I think having races and cultures with a strong identity (even one which I dont agree with or find objectionable) is more inherently interesting then ones that don't
These two things are not the same.
Cultures should absolutely have a strong identity. It's what makes them a Culture.
(Well, that or hyperintelligent starships with whimsical names.)
Races/species with the same sort of strong identity are weird. The idea that every single member of this species, regardless of how separated the populations are, belongs to the same culture, breaks verisimilitude hard. It requires an explanation, and those explanations typically range from unsatisfying to downright creepy.
That is true from a modern perspective when you have food, shelter and safety available. You have many options. Now go back to a time when humans, orcs, dwarves and tabaxi were not the top of the food chain. Your survival options start to limit. If you want to look at various barbarian tribes that swept through Europe, they tended to have very similar survival tactics, culture and behavior. Once they conquered the cities and integrated, they could then diversify a bit. Not everyone wants to play a game based on the modern world where you pretend there is prom and baristas. Players play to be the hero, the conqueror and that requires foils. Typically the barbarian at the gates, the Visigoths, the Francs, the Goths, the Timurids etc and drow, orc, goblin, hobgoblin, bugbear, ogres oh my are their stand ins.
I'm a fan of the change as well, and I think it was a design choice just as much as a cultural one. Even if you did want to run orcs as villains (which is totally fine - everyone should be able to tell their own stories), what were the chances that the handful of orc stat blocks were going to meet your needs? Now, you can use Warrior, Tough and Berserker and none of them would feel out of place at all. And each of them does different things and present different challenges to the players.
But maybe in your game orcs aren't like that - maybe they're pirates in your game. Or knights. Or maybe the elves are the berserkers. Or maybe you don't want species to be a central theme at all and all of your humanoid enemies are a mix of various species.
It just gives a lot more flexibility and raises the chances that more of these stat blocks are actually useful to more DMs.
Having pre made stats unique to the race gives flavor to the game, a common entry point and a basis that the player can choose to go against or go with. It also doesn't mean that you can't have a good aligned orc tribe. But taking the stats away is a pain to deal with. Rules lawyer types are going to use it against you and say why does this knight get to come back up, he should have died, nope he has orc traits, welcome to arguments at the table 101 courtesy of a game decision. A lot of younger players tend to be rules as written now, they are different from older players who tend to have more flexibility.
I'm having issues with the change and I'm not buying the MM because I'll have to copy and redo so much of the content, its ridiculous, to keep these monsters in a playable state. Especially when converting prior content. Orcs are a core villain for most starter modules out there, and I'm not down on having to covert 4-5 stat blocks that are flavorless to begin with because a small group of players are upset. The best wait to satiate everyone would have been to release the monsters with statblocks already created with racials applied and leave the text out. At least then the MM 6E is now usable out of the box to everyone and conversions of content is easier and a standardized product with easier player buy in.
That is true from a modern perspective when you have food, shelter and safety available. You have many options. Now go back to a time when humans, orcs, dwarves and tabaxi were not the top of the food chain. Your survival options start to limit.
Which still has absolutely nothing to do with having a strong identity for a species; similarity is driven by environment, economics, and technology.
Typically the barbarian at the gates, the Visigoths, the Francs, the Goths, the Timurids etc and drow, orc, goblin, hobgoblin, bugbear, ogres oh my are their stand ins.
'Barbarian' is about culture (and just being Not From Around Here), not about race -- and it should be obvious that all of your real world examples are humans.
That is true from a modern perspective when you have food, shelter and safety available. You have many options. Now go back to a time when humans, orcs, dwarves and tabaxi were not the top of the food chain. Your survival options start to limit.
Which still has absolutely nothing to do with having a strong identity for a species; similarity is driven by environment, economics, and technology.
Typically the barbarian at the gates, the Visigoths, the Francs, the Goths, the Timurids etc and drow, orc, goblin, hobgoblin, bugbear, ogres oh my are their stand ins.
'Barbarian' is about culture (and just being Not From Around Here), not about race -- and it should be obvious that all of your real world examples are humans.
