WotC Apologists> There's always been monsters as PCs!
Yeah... It used to be the exception that a Drow wouldn't be Evil.
WotC Apologists> There's always been monsters as PCs!
It's so tiresome.
Greetings!
Exactly, my friend! These apologists are fucking either intentionally or mistakenly "Arguing from the Extreme". Taking the letter of the law, and elevating it above the spirit of the law, so to speak. It is all about the difference in *Framing*. Modern WOTC books front and center monster player characters and weird fucking races, constantly promoting them, glorifying them, and assuming them all to be the fucked up crazy zoo is normal for game world.
Back in the day--Humans were THE STANDARD, THE NORM, with a few normal demi-humans--Elves, Dwarves, Halflings, and Gnomes.
Other crazy races and monsters were more or less hidden away within the Dungeon Master's Guide, with clear and explicit advice that the DM should typically not allow such in their game world, or if they chose to do so, to think long and very carefully about their world, and in any event, proceed to include such crazy races carefully, and with caution. Furthermore, a DM was entirely entitled to merely allow few exceptions as a kind of experiment, so if the player or DM didn't feel the race of character worked or was balanced, then boom--such a character could easily be removed and otherwise explained, without huge and irreparable damage done to the integrity and consistency of the DM's game world.
That overriding sense of caution, of restraint, of exception, and entire DM's authority and judgment being absolutely PRIMARY, is what is sadly absent from the current line of WOTC books, and that absence, that very precise difference in FRAMING is what causes these kinds of epic debates between mostly "Old School" DM's and Players, and WOTC "New School" apologists.
Semper Fidelis,
SHARK