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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kinak" data-source="post: 6198463" data-attributes="member: 6694112">Agreed <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />The thing that I think separates, say, the minotaur from the original owlbear is that the minotaur has some of those spaces filled in. Who cursed him? Why was he cursed? Where did he live? What happened?The minotaur of Greek myth is really hooked in to an entire setting, along with being a symbol for the stormy relationship between the gods and mortals. If you decide to involve the minotaur, you have a raft of plot hooks. And, if you decide it's the sire of an entire race, you have a great basis for their habits and society.So the minotaur has a story. But if you just say "minotaurs were cursed by a god" that's no better than the owlbear. So they were cursed with becoming far stronger and more dangerous than humans? Who decided that was a good idea? What do I do to get cursed like that?And that's part of what's so weird about the racial symbolism stuff he talks about. The minotaur is iconic and has symbolic weight because it has an actual backstory. The owlbear could be iconic and could have actual symbolic weight, but it ends up being a joke because it doesn't have a real backstory.Ha! Yeah, I've certainly done the cantina scene before (admittedly in Sigil, not Waterdeep). The City on the Spire didn't suddenly become not-fantasy.And you're absolutely right that the Basic Set focus suggested in the article doesn't jive with how the game's been developed and marketed, with later 3rd Edition and several classic 2nd Edition settings sharing the proliferation you mentioned. Along with any game allowing Savage Species or the Complete Humanoids Handbook, which I haven't thought of for ages.The question isn't if the cantina has a place in fantasy. It obviously can and I think he's just drastically overstating his point.What I'd much rather see than some line-drawing about how many races should be in the same place at the same time is some discussion of what that says about your setting. Just because a street in Sigil, Sharn, or the Rock of Bral has a dozen species on it doesn't mean those places aren't fantasy, but it does tell us something really important about those places.Cheers!Kinak</blockquote>

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