WotC is treating characters and monsters as humans now. There is little to no difference, what matters now is culture. Hence why I gave you cultural references to set expectations. They are telling us now to just use the Knight and call it an Orc now. Just saying. So if we are going to be playing a game where everything is humans, then you should take the cultural examples as valid.
I think having races and cultures with a strong identity (even one which I dont agree with or find objectionable) is more inherently interesting then ones that don't because it actually offers a lot of opportunity for inspiration and such for both players and GMs; it's frankly my biggest problem with the player options from both mord's and the 2024 PHB: if you strip away any references to physical characteristics they're pretty much entirely interchangable with how they're described.
I get that this isn't a popular take around here and that WotC keeps screaming "setting agnostic" at the top of it's lungs whenever issues like this get pointed out but they're also consistently going back to established settings when releasing materials and also setting themselves up for a ton of work when it comes to establish the extent settings and the races/cultures therein.
What you may find interesting, others find to be harmful and this game is meant to be enjoyed by everyone. If you want that stuff in your game, no one is going to kick down your door and make you stop, but others should have the opportunity to play without having to be reminded of the game's controversial and painful roots.
And what you find harmful and to be enjoyed what you consider meant to be enjoyed by everyone, isn't to everyone you are finding that out in this thread. There is no monolith on this and it gets worse when you are dealing with people familiar with the content and have played with those designers. You need to have villain's and foils in the game. And having various drow, orcs, goblins etc being evil fits that role. Don't get me wrong, the current writing direction by D&D is aimed at 8 year old and above in my opinion so trying to be samey with everything could be useful when playing with children, which is how I adjust lore when DM'ing for kids. As to take up to the 8yr and up content, so far less than 4M characters have been built in D&D Beyond for 2024 and that is very low. I'm running 5E games at conventions and online, and generally have a wait list. I'm running Age of Worms (3.5E content) and I have 5 people waiting to get in the main group. No complaints on using original lore, they ask to bring their friends. Typically half of the new players become DM's using older content as well. This is anecdotal, but it is what it is.
If you really want to make a plea to authority (essentially WotC agrees with me - really dude?), then I suggest you look at Dungeon Magazine and Dragon magazine and you'll see a lot of current high level designers at Paizo and WotC and read their content, it doesn't agree with your statement you'll find a diversity of opinions. What you are seeing is an official company line from the marketing department - not from all of the designers, not by a long shot. Look up Dungeon Magazine 124 for Age of Worms, and look at the designer names on the adventure path and read it the village of Diamond Back. You can understand a persons views based on what they create. The town alone is incredibly well made and would make a small group of people clutch their pearls at gambling, brothel's and drugs oh my. Plenty of factions, adventure seeds and a good town to take you to level 20. WotC hasn't written a real town like that for 5E+.
You are confusing a few points here, which I am happy to clear up:
Reduction of harm is important.
No one claimed to be an absolute authority.
Villains can exist without harmful stereotypes or without needing to leverage biological determinism.
Furthermore, you misidentified me making a plea to authority (seriously, this was something someone else said) while also making an appeal to tradition?! Setting aside that WotC is the authority on WotC IPs, please make sure you are responding to the person you mean to. Additionally, people are often wiling to compromise on some issues that they might find distasteful just to play the game. Many people have not realized that 'no D&D is better than bad D&D', so your wait lists are virtually meaningless here and would not be commentary on the lore of the games even if that were not the case for a variety of reasons. Not the least of which is the anecdotal nature of it, but also because those player's feelings on the content does not serve to erase the feelings that others may have who you may not feel has value.
This is a very confused, if emotional argument. What Paizo says or does is irrelevant to D&D. I am baffled as to why you are including that company in this discussion at all. At the end of the day, WotC made an intentional decision to make their content accessible to more people. Part of this decision necessitated revising content and throwing out some long held and weirdly-coveted ideas, so that those who were previously harmed, as those people define it, felt they were able to play and enjoy this game fully. You can add whatever biological determinism you want to your game - it's your party. But people always matter more than ideas.
