly.

(Did I mention that Call of Cthulhu is my other favorite RPG? )

Jason

 

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

God I hate that! But I imagine that could be a very common complaint with very inexperienced players. I certainly would've been annoyed when I was a 10-year-old elementary-school D&D player if someone said my fighter couldn't worship Ishtar (from 1st edition DEITIES & DEMIGODS) because Ishtar didn't exist in that DM's campaign world... I didn't really even understand the *idea* of campaign worlds back then. It was all just D&D. Anything that was in the books had to be in the game.

Yeah, we're talking about a pre-teen, actually. Think he's 13 now. Couldn't talk any of my adult friends but one into gaming again, so we thought we might run a game for his kids.

Hasn't worked out yet. /shrug

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Bookstores carry what sells and is in print, if it is not selling, it is not in print. Lieber and Howard, two writers whose work I truly enjoy and have been a staple of my reading habits, have gone in and out of print over the last 30 years, Tolkien has not. If it is not available in print, they cannot carry it. Would more Howard/Liber sell if stores carried it-probably, but it has to to seel enough to justify a print run. Right now, Howard, Lieber and such are experiencing a bit of a renaissance in popularity, but 10 years ago, they were mostly out of print.

Stores will pretty much carry whatever turns them a tidy profit. If they carry 4 different editions of Prof. Tolkien's wor, it is because those editions are selling. They choose products with mass appeal and fill in available space with niche products as needed.

I've studied marketing- shelf space can be a self-fufilling predictor of sales. If you have it, you sell, if you don't, you're dust. There is a reason Coke & Pepsi aggressively battle over how many feet of shelf space they get, where it is in the store (soft-drink aisle, endcaps), and whether its at eye-level, knee-level, or overhead.

I'm not just talking about products that are out of print- I'm also talking about books I can find in one place and not another- by authors new and old. Sometimes, a book has a few months of shelf time and then its gone, in print or not. I can still get the books if I special order them...but if I don't know they exist (because I never saw them on the shelves, for instance), then I can't even formulate the request.

JRRT sells- there is no question about that. However, when a store devotes 40% of their shelf space to him, they're not going to sell much of anything else. New releases would be the next big category of sellers.

 

[Ryltar]

Who thought of that name Tiefling anyway? "Ok we are creating a race with demon blood and I want it to capture the real potential drama and turmoil intrinsic in such a race....hmmm.....I got it.....Tiefling."

Sometimes I wonder about where peoples heads are when they make the decisions they make.

IIRC, it was Wolfgang Baur who came up with the name. The term "tiefling" is derived from german "tief", which would translate into the english "nether" or something similar. (Wasn't this mentioned in a recent Dragon or Dungeon Magazine?)

 

[Kesh]

Yeah, we're talking about a pre-teen, actually. Think he's 13 now. Couldn't talk any of my adult friends but one into gaming again, so we thought we might run a game for his kids.

Hasn't worked out yet. /shrug

<Car mechanic voice> Well, there's yer problem. </Car mechanic voice>

 

[AllisterH]

Then again, this generation of teens/young adults have grown up with the LotR on film. Prior to the LotR film (I'm talking a few years before we even saw preview pictures much less actual footage) it _WAS_ possible to walk into a CHAPTERS and NOT see the entire LotR trilogy on the shelves.

In fact, I distinctly remember having to place an order for the 2nd book, the Two Towers for my younger cousin since in our city of Mississauga (only a half million back then) no bookstore actually was selling the Two Towers.

I mean, I remember reading recently in STARLOG that there has been talks about restarting/rebooting the Conan film franchise and if that ever did happen, I'd fully expect various Conan novels to come back in print.

 

[Aeolius]

... Tieflings... are a more fantastic race than elves because they are built upon the assumption of strong extra-planer contact.

With oceans and seas being more prevalent than planar portals and the like, Aventi or Sea Kin should be the new race.

 

[Shadeydm]

Well adding them to the PHB leaves the door open for Warlock to survive as a class in some form. It would seem like a natural tie-in.

 

[Nebulous]

I gotta say, I'm pretty put-off by the idea of Tieflings as a PC race. And am I the only one that sees a similarity (perhaps not coincidental) between the new Tiefling pics and the Dranei?

(reposted from the cover-design thread)

It doesn't particularly bother me, really. If the DM doesn't want it in his campaign he just nixes it. And it does fit the highly magical nature of the D&D world where everything is suffused, both physically and genetically, by magic.

What worries me more is how they elected to "fix" the problem of introducing a powerful race: by making all the others more powerful in comparison too, so they're equal. It might not be a bad thing, unless you consider the "Power Creep" from 2e to 3e about to take another jump.