Personally, I think that while the change is a positive one, it was also a knee-jerk reaction to the negative press involving some of the races and appealing to players they have lost to Pathfinder.

This got me thinking why do we have an ever-growing list of new playable races but no template for creating an interracial character? Tasha’s has attempted to address this issue, but it only scratches the surface.

Like everyone, I have my opinions on what races make sense - you like playing an animal type race, then I’m all for the Tabaxi or the UA Rabbitfolk - and what races I wouldn’t allow in a campaign - sorry, Aarakocra, I feel that giving a player a 50-foot flight speed is too much. I’m not going to go down the rabbit hole of allowable player races, inherent biases in stats for certain races, and so on. More than anything, though, it seems like a very narrow mindset about how the game should be played. I understand the point Gygax was attempting to get across to the reader, even if there are some disturbing undertones in what he is saying. Much of the article discusses how restrictions in playable races maintained balance, as not to give a singular race an advantage over all others. And now somebody decided that ogres could cross with humans! Could they cross with elves also? How about hill giants interbreeding with humans? with elves? with ogres? with ettins? Why leave out goblins? hobgoblins? gnolls? bugbears? Because of the potential for absolute madness in the game, I included only the half-elf, hoping that the rest would not arise to plague the placid waters of racial selection, but it is apparent that it was not meant to be. Those involving humans and orcs add still more confounding factors. Should half-dwarves, half-gnomes, and half-halflings (and is a half-halfling a quartling, perchance?) be allowed? How about dwarf-elf, dwarf-gnome, dwarf-halfling, elf-gnome, elf-halfling, and gnome-halfling crossbreeds? Then there are tri-racial mixtures. In designing ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS, I considered the possible racial mixtures. He has some strong feelings about what races should be allowed as player races and what shouldn’t, including interracial races. 1979), Gygax begrudgingly released ‘official’ stats for the half-ogre race, mainly because he had heard about it being popular from various DM’s and wanted to get his two cents in. I’ve been reading through old Dragon Magazines (again) and came across an interesting article on creating a new player character race.

All 5e playable races