WotC is treating characters and monsters as humans now. There is little to no difference, what matters now is culture. Hence why I gave you cultural references to set expectations. They are telling us now to just use the Knight and call it an Orc now. Just saying. So if we are going to be playing a game where everything is humans, then you should take the cultural examples as valid.
This was an argument about whether species should have a strong identity -- i.e. arguing that what 2024 is doing is wrong. You're not going to get very far arguing that 2024 is wrong because 2024 is right.
D&D absolutely needs foes for the PCs to fight. Some groups of enemies will in fact consist primarily of a single species. There's just no reason for the rules to tell the DM what species the enemy should be made up of.
WotC is treating characters and monsters as humans now. There is little to no difference, what matters now is culture. Hence why I gave you cultural references to set expectations. They are telling us now to just use the Knight and call it an Orc now. Just saying. So if we are going to be playing a game where everything is humans, then you should take the cultural examples as valid.
This was an argument about whether species should have a strong identity -- i.e. arguing that what 2024 is doing is wrong. You're not going to get very far arguing that 2024 is wrong because 2024 is right.
D&D absolutely needs foes for the PCs to fight. Some groups of enemies will in fact consist primarily of a single species. There's just no reason for the rules to tell the DM what species the enemy should be made up of.
Yeah 2024 is wrong by telling people to just add racials essentially to build your own monster based on this stat, it leads to sameness. And telling people to use 2014 is a reason not to buy 2024. I'm running VTT and I'm not liking a company telling me to spend my time building their monsters for them because they decided for political reason and not game play reasons to provide statblocks. I'm money rich and time poor and when you are running 4 campaigns you tend to avoid time sinks. Now, 2024 is right for you, and I'm happy. But the decisions 2024 made on not providing premade stats is not wrong for a lot of their player base as well. One of the good things about D&D was you could easily take old content, use the MM and for the most party insert newer edition content and its playable. You can still do that with 2024, just remake all the humanoid races. It's D&D with extra steps, what were they thinking?
I'm a fan of the change as well, and I think it was a design choice just as much as a cultural one. Even if you did want to run orcs as villains (which is totally fine - everyone should be able to tell their own stories), what were the chances that the handful of orc stat blocks were going to meet your needs? Now, you can use Warrior, Tough and Berserker and none of them would feel out of place at all. And each of them does different things and present different challenges to the players.
But maybe in your game orcs aren't like that - maybe they're pirates in your game. Or knights. Or maybe the elves are the berserkers. Or maybe you don't want species to be a central theme at all and all of your humanoid enemies are a mix of various species.
It just gives a lot more flexibility and raises the chances that more of these stat blocks are actually useful to more DMs.
Exactly. Instead of one Orc statblock in the MM we now have 45. The only people who see that as a bad thing seemingly want Orcs to stay one-dimensional in perpetuity.
Yeah 2024 is wrong by telling people to just add racials essentially to build your own monster based on this stat, it leads to sameness.
2024 could certainly do with better advice on how to customize stat blocks to create a distinctive flavor for your enemy group, but having dozens of largely duplicate NPC stat blocks is a colossal waste of pages. For CR 1+ creatures, you can generally just add a PC species block and assume it won't significantly affect CR, pretty much the only PC species that will actually warrant a CR change of 1 are Aasimar (blinding radiance is a lot of damage) and Human (if you take Tough as your origin feat and assume it's based on HD, not CR), the only real problem is the CR 1/8, 1/4, and 1/2 mooks.
Exactly. Instead of one Orc statblock in the MM we now have 45. The only people who see that as a bad thing seemingly want Orcs to stay one-dimensional in perpetuity.
So at what species we stop this are we next going to only have dragons whittled down to their age groups and no colors? Just add the flavor you want/need and go look up the lore you need for your campaign?
This is only a good direction for the game if one assumes players that want the traditional stats/lore are promoting a part of the game that has long since been left by the wayside. Do you really need 45 options for an Orc in the rules, talk about paralysis from analysis. I guess we should start rolling up npc's and monsters same as we do PC's. Which here on DDB has gotten ridiculous as of late.
It is like they are combining the worst parts of 4e and 5e to make 5.5, and people are throwing everyone that disagrees with the change is to be cutaway from the game and labeled. It is not a good direction or look. The game is suffering because of it heck this site is suffering from it.
