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Message: <blockquote data-quote="airwalkrr" data-source="post: 4028225" data-attributes="member: 12460">It looks like 4E is shaping up to be a great game. It just doesn't look like it is shaping up to be D&D. When I think of D&D, it conjures up images of elf mages and dwarf fighters locked in battle against orcs and dragons. Tiefling warlocks and Dragonborn warlords just don't seem very D&Dish in that context. This is exactly the problem I have with certain editions being "setting-specific." Greyhawk really blossomed during AD&D 1E and fell out of vogue after that. Meanwhile Forgotten Realms crept in and became the smash hit of 2E, spawning a barrage of supplement books the likes of which has never before been seen. While Forgotten Realms remained popular during 3E days, Eberron really snatched up the goodies that 3.5 had to offer and made the system its own.For years attempting to run 3.5 I have cringed when players requested playing a tiefling or half-dragon in my Greyhawk campaign. There simply isn't much of a precedent for it if you want to stick to the original setting materials. And for that matter, I think with magic items and spells and psionics, player characters already have plenty going for them. Supernatural heritage should be left, I feel, for the monsters and opponents, at least when running a classic campaign like Greyhawk. But with so much of the game recently designed to hand players these options, it is very frustrating for me to deny it to them. At the same time, Greyhawk is what I know and like. I don't care to change it so drastically and I really don't care to run another campaign. I would simply run AD&D but no one seems to have held on to their books and my players aren't interested in such a retrograde move anyway.Anyway, back to how this all relates to 4E. This just isn't my system because it is too fantastic. I don't really want, for lack of a better word, monsters like eladrin, tieflings, and dragonborn running around my campaign pretending to be members of human or humanlike societies, especially not as common PC choices. I believe the primary reason WotC has added them to the line-up of PC races is because players are growing tired of the conventional fantasy races like the dwarf and elf. I'm not tired of them, so I really see no need to adopt a what is essentially a new setting just so I can use a new set of rules, which I'm sure are well-designed. (Don't get me wrong. I think mechanically, WotC has made a lot of positive changes to the rules since taking over from TSR.) It isn't as easy as using the new rules and saying "Sorry, but tieflings, eladrin, and dragonborn don't exist in my world." That will just cause long faces and resentment among my players. I have a hard enough time keeping "optional" races like illumians and raptorans out of my campaigns as it is. I don't think it would be as simple a matter to keep core races out of the game. Imagine sitting down to play a 3E game to hear the DM tell you "Sorry, but elves don't exist in my world." As a long-time player of primarily elf characters, such a campaign probably wouldn't hold much interest for me.I probably will end up playing 4E at some point, because I imagine it will become "the game" within a few years much like 3E did. But when it comes to DMing, I'm gonna cling to my old editions as long as I can find players who will let me.</blockquote>

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