A game about combat needs a world full of things for the players to mow down but also not feel bad about killing, and sometimes you need a bunch of Violent Dungeon Fodder that can think and plan and make tactical decisions and potentially be negotiated with.

I'm a bit confused by this. Why not have them be any other species, or combination of them? If they're capable of being negotiated with shouldn't the players feel as bad about killing them as anyone else? I feel like "self-defense" can do a lot of heavy lifting in dungeon crawls, I've never really noticed my players feeling bad about killing bandit dwarves or whatnot.

I enjoyed reading through that, thanks!

I think I more or less agree with where you're coming from. Part of the fun of roleplaying is getting to explore darkness in a safe way. Not everyone is looking for that and that's fine, but I definitely find it weird to have the core setting lean into a more "disney-fied" setting. Seems like it should offer options.

It's probably a symptom of DND becoming so much more mainstream. You can't please everyone, so the best they can do is minimally bother everyone which can end up pretty... OK. Not great, not terrible, and mostly uninspiring.

Those are my thoughts based just on what you said. I haven't heard about any of this before now so those are just off the cuff.

As a player, sometimes I want to settle down with an Orc and make a bunch of Half-Orc Babies, but seeing the word "species" gives me pause. I know in real life cross-breeding different species of animals rarely goes well and the children are as a rule sterile, so can i ethically bring a baby into the world that I know is going to be sterile and is probably doing to have serious health problems?

I don't get your problem here. Either the world that has half orcs declares if they are fine, or you are free to decide for yourself. Why bother yourself with some "knowledge" about the "real world"?

@ThisIsAManWhoKnowsHowToGling
Pretty sure this is already known but I'll throw in the tidbit that in Ad&d 2nd Dark Sun, Muls were the progeny of humans and dwarves and were explicitly sterile so this is not exactly untrodden ground. Not saying it's the way to go, just that it happened

bro basically everyone outside of africa has neanderthal and denisovan heritage, our ancestors had TONS of kids with other human species.

Good ol' reliable undead. Trusty skeleton-to-lich scale of complexity fits every scenario. Can be evil, good, or mindless as needed.