Quote from: Ruprecht on September 28, 2022, 02:27:00 PM

I could be wrong but I think it is mostly DMs that spend time on blogs and forums and such.

That is possible.

I'll just quote myself from the comment I left on YT earlier today.

QuoteWhat these wokists ultimately want doesn't even need a rulebook. They can just sit around a table and describe how their self-insert blue-haired sex-positive trans-halfling tiefling with wings and magic blood does amazing awesome at everything. Because that's all they want: to use the game as self-validation for their own debauched lifestyle.

But they can never be content with no one really caring what they do in their private lives, so they must FORCE others into caring. And they do that through bully tactics. That's why the goalposts keep shifting, because if they simply take the win when they get it, they will eventually slip back into obscurity. These aren't just narcisists, these are full-blown sociopaths.

I always say: the best thing you can do is ignore them. Simply don't give them the attention they crave.

Pundit disagreed with the last sentence, saying you can never ignore them because they will never ignore you.

I should clarify that by "ignore them" I mostly meant not capitulating to their demands. I also whole-hearted believe they should be mocked mercilessly. Do not try to engage lefties through logic or reason, they do not care at all about principles or consistency. They only care about winning... forever. They are perpetual victims, and there will always be a new battle for them to win. If you don't give in, they will eventually get bored and look for an easier target. Because they ARE bullies, and bullies are often wimps.

As for the topic, it's being discussed to death in two other threads, so I'm not going to get too deep into my opinions here. I'm not sure anyone can definitively claim that WotC wants "grey goo" characters, even if that is the eventual goal of insane wokists. Wizards loves their crunchy mechanics and endless content bloat (it's how they make their money after all), so I doubt they're going to just strip the system down to it's bare bones. My prediction is that removing Ability score adjustments is going to be replaced by more strict lockdowns on classes.  They can then sell "diversity" by offering dozens of special snowflake abilities pre-packaged in little 20-level bundles, which can then be laid atop the non-bioessentionalist races.

Dnd can be bad at modelling extreme differences in attributes. The attributes are to much of a backbone in the system. High attributes are critical for your build, and mid or low attributes are often completely irrelevant. Can skew how you allocate things.

But when majority of char gen boils down to attributes, race, and class you better make all of them distinct in some way. And I still think attribute modifiers are fun.

I've been wanting to give some negative modifiers, but that incentives even heavier into certain class selection. Maybe you could do an option between two negative modifiers for most races?

Humans - Lawful Neutral (Neutral)
+2 Con
-2 Wisdom or -2 Charisma

Half-Orcs - Chaotic Neutral (Chaotic)
+2 Str
-2 Intelligence or -2 Charisma

Elves - Chaotic Good (Good)
+2 Dex
-2 Str or -2 Con

Halflings - Neutral Good (Good)
+2 Cha
-2 Str or -2 Int

Dwarves - Lawful Neutral (Lawful)
+2 Wis
-2 Cha or -2 Dex

Gnomes - True Neutral (Neutral)
+2 Int
-2 Str or -2 Con

Something like that.

The Alignment bit Explained
It's just my own takes on alignment, nothing official. It's divided into a default alignment and an alignment affinity.

Most members of this race will be of the stated alignment. Most other members will be of an alignment matching the parenthesis. About 10% will be any other alignments.
So for Humans: Most humans will be Lawful Neutral and most others will be some flavour of neutral. Most half orcs will be chaotic neutral, most others will be chaotic good or chaotic evil.
Player characters being outside the norm does not have to match this and starts the game as either any alignment they want, any neutral alignment, or unaligned, dependent on if you want to run alignment as a guide to behavior, a cosmic force, or something you save for later.

Quote from: Zelen on September 28, 2022, 03:33:06 PM

Quote from: Corolinth on September 28, 2022, 03:18:39 PM
I don't think WotC's decision is actually driven by wokists. I'll bet they took a look at data on D&D Beyond and noticed that 75% or more of the characters are variations on the same 8-10 race/class combinations. Wokism is just the spin they put on it, because that's what they think is hot right now.

I don't think that's the case. Any evidence to back this up?

