D&D (2024) Does the concept of subspecies of Elves come across as racist to you

[Cadence]

I like having wood elves, high elves, dark elves, etc. I am not too fond of labeling them subspecies or bringing evolution into why there are different kinds of elves.

<insert something about game systems that have something like species+culture+pre-class-training>

 

[Scars Unseen]

In Level Up, background provides your stat bonus, not culture. And a culture could teach firebolt, or provide skill proficiencies, or mechanical benefits in other ways. Language and weapons/armor proficiency, which you mentioned, are also mechanical benefits cultures can, in your own admission, provide, so I'm not sure what you're saying here.

The issue here, if you want to call it such, is that this doesn't actually "solve" anything. If we're just talking about different ways to distribute mechanics in a game absent any further context, then it works fine, but so does attaching the same mechanics to race/species/ancestry/etc. At most, it increases design space for customization, which can be seen as a positive or negative depending on how complex you want character creation to be. But as a measure to resolve perceived negative correlations to real life issues (e.g. racism), it's just passing the buck. Stereotyping ethnicities and stereotyping cultures are both problems in the real world, so trading one for the other doesn't seem like an improvement, really.

Frankly, I think the biggest flaw in the racial mechanic setup (in modern editions) is that D&D was designed as a game about archetypes. It wasn't problematic to have all elf or dwarf characters in Basic D&D essentially be the same mechanically because PCs weren't supposed to be reflections of the greater populace around them. They were exceptional. It wasn't until WotC got their hands on the game that suddenly PCs and NPCs played by the same rules, so now if the PHB race write-up says that PC elves are all trained in longsword and longbows, it meant all NPC elves were assumed to be as well. And as the class/race structure became less about archetypes and more about toolkits used to build the character you want a la carte, the assumptions of training and other learned abilities made less sense to be attached to the race chassis. But that same reasoning applies to culture outside of minor things like language. Background makes the most sense for learned mechanical features.

Honestly, I think that the biggest way to resolve any of this is just to assume mechanical uniqueness for PCs. As long as their character creation isn't assumed to be reflected by the NPCs around them, then how you divide up the mechanics is just a question of desired granularity.

 

[Micah Sweet]

The issue here, if you want to call it such, is that this doesn't actually "solve" anything. If we're just talking about different ways to distribute mechanics in a game absent any further context, then it works fine, but so does attaching the same mechanics to race/species/ancestry/etc. At most, it increases design space for customization, which can be seen as a positive or negative depending on how complex you want character creation to be. But as a measure to resolve perceived negative correlations to real life issues (e.g. racism), it's just passing the buck. Stereotyping ethnicities and stereotyping cultures are both problems in the real world, so trading one for the other doesn't seem like an improvement, really.

Frankly, I think the biggest flaw in the racial mechanic setup (in modern editions) is that D&D was designed as a game about archetypes. It wasn't problematic to have all elf or dwarf characters in Basic D&D essentially be the same mechanically because PCs weren't supposed to be reflections of the greater populace around them. They were exceptional. It wasn't until WotC got their hands on the game that suddenly PCs and NPCs played by the same rules, so now if the PHB race write-up says that PC elves are all trained in longsword and longbows, it meant all NPC elves were assumed to be as well. And as the class/race structure became less about archetypes and more about toolkits used to build the character you want a la carte, the assumptions of training and other learned abilities made less sense to be attached to the race chassis. But that same reasoning applies to culture outside of minor things like language. Background makes the most sense for learned mechanical features.

Honestly, I think that the biggest way to resolve any of this is just to assume mechanical uniqueness for PCs. As long as their character creation isn't assumed to be reflected by the NPCs around them, then how you divide up the mechanics is just a question of desired granularity.

See, I never thought any of the various systems used by different versions of D&D were racist, so none of that is an issue for me. I do like more customization, and being able to represent a member of one heritage being raised in the culture of another, so I like how Level Up does it.

 

[Scars Unseen]

See, I never thought any of the various systems used by different versions of D&D were racist, so none of that is an issue for me. I do like more customization, and being able to represent a member of one heritage being raised in the culture of another, so I like how Level Up does it.

Yeah, I don't see it that way either. I'm just saying that if moving away from race based stereotyping is the goal, moving toward culture based stereotyping surely isn't the solution.

Though I've honestly started leaning the other way and looking toward simplification (OSE being one of my more recent purchases) rather than increased complexity. Works a lot better with my preference toward Theater of the Mind gameplay.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Yeah, I don't see it that way either. I'm just saying that if moving away from race based stereotyping is the goal, moving toward culture based stereotyping surely isn't the solution.

Though I've honestly started leaning the other way and looking toward simplification (OSE being one of my more recent purchases) rather than increased complexity. Works a lot better with my preference toward Theater of the Mind gameplay.

I've definitely been looking at OSE lately. I generally prefer more complexity, but OSE would be a good way to play a simpler game I sometimes enjoy while maintaining the old school sensibilities I prefer.

 

[Cadence]

From having seen a lot of these threads, it feels like I would...

