By non-technical I mean that instead of the (to me) gobbledygook you see in dictionaries — with all the little accents and crap — it was improvised, but made perfect sense: Moonshae = MOON-shay, Amn = AWM. I loved that approach, and used it for years in my own games.

Semi-related: The Forgotten Realms Adventures hardback had a page detailing the collective nouns for inhabitants of specific cities and locales. So a person from Amn is an Amnian, while a person from Mulmaster is a Mulmasterite. That book is crazy-awesome in all sorts of little geeky ways like that.

Over at Paizo.com, there’s a pronunciation key for the proper nouns in their Pathfinder campaign setting.

It’s a start.

My reason was the following though: Tieflings, Dragonborn, and Warlocks have all the earmarks of the annoying-ass fanboy choices. You might as well have put “good drow” and Jedi in the PHB.

Re: “Quick question: Do members of other religions get questioned about their gaming choices? Or is it only the “uncool” ones?”

I’m much more likely to question the “Cool” ones. For the same reason as above in fact. I’m quite frankly sick and tired of hearing how awesome and oppressed wiccans et al… are.

Good point. It stresses the other aspect that D&D is always about once you purchase the books: It’s the players’ game. Change what you want and make it your own.

I will not be using Dragonborn, as I already have draconic races that I prefer, in my campaign and Tieflings will remain as bit players.

~ John

Finally I decided that I would trust the game and let the races be included for starting character options. I’ll give them a chance and see where it goes from there. What’s the worse that can happen? They break the game? Not like I haven’t had to recover a session from that kind of problem before. I would hope that if the playtesting revealed the races to cause problems in the game that they would have been scratched from the system. They weren’t, so I might as well take them for a test drive.

As for why Wyatt excluded a race and did his religion influence that decision, well I don’t think that it matters. GMs can choose to do whatever they want with their game. The only people who have the right to question those decisions are the players at that GM’s table. If Wyatt’s beliefs, ideas for the setting, or whims are why he chose to do it those are all fine reasons. It is his game. That is all there is to it.

In the end, I can change whatever I want with the game once I am more familiar with it. Right now I’m not familiar enough with the system. I have to play it some more and run an actual campaign before I can question the design and come to meaningful results. Otherwise I’m just cheating myself and my players.

I agree that it’s a bit strange Mr. Wyatt’s not allowing tieflings into his campaign, but I’m actually sort of pleased to hear it. I think it’s an excellent representation of something I’ve been shouting at the winds since 4E came out: you don’t have to use the D&D “world” and the things within it if you don’t want to. No one’s forcing you to have dragonborn, or preventing you from having several massive, civilized empires warring with eachother. If the credited author of the DMG doesn’t allow tieflings, then dammit, then you don’t have to, either. He’s setting a good example.

Of course, it’s a bit late for me, since I already went and shoehorned tieflings and dragonborn into my setting…

Making them a core race robs us of that. And I feel a little unconfortable about that (I’m a member of a non-cool religion, I guess, by the way… I’m a Quaker… although I don’t know how cool/non-cool that is in the US… I’m British). And I think it’s great that James Wyatt talks about his religion … and possibly a bit of a shame that we then interpret his decision to ban tieflings as a possible consequence of his faith. Although I’m not having a go at any of you; it is interesting, from a game design point of view, and James Wyatt has made it a discussion issue by his talking about it.

The tiefling (and the dragonborn) inclusion does annoy me more because gnomes got left out.

Personally, I wouldn’t have a problem playing a Tiefling; per Christian doctrine, we’re all flawed. My wife (practicing Catholic, novice gamer) wouldn’t choose to play one until she was more comfortable with gaming, but she doesn’t have a problem with the concept.

After all, we don’t choose our families, or our heritage. I don’t get to choose if my grandfather’s brother was a Nazi, or my great-grandfather an IRA bomber. (BTW, they weren’t.) I only get to define my life by the choices and decisions I make.

You know, that’s a more than fair question. And in my post I tried not to put give any more weight to that possible motivation than any other. Point in fact, I think it’s great that Wyatt is upfront about his faith and gaming interests. And if I had to bet, I’d say it was simply a creative choice, perhaps influenced by whatever is cooking in the Forgotten Realms.

As a member of an “uncool” faith (I’m a Congregationlist) I have to admit that the idea of a tiefling as a player race is a little unsettling to my own sensibilities. I don’t think I would ban it from my game, or even refuse to play such a character, but I can’t shake that feeling.

Given a choice, I’d rather play a gnome (and they’re not exactly the most innocent or saintly folk in mythology, if you get right down to it).
Our gaming conventions are being challenged by this new edition, and that’s not a bad thing either.

Still, it seems an odd choice, doesn’t it? A new game, a new player race — and the first glance we get into a principal designer’s approach to a setting consciously omits it. Perhaps future posts will illuminate this decision.