Me too, I was hooked on the DOS games the moment I started them.
They won’t touch it, they’re desperate to stay in the good graces of their new player base.
There’s already a fanmade alternative called red sun that’s just the kind of sanitary politically correct setting you’d expect from them.
Dark Sun is pretty problematic and mature themed so they may stay away from it for that reason alone. Then again, they did successfully butcher and tone down Ravenloft.
Don’t forget that they’d also rather try to sell magic the gathering books on top of that. They’ve also made spelljammer look worse, which is dismaying because I liked it.
In the current game I'm running I have a list of playable races and the players are aware that choosing a traditionally monstrous or evil race will likely result in death (Jimbo the halfling might be eyed suspiciously by the guards, but Zug Zug the orc is going to get pincushioned by crossbow bolts). Some others don't even exist in the setting (Yuan-ti/Naga equivalents got wiped out by their god, tieflings/aasimar don't exist because planes are aligned to specific gods/concepts, etc.).
I normally restrict people to Core Books. More exotic stuff is on a case-by-case basis based on how well I know the person, whether or not they're a good roleplayer. etc. And I make it very clear exotic races are just that, exotic, and it's possible the locals won't like them. Exotic enough and they might run afoul of the Inquisition or paranoid LEOs.
I like to allow what’d be appropriate for the setting but usually it’s pretty lenient. Like if we’re going to be on athas I wouldn’t want the players playing as a race not found there. I’ve let the players know I like to DM lower level because of the pool of monsters <CR5 are usually more reasonable and aren’t usually capable of doing some heavy things that could make encounters not fun. Letting them know that means they (for the most part) keep that in mind when building characters to avoid making something too overpowered.
The race does not make the character interesting. The person playing the character makes it interesting. There's also a difference between "shenanigans" (which are cheeky, fun, and give me license to torture the players) and being so incredibly drained of even basic creativity you need to play an abstract expression of fighting spirit given form with no actual body of its own in order to feel like your creative juices are flowing. In my experience, the players that always play something quirky like Tieflings, Genasi, and Kender have no idea how to build a personality and keep it consistent. Someone who actually deserves the title of roleplayer? Their Human Fighter is plenty interesting.
Honestly? It's anything goes at my table since I tend to not use settings and usually do free world. I might be stricter if it was a specific setting, though it'd more likely be in the "Yeah people are going to be weirded out by you depending on what race you picked".
Yes we have, which is why I began with "in my experience." I never said you were doing it wrong, people can do well with the more exotic races provided they work to make them fit in (or, as said it's set in Sigil where nothing's exotic). It helps your group has likely been friends for years so you know each other pretty well. But munchkins and dangerhairs ruined exotic races for me, so unless I have a good handle on the player I enforce the standard choices only rule.
not with that kind of attitude.
When I started to play back in the 80s, every GM I've played with would say at the start of the campaign what races were allowed in that game. Everyone was ok with it and no one threw a hissy fit if they couldn't play a certain race.
How how my main GM rolls. You get a list of races and classes/archetypes that are available in the world, and pick from there. It helps that we have a habit of waiting for the campaign premise before creating characters.
