Thread 96372515

So I have noticed that certain kinds of Player Characters and for some the personality types that play them have either faded away or are only played by older players.
This isn't to say that nobody every plays characters like this, but the cultural prevalence is gone.
One of these is the Female Elvish Archer, you know the kind with a pet and some kind of noble background.
These kinds of PCs were mostly played by actual women dating back beyond my recollection but have mostly faded away these days in response to changing demographics around women who play..
Another is The Drizzit Expy PC which was on the rage in the late 90s to early 2000s but since Tieflings became popular has become replaced.
These were softballs to start off the thread but I'm sure there are many others that can be attested to.

>>96372515 (OP)
>One of these is the Female Elvish Archer, you know the kind with a pet and some kind of noble background.
Really? I invited my sister-in-law (22y) to one-shot over Easter and that's exactly the archetype she asked to play.

I'm not surprised Drizzt is gone though. He was considered an overdone stereotype back when I first started gaming and that was over 15 years ago.

>>96372515 (OP)
Female players not playing a tiefling seem to be a dying breed anyway
Dual wielding went out of fashion so Drizzt went with it

The real oldheads are the ones who played half-elves as the token "woe is me, I am an outcast" race because of the Dragonlance books from the 80s.

>>96372609
Half-elves are quite literally dead in D&D now

>>96372515 (OP)
>So I have noticed that certain kinds of Player Characters and for some the personality types that play them have either faded away or are only played by older players.
What is your sample size and how did you make such observation?
>One of these is the Female Elvish Archer, you know the kind with a pet and some kind of noble background.
I'm literally posting daily a picture of my PC that's matches that exact description minus the noble background.
The only type I never saw in my meagre playtime of 6 years is a small race+paladin. Paladins in general are rare nowadays.
>how do you know outside your table
I work with highschoolers and a lot of them play D&D. Heard about one paladin or paladin-like class being played

>>96372623
Small race players were always uncommon IMO
I have been playing for two decades on and off and only saw a handful even at con games

>>96372615
they are just templated now, along with all half-Xs, to just use the stat block of either parent

>>96372643
I think halflings and kobolds are still pretty popular. Gnomes, however...

>>96372656
I'm playing a gnome right now (never did until BG3)

>>96372676
This is literally first time I ever hear/read about someone playing a Gnome. You are horseshoe crab, sir.

>>96372684
They're mechanically good in 5.5 with the no doubt Larian-inspired advantage to ALL Wis, Int and Cha saves.

>>96372697
People actually play 5.5!?!?

>>96372708
Yeh my friend bought the books and said he'd run it so might as well.

>>96372718
What is better in 5.5 compared to 5e and maybe even 3.5e? What are genuine improvements?

>>96372697
>no doubt Larian-inspired advantage to ALL Wis, Int and Cha saves.

That was in the 2014 Player's Handbook.

>>96372748
OT but compared to 5e
>origins now matter
>weapons have more options if you are a martial or martial-adjacent class
>several class abilities like Wild Shape are less retarded
>buffs to healing spells making them not useless in combat
That said it's more of a sidegrade and comparing it to 3.5 is like comparing apples and eggs

>>96372763
Those were against magic effects specifically, not all effects.

>>96372525
How engaged in tabletop is she already because that's interesting in this day and age.
>>96372623
>What is your sample size and how did you make such observation?
Games I have played and engagement I have seen online. Also i realize I didn't it detail it enough but for the Elvish Archer I mainly mean in how, alongside to a lesser extent Druid, used to be the defacto option for women playing tabletop. Now its more likely to be a Tiefling Warlock than anything.
>The only type I never saw in my meagre playtime of 6 years is a small race+paladin. Paladins in general are rare nowadays.
That makes sense, there used to be a bit of groundswell around Dwarven Paladins and Clerics but as >>96372643 and >>96372656 brought up nobody plays short races unless they can make them Cute (kobold) or make a joke character (halfling).
As for Paladins I honestly think its a morality thing within the community. I recall seeing a forum post a few years back where a player was asking "how to play a paladin without being a cop?" and other statements with that same sentiment coming from new players. So if that perception held I can see why people would pull away especially at "newer" tables.

>>96372772
How often do you roll Int/Wis/Cha against nonmagic?

>>96372515 (OP)
At this point the Overton window on playable races has shifted so far that somebody playing a Drow at most tables is met with "oh wow, somebody's actually playing a traditional fantasy race!", they have been completely pushed out of their niche as edgelords.

