Exotic species aren't so exotic, eh?

[Psyren]

Oh dear, I didn’t mean to kick the hornet’s nest. Sorry.

But yeah, Dr.Samurai and KorvinStarmast have the best read of my position. The sidebar implies a certain malleability that by default Krynn does not have. If the DM makes the call of their own volition to let a player play an orc in Dragonlance, that’s fine and good. But in my opinion there’s enough ambiguity that a player may (mistakenly) believe the sidebar to be a case of Specific Beats General overriding p. 6 of the PHB in this specific instance.

There is no rule more specific than "Ultimately, the Dungeon Master is the authority on the campaign and its setting, even if that setting is a published world." And a DM who is incapable of asserting themselves even with that text in hand, would be incapable of asserting themselves no matter what is written in any rulebook. At that point, the designers are not the problem.

(Moreover - they put that text at the front of the PHB, so the players can't even credibly claim that they weren't exposed to it, or at least that it's unreasonable for them to have been exposed to it.)

I am of the belief that while ultimately no amount of rules text can truly defeat a bad-faith/jerk DM or player, the rules can provide some guardrails to prevent misunderstandings or clear up confusing cases that would otherwise cause players and DMs to not be the best person they could be at the table.

I completely agree, and they've done that.

[RedMage125]

(IME players who go to the effort to make it fit are usually worth working with on any number of things, not just chargen).

I am of the belief that while ultimately no amount of rules text can truly defeat a bad-faith/jerk DM or player, the rules can provide some guardrails to prevent misunderstandings or clear up confusing cases that would otherwise cause players and DMs to not be the best person they could be at the table.

I second both of these statements.

[Chronos]

What's a player doing reading the module, anyway? The only way a player should even be encountering that sidebar in the first place is if the DM chooses to share it with them.

[Devils_Advocate]

People aren't going to confuse a tiefling for a fiend under normal circumstances. Those who have seen fiends know that they don't look the same, and those who have never seen fiends are unlikely to leap to the conclusion that this stranger is one of those monsters that you only hear about in stories. ("If they believe in angels, why should they be surprised to see one?") Dragonborn are even less likely to be mistaken for dragons; they're humanoid bipeds, for Bahamut's sake!

Someone's reaction to an unfamiliar species will probably be more about the unfamiliarity. Not "I assume that this dragon-lookin' guy is exactly like a dragon" so much as "I've never seen a dragon-lookin' guy like this one before". Someone who knows nothing about dragonborn and nothing about tabaxi probably isn't gonna just be like "Well, dragons are dangerous, but cats are harmless". Someone might tentatively guesstimate that a dragonborn is more dangerous than a tabaxi, but probably isn't gonna be a lot more wary of one than of the other.

Realistic societal attitudes towards specific peoples vary regionally based on history and current events. Humans of one country might well hate humans from a neighboring country more than they hate orcs. Like, if raiders from Flarkland routinely pillage Blarkland, Blarks probably wind up disliking the Flarks a lot. Whereas, if orcs regularly raid Flarkland and give Flarks a lot of trouble, most Blarks might like the orcs! Sure, there was an incident a while back where some orcs ate a Blarkish diplomat, and some folks in Blarkland are still fairly resentful about it, but ultimately an enemy of the Flarks is a friend of the Blarks.

These sorts of divisions get glossed over in generic fantasyland, where all of the governments are monarchies, everyone uses coins of the same weight made of the same 3 to 4 different metals, everyone speaks "Common", etc. If you don't strive to make your setting more diverse than that, the appeal of fantasy racism isn't that it serves setting verisimilitude; it's just a genre trope. Which, hey, fair enough, but let's call a spade a spade, in that case.

On the other hand, if you want something non-generic, it might be helpful to dump the usual elves, dwarves, and even humans. In that case, you might consider making a setting inhabited entirely by whatever weird non-standard races your players like. Plenty of space on the map for their homelands if you that's where you start from. And this will hopefully produce something original, if nothing else.

[Amnestic]

On the other hand, if you want something non-generic, it might be helpful to dump the usual elves, dwarves, and even humans. In that case, you might consider making a setting inhabited entirely by whatever weird non-standard races your players like. Plenty of space on the map for their homelands if you that's where you start from. And this will hopefully produce something original, if nothing else.

One of my settings (mostly) did that. It had humans, mermen (male only), bird people, dragonborn, and genasi as playable races. No elves/dwarves/gnomes/etc.

It was also my first foray into scrapping Common as a language and having regional languages only. It had...eh...mixed results.