D&D General WotC’s Official Announcement About Diversity, Races, and D&D

Following up on recent discussions on social media, WotC has made an official announcement about diversity and the treatment of ‘race’ in D&D.

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Following up on recent discussions on social media, WotC has made an official announcement about diversity and the treatment of ‘race’ in D&D. Notably, the word ‘race’ is not used; in its place are the words ‘people’ and 'folk'.

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 PRESS RELEASE


Dungeons & Dragons teaches that diversity is strength, for only a diverse group of adventurers can overcome the many challenges a D&D story presents. In that spirit, making D&D as welcoming and inclusive as possible has moved to the forefront of our priorities over the last six years. We’d like to share with you what we’ve been doing, and what we plan to do in the future to address legacy D&D content that does not reflect who we are today. We recognize that doing this isn’t about getting to a place where we can rest on our laurels but continuing to head in the right direction. We feel that being transparent about it is the best way to let our community help us to continue to calibrate our efforts.

One of the explicit design goals of 5th edition D&D is to depict humanity in all its beautiful diversity by depicting characters who represent an array of ethnicities, gender identities, sexual orientations, and beliefs. We want everyone to feel at home around the game table and to see positive reflections of themselves within our products. “Human” in D&D means everyone, not just fantasy versions of northern Europeans, and the D&D community is now more diverse than it’s ever been.

Throughout the 50-year history of D&D, some of the peoples in the game—orcs and drow being two of the prime examples—have been characterized as monstrous and evil, using descriptions that are painfully reminiscent of how real-world ethnic groups have been and continue to be denigrated. That’s just not right, and it’s not something we believe in. Despite our conscious efforts to the contrary, we have allowed some of those old descriptions to reappear in the game. We recognize that to live our values, we have to do an even better job in handling these issues. If we make mistakes, our priority is to make things right.

Here’s what we’re doing to improve:
  • We present orcs and drow in a new light in two of our most recent books, Eberron: Rising from the Last War and Explorer's Guide to Wildemount. In those books, orcs and drow are just as morally and culturally complex as other peoples. We will continue that approach in future books, portraying all the peoples of D&D in relatable ways and making it clear that they are as free as humans to decide who they are and what they do.
  • When every D&D book is reprinted, we have an opportunity to correct errors that we or the broader D&D community discovered in that book. Each year, we use those opportunities to fix a variety of things, including errors in judgment. In recent reprintings of Tomb of Annihilation and Curse of Strahd, for example, we changed text that was racially insensitive. Those reprints have already been printed and will be available in the months ahead. We will continue this process, reviewing each book as it comes up for a reprint and fixing such errors where they are present.
  • Later this year, we will release a product (not yet announced) that offers a way for a player to customize their character’s origin, including the option to change the ability score increases that come from being an elf, a dwarf, or one of D&D's many other playable folk. This option emphasizes that each person in the game is an individual with capabilities all their own.
  • Curse of Strahd included a people known as the Vistani and featured the Vistani heroine Ezmerelda. Regrettably, their depiction echoes some stereotypes associated with the Romani people in the real world. To rectify that, we’ve not only made changes to Curse of Strahd, but in two upcoming books, we will also show—working with a Romani consultant—the Vistani in a way that doesn’t rely on reductive tropes.
  • We've received valuable insights from sensitivity readers on two of our recent books. We are incorporating sensitivity readers into our creative process, and we will continue to reach out to experts in various fields to help us identify our blind spots.
  • We're proactively seeking new, diverse talent to join our staff and our pool of freelance writers and artists. We’ve brought in contributors who reflect the beautiful diversity of the D&D community to work on books coming out in 2021. We're going to invest even more in this approach and add a broad range of new voices to join the chorus of D&D storytelling.
And we will continue to listen to you all. We created 5th edition in conversation with the D&D community. It's a conversation that continues to this day. That's at the heart of our work—listening to the community, learning what brings you joy, and doing everything we can to provide it in every one of our books.

This part of our work will never end. We know that every day someone finds the courage to voice their truth, and we’re here to listen. We are eternally grateful for the ongoing dialog with the D&D community, and we look forward to continuing to improve D&D for generations to come.
 

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Warpiglet

Adventurer
Yup. That's also why I think it would be better to have them as Monstrosities instead of humanoids, just like Medusas, Merfolk and Yuan-ti, if we are to keep the Tolkien-Orc. Hell, they are in the Monstrous race section of Volo's! They have all the prerequisite, from their Volo's lore, to be Monstrosities.

  • Created by and bound to a dark power
  • One goal: destruction
  • Experimented on to further increases predisposition (Orog, Neo-Orog)
  • Decadent culture

MM's description:
''Monstrosities are monsters in the strictest sense-frightening creatures that are not ordinary, not truly natural, and almost never benign. Some are the results of magical experimentation gone awry (such as owlbears), and others are the product of terrible curses (including minotaurs and yuan-ti). They defy categorization, and in some sense serve as a catch-all category for creatures that don't fit into any other type. ''

I'd do the same for Kobolds, Gnolls and Goblinoids (which is such a large category that it should be its own thing)

Then you could have the player version of them without the alignment part for those above-mentioned peoples which escaped their dark fate and overcome their tragic disposition as playable folks that could also be used for NPC with the (any race) tag.

Fine solution really.

Tolkien’s orcs were supposed to be monstrous devil spawn essentially.