Part of this is cultural and part of it is mechanical. Drow racials are extremely neutered compared to their past abilities, they no longer get stuff like racial spell resistance and their spell-like abilities are massively weakened and homogenized in line with other races like tiefling, so they no longer attract an audience who wants to be edgy and playing the "cool" powerful forbidden race. They're just another flavor of elf now so the only Drow players are the people who actually play them for the lore and flavor which is way less people now since stuff like the drizzr books are so much less relevant. My last campaign did have a girl playing an Eillistraee worshipping Drow but I was the only other person at the table who had any idea what that meant

>>96372885
Good question but if it's a monster ability that's being rolled against, there's then no argument whether the advantage applies or not

>>96372774
>How engaged in tabletop is she already because that's interesting in this day and age.
Not engaged at all. She's a bit of nerd in that she likes vidya and scifi/fantasy media but no exposure to gaming outside of when we've invited her to a game.

>>96372623
Your character has sex with human men exclusively

>>96373125
t.

>>96373037
That makes sense, its more so the culture surrounding Dungeons and Dragons in regards to its players has moved away from the archetype (or more likely buried under the influx of new players with no interest) and so an outsider who likes fantasy but does not engage with the community at all still embracing the idea makes sense.

>>96372774
I think a drop in Paladin popularity corelates with people abandoning alignment system or in general not being able to perceive absolute good vs evil

>>96372615
>no more miscegenation

wtf I love (grand)wiSSards of the KKKoast now!

>>96372774
>Kobolds
>Cute
3.5 player here, what I have missed?
How can kobolds be cute?

>>96372515 (OP)
punctual

>>96372515 (OP)
Straight up cookie cutter pirate is something I have never seen played. Swashbucklers, sure, seen a few, but treasure hording, boat captaining, parrot keeping, patch-eyed fucker with a big hat? Not once.

>>96379663
Long story short, there was a art movement in the 2010s /tg/ sphere called "cutebolds" thanks to an old questfag named Weaver, in which kobolds were depicted like pic rel. From there is spread out to the broader tabletop community and even after its popularity faded it permanently changed ppular the perception of Kobolds from trap making, dragon worshiping, bastards, "into so stupid its cute", dragon worshiping, tricksters.
If you ever engaged with Sunless Citadel the end result was basically making "Meepo but more energetic" the default personality type instead of an outlier.

>>96379694
It's hard when most campaigns take place in landlocked areas where there's like rivers at most.

>>96379663
>>96379835
tl;dr: it was a furfag's psyop to make them teh heckin kobolderinos that make you want to gigglesquee and nomf their heads~~

>>96379955
I will say that Weaver has balanced scales by also making Rubyquest but there is no excuse for the rest of the community that followed.

>>96379663
>>96379835
Kobolds have always been cute and it's nothing to do with any /tg/ psyop. As a 3.5e fag I'm surprised this is news to you, Meepo and Deekin are prime examples.

>classic dwarf fighter who hates elves
you would think this would be a mainstay but sadly freakshit and dnd being co-oped by leftists make people afraid to RP even fantasy racism. Gimil is and always will be based. So any expys of gimil are always welcome for me.

>>96372656
i never went over to 5e but in 3.5 gnomes were popular enough, at least in my group and the same goes for all the short races really. I cant remember the last time we didnt have a gnome, dwarf or halfling player in a 5 player party

>>96380030
There is a difference between mascots being cute and an entire race being cute.

>>96379955
>teh heckin kobolderinos that make you want to gigglesquee and nomf their heads~~
I hate that shit in any variety
Im convinced after interacting with enough of them online that it somehow leads into them raping them

>>96372515 (OP)
>One of these is the Female Elvish Archer, you know the kind with a pet and some kind of noble background.
No idea what you're talking about dude, I am currently in two normie groups with female elvish archers played by normie women. Also I let my wife try to play once and she immediately rolled a female elvish archer with self-insert appearance and name.

But yeah I agree Drizzt is gone, modern audiences have no idea who the fuck he is. Still plenty of Legolas or Aragorn though.

>>96380097
It did. "Cutebold" porn was quick to follow. If furries are involved then rest assured it's pedophile shit, all the way down.

>>96380149
I remember when drawing kobolds with big hips became a thing and thats when it clicked for me. Goblins went a similar route a few years after that.

>>96380158
>after
Goblins were first. Kobolds are just scaly kender/goblins for furries so they copied the format.

>>96379835
>>96380030
Didn't this get inspired from the pathetic antics of kobolds in old dwarf fortress?

>>96380075
The races become perceived as cute because of the association with those characters though.
And the 3.5e kobold art is cute even without those characters.
>>96380253
Sunless Citadel was published in 2000, NWN SOU came out in '03.
When was dwarf fortress?

