[HN Gopher] Dungeons and Dragons rolls the dice with new rules a...
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Dungeons and Dragons rolls the dice with new rules about identity
Author : jordanpg
Score : 40 points
Date : 2024-12-30 14:16 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| jprd wrote:
| https://archive.md/z2q8s
| turtleyacht wrote:
| Does anyone play a human constantly holding a torch?
|
| Usually everyone forgets until vision and sight matter (boss
| fight, in a fog, or down to the wire).
| ryoshu wrote:
| Haven't seen it in a long time. Generally one or two characters
| will cast a Light spell on something like a shield or holy
| symbol. Dark vision/devil sight will cover the rest of the
| party. Foundry has really nice lighting effects using shaders
| for VTT play.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| Yep. So many races/species have darkvision, and so many
| people prefer playing non-humans, that it usually doesn't
| matter, and a single Cleric will typically have Light
| prepared anyway.
|
| I should really start running more sessions in a dark place,
| where stealth _matters_.
| techwizrd wrote:
| This is one of the changes I like the most about Shadowdark.
| None of the players have darkvision, but all of the monsters
| do. Combat is unpredictable and dangerous, and darkness is a
| real threat. And Torches are finite resources that last 60m
| of IRL time, so there is an in-game impact to dilly-dallying,
| endless debates, and rules-lawyering.
| valbaca wrote:
| I'm playing a human warlock with a Genie patron...so yes, I
| always have a lamp ha
| mcphage wrote:
| Wonderful piece--tons of interviews with people complaining about
| the changes, yet no interviews with people in support. And yet
| the authors mention (almost embarrassedly) that it's the fastest
| selling title in WotC's history.
|
| Clearly a lot of people like this change--and it's a great
| change! Yet the authors didn't feel like talking to any of those
| people, instead repeatedly coming back to Musk's whining. Great
| journalism 10/10 no notes.
| Ekaros wrote:
| I would argue that likely the sales are despite this. Not
| because of this. Could be there would be lot more sales if
| these weren't in place. In general RPGs have gained lot more
| popularity and visibility and thus are more popular. And DnD is
| most well known system.
| mmooss wrote:
| > I would argue that likely the sales are despite this. Not
| because of this.
|
| Unless you have evidence, you could argue anything. The
| evidence is that it's selling really well with these rules.
| hooverd wrote:
| > The company now suggests that extended Dungeons & Dragons
| campaigns begin with a session in which players discuss their
| expectations and list topics to avoid, which could include sexual
| assault or drug use. Dungeon masters are encouraged to establish
| a signal that allows players to articulate their distress with
| any subject matter and automatically overrule the dungeon
| master's own story line.
|
| This got a lot of flak. But I can see why they did it. Many such
| cases of DMs, especially the game store kind, using DnD as their
| own sexual assault simulator. RPGHorrorStories has a lot.
| caeril wrote:
| > > which could include sexual assault or drug use
|
| Wouldn't any potion, including potions of healing, be
| considered "drug use"? Howabout excessive drinking by dwarves
| at a tavern in the canonical DM party formation ritual?
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| In the western world, a potion of healing is more akin to
| taking antibiotics, and imbibing alcohol has been agreed to
| be just a Regular Thing People Do, not a drug thing.
|
| And in any case, yeah! This is why you talk things out in a
| session zero! If a player at a table is an alcoholic, they
| might not _want_ to play in a campaign where other PCs
| regularly binge-drink. It doesn 't necessarily mean the other
| players aren't _allowed_ to do this, it might just mean that
| this isn 't the right table for the player, or it might mean
| that the DM has to scratch out "alcoholic" as a trait for an
| NPC and replace it with something else.
| nothercastle wrote:
| If you need to go through a HR exercise at the beginning of
| a game perhaps you need to find a different group of people
| to play with.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| Why do you frame it as an "HR exercise" when it's just
| the people who are about to play a game talking about
| what they expect out of it?
|
| And how would I find a group of people whose playstyle is
| compatible with what I'm looking for without actually
| talking to them?
| danudey wrote:
| > Why do you frame it as an "HR exercise" when it's just
| the people who are about to play a game talking about
| what they expect out of it?
|
| Because they're so incapable of considering other
| people's feelings that they think the only time anyone
| ever does so is because someone cried to HR about
| something and HR is making you sit through a meeting to
| cover the company's ass legally, and not because anyone
| actually cares about how they make other people feel.
| zug_zug wrote:
| So what if your dad died last month, and the DM decides
| it'll be a cool twist for his BBEG to abduct your
| character's dad gouge his eyes out and try to kill him?
|
| It's good to be able to explain these things, and IMO a
| lot of D&D players aren't comfortable being the first one
| to say that stuff without an "HR" exercise to give them
| permission.
| ddingus wrote:
| Well, if my dad had died, I would understand the DM has
| no clue, until I say something.
|
| If I say something and that scene plays out, things are
| understandably ugly.
|
| If I don't and find myself uncomfortable, that is on me
| to manage, nobody else at the table.
|
| How are these things so damn hard for people to
| understand?
|
| All that was true when I played years ago. People would
| intro the game, have chat about stuff and then get into
| it. I recall having tough conversations, and I recall
| just being a good human to the other humans as a given.
|
| I don't get the discussion today.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| I'm not sure which side you're arguing for, but I do
| agree with what I _think_ I 'm reading - that you should
| be able to tell the table what you are and aren't
| comfortable with. And the new rules encourage that.
| ddingus wrote:
| You are reading it correctly. The before game meet n
| greet was where everyone caught up with everyone else.
|
| Maybe being pre cell phone has something to do with it
| all.
|
| Where and when I came from, the idea of having to do a
| "might trigger" rundown did not need to happen because of
| the dynamics I put into my prior comment.
|
| How about this mess:
|
| Say one chooses to not talk about a dead father confident
| the game will play out fine. Basically omit the father in
| the pre-game rundown of potential triggers.
|
| Then the scene happens, and major trigger!
|
| Now what?
|
| Seems to me one falls back on the very basic rules above
| and acts accordingly.
|
| Nobody else would be blamed. How could they?
|
| The result is the talk didn't solve anything, which us my
| point and lack of understanding.
|
| Another POV:
|
| DM runs a scene that is a major trigger for someone.
| Bummer.
|
| Pause game, help that person, right? Take a bit and
| figure it out? Do they want to end play? Is there
| something any of us can do? Etc...
