RPG Evolution: Do We Still Need "Race" in D&D?

The term "race" is a staple of fantasy that is now out of sync with modern usage. With Pathfinder shifting from "race" to "ancestry" in its latest edition, it raises the question: should fantasy games still use it?

“Race” and Modern Parlance​

We previously discussed the challenges of representing real-life cultures in a fantasy world, with African and Asian countries being just two examples. The discussion becomes more complicated with fantasy "races"—historically, race was believed to be determined by the geographic arrangement of populations. Fantasy gaming, which has its roots in fantasy literature, still uses the term “race” this way.

Co-creator of D&D Gary Gygax cited R.E. Howard's Conan series as an influence on D&D, which combines Lovecraftian elements with sword and sorcery. Howard's perceptions may have been a sign of the times he lived in, but it seems likely they influenced his stories. Robert B. Marks explains just how these stereotypes manifested in Conan's world:

The young, vibrant civilizations of the Hyborian Age, like Aquilonia and Nemedia, are white - the equivalent of Medieval Europe. Around them are older Asiatic civilizations like Stygia and Vendhya, ancient, decrepit, and living on borrowed time. To the northwest and the south are the barbarian lands - but only Asgard and Vanaheim are in any way Viking. The Black Kingdoms are filled with tribesmen evoking the early 20th century vision of darkest Africa, and the Cimmerians and Picts are a strange cross between the ancient Celts and Native Americans - and it is very clear that the barbarians and savages, and not any of the civilized people or races, will be the last ones standing.

Which leads us to the other major fantasy influence, author J.R.R. Tolkien. David M. Perry explains in an interview with Helen Young:

In Middle Earth, unlike reality, race is objectively real rather than socially constructed. There are species (elves, men, dwarves, etc.), but within those species there are races that conform to 19th-century race theory, in that their physical attributes (hair color, etc.) are associated with non-physical attributes that are both personal and cultural. There is also an explicit racial hierarchy which is, again, real in the world of the story.

The Angry GM elaborates on why race and culture were blended in Tolkien's works:

The thing is, in the Tolkienverse, at least, in the Lord of the Rings version of the Tolkienverse (because I can’t speak for what happened in the Cinnabon or whatever that other book was called), the races were all very insular and isolated. They didn’t deal with one another. Race and culture went hand in hand. If you were a wood elf, you were raised by wood elves and lived a thoroughly wood elf lifestyle until that whole One Ring issue made you hang out with humans and dwarves and halflings. That isolation was constantly thrust into the spotlight. Hell, it was a major issue in The Hobbit.

Given the prominence of race in fantasy, it's not surprising that D&D has continued the trend. That trend now seems out of sync with modern parlance; in 1951, the United Nations officially declared that the differences among humans were "insignificant in relation to the anthropological sameness among the peoples who are the human race."

“Race” and Game Design​

Chris Van Dyke's essay on race back in 2008 explains how pervasive "race" is in D&D:

Anyone who has played D&D has spent a lot of time talking about race – “Racial Attributes,” “Racial Restrictions,” “Racial Bonuses.” Everyone knows that different races don’t get along – thanks to Tolkien, Dwarves and Elves tend to distrust each other, and even non-gamers know that Orcs and Goblins are, by their very nature, evil creatures. Race is one of the most important aspects of any fantasy role-playing game, and the belief that there are certain inherent genetic and social distinctions between different races is built into every level of most (if not all) Fantasy Role-Playing Games.

Racial characteristics in D&D have changed over time. Basic Dungeons & Dragons didn't distinguish between race and class for non-humans, such that one played a dwarf, elf, or halfling -- or a human fighter or cleric. The characteristics of race were so tightly intertwined that race and profession were considered one.

In Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, the changes became more nuanced, but not without some downsides on character advancement, particularly in allowing “demihumans” to multiclass but with level limits preventing them from exceeding humanity, who had unlimited potential (but could only dual-class).

With Fifth Edition, ability penalties and level caps have been removed, but racial bonuses and proficiencies still apply. The Angry GM explains why this is a problem:

In 5E, you choose a race and a class, but you also choose a background. And the background represents your formative education and socio-economic standing and all that other stuff that basically represents the environment in which you were raised. The racial abilities still haven’t changed even though there is now a really good place for “cultural racial abilities” to live. So, here’s where the oddity arises. An elf urchin will automatically be proficient with a longsword and longbow, two weapons that requires years of training to even become remotely talent with, but a human soldier does not get any automatic martial training. Obviously, in both cases, class will modify that. But in the life of your character, race happens first, then background, and only later on do you end up a member of a class. It’s very quirky.