>>96372774
How often have you seen kobolds of any stripe in the wild? To me, they always felt kind of a meme spurred by stories of Tucker and Pun-Pun and Dwarf Fortress who require so much setup to actually do something you might as well base the campaign around the premise or settle with the fact you are playing something that is all the negatives of a small race with a few party tricks that any other small race will have and more aside from the draconic heritage, which is conditional since not all kobolds are dragonoid.

>>96380624
>When was dwarf fortress?
The first public build was released in 2006.

>>96380253
The bit of artwork there, along with the "cutebold" phrase, absolutely comes from DF threads.

>>96380725
>How often have you seen kobolds of any stripe in the wild?
As enemies or characters?
The former, plenty. The latter, eh, one of the girls in my group thinks they're cute so she's played one a couple of times and one of the other players in the group has played one once.
Mechanically they're not too bad, a bigger problem is the fact that they're a monster race so unless your group plays some sort of multiracial fantasy-Seattle that's going to carry serious narrative drawbacks. One of the girl's characters I had to keep literally leashed whenever we were in civilisation and the other was pirate adventure so we were hated by all righteous folks anyway.

>>96372515 (OP)
female (half) elf with noble background and a pet companion is currently featured in one of the most popular fantasy shows on the market. I know of at least like 4 or 5 of such rangers being played by people.

>>96381291
I think OP is referring to sincere archetypes and not dog shit simulacra by things like critical role. K.

>>96381291
>one of the most popular fantasy shows on the market
I don't even recognize what you're referencing, but the fact that it's "temu anime at home" netflixslop already tells me all I need to know about how wrong your statement is.

>>96381137
>One of the girl's characters I had to keep literally leashed whenever we were in civilisation
Hot.

>>96372718
Some sort of game is always better than no game.

>>96379835
And from there the Scalies took over and insist that a velociraptor's backside has the same attractive qualities as human ass.

>>96382221
One of the very first cutebold drawings was about sexually assaulting a sleeping dwarf, don't act like it was ever innocent.

>>96382225
No argument from me, I view the entire furry phenomena as normalizing a fetish. There's some facets of the community that try to put up border or deny ts not-innocent roots, but I've never bought it.

>>96381291
>westoid marvelslop animation
What even is the name of this?

>>96372515 (OP)
Dark Elves as a whole were replaced by teifling fags

>>96372653
>they are just templated now, along with all half-Xs, to just use the stat block of either parent
That's as good as killing them, nobody will put in the effort of doing all that to play a half-elf.

>>96382461
>What even is the name of this?
The term, "Chinese Knockoff" was used for years to describe products that looked similar to American products but were inferior quality and had strange, sometimes comical mistakes such as misspellings or characters interacting with others that made no sense (Ash Ketchum with Spider-Man, for example.)

Yet, with America now occupying the role as the Land of Crap, I'd suggest the term, "American Knockoff." You see it in every new American production; faux-Japanese animation, with the advertising campaign highlighting how the Japanese (ooh, aah, quality) animated it... And then you see it was made by Netflix and written by someone from California.

Poor Psion players were never allowed to exist to begin with

>>96381326
>I think OP is referring to sincere archetypes
Vex'alia is absolutely a representation of the archetype. All of the Critical Role players made archetypes in Season 1. You had,
>The irreverent Bard that loved to fuck and made pop culture references
>The big fighter of strongness that was really big and strong and has a beard, he loves to drink and fight and did I mention he's big
>The edgelord rogue that has no friends and is the servant of DEATH
>The half-elf ranger with animal companion that uses a bow and is secretly a princess, despite this is played mostly as a slut
>The Paladin that has no idea what's going on so their player shits out platitudes
>The Druid that is literally just a combination "Dude Weed LMAO" and "Literally a Pop Culture Character" (in this case, Aang.)
>The guy who put way too much effort into their backstory to explain why they're so tragic and sad, but they're also really rich and smart. Ugh!

>>96379996
He brought the plague of quests upon us. Weaver is the faggiest of fags.

>>96372515 (OP)
>Drizzit Expy PC
Currently have a player playing that exact character, albeit as a parody.

>>96372772
No Gnome was specifically only mental based advantage on saving throws.

>>96372515 (OP)
Necromancers that aren't creature summoners.

>>96372515 (OP)
Depraved Demon cultists instead of a slightly off color warlock.

>>96372515 (OP)
>Bot spam thread claims utter bullshit
More news at 11

>>96372515 (OP)
>Another is The Drizzit Expy PC which was on the rage in the late 90s to early 2000s but since Tieflings became popular has become replaced.
Or maybe, just maybe - and brace yourself, for this is a revolutionary idea - Drizzit books came out 30 fucking years ago, and average modern player is unaware such thing even existed.
I know, it's a lot to take when the last time you left the basement, Bush was still during his first term, but which year do you think we are in?