|
| Blame and shame aren't the answers. Being a good human is
| the answer.
|
| Seems like someone is trying to write be a good human
| rules. Ah well. They tried I guess.
| rincebrain wrote:
| The point, I think, is that a lot of people pathologize
| "this is just a me problem" to the point that they don't
| want to bring things up at all, particularly if it's not
| someone they're very familiar with, because while some
| people react reasonably to, for example, "please do not
| include a graphic description of bugs crawling around, I
| had a really bad experience once and it still bothers me
| to think about", some people will also very deliberately
| introduce things for that reason.
|
| Or perhaps you say "I don't like it if X" when you really
| meant "I am going to have a full blown trauma flashback
| if you surprise me with X", and they think that you meant
| what you said, and it's something they would do with all
| the maliciousness of hanging a "boo!" sign on your front
| door one day.
|
| The goal is, I think, to recognize that a lot of people
| are bad at being the first one to bring things up, as
| well as a lot of people being bad at "reading the room",
| and set up an explicit normal structure to reduce the
| friction of doing so.
|
| (Whether they succeeded or not is a different question,
| but I think that was the goal - to try and make it feel
| more normal and part of the structure and expectations,
| and thus have lower friction to bring things up a priori
| and in the moment, rather than people feeling like "I'm
| the problem" if there's no explicit moment for it and
| they have to ask.)
|
| Yes, you can't make people be good people, but you can
| try to provide tools to make it feel more like the normal
| part of setting up and running your game to leave
| explicit room for them to say something. More or less the
| difference between saying "you can call us after filling
| out the paperwork and have us add manual edits to what
| you filled out" and "you can just include a form 412 and
| check the boxes for which things apply, and fill out an
| other box at the bottom if it's not covered".
| MadcapJake wrote:
| Let's look at another media: movies. Do you ever look at
| reviews or the advisory notices to see if a movie will be
| appropriate for someone you're watching it with? This is
| the exact same thing but since the story hasn't been
| written yet, you need to agree with all the story tellers
| (DM and players) what your story rating will be.
|
| Do you skip this step when it's your closest pals who can
| handle a gory mature story? sure!
|
| Is it good to have a system for others to use or in
| public settings? Definitely.
| danudey wrote:
| Hypothetical situation: someone had an abusive alcoholic
| father, and discussion of drinking and alcohol brings up
| a lot of unwanted feelings, including anxiety, unpleasant
| memories resurfacing, etc.
|
| You're suggesting that the person in that scenario should
| either suffer those feelings in silence or should just
| keep trying new groups until they find one that just
| coincidentally doesn't bring up those topics?
|
| Or someone who was sexually assaulted should keep that to
| themselves, and if discussion of the topic comes up in
| the game and makes them uncomfortable they should just
| leave and go find a new group without telling anyone why?
|
| Are you suggesting that you could just say "hey, these
| are things that bother me so I'd rather not be part of
| the game if these topics are going to come up", and
| either the DM can exclude those topics, or they can
| refuse and the player can go somewhere else? Because
| that's _exactly what is being discussed_.
|
| Lay out your ground rules. If there's no way to
| reconcile, go elsewhere, but it saves people getting
| blindsided halfway through the game and then having to
| deal with it while surrounded by other people and
| potentially feeling very vulnerable.
| ghusto wrote:
| So don't play with those ones?
|
| This is why these types of initiatives do far more harm than
| good. They hide problems rather than address them.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| > _This is why these types of initiatives do far more harm
| than good. They hide problems rather than address them._
|
| How do these initiatives hide these problems?
| krapp wrote:
| But this "initiative" suggests addressing the problems
| through dialogue.
|
| D&D is supposed to be a collaborative effort, "My way or the
| highway" isn't how a table should be run.
| hooverd wrote:
| Those people typically don't tell you ahead of time. I
| wouldn't do this with my close friend group either, we know
| each other. I think we can all agree on "hey this is touchy
| for me could we please not" and it works as a filter for
| people who get upset about it.
| zug_zug wrote:
| Presumably you've had different experiences, but from my
| personal D&D experience I've had zero people who abused the
| "distress signaling" and seen multiple cases where people
| were a bit uncomfortable and didn't really say anything other
| than snarky jokes (e.g. a player's backstory culminates in
| them graphically torturing an NPC to death while everybody
| else at the table is weirded out).
|
| "Don't play with them" strikes me as impractical advice
| compared to communicating. If you're 6 months into a campaign
| as opposed to establishing a protocol to be able to say "hey
| this is kinda much for me, could we take the gruesome details
| of this offline?"
|
| Communicating a tone for the setting early would have also
| helped.
| stormfather wrote:
| I see why it gets a lot of flak too. People are becoming
| increasingly neurotic and fragile, and coupled with that we are
| increasingly unable to fluidly deal with differences this
| creates as they arise. We're talking about playing a boardgame
| with friends, do we really need to have a trigger-warning
| session? And when does that end? Every time I hang out with my
| friends should we update our daily list of no-no words first?
| hooverd wrote:
| If you're playing with close friends, you probably wouldn't
| railroad things to their character that would damage your
| friendship. If you know your friend is touchy about something
| traumatic do you rib them about it?
| c22 wrote:
| You can use whatever rules you like with your friends. When I
| play Monopoly with my friends we like to put fees and fines
| on "Free Parking," then if you land there you can take the
| money. We all agreed it's more fun this way.
| valbaca wrote:
| > When I play Monopoly with my friends we like to put fees
| and fines on "Free Parking," then if you land there you can
| take the money. We all agreed it's more fun this way.
|
| Listen, your game, your rules 100%
|
| But I will say, the Free Parking house rule is why most
| games of Monopoly take so freaking long. (And if you're
| fine with that, then that's fine too!). The fees and fines
| are _meant_ to take money out of the player 's pockets and
| drive them closer to bankruptcy so the dang game CAN end.
|
| Unfortunately, it's a game that just feels bad. You either
| play as-is and it feels bad to go broke. or you house-rule
| and the money keeps circulating until someone builds all
| Hotels and completely obliterates someone when they land on
| the third and fourth-edge properties
| nemo44x wrote:
| But it's just so much fun you never want it to end!