Perhaps this is why Pathfinder decided to take a different approach to race by shifting to the term “ancestry”:

Beyond the narrative, there are many things that have changed, but mostly in the details of how the game works. You still pick a race, even though it is now called your ancestry. You still decide on your class—the rulebook includes all of the core classes from the First Edition Core Rulebook, plus the alchemist. You still select feats, but these now come from a greater variety of sources, such as your ancestry, your class, and your skills.

"Ancestry" is not just a replacement for the word “race.” It’s a fluid term that requires the player to make choices at character creation and as the character advances. This gives an opportunity to express human ethnicities in game terms, including half-elves and half-orcs, without forcing the “subrace” construct.

The Last Race​

It seems likely that, from both a modern parlance and game design perspective, “race” as it is used today will fall out of favor in fantasy games. It’s just going to take time. Indigo Boock sums up the challenge:

Fantasy is a doubled edged sword. Every human culture has some form of fantasy, we all have some sort of immortal ethereal realm where our elven creatures dwell. There’s always this realm that transcends culture. Tolkien said, distinct from science fiction (which looks to the future), fantasy is to feel like one with the entire universe. Fantasy is real, deep human yearning. We look to it as escapism, whether we play D&D, or Skyrim, or you are like myself and write fantasy. There are unfortunately some old cultural tropes that need to be discarded, and it can be frustratingly slow to see those things phased out.

Here's hoping other role-playing games will follow Pathfinder's lead in how treats its fantasy people in future editions.

 

[Anthro78]

I think ancestry is an improvement over race and I expect WotC will adopt something similar in their next iteration of D&D, for the simple fact that companies like Hasbro and Paizo realize that being insensitive to the concerns of people leads to excluding large swathes of them from becoming part of the hobby, and spending their money on those products. Also because, and I am ashamed it has to be said, it's the right thing to do.

 

[LazarusKane]

I think the using of "race" is not a bug, it´s a feature - meaning:
Using "race" in the real world for human categorization is wrong (we all are one subspecies of the species Homo Sapiens) or at least debateable in scientific context (it seems to depend on the scientific field).
But there a several species in your standard RPG world and "human" is one of them, so using the term "race" only solidifies the simply truth: "We are all one race", it doesn´t matter if your ancestors came from Arabia, Northern Europe or South-Asia (or somewhere else - and the funny thing is in any case that all our ancestors came originally from Africa).
Using this word in the correct context feels right for me, as if the RPG Community is reclaiming the word.
And that´s IMHO important because I think Celebrim is right "(t)hat shifting language in order to attempt to be more sensitive never works, because the meaning follows the term and quite soon all the things attached to the old word are also part of the baggage of the new term" a.k.a. the euphemism treadmill.

PS: Mabye using "ancestry" instead of "sub-race" for "Half-Elves", Tieflings etc. would be better but that´s an different topic.

 

[Celebrim]

Which is the issue. It’s not. Race and breed effectively have the same negative connotations. One isn’t less insulting. That the whole damn point.

I don't think I'm reasonably supposed to expect to realize that race and breed have the same negative connotations, because they don't.

However, I'm glad you recognize how problematic the alternatives are.

Rather than fight this ludicrous fight, if you really believe that, I'd suggest you spend your energy convincing the various governmental statistic bureaus to stop collecting the information that they collect as 'race', since you find the term so problematic. Tell the census bureau how problematic it is that they have a category of 'race' and convince them that ancestry, heritage, or nationality is exactly the same thing but less loaded.

Because I'm having a hard time taking seriously the idea that terms like 'human race', 'elven race', 'dwarven race' and in general 'race' itself is so loaded with baggage that we have to do away with it, when you are happy with it in far more problematic real world contexts. And that's to not even get into the general problem of consistency of philosophy in this, because I'm sure there are plenty of cases when you'll demand race be acknowledged.

 

[Mallus]

Of course my first reaction to this is picturing an Elf and a Dwarf discussing sociology in a bar.

