Reply To: D&D officially turning Forgotten Realms sights away from Euro inspired campaigns

[greyhunter88 1654xp 4]

Shrug…

Maybe be a bit more reflective? It’s a bit silly to come in dismissing contrary opinions as “vitriolic rants”, calling out specific posters yet accusing others of making ad-hominems, and naming others raging ideologues (a bit dramatic, honestly) while you sweep in purporting to represent the silent and beneficent masses who accept the Dogmatic Good.

I posted on here with two main concerns, which I feel are pretty on-topic.

1) My friends (one of them non-white and one of them non-male) were told, by people whose language and tone very much conjured your own, that they were not allowed to play the characters they wanted to play because it was not “sensitive to cultural diversity”.
I find that concerning, and it’s not something I would like to see pervade any more of the hobby. So when I see an article touting a new product’s “diversity”, rather than its quality, I fret. You might not think my personal musings, because they might contradict your own, are worthy of being posted on this forum. Given your distaste for others “policing” the hobby, though, I would assume you’d agree with me on this point. Surely you could never tell another that they “can’t play” a certain character, right? So maybe you failed to empathize with my personal experience, outlier though it may be, and instead chose to focus on what you wanted my argument to be.

2) Directly to the point of these new WoTC settings, I posit that if they become part of the generic setting, rather than part of specialized expansions, they will actually lose the elements that make them unique. I love diverse settings. I love playing in unique settings, whether that be culturally, historically, or even thematically unique.
If D&D made a new module/setting, similar to Oriental Adventures, that was self-contained, that would be awesome.
If they add a source book talking about the land of “Not-Japan” in the Forgotten Realms, however, that becomes ‘standard’. If there is a Samurai class in there that’s better at stacking AC or damage than a Paladin or a Fighter, say goodbye to those other classes. At the very least in any kind of pick-up or organized play. The samurai will lose its cultural, philosophical or aesthetic raison-d’etre, and just become a renamed “fighting class”, like what is happening to Paladins in Pathfinder 2E. I think this is a shame, because a samurai is so much more than a re-skinned fighter, and that will become lost if their inclusion isn’t genuine.

Look at the Tiefling. Back in earlier editions, playing a tiefling was special. You had to go out of your way to do it, because it wasn’t really ‘standard’. Now, I’m more surprised when someone doesn’t play a tiefling than the other way around. The net result is that the tiefling has lost any and all style and appeal, and become a re-skinned human with slightly different starting stats. Do many actually treat them as rare and outlandish half-demon spawn, full of malice and potential danger? I’m sure some do, but I don’t see them that often.

Yes, this is my opinion, no more valid than yours.
Yes, everyone is allowed to play a tiefling demithurge ronin if they want; it’s their game.
No, I don’t have a problem with these books existing.
No, I don’t think the sky is falling. No need to crown me with all these villainous qualities I really haven’t tried hard enough to deserve.