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| > _People are becoming increasingly neurotic and fragile, and
| coupled with that we are increasingly unable to fluidly deal
| with differences this creates as they arise._
|
| Another way to interpret this would be that people are
| becoming increasingly comfortable with telling people they're
| not comfortable with something, and leaving when others at
| the table are refusing to take the feelings of others into
| consideration.
|
| > _We 're talking about playing a boardgame with friends, do
| we really need to have a trigger-warning session?_
|
| D&D isn't always played with friends. Not that many of my
| friends play D&D, or are interested in; most of the people
| I've played with were strangers to me when we first began
| playing.
|
| > _Every time I hang out with my friends should we update our
| daily list of no-no words first?_
|
| You likely _have_ this list in your head already for your
| friends; it 's not necessary to explicitly rehash it because
| you've built a relationship with these people, and you know
| not to brag about your awesome trip with your dad in front of
| someone who's dad died last week.
|
| But when you're meeting new people, you don't know what
| they've gone through. That's why it's better to be explicit
| at the start of this.
| rayiner wrote:
| > Another way to interpret this would be that people are
| becoming increasingly comfortable with telling people
| they're not comfortable with something, and leaving when
| others at the table are refusing to take the feelings of
| others into consideration
|
| Yet another way to interpret this is we're increasingly
| catering to narcissists who think that their personal
| feelings and sensitivities should override the norms and
| conventions of the group. Your example highlights the
| problem. You don't need to tell people to tip toe around
| someone's dad having died because that's a generally
| recognized social norm.
|
| That's what it comes down to. People want to just be able
| to target their behavior to a general, objective social
| norm, without customizing it for myriad individual
| sensitivities. That's a good approach. Don't do anything
| that transgresses the social norm. Don't be offended by
| anything that complies with the social norm.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| > _You don't need to tell people to tip toe around
| someone's dad having died because that's a generally
| recognized social norm._
|
| No, but I do need to tell them that my dad died in order
| for them to know. Otherwise, the GM just might bring my
| PC's dad up out of the past, and kill him in front of my
| PC again.
|
| That's all that "the form" or Session Zero is. It's
| explicitly laying out things that you may be sensitive
| to, so that the rest of the group can continue to behave
| in that general, objective social norm you're talking
| about. It's a way for them to let me know that their dog
| died last week, so that I know that the first combat of
| the first session shouldn't be fighting a bunch of guard
| hounds.
| haswell wrote:
| > _People want to just be able to target their behavior
| to a general, objective social norm_
|
| But herein lies the problem. There is no general,
| objective social norm that covers the range of topics
| necessary.
|
| Social norms are regional, cultural, familial,
| situational, etc. If you were to optimize for some
| universal standard, the result would be pretty boring.
| Think: "what would be appropriate in a corporate
| workplace?".
|
| Learning to navigate this as a group seems like a rather
| reasonable and necessary social skill for everyone
| involved. People who bristle at those with certain
| sensitivities seem to be masking sensitivities of their
| own and would prefer to just avoid a potentially
| uncomfortable conversation.
|
| And I've gotta be blunt: many gamers (tabletop and
| otherwise) are often all too eager to blow right past
| norms or are unaware of them completely, which leads to
| recommendations like the above being helpful/necessary.
| rayiner wrote:
| > But herein lies the problem. There is no general,
| objective social norm that covers the range of topics
| necessary.
|
| I'm pretty sure people happily played board games
| together in the recent past without these conversations.
| danudey wrote:
| A lot of people did, and a lot of people were made to
| feel extremely uncomfortable and unwelcome and ended up
| leaving the game/community because of their bad
| experiences with DMs who don't understand that it's not
| okay to have NPCs sexually assault a player's character
| just because they're a woman.
|
| Now that we're laying out these kinds of guidelines,
| maybe the people who legitimately don't understand why
| that's bad will stop and listen to what others have to
| say, and the ones who don't will be showing that they're
| deliberately ignoring how they make other people feel.
| jitl wrote:
| Some nerds need and appreciate formalization of what
| you're describing as a social norm being made explicit
| and spelled out for them. Besides, most DMs I've played
| with already do this kind of "ok what kinda stuff is
| everyone thinking about for this campaign?" conversation
| already, so these guidelines are just a reminder for
| players or DMs to include this stuff in that conversation
| too.
| ineptech wrote:
| I think you're trying to force a narrative that doesn't
| really fit. This change isn't in response to "everything is
| woke now", it's in response to people playing with strangers
| more.
| valbaca wrote:
| > We're talking about playing a boardgame with friends, do we
| really need to have a trigger-warning session?
|
| First, it's not a "boardgame." It's a Role Playing Game. It's
| much more unbounded than a board game and _you_ are actually
| playing. Not just rolling dice but acting and imagining and
| adding to the experience. You play your character and you
| decide how that character acts.
|
| > do we really need to have a trigger-warning session?
|
| You could have one. Generally cover strong NOs and decide on
| hot-topics that often make people uncomfortable:
|
| racism/slavery, romance/sex, phobias, etc.
|
| Then setup a system to halt if anything new comes up.
|
| People throw around "trigger" and "safe-space" like they're
| above feeling anything but sometimes it's just being
| considerate. It's not just about language but situations.
|
| We play D&D to have fun. For some, that means "leaving
| politics out of it" but for others, those "politics" impact
| our actual daily lives. To pretend they don't exist or to
| _have_ to interact with them in a game can be just as un-fun.
|
| > And when does that end? Every time I hang out with my
| friends should we update our daily list of no-no words first?
|
| Now you're being facetious. You communicate like people.
| That's it.
|
| If someone was recently mugged in real-life, you probably
| wouldn't have their character get attacked by a rogue. If
| someone had arachnophobia, you probably wouldn't drop down
| the RPG-cliche giant spider. If someone has to deal with
| real-life racism, you could probably understand why "knife-
| ears" wouldn't feel fun. OR maybe they're all okay. It's all
| about opt: opt-in and opt-out.
|
| > oupled with that we are increasingly unable to fluidly deal
| with differences this creates as they arise.
|
| I think that's a YOU-issue. My friend group is a complex
| group of people, and yet we find a way to have fun every week
| with D&D while also respecting all members of the game.
| mmooss wrote:
| Why would the DM put something in their game that actually
| traumatizes people?
| UncleMeat wrote:
| While I'd generally expect this to be naturally rare in dnd,
| this isn't the case in many other games.
|
| Monsterhearts deals with unhealthy sexual relationships at
| its core. Night Witches deals with sexism at its core.
| Bluebeard's Bride deals with straight up sexual violence at
| its core. These topics are heavy and its worth having some
| systems in place to help people navigate them.
|
| This is especially true with con culture, where people are
| likely to play ttrpgs with total strangers.
