“May a ninja use a gnome battle cloak without penalty, or will they still lose their AC bonuses?”

This was the latest question posted on Wizards of the Coast’s D&D article “Ask Wizards,” and it represents everything that is wrong with D&D and fantasy gaming these days. What is fantastic about Fantasy when everything becomes common? Does the fact that this question made it to Sage Advice mean that enough people asked this question that they felt they had to answer it? If so, I weep for the future of the entire fantasy genre.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s fine to game like this, and if you really like to merge every single fantasy element ever invented into one big cartoon world, that’s fine. But that shouldn’t be the standard of fantasy. The whole reason that fantasy is enjoyable is the element wonder that springs out of the ordinary world. When there is no ordinary world, and when everything fantastic has become mundane, you don’t have Fantasy anymore…