D&D 5E (2024) WotC Should Make 5.5E Specific Setting

[Azzy]

Well, hold on there. Halfling and gnome-ruled polities may not be around in the Greyhawk material, but that doesn't mean there's no room in Gygax's Greyhawk. If you look at the setting as published in the 1983 boxed set, when the various polities refer to demihumans in significant numbers to call out specific varieties, halflings and gnomes come up a lot and spread widely. They may not be the high and mighty NPCs, but there's plenty of room for their involvement, their presence in the background, and halfling/gnome PCs to come from just about anywhere.

That's a good argument for treating the newer PC species similarly in existing settings. Well, just say that there's a Dragonborn community in the Hellfurnace mountains or what not.

 

[Minigiant]

That's a good argument for treating the newer PC species similarly in existing settings. Well, just say that there's a Dragonborn community in the Hellfurnace mountains or what not.

The issue isn't the newer species existing in the setting.

It's the newer species having a part in the setting's history, diplomacy, economy, and important NPCs.

Like no setting IIRC has ever thought about how destabilizing an army of humaniods with breath weapons could be as a neighbor.

Imagine having a border which a nation where every peasant can shoot lightning, fire, poison, acid, or ice out their face. How destructive one ambitious noble with an army of them could be? How relations to that nation and individuals might be after a few hundred years?

 

[Azzy]

The issue isn't the newer species existing in the setting.

It's the newer species having a part in the setting's history, diplomacy, economy, and important NPCs.

Yes, but the ur-setting of Greyhawk have little in the way of history, diplomacy, economy, and important NPCs of halflings and gnomes. So it's kind of a wash there. Later settings put more effort into halfling and gnomes (Eberron does a great job on both, Mystara actually has a nation of halflings, but for much of the older settings, they're still much of an afterthought).

Like no setting IIRC has ever thought about how destabilizing an army of humaniods with breath weapons could be as a neighbor.

Imagine having a border which a nation where every peasant can shoot lightning, fire, poison, acid, or ice out their face. How destructive one ambitious noble with an army of them could be? How relations to that nation and individuals might be after a few hundred years?

It really depends on how common they are, how large their communities are, how close their communities are to extant species' communities, whether they tend to be clannish and isolationist, etc.