| danudey wrote:
| Some people just don't understand social norms and, you know,
| other people's feelings, and use these sorts of games as
| their own personal power fantasy.
|
| There have been a kind of gross number of threads I've seen
| where women join a group, make their character, and then
| spend the entire first session having their character abused,
| belittled, sexually assaulted, impregnated, etc.
|
| Worth noting that not all D&D groups are among close friends;
| sometimes you get invited to a group because you're looking
| for people to play with and your friend group (if you have
| one) doesn't play. No different than joining a frisbee golf
| team, except with a much greater chance of a bottom-tier
| caliber of people.
| techwizrd wrote:
| Why interview solely the grognards? Even OSE options like
| Shadowdark have adopted terms like ancestry over race. It sorta
| feels like this article is trying to create an issue where none
| exists.
|
| Changing race to species has not been a concern for myself, my
| players, or those I know. We're more concerned with improving the
| mechanics and speed of gameplay, balancing martials and casters,
| improvements to the core books, backgrounds, bastions, and
| impactful changes.
|
| We want more variety at the table, not just everyone choosing the
| same optimized builds from RPGBOT. I think Crawford in the
| article puts it well: "People really wanted to be able to mix and
| match their species choice with their character-class choice.
| They didn't want choosing a dwarf to make them a lesser wizard."
| jltsiren wrote:
| I'm kind of surprised that optimized builds even exist, at
| least outside competitive games.
|
| Back in the day when I was playing tabletop RPGs, the standard
| GM approach was that meaningful advantages must be balanced
| with meaningful disadvantages. Encounters where the characters
| had to face their weaknesses were supposed to be common. It
| didn't really matter if your characters were optimized as not.
|
| Character builds as a concept were just some video game
| nonsense that had no place in actual role-playing games. At
| least among the people I used to play with.
| caeril wrote:
| It depends on the complexity of your campaign. Back in the
| day when I played D&D, we had a DM who would throw together
| typical hack-and-slash-and-loot campaigns, in which you
| wanted to maximize your STR, CON, DEX, and INT( if you were a
| magic-using class ). Nobody wanted to assign points to
| anything else, as they would be a waste.
|
| It takes a good DM to balance a campaign, especially for
| years. And I suspect most DMs are pretty bad (I'm guessing,
| haven't played in over a decade now).
| brightball wrote:
| This is a valid point and it's honestly one of the things
| that I really enjoy about the Dungeon Crawler Carl series.
| One of the main character's best weapons is charisma.
| Multiple different types of spells or abilities are
| modified by secondary stats, like charisma with charm or
| illusion spells.
|
| I haven't played D&D in, like 30 years, but I don't ever
| remember those types of game mechanics being involved. If
| they are now it would make for some great potential
| combinations. If a dwarf gets -1 INT and +1 CON, but
| certain types of spells use CON as a modifier then it
| creates an interesting combination.
| Ntrails wrote:
| > Changing race to species has not been a concern for myself,
| my players, or those I know.
|
| Largely the same, I acknowledge it's not being done _for_ me
| and definitely doesn 't impact me. Shrug (or eyeroll if so
| inclined) and move on.
|
| > "People really wanted to be able to mix and match their
| species choice with their character-class choice. They didn't
| want choosing a dwarf to make them a lesser wizard."
|
| Ok, but IMO nobody has more _fun_ by doing 13 damage a round
| instead of 10. The consequence of chasing optimality is it
| simply leads a DM to tune encounters appropriately.
|
| > We want more variety at the table, not just everyone choosing
| the same optimized builds from RPGBOT.
|
| So instead everyone is using the same optimised builds but with
| more _species_ variety? Does that really improve the state of
| games in your experience?
|
| I sort of want disparate builds, playing to aptitudes.
| Balancing spell lists and feats etc to make lots of viable
| builds is a hard problem to solve though (I've not played the
| 2024 rules so have no idea how well they've done?).
| rayiner wrote:
| > Largely the same, I acknowledge it's not being done for me
| and definitely doesn't impact me. Shrug (or eyeroll if so
| inclined) and move on
|
| Who is it being done "for" if not for the people who play
| this game? Don't you have the same stake in changes to the
| game as anyone else?
| techwizrd wrote:
| Not all changes are for the players. The changes to remove
| perceived racial biases may improve inclusion for some
| minority of players. It may be a serious issue for those
| players, the game designers, or some executive. Just like
| real world changes to improve inclusivity, most are
| unaffected and simply move on.
|
| For the changes people care about, Wizards of the Coast
| (WotC) publishes "Unearthed Arcana" or pre-release versions
| of content (e.g., bastions, the Monk class, a new Druid
| subclass). People will playtest the new content and WotC
| surveys players to get feedback. Based on the feedback,
| they may make additional changes or even scrap some things
| entirely.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| > Who is it being done "for" if not for the people who play
| this game?
|
| Many changes to media franchises and games are being made
| in an effort to attract a new audience, or with the belief
| that it increases appeal to the "modern audience". Emphasis
| because this is the buzzword phrase that gets used quite a
| lot to justify changes that are generating some amount of
| controversy or negative attention. The problem is that
| "modern audiences" may not actually exist
| jandrese wrote:
| On one hand many people don't want to be dead weight when the
| dice start rolling. On the other hand it can be more fun to
| be the Half-Ork Wizard with 7 INT trying to role play a big
| dumb guy who's only love is setting things on fire with his
| mind and getting paid for it.
|
| There's the age old role play vs. roll play argument. With a
| good DM it shouldn't matter but if you're running some
| prebuilt campaign then it might lead to unexpected struggles.
| ineptech wrote:
| I find this mystifying. I think of "choosing a dwarf makes you
| a lesser wizard" as being a pretty core part of D&D. Have they
| released specifics on this? If race/species is going to become
| purely cosmetic, have they explained what will replace it,
| mechanically?
| WorldMaker wrote:
| That's kind of the problem with it was it was mechanically
| implementing something that was more setting/background
| cosmetics specific in the first place. Not all settings think
| dwarves should have a harder time becoming a wizard.
| Forgotten Realms, the modern "default" for D&D thinks anyone
| can do anything if they want, classes are just "jobs"
| available to anyone. Those settings that do care, including
| throwback settings, generally make it a story telling device
| about why things are the way they are ("dwarves are closer to
| the earth and have a hard time learning illusions") and the
| hardships exceptions face ("it took a lot more work and they
| lost access to some of their home community") and making it a
| mechanical disadvantage doesn't do anything more interesting
| than the storytelling tools already inherent in the setting.
