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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mercurius" data-source="post: 6235769" data-attributes="member: 59082">You're arguing something very similar to what I argued in this <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?349190-Beyond-Old-and-New-School-quot-The-Secret-That-Was-Lost-quot" target="_blank">post/essay</a>, so I don't disagree with you with a big picture kind of way. In some ways, what you describe explains the problem I have with the AEDU paradigm in 4e: because there are a plethora of "default options" in the form of powers, players are less likely to think creatively and improve an maneuver out of their own imagination.That said, we can't expect everyone to want to create their own worlds or cosmologies. What you're saying can be extended to campaign worlds as a whole - and it isn't fair for folks like you and I, who love the process of world building (including cosmologies) to expect others to love it as well, or even be able to do it. Some don't have that ability, or at least it is latent. Some prefer using a pre-published setting and cosmology and I'm fine with it.As far as what approach WotC actually takes in the DMG and Manual of the Planes, let's remain open-minded. Chanced are they won't provide detailed options for cosmology design, but they might at least give guidelines. But that's like saying a human from Greyhawk and a human from Faerun need to be mechanically different in order to get the feel of them "playing differently," when I think you can go along way by looking at culture, background, etc. I suppose a human from Calimshan and one from the Silver Marches might have subtle differences, and certainly different backgrounds, but they've always been treated as essentially the same. Why is this issue about dwarves worse?On a side note, I've always seen the differences between sub-races (e.g. hill and mountain dwarves) to be similar to the difference between the major racial groups in our world: North American Indians, South American natives, Australian Aboriginals, Africans, Northern Europeans, Slavs, East Asians, Indians, etc. Assigning mechanical differences between real world racial-ethnic groups would not only be hugely problematic but simply very difficult, mainly because if there are general differences, there are always exceptions that go against those differences (i.e. some white men can jump ;-)).But again, my approach to all this is that WotC will offer archetypes: hill and mountain dwarves, and then individual DMs can customize them to their own world. It sounds like in the core books at least all hill dwarves across worlds will be the same, but it remains to be seen how this actually works when setting books start coming out.I hear you. But I don't think this problem will be solved, or that this issue about races or cosmologies is really that significant in the larger picture. I think of Lego's. I haven't owned or bought a lego set in almost 30 years, but remember when I would get a new set for Christmas or some such, I would follow the directions and make the "default" creation, then when it was finished say "Cool," and break it up and mix it in with the rest of my Lego's and make up my own stuff.Some DM's never get past the point of just following the default directions. Sometimes this is because they don't have that creative bug in them, but sometimes its because of time. So we can think of D&D providing default options as a way to unite the D&D multiverse, to give a sense of community and consistency. But this isn't meant to, as far as I can tell, prohibit any individual DM's creativity. It simply provides a common language, a main theme or melody...but we can always improvise.But I will agree with you, in that I hope that WotC is explicit about the approach that you and I prefer so that the next generation of DMs will be as creatively empowered as we were/are.</blockquote>

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