So taking them back to that idea makes plenty
of sense: the created spawn of an evil god.

We can still have irredeemably evil gods...right? That is their nature? (Surely that does not cross any
Line?)
 

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Horacio

LostInBrittany
Supporter
This is about as far as you can overanalyze things to make it look like they suit your point.

Pink haired female gnome main tanks are a WoW meme. No downsides on that there, half duration on certain CCs actually make gnome warriors pretty much optimal.
And your main tank is porbably not going to be someone who plays that Gnome to promote inklusiveness. Chances are that character is an accumulation of maximum effectiveness and going for the edgy option on top because why not, it's edgy therefore cool.

Bringing WoW meme character choicers into a DnD game someone might be trying hard to RP in, isn't going to promote inclusiveness, it's memeing in a game.
Now in the context of this thread you'd get backlash like yours for saying "I'm not going to allow pink haired gnome girl warriors in my game". Since somone, in this example you, will decide he absolutely guessed the context correctly, knows how you meant that and will take his new established moral high ground to tell you why you're wrong.

You could have taken another turn of actions, like inquire details, go with "but gnome girls are so cute" or whatever.
But you didn't and chose to do what you did instead.
And that was a fairly harmless example where no one got hurt. These things tend to escalate way beyond that if we're not talking to each other.

What usually happens is each side slings their argument, goes back in their corner to get celebrated for it and refuses to do more than rinse and repeat in the next round until both sides are pissed off at each other and a dialogue is pretty much not an option anymore.
But both sides will think they've won and the other guys are baddies for disagreeing. Everyone wins, yay!

Well, I am guilty there, I reckon. I didn't looked for a confrontation, honestly, or for getting the high moral ground, but yeah, I dived into a detail point of your post.

Sadly it's in the nature of internet forum that things escalate, as textual communication lacks the non verbal elements needed for reducing tensions...

Anyways, sorry about that, sincerely.
 

Bolares

Hero
I see all the discussion about how you can't have a fantasy setting without good and evil being a driving force in the narrative, and that being used as a reason for why drow, orcs and other races can't be changed.
That makes me think of Eberron. The fight between good and evil is as strong there as in any other setting, but orcs are not evil by nature, drows aren't either. You can have an evil society, but making humanoids with evil in their DNA is really bad IMHO (specially if you give them dark skin, and cultural steriotypesused to progress racist narratives in the real world.)
 

MGibster

Legend
Is it April 1st? How is this going to change anything related to real-world problems with racism? IMO they're changing the game I love for absolutely no reason. Sad news indeed..

I don't agree with all the changes but it's a bit of a hyperbole to say that there's absolutely no reason for them. D&D changes constantly. The D&D of 1977 wasn't the same as it was in 1987 which wasn't the same as it was in 1997. I expect D&D of 2030 will not be the same as it is today. I realized a few years ago that time marches on and to remain relevant WotC is going to appeal to the next generation of consumers. I have made my peace with that. If I'm still playing D&D in 10 years I'll probably adapt to whatever rules/settings they have.
 

Chulhugus

Villager
I welcome these changes and look forward to seeing what WoTC has planned! I have enjoyed the alternative to races that DM Guilds has had from both a story and role playing standpoint. These changes are needed to modernize and expand the hobby. I am encouraged that these seem to be honest, good faith attempts to include more diversity!
 

HawaiiSteveO

Blistering Barnacles!
You jest, but locking doors while in the house is not common practice everywhere. I didn’t for years before moving in with my parter who isn’t comfortable with it.
Being kind to others is not common practice everywhere either, unfortunately ...
My point is thinking morality is subjective is unliveable.
 


Warpiglet

Adventurer
So legitimate question: based on what Crawford said are they talking about retconning everything or merely having a variety of worlds where things are different?

If they are talking some worlds with more variety for drow and orcs it’s one thing. If they are talking about changing drow overall it’s another thing.

For example( are the realms going to suddenly have a new history again? (I don’t use the realms much but just an example).
 

Oofta

Legend
I just don't see a lot of people, in this thread or the other, calling you a racist because of how you want to use orcs at your table.

Let's see. Posters saying things like "I don't want to interact with people that don't understand why this is an issue", "try showing some empathy", "continue to willfully ignore and make excuses", "Yep. Why better ourselves.". Then of course there was the post I replied to which said that calls everyone who doesn't agree a regressive element and a senile old man yelling at the sky.

And I think you are a smart enough person that you could see through the falacy of someone saying so.

What would it look like, if WotC produced text that supported your desire to have monstrous orcs, and the desire to not portray orcs using the harmful racial stereotypes that have been used in the past?

I could see an entry in the Monster Manual for something like "Raider." A Raider is a humanoid who raids villages and travelers for their food and wealth. Here's the stats of an orc raider. Here's the stats of a human raider. Here's the stats of a halfling raider.

What are some of your ideas?

Someone else suggested labeling orcs as monstrosities instead of humanoids. I think orcs (and goblins) should go back to being green. I've always had issues with drow and don't remember ever using them in my campaign (although in theory they do exist).

I'd also get rid of the word "race" because it means something different in D&D than in the real world. I prefer species myself.

I also think changing orcs to evil only when they follow a specific religion is also problematic. It's like saying that certain ethnicities are are perfectly okay as long as they aren't [fill in the blank with some religion you do not follow].
 


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