| ineptech wrote:
| The problem is that some racial bonuses are things that can
| be plausibly explained away by background (stat bonuses,
| mental abilities, humans getting a feat) but a lot aren't
| (aarakocra flight, dragonborn breath weapons, halflings
| being able to hide more easily), and they're all balanced
| against each other. Does an aarakocra raised by humans get
| human bonuses, and still get to fly? Does a human raised by
| aarakocra lose their human bonuses but grow wings?
| xyzzy_plugh wrote:
| You're conflating physical properties with other
| abilities/characteristics. Does a dwarf have a physical
| limitation preventing them from wielding magic? This is
| the argument.
|
| I don't see anything innately wrong with a human who can
| breathe fire, or has wings, or a dwarf with four arms, so
| long as you're willing to RP it. It does seem silly to
| say that no, it's actually against the rules, your dwarf
| can't learn magic.
| dotancohen wrote:
| Then why have races at all?
| ineptech wrote:
| Not sure how familiar you are with the rules of D&D, but
| "lesser wizard" in this context means suboptimal stat
| bonuses, not limitations on magic.
| WesternWind wrote:
| That's almost exactly the split they made actually, with
| things like feats and flight still species based, but
| statu bonuses and backgrounds (with maybe some small
| exceptions) not being species based.
|
| They did some work to balance it, but really species have
| never been the biggest balance issue, it's always been
| class stuff, or magical vs. martial issues, or the fact
| that ranger is thematically cool if you like LOTR, but
| sucks mechanically compared to other classes.
| ineptech wrote:
| Have the details been published anywhere? I looked
| briefly and only see stuff describing it in general and
| saying it is yet to be released.
| Neonlicht wrote:
| Every game has rules. As kids we learn not to peep when
| playing hide and seek...
|
| But this is D&D in the end it's all up to the DM.
| danudey wrote:
| The frustrating thing here is that the people in the
| article are complaining that Wizards isn't 'leaving it up
| to the DM', but that's one of the main things that WotC
| always drives home - and still is. If you want to fill your
| world with racist, ableist, sexist asshats and tell your
| players that their orc character is going to be inherently
| stupider than other races because they're inherently
| (genetically?) inferior, you still can.
|
| What they're really saying, as always, is 'why does
| inclusivity have to be opt-out instead of opt-in?'
| grraaaaahhh wrote:
| I mean, if you go far back enough "dwarves cannot be wizards"
| was a core part of D&D as well.
| zzo38computer wrote:
| > I think of "choosing a dwarf makes you a lesser wizard" as
| being a pretty core part of D&D.
|
| I agree that you should be able to make suboptimal choices if
| you wish, but I think that shouldn't be the issue.
|
| Your character will be more than just a dwarf and a wizard
| (otherwise the game will be too simple), in addition to those
| things, so if a dwarf will be more likely to have an
| advantage at something else that is independent of classes,
| then you can have that, and still be a wizard, even if a
| "greater wizard" lacks what your character will have.
|
| (There might also be the possibility, that if dwarf wizards
| are not very common (for whatever reason; there are many
| possibilities, depending on the story), then someone might
| not expect you to be a wizard so might be possible for some
| surprise if you are disguised by mundane means.)
| sdwr wrote:
| I've been playing Grim Dawn recently, and feeling the tension
| between optimizing and exploring, between pre-built and puzzled
| out.
|
| If you can manage to forget about the answer key lurking on
| every forum, the core experience of finding synergy, figuring
| out a build, balancing resistances is surprisingly fun.
|
| > Why interview solely the grognards?
|
| And, I know it's a rhetorical question, but the answer is:
|
| > So the article can serve double duty as a Nat Geo-style
| jungle expedition, providing glimpses of unwashed tribespeople
| to intrigued middle Americans.
| torginus wrote:
| > Kuntz, the designer and Gygax collaborator, said that while
| some topics ought to be considered off-limits, it was a mistake
| to interfere with the implicit social contract that has sustained
| Dungeons & Dragons for decade.
|
| I'm fully in agreement with this statement. This is like human
| group dynamics 101, which underlies all social interaction. You
| figure out what sort of people you are playing with, how familiar
| you are with each other, and what sort of fun you want to have
| together. If unsure, err on the side of tameness. This has many-
| many dimensions besides the ones about taboo topics mentioned in
| the article.
|
| Handling this through a form feels incredibly insincere and
| performative, and insinuates that people (including me) are not
| to be trusted. If you don't trust the people you're playing with,
| you shouldn't be playing in the first place.
|
| That being said, this is 100% manufactured controversy. It's
| virtue signaling from Hasbro (possibly ESG dollar sign motivated)
| as well as pearl clutching from right wingers. How tabletop works
| is you ignore all the stuff you don't like or don't care about. I
| have played with quite a few parties, some of them consisting of
| people who were complete strangers at first, and also quite
| socially heterogenous.
|
| I have never seen such a form in my life, and yet despite that,
| none of our campaigns turned into the pen-and-paper version of
| Blood Meridian.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| > _You figure out what sort of people you are playing with, how
| familiar you are with each other, and what sort of fun you want
| to have together._
|
| Yes. And you figure this out with a new group by using the new
| tools during a session zero :)
| stolenmerch wrote:
| A problem with the X-Card concept is that it can only be used
| within the pre-existing Overton Window of the group anyway, so
| you might as well ditch it in favor of normal social negotiation.
| For example, X-Card guidelines always tell players they can use
| it to block anything they're uncomfortable with. However, you'll
| quickly learn you can't use it to block political ideology from
| the DM, even if you legitimately find it triggering and
| distressing.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| The general point makes sense, the GM is has a lot of social
| power and there are risks to publicly calling them out on
| anything really.
|
| But I'm having a hard time imagining this specific example.
| What would be an example of political ideology from the GM that
| you'd want to block?
| stolenmerch wrote:
| Mostly political agendas that spill over from the real world,
| often surrounding themes of social justice and left-wing
| activism but sometimes right wing fascist themes as well. I
| just find it infuriating to have the DM shoehorn their
| extremist political views into a game. Especially with the
| leftist DMs, I've found that I'm usually expected to
| reinforce their beliefs and not question them, even with
| provided X-Cards or the like.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| But what is an example of this in a game? How would this
| come up in a way that you'd feel uncomfortable with? I'm
| just struggling to see concretely what this would _look_
| like.
