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.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

Really? By using a term, even completely innocently, that is so heavily steeped in racist history, isn't that more or less condoning how the term is used? After all, that grants the racist the defense of, "Well, I'm just using it how he meant it".

No, because the racist isn't using the term how he meant it. And use doesn't and can't condone all other uses, because, once again, lots of people use lots of different words to say horrible things.

I remember years ago, driving in Detroit with a friend of mine from Newfoundland. Now, if you know Newfie English, you know that they use "boy" all the time, but, it's pronounced as rhyming with "bye". Well, we got a bit lost and my friend leans out the window and asks the young black man at the corner, "Hey, b'y, where's t' Ford Museum at?"

Now, again, 100% innocent, but, this time from a white dude in the middle of Detroit in the early 1990's. Still doing nothing wrong?

He's in a context where he's almost certainly going to be misunderstood. People are going to hear him and think he's expressing a racist idea -- and it's reasonable for them to do that, because that's what the word means in the dialect of the place they're in. If he knows this, yeah, he's doing something wrong.

 

[Riley37]

I'm seeing three uses of "race" in D&D

I agree with your three examples. I would not be surprised to find a fourth or fifth, if one dug deeper into the huge volume of all books published for D&D.

"Level" has at least three uses, when a 13th rank druid casts a seventh magnitude spell on the fourth floor of the dungeon. (The spell is "sideways gravity", a home-brew variation on Reverse Gravity, and the material component is a spirit level. No, not that kind of spirit!) Nethack plays with this: a blessed potion of Gain Level adds one to the character's class rank, while a cursed potion of Gain Level moves the character one dungeon floor upwards. But I digress.

The second usage is at the heart of the controversy.

Yes, and you're not wrong about presentation of racial debasement. Afrodyte mentioned "The only good (race) is a dead (race)". (That's been said at a virtual D&D table, where (race)=Goblin.)

Playing a shell game with the differences in usages, has been SUPER EFFECTIVE for those uncomfortable with the topic, who prefer to deflect away from the emotionally unpleasant part. Among many other examples, and as Afrodyte mentioned, the Elves are enlightened and noble, *except for the ones with black skin*. The black-skinned ones are evil, *except for the one who renounces his people, and lives among others*. The parallels are unsubtle, and for some of us, painful.

(Ben Carson is a skilled surgeon, but does he dual-wield scalpels? Digressing again, sorry not sorry.)

Two is that the problem that D&D has with race won't be simply solved by changing the term "race". There are deeper structural issues which are present and which should be addressed.

If I agreed any more strongly, I would nod so hard that I'd break my neck. I am doing my best to spotlight that structural issues exist, which is necessary but not sufficient for addressing them.

There's a LOT of push-back on even recognizing that they exist. MaxPerson asserts that there's *nothing* wrong with race in D&D, in the last forty years and also the next forty years. Show him some dripping-with-racial-supremacism passage from the 1978 PHB, and he might revise his claim to *thirty* years, without ever admitting that 40 years was a non-factual assertion.

(George Wallace's 1963 speech claimed more than forty years: "In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever." Wallace was at least open about his goals, gotta give him that much. But I digress *again*.)

Back to your second take-away: "Necessary" is not always "sufficient". Beware of those who conflate "terminology change is not sufficient" with "terminology change is not necessary" with "terminology change is neither possible nor useful".

When I entered this conversation, I was kinda meh on the merits of shifting away from the term "race". Now that I've seen the arguments of the Status Quo Defenders, I will ally with almost any side but theirs. I mean, when D&Der A goes out on a limb with "I've experienced some racism, here and there, playing D&D while black", and D&Der B dismisses that story, casts doubt on D&Der A's honesty, (on the grounds that forum posts are non-verifiable), and equates that story with hatred of white people... then I still dunno if D&Der A is right about Paizo's usage, but I've also learned something about Player B's perspective on the usage issue.

 

[Hussar]

No, because the racist isn't using the term how he meant it. And use doesn't and can't condone all other uses, because, once again, lots of people use lots of different words to say horrible things.


He's in a context where he's almost certainly going to be misunderstood. People are going to hear him and think he's expressing a racist idea -- and it's reasonable for them to do that, because that's what the word means in the dialect of the place they're in. If he knows this, yeah, he's doing something wrong.

So, ignorance makes it okay? If he didn't know this (and, he certainly didn't mean it that way) then it's the other folk's fault for taking offense? I disagree.

 

[Parmandur]

We in this thread may know/believe the designers aren’t racists. But someone new to the game or hobby won’t necessarily be able to figure that out. At least, not before having their initial gut reaction. By then, the damage may have already been done. Perhaps too much to overcome.

To use an old aphorism, why borrow trouble? Why continue to use a word with lots of baggage when there are others with less?



See also photos of Army units comprised mainly of Native Americans whose regimental symbols included swastikas, prior to their engagement in WW2. Like the 45th Infantry:
View attachment 96221

Or, perhaps more disturbing, the pre-war “Bellamy salute” given to the American flag during the Pledge of Allegiance.

(FWIW, for the past few years in the Catholic Church, pastors have asked congregations to “extend their right hand in prayer” over/for certain purposes. I participate, but I do it from the elbow only, without raising my arm. It looks too creepy for me to do otherwise.)

Yeah, the "Nazi Blessing" drives my wife crazy, hates it when priests do that.

 

[Riley37]

See also photos of Army units comprised mainly of Native Americans whose regimental symbols included swastikas, prior to their engagement in WW2. Like the 45th Infantry

MaxPerson, if you're about to assert that the regimental symbol change is a coincidence, that surely it must result from other factors: don't bother.