Exactly. Instead of one Orc statblock in the MM we now have 45. The only people who see that as a bad thing seemingly want Orcs to stay one-dimensional in perpetuity.
So at what species we stop this are we next going to only have dragons whittled down to their age groups and no colors? Just add the flavor you want/need and go look up the lore you need for your campaign?
This is only a good direction for the game if one assumes players that want the traditional stats/lore are promoting a part of the game that has long since been left by the wayside. Do you really need 45 options for an Orc in the rules, talk about paralysis from analysis. I guess we should start rolling up npc's and monsters same as we do PC's. Which here on DDB has gotten ridiculous as of late.
It is like they are combining the worst parts of 4e and 5e to make 5.5, and people are throwing everyone that disagrees with the change is to be cutaway from the game and labeled. It is not a good direction or look. The game is suffering because of it heck this site is suffering from it.
I don't think 2024 is going to be an issue in the long run. It's irrelevant to the groups I run. I only lost one player to 6E out 12 D&D players. I'm not seeing the conversion and the MM 2024 other than the visible stats, it is going to cost me too much work in VTT to make it usable. Maybe Fantasy Grounds, Roll 20 and Foundry VTT are such a smaller use case that it won't matter for those running 1E to 3.5E content updated to 5E. That is the only reasoning I can give WotC at this time.
So at what species we stop this are we next going to only have dragons whittled down to their age groups and no colors?
It would totally be possible to redo dragons as "look up CR on this table to find base stats, then apply this color template", and it would arguably be a better experience for a DM, because currently as a DM you can easily run into the problem of "The story is appropriate to a black dragon, but I need about CR 10 to match the PCs... guess I should reskin a young red dragon?" The only problem with templates is that they don't tell you how to apply a species template, and the low number of templates (a tough plays totally differently from a orc, but that's because one of them has 32 hp and 5 damage, and other has 15 hp and 9 damage, not because one of them is an orc).
So at what species we stop this are we next going to only have dragons whittled down to their age groups and no colors? Just add the flavor you want/need and go look up the lore you need for your campaign?
Humanoids are defined by their profession, not dragons. Are you familiar with "Slippery Slope Fallacy?"
So at what species we stop this are we next going to only have dragons whittled down to their age groups and no colors?
It would totally be possible to redo dragons as "look up CR on this table to find base stats, then apply this color template", and it would arguably be a better experience for a DM, because currently as a DM you can easily run into the problem of "The story is appropriate to a black dragon, but I need about CR 10 to match the PCs... guess I should reskin a young red dragon?" The only problem with templates is that they don't tell you how to apply a species template, and the low number of templates (a tough plays totally differently from a orc, but that's because one of them has 32 hp and 5 damage, and other has 15 hp and 9 damage, not because one of them is an orc).
And this makes the game better how? For many it does not for them it is turning the game in to a lot more work too much for some, making the game harder for the DM is not a way to bring more people to the game, it is just a reason to look elsewhere. When does the game become so generic with meaningless skins draped over mannequins that it is no longer D&D other than marketing? The game is losing it's meaning this way. Everything thing is turning into nothing on this path.
How long before the game is just a 300 page book for everything, buy the book and do what you want. A red dragon that is just a black dragon reskinned sure do it. That is just the game engine using all homebrew, how copyrightable is the product at the end of this path? Will it increase short term sales, likely, but at what cost?
Cultures are still there I think they are just in the DMG rather than the monster manual and the DMG is where deciding how your world's cultures and history work belongs. I don't see how it is more generic to have all npc models for all races compared to only 2 or 3 stat blocks for a single race. Like I can make Warcraft style shaman orcs by putting in druid or ranger style npc's if I want. It is much easier to add a "species defining trait" like dark vision to a cultist for an orc worshiper of asmodeus than it is to come up with a dozen stat blocks to represent all the different types of orcs that I may want in my campaign from level 1 to 12.