|
| Examples elsewhere in this comment section like eg sexual
| assault I can easily see how that would both come up in a
| game _and_ interact with player experience to make them
| uncomfortable in a way they may not want to have to explain
| in the middle of a session.
| stolenmerch wrote:
| I'm getting downvoted simply for giving examples, thus
| proving my point. But if you need a concrete example, I
| once had a DM include a drag show in-game.
| JamesBarney wrote:
| And a better solution for this is to not run campaigns at
| conventions or public games that have sexual assault.
| thatguysaguy wrote:
| I know a number of otherwise pleasant people who have as a
| political/philosophical view that it's not rude to insult
| certain identity groups.
|
| I wouldn't say I find it triggering when someone says
| something about men, just annoying, but I can imagine someone
| who is more easily upset feeling that way.
|
| That being said, if you have friends willing to say things
| that they know upset you, you probably need better friends,
| not a card.
| junek wrote:
| > you'll quickly learn you can't use it to block political
| ideology from the DM
|
| That's like, not true at all. The X card is exactly for that
| purpose, the GM doesn't get a special exception from the effect
| of the X card.
|
| As a GM, if a player reaches for the X card for any reason I'm
| obliged to stop and listen.
|
| I'm curious what exactly you mean by "political ideology" in
| this context. Can you give a concrete example of the kind of
| thing that makes you uncomfortable?
| stolenmerch wrote:
| I believe you, but that's not the case everywhere. I've had
| DMs who have put drag shows in our game as part of tavern
| entertainment, for example. Even though I have no problem
| with them in real life, I have no desire to see them in my
| fantasy game because it just reminds me of contemporary
| culture war shenanigans. When questioned on it or asked if we
| could not do that, I've received nothing but pushback. Stuff
| like that.
| dsr_ wrote:
| Not every group is right for every person.
|
| But the big thing is this: it's not your fantasy game. It's
| the shared fantasy game of you, the other players, and the
| DM.
| GeoAtreides wrote:
| > Not every group is right for every person.
|
| In the context of an X-card discussion, that's hilarious.
|
| "Touch the X-card, but only if the group agrees on why
| the X-card was touched. Otherwise, find new group"
|
| turns out the real x-card was the group itself :)
| zanderwohl wrote:
| I find the X-Card most useful at conventions. When I sit down
| at a table I have no idea where strangers' lines are. It
| provides a more frictionless way to let people tell you how to
| be courteous, without knowing them very well.
| JamesBarney wrote:
| I think guidelines and an equivalent of a trigger warning is
| a better solution. It's really hard to modify a campaign on
| the fly if for example someone is uncomfortable with cults
| but that's the primary driver of the storyline.
| infinitezest wrote:
| Isn't this just WotC catching up to 90% of other TTRPGs?
|
| There's a part of me that understands where the pushback on these
| changes is coming from (some people are narcissistic and could
| abuse these tools), but ultimately it seems like a good thing to
| have in the book for groups that aren't already friends. If you
| don't need em, just don't use em.
|
| As an aside, I would encourage anyone that's just getting into
| the hobby now, not to give WotC any money. There's a ton of other
| RPGs out there that are just as good if not better and aren't
| accompanied by grotesque profit maximizing. But either way, just
| make sure everyone is having fun.
| netbioserror wrote:
| Adding meaningless chaff like this to the rulebook has a near 1.0
| correlation with entirely in-module railroad campaigns, avoidance
| of house rules and homebrewing, and by-the-book rules play. The
| new D&D audience only knows how to color inside the lines. Case
| in point: Celebration and debate over tiny rules changes any
| group could have made themselves.
|
| Really jogs the noggin.
| zanderwohl wrote:
| It's nice to have a better core game. D&D is perhaps the only
| TTRPG known to have such sparse content that players have to
| fix the rules themselves to make the game playable.
| mnky9800n wrote:
| I gave up learning new systems after I spent lots of money on
| 3.5e books and then 4e came out. It wasn't that I didn't want
| to spend money it just seemed that another big overhaul of
| all the rules felt like the beginning of the end for the game
| being anything more than cardboard and paper for sale. My
| imagination seemed to be able to fill in any gaps that
| wizards of the coast seemed intent on selling me.
| mmooss wrote:
| I have no idea about the current rules, but haven't they always
| been separate species? Can an elf and a dwarf make a fertile
| child?
| bena wrote:
| I don't know about elves and dwarves, but just about every race
| could be a human hybrid.
|
| But it came with stat hits. Half-elves were more like humans
| than elves, etc.
|
| And from what it seems, they're separating stats from
| race/species. Which is probably an overall good. I'm going to
| use the older terminology as this was the issue with the older
| game. If you wanted to be a wizard, you should be an elf. If
| you wanted to be an elf, you should be a wizard. And things
| like that. Certain classes just worked better with certain
| races.
|
| But now, if I want to be an elf barbarian, that's better
| supported. I'm not fighting the game rules to play the role I
| want to.
| JamesBarney wrote:
| You're right it's not ideal that races shoehorn you into
| certain classes, but on the other hand you don't want
| someone's race to be flavortext. I think there's a balance to
| be struck. I doubt DnD will find it on the first shot, but
| I'm looking forward to what it looks like for the version
| after next.
| nerdjon wrote:
| I will likely do some searching on this later, but I am curious
| how "race" ever came to be the word we use instead of "Species"
| in nearly every video game I know of that has a character creator
| (at least until recently)? I know I have struggled to not say
| race when I really mean species just out of many years of habit.
|
| That being said, I don't really understand the push to remove
| species benefits from games (not just D&D) and instead just do a
| name change? It makes sense that in a fictional world that
| different species would have their strengths and weaknesses just
| for biological reasons.
|
| Or story reasons like in Mass Effect where the Asari live to
| around 1000 or more (I don't remember exactly) and have a very
| natural benefit for biotic abilities.
|
| I understand the concern that some of these traits were
| originally racially fueled, but it makes sense for there to be
| differences of some sort.
| bena wrote:
| I think the main reason is that it kind of pigeon-holed certain
| races and classes. There were just objectively correct choices.
| In a game where there should be no "correct" choice. And it was
| mostly benefit, very few drawbacks. And the drawbacks that
| existed could easily be circumvented.
| object-a wrote:
| One thing I like about the new rules: they let users create
| their own unique species/class combinations, without feeling
| like the game's rules are limiting you.
