To the above post, I won’t quote it for reasons of brevity but from what I have read there seems to be an ‘equalling out’ of all races? So any kind of innate advantages or disadvantages are done away with? Is there a chance this has anything to do with real world politics at all, everyone is equal etc etc?
It seems a strange decision regardless, a bit like making a RPG with animals as characters and all the different species have no biological advantages or disadvantages and they’re fundamentally all the same. Or am I totally misreading this?
Basically, yes - that is what is happening. It's a move that is being made based on responding to the hypersensitive, offended-at-everything social media crowd; it's a design choice that literally does not care whether it makes for a better or more interesting game, and is made solely based on what they think they need to do to stop the twitter troglodytes cancelling them (the secret is there is nothing - because that crowd cannot be satisfied because the atmosphere there is one of taking offence by default; they cannot be pleased and Wizards will learn this the hard way if they keep on as they are). The problem is that it's gone well pest the concept of being inclusive or sensitive - it's gone out the other side to the point where being different at all, or rather the act of showing people as being different, is immediately vilified.
They're reached a point where they're afraid to define anything, or describe anything, because giving things definition, descriptions or cultural background makes them different,and you can't have people being different, that's bad - or rather, they'd phrase it as illustrating the ways in which different peoples are different is 'racist' and Wizards are terrified of the twitter crowd giving them that brand. It's gone so far that any trace of different peoples being intrinsically different from one another is being removed as much as possible.
That different peoples are different is something we should celebrate, not something we should be trying to erase. It isn't racist to say that orcs, by their birth and species, are naturally stronger than other comparative humanoids; pretending that they Aren't is erasure of their uniqueness and a part of their biological identity as a species (and we are talking about species here, not cultural sects; literally, physically, biologically different creatures entirely; fantasy in D&D species are not and have never been analogues for human races; they may have cultural inspirations in some places, but they are nevertheless their own peoples, not representatives for something else).
Originally Posted by dwig
I think that some of these concerns could be mitigated via stat blocks for typical non-player characters of various professions. Racial characteristics could be reflected in the fact that NPC orcs are stronger than NPC halflings.
Except.... they're not. Those propensities are going away. There will be no 'regular halfings' or 'regular orcs'; the new races don't even HAVE those propensities listed any more, so we-as-creators-of-NPCs literally cannot fall back on those for them. They don't exist for the new races, and the won't exist for the current ones, if these changes are made. You can't even buy the older books digitally any more - they've removed things like Volo's Guide for purchase entirely.
Originally Posted by RagnarokCzD
I completely agree with everything you said Niara ... except this one:
Originally Posted by Niara
Dwarves are still sturdy and resilient of constitution as an innate and natural part of their biology, making them hardier compared to other humanoids... Only, not...
Since Dwarves sub-species was erased from existence ... and they all now get Toughness ...
No, because, as I mentioned, that already existed and was not going anywhere. All they've done is made it so that ALL dwarves are Hill dwarves and Mountain dwarves no longer exist at all. There is nothing that has actually been given back, to replace the work done by the racial ability score propensity.
Anyway... That's my comment on this comment, so I'll leave it there probably.