It effectively multiplies the monster count by a large number. The 2014 listings aren't good even if I want to use orcs as my villains, because there aren't enough distinct orc templates -- I'm still going to have to homebrew my CR 1/8 orc rabble (whatever I use for that... maybe tribal warriors?), and my CR 1/2 orc scouts, and my CR 2 orc berserkers, and so on.
Cultures are still there I think they are just in the DMG rather than the monster manual and the DMG is where deciding how your world's cultures and history work belongs. I don't see how it is more generic to have all npc models for all races compared to only 2 or 3 stat blocks for a single race. Like I can make Warcraft style shaman orcs by putting in druid or ranger style npc's if I want. It is much easier to add a "species defining trait" like dark vision to a cultist for an orc worshiper of asmodeus than it is to come up with a dozen stat blocks to represent all the different types of orcs that I may want in my campaign from level 1 to 12.
Yes but for a monster "manual" should it not be more representative than generic? Mabey not every iteration, but not only the generic? It would be a far more useful tool if it had both the generic with a sprinkling of the specific would it not. Then fill in the Uber specific in setting and adventure books? Otherwise the MM becomes insignificant rather than a specialized tome of useless that could just be a side bar in the PHB & DMG which seems to be the direction it is going. It is like wotc just made a better DMG at the expense of the MM. The new cor 3 is, as a whole, not an improvement over 2014, just a reshuffling of the deck that has brought more confusion while being marketed as an improvement especially when the digital character tool has been compromised at the expense of the end users. Thought this edition is proving to be geared towards selling whole books rather than the smorgasbord it was.
It effectively multiplies the monster count by a large number. The 2014 listings aren't good even if I want to use orcs as my villains, because there aren't enough distinct orc templates -- I'm still going to have to homebrew my CR 1/8 orc rabble (whatever I use for that... maybe tribal warriors?), and my CR 1/2 orc scouts, and my CR 2 orc berserkers, and so on.
It may multiply the monsters and use less pages, but it does so at a cost to the ease of use the core 3 should provide new users getting into the game. It puts undo burdens on new DM's over the older MM's. We were marketed a better easier to use core 3, yet we (new and less experienced users) are burdened with a very different the advertised and marketed experience. The 24 core 3 is far more divisive and hard to use than what it is trying to replace.This release would have better been marketed as advanced 5e rather than the new non edition is was.
Yes but for a monster "manual" should it not be more representative than generic?
That should really be reserved for things that actually play differently in a meaningful way.
For which group of players the seasoned or the new players (specifically DM's) which is what the DMG and MM are for. This is more an advanced edition than a better beginners edition.
That is true from a modern perspective when you have food, shelter and safety available. You have many options. Now go back to a time when humans, orcs, dwarves and tabaxi were not the top of the food chain. Your survival options start to limit. If you want to look at various barbarian tribes that swept through Europe, they tended to have very similar survival tactics, culture and behavior. Once they conquered the cities and integrated, they could then diversify a bit. Not everyone wants to play a game based on the modern world where you pretend there is prom and baristas. Players play to be the hero, the conqueror and that requires foils. Typically the barbarian at the gates, the Visigoths, the Francs, the Goths, the Timurids etc and drow, orc, goblin, hobgoblin, bugbear, ogres oh my are their stand ins.
Having pre made stats unique to the race gives flavor to the game, a common entry point and a basis that the player can choose to go against or go with. It also doesn't mean that you can't have a good aligned orc tribe. But taking the stats away is a pain to deal with. Rules lawyer types are going to use it against you and say why does this knight get to come back up, he should have died, nope he has orc traits, welcome to arguments at the table 101 courtesy of a game decision. A lot of younger players tend to be rules as written now, they are different from older players who tend to have more flexibility.
I'm having issues with the change and I'm not buying the MM because I'll have to copy and redo so much of the content, its ridiculous, to keep these monsters in a playable state. Especially when converting prior content. Orcs are a core villain for most starter modules out there, and I'm not down on having to covert 4-5 stat blocks that are flavorless to begin with because a small group of players are upset. The best wait to satiate everyone would have been to release the monsters with statblocks already created with racials applied and leave the text out. At least then the MM 6E is now usable out of the box to everyone and conversions of content is easier and a standardized product with easier player buy in.