|
| For example, a Barbarian gnome or Half-orc wizard can be fun
| choices from a role playing perspective, but suboptimal in
| combat or gameplay. Removing species-specific ability score
| increases lets players create non-standard combinations without
| weakening the party.
| Teckla wrote:
| Speaking as both a D&D DM _and_ player, the "sub-optimal
| game play" makes the campaign more fun, more diverse, and
| offers more thoroughly enjoyable role-playing and problem
| solving opportunities. It _doesn 't_ make it less fun.
|
| Not to mention that D&D rules aren't carved in stone. I've
| never encountered a DM or D&D group that wouldn't allow
| players the leeway to create a barbarian gnome or half-orc
| wizard with their desired stats, if that was important to
| them.
|
| The changes WoTC made are bad, and make everything less fun
| and more generic. Their _intentions_ were good, but what they
| 've done really isn't helpful or good at all.
| nickthegreek wrote:
| Then just like before, don't use them. You can still roll a
| sub-optimal character. No one is forcing anyone to make
| only superheroes.
| object-a wrote:
| An experienced DM can of course let their players create
| whatever character they want, but a less experienced DM
| might be concerned about balance/fairness/implications of
| bending the rules. By creating an alternative, flexible
| rule for ability scores, a table can feel confident that
| the characters they build are still balanced.
|
| > The changes WoTC made are bad, and make everything less
| fun and more generic. Their intentions were good, but what
| they've done really isn't helpful or good at all.
|
| As you said above, the DM and table can agree to whatever
| constraints they want for the game, including using the old
| ability scores.
| zzo38computer wrote:
| I disagree. Sometimes you might select such combinations
| because you like suboptimal combinations for a challenge or
| for other reasons. (The rules should not prohibit from making
| such selections.) However, there might sometimes be
| advantages as well as disadvantages to your selections.
|
| However, I don't like class-based systems so much, and I
| prefer skill-based systems. Instead of selecting a character
| class, you can select which skills you want (including
| narrower skills; I think the skills in GURPS are not narrow
| enough) and how much of each one.
|
| But see also my other comment for other details.
| object-a wrote:
| You can make sub-optimal combinations, but D&D is a team
| game. If you build a Barbarian that can't deal damage, or a
| Wizard who's spells never land, you're letting the rest of
| your team down.
|
| > The rules should not prohibit from making such
| selections.
|
| The new rules give you _more_ freedom to choose a
| suboptimal build. You can even play a Gnome with low
| intelligence under the new rules, something that was
| impossible before.
| roenxi wrote:
| My understanding is that the word's use has morphed over time
| and it could be used to mean ethnicity back in the day
| (probably still can, I'd expect "Irish race", "Scottish race"
| or "English race" to parsed as intended in most contexts).
| Given how D&D uses it the people who wrote the game interpreted
| "race" to mean anything basically humanoid that looked
| systemically different which seems like a reasonable take for
| the times. Then people rolled with it because we're generally
| talking high fantasy where science has no meaning and "race"
| rolls off the tongue better than "species".
| auntienomen wrote:
| I think the use of the term "race" probably comes from early
| Dungeons & Dragons. The original D&D had dwarf, elf, gnome, and
| hob^H^H^H halfling as character classes. It used the term
| "demi-humans" for these.
|
| In 1978, TSR produced "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons", the first
| of many attempts to clean-up and rationalize the game's basic
| system. It appears to me that this is where they first factored
| out race (i.e., [human, half-elf, elf,...]) as a separate PC
| characteristic.
|
| From my cursory search, Tolkien seems to have often referred to
| dwarves, elves, and whatnot as "peoples" and used the word
| "race" for different subgroups of those. He at some point wrote
| (in a letter, not in the stories) that that at least elves &
| men were able to interbreed on ocassion, and thus were
| technically the same species. But he was mainly interested in
| the drama around half-elves, and left open questions about
| dwarf/elf and hobbit/ent pairings for later explorers...
| amiga386 wrote:
| > how "race" ever came to be the word we use instead of
| "Species" in nearly every video game I know of that has a
| character creator
|
| The character creator does not let you roleplay as a tree,
| bacterium, moss, fish, vole, etc.
|
| It lets you roleplay as an anthropomorphised, sentient,
| sapient, language-using creature, with minor visual differences
| - a human, an almost-human that looks like a lizard, an almost-
| human that looks like a cat, an almost-human that looks like a
| bird, an almost-human with hooves and horns, a short human, a
| very short human, a tall human with pointy ears, a dark-skinned
| human, a blue-skinned human, a green-skinned human, a purple-
| skinned human, and so on.
|
| If you're Commander Shepard, you're going to have sex with all
| of them. I suspect the progeny, if any, would be fertile.
| Claims that these are distinct species that all colonised
| different parts of the galaxy are a thin veneer. True "alien"
| life would be hyperintelligent shades of blue like in HHGTTG,
| hiveminds like in Ender's Game, or the amazing fauna in
| Scavengers Reign. They would not be a human actor wearing a
| Cornish pasty, even if you say they're Klingons.
|
| I put it to you that your character creator choices are all the
| same _SPECIES_ , and their differences are minor genetic and
| cultural groupings driven by geographical isolation, which we
| call "ethnicity" or _" RACE"_. And all the stories you make up
| playing RPGs are, in fact, human dramas. You're pretending that
| the story tensions aren't just ethnic tensions, but that's what
| they are. And when you kill orcs, drow, revenants or other
| "baddies", you're actually just killing stand-ins for humans.
| Humans that your ethnicity/tribe of humans looks down on (if
| you fight non-sentient monsters or plants, I'll let you off
| with that)
| LordDragonfang wrote:
| Technically "species" is also incorrect, since many D&D races
| can produce fertile offspring, whether half-breeds or otherwise
| (half-elf and half-orc have been core races for ages)
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| My instinct would be it's a borrowing from Tolkien, which is
| full of "the race of men" and "the Elvish race" etc.
| doesnt_know wrote:
| Here's my gift link for the full article:
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/30/arts/dungeons-and-dragons...
| drivingmenuts wrote:
| I'd bet Melon Husk hasn't played D&D in years ... I doubt he'd be
| able to even find a table that didn't bow to his every whim.
|
| Honestly, the "species" thing has bothered me for years. I'm not
| sure I'd agree with divorcing physical traits completely, but
| that's easy enough to house-rule, as is everything else about the
| game. I feel sure that anyone getting upset is doing so
| performatively, not because it's actually a problem.
