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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DEFCON 1" data-source="post: 6203175" data-attributes="member: 7006">See, I don't see him "dictating" that they are both comic relief... but rather "acknowledging" that they HAVE been seen as comic relief, and that what they want to do and want to be can be seen as funny when you shine that image up against their natural small size and weakness.Gnomes have always been traditionally known as tricksters.  They're "comic relief" too.  But not too many people seem to object when WotC acknowledges that.  Now do some people make their gnomes deadly serious?  Sure.  But to say they are tricksters but NOT funny kinda goes against what being a trickster is.  And by the same token... the dichotomy of a 3 foot, rat-faced weakling who tries to be a bully and push people around is in a general sense, usually amusing.  Whether it's a goblin or anyone else.  The same way the short bully in A Christmas Story is amusing when he pushes Ralphie and his friends around.  Was the bully treated seriously and did the actor play him seriously?  Yup.  And of the two, he was the one you thought would actually kick the kids' asses.  But that didn't matter.  The image of this shrimp acting that way was still amusing.  Which was the entire point of it.To not acknowledge the dichotomy of what the goblins or kobold want to be versus what they actually are, is to ignore what is in front of all our faces... all in the name of "not offending" people who might want to use them differently.But you know what?  Not every monster is a blank slate.  You can't make every player decide for themselves how every monster should be.  Some signposts are not a bad thing.  But it seems every time Wyatt posts an article about monsters and it has a bit of specificity to make them interesting, a handful of people jump up and down screaming that they don't want it because it means they can't use the monster how they want.  They want the monster completely open to interpretation.  Really?  And how is that useful to anybody except yourself?And then at that point, I just ask the same question over and over "Why do you even care about anything but the stats in the monster manual anyway?  If you already have in your head how you see and want to play these monsters... just take the stats and ignore anything else, since nothing anyone writes will EVER match how you intend to play them."</blockquote>

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