Which still has absolutely nothing to do with having a strong identity for a species; similarity is driven by environment, economics, and technology.
'Barbarian' is about culture (and just being Not From Around Here), not about race -- and it should be obvious that all of your real world examples are humans.
WotC is treating characters and monsters as humans now. There is little to no difference, what matters now is culture. Hence why I gave you cultural references to set expectations. They are telling us now to just use the Knight and call it an Orc now. Just saying. So if we are going to be playing a game where everything is humans, then you should take the cultural examples as valid.
You are confusing a few points here, which I am happy to clear up:
Reduction of harm is important.
No one claimed to be an absolute authority.
Villains can exist without harmful stereotypes or without needing to leverage biological determinism.
Furthermore, you misidentified me making a plea to authority (seriously, this was something someone else said) while also making an appeal to tradition?! Setting aside that WotC is the authority on WotC IPs, please make sure you are responding to the person you mean to. Additionally, people are often wiling to compromise on some issues that they might find distasteful just to play the game. Many people have not realized that 'no D&D is better than bad D&D', so your wait lists are virtually meaningless here and would not be commentary on the lore of the games even if that were not the case for a variety of reasons. Not the least of which is the anecdotal nature of it, but also because those player's feelings on the content does not serve to erase the feelings that others may have who you may not feel has value.
This is a very confused, if emotional argument. What Paizo says or does is irrelevant to D&D. I am baffled as to why you are including that company in this discussion at all. At the end of the day, WotC made an intentional decision to make their content accessible to more people. Part of this decision necessitated revising content and throwing out some long held and weirdly-coveted ideas, so that those who were previously harmed, as those people define it, felt they were able to play and enjoy this game fully. You can add whatever biological determinism you want to your game - it's your party. But people always matter more than ideas.
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This was an argument about whether species should have a strong identity -- i.e. arguing that what 2024 is doing is wrong. You're not going to get very far arguing that 2024 is wrong because 2024 is right.
D&D absolutely needs foes for the PCs to fight. Some groups of enemies will in fact consist primarily of a single species. There's just no reason for the rules to tell the DM what species the enemy should be made up of.
Yeah 2024 is wrong by telling people to just add racials essentially to build your own monster based on this stat, it leads to sameness. And telling people to use 2014 is a reason not to buy 2024. I'm running VTT and I'm not liking a company telling me to spend my time building their monsters for them because they decided for political reason and not game play reasons to provide statblocks. I'm money rich and time poor and when you are running 4 campaigns you tend to avoid time sinks. Now, 2024 is right for you, and I'm happy. But the decisions 2024 made on not providing premade stats is not wrong for a lot of their player base as well. One of the good things about D&D was you could easily take old content, use the MM and for the most party insert newer edition content and its playable. You can still do that with 2024, just remake all the humanoid races. It's D&D with extra steps, what were they thinking?
So does having various humans, elves, dwarves, halflings and gnomes being evil.
Exactly. Instead of one Orc statblock in the MM we now have 45. The only people who see that as a bad thing seemingly want Orcs to stay one-dimensional in perpetuity.
2024 could certainly do with better advice on how to customize stat blocks to create a distinctive flavor for your enemy group, but having dozens of largely duplicate NPC stat blocks is a colossal waste of pages. For CR 1+ creatures, you can generally just add a PC species block and assume it won't significantly affect CR, pretty much the only PC species that will actually warrant a CR change of 1 are Aasimar (blinding radiance is a lot of damage) and Human (if you take Tough as your origin feat and assume it's based on HD, not CR), the only real problem is the CR 1/8, 1/4, and 1/2 mooks.
So at what species we stop this are we next going to only have dragons whittled down to their age groups and no colors? Just add the flavor you want/need and go look up the lore you need for your campaign?
This is only a good direction for the game if one assumes players that want the traditional stats/lore are promoting a part of the game that has long since been left by the wayside. Do you really need 45 options for an Orc in the rules, talk about paralysis from analysis. I guess we should start rolling up npc's and monsters same as we do PC's. Which here on DDB has gotten ridiculous as of late.