Shortly after the beginning of World War II, several Native American tribes (the Navajo, Apache, Tohono O'odham, and Hopi) published a decree stating that they would no longer use the swastika in their artwork. This was because the swastika had come to symbolize evil to the tourists who purchased their crafts. This decree was signed by representatives of these tribes. The decree states:

"Because the above ornament which has been a symbol of friendship among our forefathers for many centuries has been desecrated recently by another nation of peoples.

Therefore it is resolved that henceforth from this date on and forever more our tribes renounce the use of the emblem commonly known today as the swastika or fylfot on our blankets, baskets, art objects, sandpainting, and clothing."

Okay, who's gonna dismiss those tribes and their resolution, on the grounds that this shift in their use of symbols in their baskets and blankets, *wasn't enough* to stop the rise of the Third Reich, and therefore *wasn't meaningful*?"

Step right up, if you've argued, anywhere in the last 100 pages, that "not a solution to the real problem" means "not meaningful".

The 45th changed their symbol. They also "directly addressed" soldiers wearing swastikas, from Sicily to the Rhineland. They were not sent to Berlin, which was arguably the main geographical location of the "deeper issue", so to speak, but their battles contributed to the larger effort which culminated in the fall of Berlin. They acted on the symbolic level AND on the physical level (in a notably gritty way). I see this as evidence that both are possible, and even inter-related.

When people whose culture has used a symbol for generations, are willing to drop that symbol, *because of how it's been used, elsewhere* in the previous decade, that raises the bar for my willingness to drop Gygax's terminology. If the 45th can let go of the one, then I can give up on the other.

Similarly, in the theoretical event that DannyAlcatraz ever asks me not to address him as "boy", then I'm inclined to acquiesce to his request, rather than double down on the grounds that I wasn't doing anything wrong in context. (Actually, I'm gonna act *as if he already had*, because I'm more interested in inclusivity than in pedantry, even though Pedant is my primary class. Most of my skill points are in Pedant-related skills, but it's just my class, not my *origin*.)

So, gentle reader, if you're reluctant to let go on whether Pathfinder uses "race", if you're calling out as Paizo as so far left that they'll destroy the entire TRPG industry: what could make letting go easier for you?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I didn’t know there was a formal declaration like that. I learned something today; my day has not been wasted.

 

[Riley37]

I didn’t know there was a formal declaration like that. I learned something today; my day has not been wasted.

Ever since I came face-to-face with a swastika, at my workplace, last year, I've been paying more attention to that part of history. I knew, from written news, that more American drew more swastikas, on synagogues and elsewhere, following the 2016 election, than at the height of the German-American Bund in the 1930s. But face to face was more visceral.

Arguing with my supervisor, about how far out of our way we would go, to *remove* the swastika: even harder. In the end, I prevailed, but it wasn't as easy as I had hoped.

The insignia change of the 45th, in my opinion, make it even more shameful, by comparison, that decades later, some of their fellow soldiers in the Marine 1st Reconnaissance Battalion chose to write the abbreviation for "Sniper Scout" with the runes of the Waffen SS.

Those who do not learn from history...

 

[MoonSong]

I have differing opinions on this. I don't really have a horse in this race -wow, that wasn't meant to be punny-. From my context, the very concept of race makes little sense. I'm quite close to being milky white, yet on my family alone everybody runs the gamut from quite dark to quite light, and all of them are my family, I share blood ties with all of them. The mere idea of race is weird. More so, last week the National University divulgated a genetic study of indigenous people, they sought tons of samples in order to find the "purest of the purest", and even then they have at least one European or African ancestor. It makes cero sense to me to make a distinction between white and non-white. Now ethnicity -and social class- is the distinction that makes sense in my immediate environment.

In part because of this, I don't quite like this "PoC" label, because it makes no sense on countries other than America -and maybe some European countries-. There's this weird conflation of race with ethnicity that just breaks down for me. By ethnicity I'm not part of this "Caucasian" thing, but the only way I could be whiter would be if I was blonde.

Also I'm not a fan of modeling racial/ethnic differences for humans on D&D. I always say this, I used to have no problem seeing me reflected on the media, until they began to make this big deal about race and started marking my ethnicity in the media and I learned that I wasn't supposed to identify with any and all of the people on the screen., except for the maid, and the hooker, and the undocumented gardener, and this "Bumblebee Man". Curiously, none of them look like me. Whenever someone who looks like me appears, there's a clear message now that "this is not you".

I'm not married to keeping "race" as a thing in the game -I like "kin" though-, but I'm not in love with this "Ancestry" thing from PF2, that sounds like quite a fiddly way to enable powergaming and just reinforce "Yes this is still not you".

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

[video=youtube;g9n_UPyVR5s]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9n_UPyVR5s&sns=em[/video]

 

[Sunseeker]

So, ignorance makes it okay? If he didn't know this (and, he certainly didn't mean it that way) then it's the other folk's fault for taking offense? I disagree.

To interject myself into this conversation: Ignorance must always be fought. At home, abroad, in ourselves and in others. If someone says something out of true ignorance, they should be corrected. Not belittled for being ignorant, but informing them of the larger context that they are missing. If they at that point, choose not to correct themselves, everyone else is well withing their rights to belittle, berate and generally shame them into a corner. That's pretty much how society works.

At this point, even if Gygax used the word from a point of ignorance, even if he used the entire linguistic phrasing of his writing completely from ignorance, Gygax is dead. His ignorance or intention cannot be corrected.

However, the current writers, creators, publishers and so forth producing D&D are alive and their ignorance (which I find to be a questionable foundation for an argument) can be corrected. Which is in large part the point of this discussion, to discover: "Are the current creators truly ignorant of the subject?" and "If they are not, how do we deal with that?" and "If they are, how can we help them change?" and "What do we do if they are not ignorant, and refuse to change?"