1. Avoid using real world racist phrasings and quotes in your descriptions (Gygax quoting Chivington, etc...) or things that are awfully close to it. This sloshes over into...
2. Avoid having things you want treated like people (so, PC races) have biological/species parts that are just negative traits ("usually evil") or a set of traits that obviously fit with stereotypes that were used by real world racists/bigots against real life racial/ethnic minorities - especially when parts of the physical descriptions line up with the real world caricatures too (you can google those both in history, games, and books by famous authors). Unfortunately for creators, sometimes it's hard to see these at first, but once they're pointed out they're obvious to lots of people. And unfortunately, like with everything, there is a borderland where folks won't agree on if it's obvious or that bad. (Tangentially, I imagine an example of a race that tends to be very deadly when angered and is based on a certain dog breed as a justification... and then watch the defenders of that dog breed get angry about it.)
3. Someone will want to make lots of things people - so if you want something always evil maybe make it tied to an evil outer plane or undead or something like that (demon-cursed Gnolls, if they hadn't had a history of not being demon-cursed; vampires; far realm infested abberations). That won't solve everything, but see (6) below.
4. Avoid having the learned/culture part sloshed with the biological/species part too much. (While a species with lots of biological adaptations to underground might be much more likely to have skills that go with their biology, think about whether they get those innately or were they taught them).
5. Don't make the evil cultural groups have easy parallels to real world nationalities, ethnicities, and religions
6. Realize that you won't make everyone happy

So, for elves, I can imagine a story about how in the early universe the fae-wild and prime material were all gooshed together and interacting and some of the proto-fae-beings came down and became the earth-elves, sky-elves, and water-elves and when the universe settled down they were separate species. Within each of those groups are a variety of different cultures that typically train from very young age in different magic abilities and weapons and skills (high elves vs. wood elves vs. drow among the earth-elves) say. And sometimes those cultures within each group have historically been associated with different physical appearances (just like geographically humans have differed in appearance) and that those blur around the edges, and presumably eventually would all smooth out if they could just stop killing each other over them. Avoiding having most of the evil ones be, say, dark skinned, or most of the dark skinned ones be evil, might be a not hard thing to do.

 

[Willie the Duck]

Overall opinion: No. Elven subspecies are* cultural subgroups of the elven people, relatively consistently used that way in the lore, and only** being treated as akin to distinct biological types (names as subspecies or not) with regards to the mechanical baubles player characters get for selecting one over the other -- and that's part and parcel for a game built around dividing up characters by archetype. or at least were, and we don't know where things will pan out for OneD&D. * the exception is the Drow, and they 1) are specifically coded as having additional (divine) intervention in this and 2) yes do have problematic elements.

The problem of separate mechanics for separate subspecies is, it mechanically enforces racial segregation.
For example, what are stats for an Elf whose parents are a Drow Elf and an Eladrin Elf? The lack of mechanics means that this doesnt exist. The mechanics imply that intermarriage between different ethnicities is forbidden. The elven ethnicities are segregated from each other.
Having subspecies within any humanlike species comes across as racist.

I think people focused on the rest of this, but I think the underlined part is a vital component of this argument that has not seen a supporting argument. At no point have I assumed that if there are no rules for a thing in D&D, then it must not exist in the D&D world. Perhaps that's coming from experience with the game when all demihumans that you could play as fit some rigorous limitations with regards to class and level (usually with an acknowledgement that there were elven clerics or dwarven thieves or name-level halflings out there, you just didn't get to play them). Likewise (to include other games), 90s White Wolf World of Darkness had vampire-werewolves that were thorough acknowledged to exist in the game world, but no you weren't going to get to play one. I don't think this underlying assumption is true, at least not without an argument for it or statement within a ruleset that it is so.

It's not the word, it's the tacit endorsement of bioessentialism combined with the weird fixation on having a designer people where you have one to match every outfit, which has a dehumanizing aspect because this adaptation isn't something that's actually part of who elves are, it's all in the meta.

At the same time, it fits the overall framing of D&D, where you select from category of archetypal adventurers (class), of ethical team (alignment), and now of former profession (backgrounds), and then throw in a few numeric scalers (attributes, starting gold, height/weight/age if you roll for them). It's the takeout lunch menu version of character creation.

D&D misinterpreted Tolkein's Elves (who sub-divided many times based on whether any particular group made it to Valinor or when they gave up and settled), and exaggerated the actual differences like crazy.

Part of me thinks it wasn't misinterpretation so much as deliberately doing something different with the basic premise, probably specifically so that choosing one over the other made your character feel different.

 

[billd91]

Part of me thinks it wasn't misinterpretation so much as deliberately doing something different with the basic premise, probably specifically so that choosing one over the other made your character feel different.

Quoted for emphasis. Over the years there have been pushes for differences (whether racial/subracial/whatever) to actually have differences expressed in the rules and not just the flavor text. Your character didn't just feel difference because you picked a different description, but because there were actually differences in some aspects of play (even if relatively small).

 

[Horwath]

Culture and background should be melded into one character creation step.
with 3 substeps.

1. Pick 3 skills that you need for your character concept
2. Pick 4 tools, languages and weapons in total that are needed for your character concept
3. Pick a feat for your character concept.

before that comes a step with fixed biological/genetic benefits

after is 1st level class features.

 

[Weiley31]

As long as it ain't those stinking Drow and their ilk.

Wonders why everybody is giving him weird looks.

What are you looking at you spider lovers??