His claim sounds like exaggerated made-up numbers, but there may be an underlying point. There is D&D Beyond data from back in 2017 here:

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/is-your-dd-character-rare/

Including only the core races from the Player's Handbook, the top 22 out of 108 combos account for the majority of all characters. That may have become more concentrated since 2017. I don't see updated data from quick search, though. 

I would take half-orc as an example. 53% of half-orc characters are either Barbarian or Fighter, while only 2.8% of them are Wizard. But if one were to roll attributes by 3d6 in order with racial modifiers, then 35% of half-orc characters should still have a higher Intelligence than Strength. I'd claim that half-orcs are far more lopsided than the modifiers would imply to random-roll, because of the min-max effect of racial bonuses. I discuss the min-max effect in another thread here:

https://www.therpgsite.com/pen-paper-roleplaying-games-rpgs-discussion/min-maxing-and-racial-ability-score-adjustments/

Quote from: Corolinth on September 28, 2022, 03:18:39 PM
... Nobody plays humans, because why would you? But also, nobody plays dwarf fighters, all the fighters are half-orcs or dragonborn. The elves are all rangers and rogues, no elf wizards or druids. The wizards are all gnomes, the warlocks are all tieflings.

Nobody plays the CORE human. The variant human is chosen quite often from what I've seen. Wokists seem to love tieflings, dragonborn, and dhampir. I guess because they're either edgelords or they have some weird demon/dragon-porn fetish (there's an actual name for it that I don't care to look up or remember). Half-elf also seems to be more popular than full elf, the reasons for that I can only assume at (though the virtue of being "mixed race" may be a factor in some cases).

Quote from: GhostNinja on September 28, 2022, 04:04:38 PM
Understood.  What are you switching to in order to get your fantasy fix?

My own thing.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on September 28, 2022, 05:43:03 PM


My own thing.

Cool.  I am looking into Basic Fantasy and a couple other ones.  Right now I have the three core books, Tasha's, Xanatars and the Ghosts of Saltmarsh book and their petty changes have not affected my game yet.

I have been saying for years that the only way that crowd will be pacified is to remove races and alignment from the game rules.   They are simply unable to comprehend the totally alien intelligences that would be present in all of those humanoids they flock to anyway.  May as well just chuck those rules out and they can describe themselves in the 18 pages of backstory no-one reads but themselves.

One issue with the idea that ability score modifiers help reinforce archetypes is that that isn't really true all of the time. With Halflings? Sure, a Dex bonus helps reinforce the idea that they're Thieves/Rogues, but Elves also getting an equal Dex bonus (and in older editions a Con penalty) doesn't help reinforce the idea that they're Wizards and even less that they're Fighter-Mages (their true inclination). Dwarves getting a Con bonus might work for Fighters, but a Con bonus is actually good for everyone.

If anything, I'd say that the changes presented in the Character Origins "playtest" document help reinforce archetypes better, cuz Elves actually get bonus spells now, so all elves really are wizards now (or Druids/Rangers in the case of Wild Elves). Same with Gnomes and all the magical races. Orcs get Adrenaline Rush and Reckless Endurance (they already had that second one, though). Halflings get stuff like Luck, Nimbleness and Bravery, and also get Stealth for free, etc.

So that archetype representation isn't out the window, it's just done through racial traits now, which more precisely convey the sort of talents those races are supposed to have. All the criticism of these changes I've seen on these boards seem to focus on they getting rid of ability modifiers, which is only a tiny element of what they actually changed, and one that didn't always reinforce racial archetypes or inclinations as well as people seem to think they did. And this isn't even getting into the the whole discussion of Ability Modifiers vs Min/Max Ability Requirements and other methods of handling racial ability score values that have been rehashed over and over again in other threads.

Quote from: jhkim on September 28, 2022, 04:40:53 PM

Quote from: Zelen on September 28, 2022, 03:33:06 PM

Quote from: Corolinth on September 28, 2022, 03:18:39 PM
I don't think WotC's decision is actually driven by wokists. I'll bet they took a look at data on D&D Beyond and noticed that 75% or more of the characters are variations on the same 8-10 race/class combinations. Wokism is just the spin they put on it, because that's what they think is hot right now.