| bjourne wrote:
| For the longest time a mmorpg I used to play used to have gender-
| based bonuses an maluses. So a woman would make a shitty warrior
| and a man an under-powered mage. On the game's boards this was
| argued about forever because many girls wanted to play warriors.
| The guardians of the game were not relenting. Females as strong
| as males were "unrealistic"... In a game where you can shoot
| fireballs, travel through dimensions, go back in time, and
| resurrect the dead....
|
| Eventually, as more and more players quit the game the gender
| differences were dropped. Before that I used to play some female
| characters to get access to the op mage bonuses. But damn, there
| were so many creeps who thought i was a "real" girl.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Women are generally weaker than men, and even in the situation
| that you're explaining, women with a strength penalty could
| still end up stronger than men within the game.
|
| The insistence that acknowledging that women are weaker than
| men is some sort of bigotry is deeply misogynistic. If fantasy
| women are just as strong as men, then real women just need to
| work harder to live up to the standards of men. If women in
| fantasy are as strong as men, then women in reality aren't
| being allowed to see themselves in fantasy.
|
| The repeated justification that women in a fantasy world
| shouldn't resemble women, or "...in a game where you can shoot
| fireballs, travel through dimensions, go back in time, and
| resurrect the dead..." is silly. Women in a game can also _get
| magic powers that make them stronger._ Erasing female
| physicality is erasing women, and replacing them with men
| playing women.
| syngrog66 wrote:
| in D&D race always meant species. No real change there. But the
| idea that there are no common "baseline" traits based on species
| is obviously nuts and contradicted by plenty of real world
| examples.
|
| Thankfully individual DMs and players are free to keep WOTC's
| "liberal" politics trend out of their own gaming experiences if
| they wish. Everyone is free to use their own terms and house
| rules to tailor the base game to taste.
| zzo38computer wrote:
| My opinion is that this is not the way to do it.
|
| > "Races" are now "species."
|
| I think neither word is really "proper", but "race" is shorter.
| (I am not really either for or against this change, and I don't
| really mind this, much.)
|
| They mention that Paizo preferred "ancestry", and that does seem
| better to me than iehter "race" or "species". (However, I think
| it is not really that much of a significant issue, anyways.)
|
| > Some character traits have been divorced from biological
| identity; a mountain dwarf is no longer inherently brawny and
| durable, a high elf no longer intelligent and dexterous by
| definition
|
| I think that is not quite right. On average, a mountain dwarf
| might be brawny and durable, but individual characters should be
| allowed to be difference from averages in many ways; it should
| not require you to be average or above average according to your
| character's race/species/gender/etc, because you can have more
| diversity. But, "diversity" should not mean that such biological
| traits do not apply at all; that is the wrong way to do it.
|
| Also, such things as "intelligence" is not so simply explained by
| a single number anyways; it is more complicated than that.
| Strength is less so, but still can be not so simple, too.
|
| (An example which is separate from the ones mentioned above: If
| your character has hands like scorpion, then there are bonuses to
| some things and penalties to other things, and you might be able
| to grapple by hand as though it is bite, and some tasks that
| would normally only need one hand will now require two hands,
| etc. So, many traits will have advantages and disadvantages. And,
| if you have wings to fly then you can fly; if your character is
| small then can fit into smaller spaces but cannot easily reach
| the stuff in the high shelf (nor attack a taller character's head
| as easily); etc.)
|
| > Robert J. Kuntz, an award-winning game designer who frequently
| collaborated with Gary Gygax, a co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons,
| said he disliked Wizards of the Coast's efforts to legislate from
| above rather than provide room for dungeon masters -- the game's
| ringleaders and referees -- to tailor their individual campaigns.
|
| I think they are right; the game should be individual. You can
| decide if you want to use any rule variants, etc; such a thing is
| common enough anyways. WotC cannot (and should not attempt to)
| control everything.
|
| > In addition to its species, each character in Dungeons &
| Dragons is assigned a class such as bard, druid, rogue or wizard.
|
| I would prefer a skill-based system, although D&D is a class-
| based system. (This is not a complaint; people who do like a
| class-based system might prefer D&D.)
|
| > "People really wanted to be able to mix and match their species
| choice with their character-class choice," Crawford said, adding,
| "They didn't want choosing a dwarf to make them a lesser wizard."
|
| Even if it is not the best combination, it should still be a
| playable character. Sometimes you might want a suboptimal choice,
| but it is not only that. There should be other things that can be
| defined as well, such as skills, etc. You can have the advantages
| and disadvantages of each, in order to make up the character like
| you like to do it.
|
| (Another example would be: A wizard that likes to carry a lot of
| spell books should have enough strength to carry them. Having
| good strength is also helpful in case you run out of spells and
| want to fight by hand, but then you should also need a skill in
| fighting by hand; this is why I like skill-based systems.)
|
| > There was also a tabaxi, a creature with the feline appearance
| and night vision that one would expect of a species created by
| the Cat Lord. "He's a tabaxi adopted into an elven family," said
| Kyle Smith, who created the character, Uldreyin Alma Salamar
| Daelamin the Fifth, for this campaign. "He's also a sorcerer --
| the magic is innate to that. He's deciding between who he is and
| what he was raised in."
|
| This is something that you should be allowed to have. In this
| way, you will be tabaxi (and therefore, have night vision), but
| you had learned elven things (e.g. perhaps elven languages). And,
| is also a sorcerer (so you can cast spells). So, that is good
| that your character is not only one thing. However, you should
| not have to decide between them; you are all of them, isn't it?
|
| > Smith added, "If being a tabaxi didn't matter, then who cares?"
| "He'd just be a fuzzy elf," Cutler chimed in.
|
| It would seem that the rule changes would make that problem. I
| agree it is no good and I explained above.
| mnky9800n wrote:
| I just want to find a good living world game that is 3.5e and not
| on discord. I would wish for a Star Wars saga edition game but
| that is probably asking too much.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| WoTC bought D&D so it's no surprise.
|
| The worst they did is the LoTR Magic The Gathering card series.
| They managed to create black Aragorn and asian Gandalf. And they
| turned Goldberry into a fat woman. I'm sorry but that's simply
| not what the book depicts.
|
| It's not done to unite people. It's not done out of good
| intentions. It's done because there's a very woke political
| agenda behind this.
|
| It's not harmless: it's history rewriting. It's propaganda at
| work.
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