"Race is a social construct."
"Really? Were you aware my kind are functionally immortal?"
"You don't say. Did you know Dwarves are part metamorphic rock?"
"I did not."
[...]
"So race is a social construct."
"Oh, sure, absolutely. Next round's on me. Ale?"
"Actually I'll try some of that fairy wine you're always going on about."

My second reaction is: while I don't find the word 'race' overly, ahem, problematic, I'm fine with it falling out of favor as the preferred term. Kinda like my response to the word 'oriental'. If someone called me the 'o-word' I wouldn't get angry, I'd just shoot them a look that says "Did you just fall off the turnip truck?", then gently remind them the term is out-of-date and offensive to some.

As for replacements: species, -kin, -kind, -folk (or -volk), or simply 'people' would all work fine.

 

[Ancalagon]

There is a risk of "euphemism treadmill". A new term may acquire loaded, negative connotations fairly quickly...

 

[Shadow Demon]

Maybe the problem is that modern society acquires loaded, negative connotations fairly quickly without any reasonable justification.

 

[the_redbeard]

I agree that gaming is escapism. However, if we use the term race, then gaming ISN'T escapism for people who are stereotyped according to the social construct that is race because it could be one more f'ing reminder of the real world. Just like D&D moved on from gender/sex attribute penalties decades ago. Yes, there are plenty of people of color who still game. But that percentage is less than representational. If one more person of color feels welcome gaming because gaming moves on from this term, then why wouldn't we remove the term? Why hold on to it?

Humans are over 99.5% genetically identical and our variations in populations have zero to do with the skin color phenotype. Even the sickle cell trait, associated in popular culture with black skinned people, is actually only prevalent in people who originated in regions with malaria - which includes Mediterranean cultures, people on different continents and doesn't include people with black skin who have ancestry other than West Africa. Race is a social construct, an idea, and it is an idea that changed over time. The Irish, for example, were not considered "white" by the original conception.

Using terms that refer to biology, like species, is genre breaking. Many fantasy world creation stories have the various humans, elves and dwarves created by different deities. I think a genre specific term could reference that and feel appropriate. Origin? What's your character's origin? I think my next campaign might use that.

 

[TreChriron]

I like ancestry as a term, this is what they call it in Shadow of the Demon Lord IIRC. Cool term, and it invokes a nice fantasy feel to me.

 

[Sunseeker]

I think one reason I'd like to see race go away is that I'd like to see human "subraces" like we have for dwarves that represent major socities which have perhaps bred for different traits. Part of the reason I want to get rid of race for this reason is I really don't want to see human-variants referred to as "subraces". I think a fantasy game like D&D, unlike real life, has room to say that X humans developed differently from Y humans because of the magical nature of their environment. Maybe "north" humans really are stronger. Maybe "island" humans are smaller and faster. Maybe "jungle" humans are more hearty.

As someone who is familiar with historical racial stereotypes, it is a little cringe-worthy to constantly see those stereotypes replayed in non-human racial variants. It would of course be worse to see them get replayed in what are supposed to be human race variants.

Though I think, at least with 5E, since there are no negative score modifiers, there is perhaps room to say "some humans are better at XYZ" without on the same token, saying they are worse at something else.

 

[Jester David]

Rather than fight this ludicrous fight, if you really believe that, I'd suggest you spend your energy convincing the various governmental statistic bureaus to stop collecting the information that they collect as 'race', since you find the term so problematic. Tell the census bureau how problematic it is that they have a category of 'race' and convince them that ancestry, heritage, or nationality is exactly the same thing but less loaded.

I'm Canadian.
Statistics Canada has decided the term "race" is not to be used and is an old standard, and uses the term "ethnicity" in its place.

I don't know what your backwards ass country does with its census, and there's little I can do about it.

Because I'm having a hard time taking seriously the idea that terms like 'human race', 'elven race', 'dwarven race' and in general 'race' itself is so loaded with baggage that we have to do away with it, when you are happy with it in far more problematic real world contexts.

If you don't see the problem then maybe you should defer to the opinion of people who DO see the problem and DO have problems with the term. Human beings who DO feel dehumanized by the world.

I don't have a nut allergy. I don't see the problem with peanuts. I love me some peanut butter. But that doesn't means I'm going to eat peanut products in a crowded elementary school, while picking at my teeth before touching doorknobs and faucets.
Because, as someone with basic human empathy I'm going to defer and modify my behaviour to not harm others.