I don't think that's the case. Any evidence to back this up?

His claim sounds like exaggerated made-up numbers, but there may be an underlying point. There is D&D Beyond data from back in 2017 here:

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/is-your-dd-character-rare/

Including only the core races from the Player's Handbook, the top 22 out of 108 combos account for the majority of all characters. That may have become more concentrated since 2017. I don't see updated data from quick search, though. 

I would take half-orc as an example. 53% of half-orc characters are either Barbarian or Fighter, while only 2.8% of them are Wizard. But if one were to roll attributes by 3d6 in order with racial modifiers, then 35% of half-orc characters should still have a higher Intelligence than Strength. I'd claim that half-orcs are far more lopsided than the modifiers would imply to random-roll, because of the min-max effect of racial bonuses. I discuss the min-max effect in another thread here:

https://www.therpgsite.com/pen-paper-roleplaying-games-rpgs-discussion/min-maxing-and-racial-ability-score-adjustments/

I wonder how useful data from D&D Beyond truly is to determine player preferences, given that you only get access to a limited range of subclasses for free (and I believe certain subraces or even races as well), which is bound to affect player choices. And then add to that the fact that it only accounts for people who actually play using D&D Beyond.

I only tried it recently, cuz I got invited to an online game that hasn't even started yet, but my character has been made for close to a month now. And I actually wanted to make her Arcane Trickster, but that subclass isn't available for free (she isn't level 3 yet, though, so can't pick any subclass regardless). How many people here actually use D&D Beyond? And how regularly?

This is why I only allow humans in my setting. At most I allow ancestry backgrounds like tiefling, dhampir, or dragonborn. These characters still look like human beings with minor and concealable inhuman features.

Quote from: VisionStorm on September 28, 2022, 07:25:01 PM
How many people here actually use D&D Beyond? And how regularly?

I have used it in the past. I wasn't really satisfied with it. Free version is way too limited. I don't want to buy content on there for multiple reasons - if it should at any point go under or be replaced with some other platform, then all of my content is useless, if changes are made that I personally disagree with I have no choice in the implementation of those changes into the content I have already paid for. I still have the first printings of the 5E PHB, DMG, and MM. If I decide I want to play or run 5E at any point in the future for some reason, I'm fine with using those without the changes already made to those books in subsequent printing and the additional books that came after.

Quote from: jhkim on September 28, 2022, 04:40:53 PM
There is D&D Beyond data from back in 2017 here:

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/is-your-dd-character-rare/

Jhkim,

That's the old (2017) dataset of 100,000 characters. For a newer (2020) dataset of 30 Million characters:

https://www.belloflostsouls.net/2020/07/dd-and-the-most-popular-class-is.html

Quote from: Palleon on September 28, 2022, 06:53:12 PM
I have been saying for years that the only way that crowd will be pacified is to remove races and alignment from the game rules.   They are simply unable to comprehend the totally alien intelligences that would be present in all of those humanoids they flock to anyway.  May as well just chuck those rules out and they can describe themselves in the 18 pages of backstory no-one reads but themselves.

That wont passify them.  They weill find something else to be offended about.  It's not about the races, they are professional victims and they always need something to be offened about.  Not to mention who cares what they think?  They arent gamers who are actually playing D&D anyway.

Quote from: Dropbear on September 28, 2022, 08:15:08 PM

I have used it in the past. I wasn't really satisfied with it. Free version is way too limited. I don't want to buy content on there for multiple reasons - if it should at any point go under or be replaced with some other platform, then all of my content is useless, if changes are made that I personally disagree with I have no choice in the implementation of those changes into the content I have already paid for. I still have the first printings of the 5E PHB, DMG, and MM. If I decide I want to play or run 5E at any point in the future for some reason, I'm fine with using those without the changes already made to those books in subsequent printing and the additional books that came after.

I think that it is crazy that the online versions of the books are only $20 cheaper than the print ones.   Yeah it is way too limited for me to use anyway.

And I do not allow electronic devices at my table so people can create characters using it, but they need to print them out.