It is like they are combining the worst parts of 4e and 5e to make 5.5, and people are throwing everyone that disagrees with the change is to be cutaway from the game and labeled. It is not a good direction or look. The game is suffering because of it heck this site is suffering from it.
I don't think 2024 is going to be an issue in the long run. It's irrelevant to the groups I run. I only lost one player to 6E out 12 D&D players. I'm not seeing the conversion and the MM 2024 other than the visible stats, it is going to cost me too much work in VTT to make it usable. Maybe Fantasy Grounds, Roll 20 and Foundry VTT are such a smaller use case that it won't matter for those running 1E to 3.5E content updated to 5E. That is the only reasoning I can give WotC at this time.
It would totally be possible to redo dragons as "look up CR on this table to find base stats, then apply this color template", and it would arguably be a better experience for a DM, because currently as a DM you can easily run into the problem of "The story is appropriate to a black dragon, but I need about CR 10 to match the PCs... guess I should reskin a young red dragon?" The only problem with templates is that they don't tell you how to apply a species template, and the low number of templates (a tough plays totally differently from a orc, but that's because one of them has 32 hp and 5 damage, and other has 15 hp and 9 damage, not because one of them is an orc).
Humanoids are defined by their profession, not dragons. Are you familiar with "Slippery Slope Fallacy?"
And this makes the game better how? For many it does not for them it is turning the game in to a lot more work too much for some, making the game harder for the DM is not a way to bring more people to the game, it is just a reason to look elsewhere. When does the game become so generic with meaningless skins draped over mannequins that it is no longer D&D other than marketing? The game is losing it's meaning this way. Everything thing is turning into nothing on this path.
How long before the game is just a 300 page book for everything, buy the book and do what you want. A red dragon that is just a black dragon reskinned sure do it. That is just the game engine using all homebrew, how copyrightable is the product at the end of this path? Will it increase short term sales, likely, but at what cost?
Cultures are still there I think they are just in the DMG rather than the monster manual and the DMG is where deciding how your world's cultures and history work belongs. I don't see how it is more generic to have all npc models for all races compared to only 2 or 3 stat blocks for a single race. Like I can make Warcraft style shaman orcs by putting in druid or ranger style npc's if I want. It is much easier to add a "species defining trait" like dark vision to a cultist for an orc worshiper of asmodeus than it is to come up with a dozen stat blocks to represent all the different types of orcs that I may want in my campaign from level 1 to 12.
It effectively multiplies the monster count by a large number. The 2014 listings aren't good even if I want to use orcs as my villains, because there aren't enough distinct orc templates -- I'm still going to have to homebrew my CR 1/8 orc rabble (whatever I use for that... maybe tribal warriors?), and my CR 1/2 orc scouts, and my CR 2 orc berserkers, and so on.
Yes but for a monster "manual" should it not be more representative than generic? Mabey not every iteration, but not only the generic? It would be a far more useful tool if it had both the generic with a sprinkling of the specific would it not. Then fill in the Uber specific in setting and adventure books? Otherwise the MM becomes insignificant rather than a specialized tome of useless that could just be a side bar in the PHB & DMG which seems to be the direction it is going. It is like wotc just made a better DMG at the expense of the MM. The new cor 3 is, as a whole, not an improvement over 2014, just a reshuffling of the deck that has brought more confusion while being marketed as an improvement especially when the digital character tool has been compromised at the expense of the end users. Thought this edition is proving to be geared towards selling whole books rather than the smorgasbord it was.
It may multiply the monsters and use less pages, but it does so at a cost to the ease of use the core 3 should provide new users getting into the game. It puts undo burdens on new DM's over the older MM's. We were marketed a better easier to use core 3, yet we (new and less experienced users) are burdened with a very different the advertised and marketed experience. The 24 core 3 is far more divisive and hard to use than what it is trying to replace.This release would have better been marketed as advanced 5e rather than the new non edition is was.
That should really be reserved for things that actually play differently in a meaningful way.
For which group of players the seasoned or the new players (specifically DM's) which is what the DMG and MM are for. This is more an advanced edition than a better beginners edition.