D&D 5E When lore and PC options collide…

[Maxperson]

no one is sticking to the lore "They were genocide along with other races" the other is "cause we said so"

Both are "cause we said so." Every bit of lore written comes down to, "Because the designers said so." There's no difference.

 

[Maxperson]

Needless to say, I voted lore.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Both are "cause we said so." Every bit of lore written comes down to, "Because the designers said so." There's no difference.

the best reason they could give is so out dated it isn't even funny... "Um tolken had orcs be bad guy foot soldiers, but our bad guy foot soldiers are unquie to our setting" okay, and that stops them from being a race in the game how?

 

[Vaalingrade]

No more settings with humanoids, magic, swords or oxygen. Get creative, people!

 

[EzekielRaiden]

When it comes to lore, how is D&D being held back? We have campaigns that span ancient Greece to noir Eberron to space fantasy Spelljammer to gothic horror Ravenloft. We have dozens of races and some of them aren't even elves. Any individual campaign may want to limit things for thematic reasons, but calling that hypertraditionalism feels like just as derogatory, just as much a dismissal of people's preferences as anything.

The hobby is always held back when someone says "what you like doesn't belong in D&D."

I'm not the one saying that. You and @Lakesidefantasy explicitly have:

I think things like FR with dozens of different intelligent races is a bit goofy and it starts to feel like the Star Wars cantina scene.

My theory is that many of us players don't really want to be playing Dungeons and Dragons at all.

 

[Mort]

If I'm a player, I will 100% respect whatever restrictions the DM is imposing on the setting.

If I'm the DM, I find that the players responding to/jiving with the world/setting is key and if allowing a race/class combo I hadn't put (or in a non-homebrew wasn't part) in the lore helps with that - I'm happy to make the sacrifice. My caveat, generally, is I then get to seriously mess with the backstory (as it's introduced in play) and push it in directions I think would be fun/interesting as befits a weird/unique character.

 

[Scribe]

Which is more important: preserving the lore of a setting or having the full range of PC character creation options?

Lore.

 

[Micah Sweet]

The hobby is always held back when someone says "what you like doesn't belong in D&D."

I'm not the one saying that. You and @Lakesidefantasy explicitly have:

@Oofta 's at least is their personal opinion. You can't really argue with that, you can just disagree with it as your own personal opinion.

 

[Grantypants]

Lore and PC options are both important and should go hand in hand. That said, I can come up with my own good lore more easily than I can write good PC options, so I'd be more likely to buy PC options. I'm sure that there are a lot of people on this forum who feel the opposite way.

I don't think that giving players huge numbers of options necessarily means you have to play in a kitchen sink setting. If nobody wants to be a sorcerer, for instance, I might take sorcerers completely out of my setting. Then a big part of writing the setting would be figuring out how the world is different from D&D's standard assumptions without sorcerer's in it. You're not preventing anyone from playing what they want, but you're also setting your campaign world apart from others. In fact, one of my favorite session zero questions for my players is "What is something that doesn't exist in this world?" Writing a world around those restrictions is a lot more fun and interesting to me.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Which is more important: preserving the lore of a setting or having the full range of PC character creation options?

For example, in the lore of Dragonlance between the Cataclysm and the start of the first novel there are no true clerics. Likewise, there are no halflings, orcs, changelings, tieflings, dragonborn, etc.

So which is more important: preserving existing lore or the full range of 5E PC character creation options?

Your wording comes across more as “PC Options vs Canon, to the letter” than lore in a more general sense.

To use your own examples, the lack of halflings (arguable), orcs, Drow, etc, IMO has no impact whatsoever on the themes or history or anything of importance about the setting. It’s just adherence to the letter of canon, which I see literally no value in.

But Clerics are a stickier wicket altogether. I’m not fully opposed to divine magic as a PC option in Krynn before the time in the novels where such magic comes back, but it is tied in with the themes enough that I’d want any divine PCs to be just as deeply tied in to that setting element, and would require them to basically be the campaign’s Goldmoon.