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. Notably, the word ‘race’ is not used; in its place are the words ‘people’ and 'folk'.

 PRESS RELEASE

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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.

 

[BookTenTiger]

At least a city full. Though, to be fair, it's been decades since I read them. The point was Drizzt is a man-vs-society story (wrapped up in schlocky early 90's fantasy tropes) and the story loses whatever punch it does have when the vast majority of the city are neutral and Drizzt is having an elongated spat with his mommy.

Drizzt was supposed to be the exact example of what people want; the non-evil member of an "evil" race. The problem with your question is that Drizzt stops being the exception and becomes the norm; there is nothing special about him going against his people, his family, and his Goddess if plenty of other drow freely make the same choice daily.

So let me pose the question in reverse; how many Drizzts do you need before the drow are just another type of elf?

I think you might be muddling my point.

You can still have Drizzt be an outsider rebelling against the system without simplifying it to "almost all drow are evil."

If instead you say "almost all drow in this city are slave-owners and backstabbers" and Drizzt is not, that's the same story without the simplification right?

The slave owning and the backstabbing are signifiers of evil without having to paint an entire race with a broad brush.

 

[Hurin70]

Morrus is a very influential fan, but he is not a WotC developer.

I didn't mean to imply he was; maybe I worded that poorly.

In any case, I just wanted to register that I would still like to see species/folks get specific stat bonuses that reflect their inherent characteristics, like Str for Minotaurs. I think you can still do that while you are stripping out the inherent racism.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

If they are not always evil I have no need for them in my game. Their role can be filled by one of the standard PHB races, I'd be happy to winnow out another humanoid species.

I actually think that you might agree with what people are challenging you on, but you might be looking at it and arguing from a different angle.

Lets say I ran a game session in your campaign world. Your good aligned character finds 4 giant eggs and decides to hatch them to see what comes out. They all hatch and you get a baby human, a baby orc, a baby yuan-ti, and a baby succubus. Your party raises the 4 babies and they all grow into adulthood.

For me to GM your world accurately....would the human baby be the only one that could grow up to be a good-aligned NPC?

If you say yes to this question...then you DO actually disagree with everyone else and that every orc, yuan-ti, and succubus ever in the entire cosmos is going to be evil, no matter the circumstances of their upbringing. Essentially you say that their Nature is 100% of their being an Nurture makes no difference. If this is your stance, then people are asking you "Why does every usually-evil humanoid have to be this way to fit in your campaign?".

If, however, you said that an orc raised by good parents can also be good, but that most orcs aren't because they never experienced good and evil is all they know.....then you actually agree with everyone else AND with the "change" that WotC is talking about. You can still have every single orc in your campaign be evil, but you acknowledge that the existence of a good orc is possible, and may be occuring somewhere "off camera" in your world.

I have reserved always-evil-always in my games to creatures from the actual Evil planes (demons, devils, yugoloch), and even then you can sometimes get what you want peacefully from a devil or yugoloch if you offer a good enough deal. I think locking down any other group just limits your creativity if for some reason you wanted to explore the idea of where that would go. That being said...i've used evil aligned humanoid groups from almost every humanoid, and there are quite a few that these evil groups are the ONLY members of that creature that are ever encountered.

 

[Warpiglet]

If you have go ask, I'm guessing you still don't understand what this conversation is about.

I get it. Fully. Sarcasm. I guess you did not get it.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Orcs aren't like black people. Orcs are like a racist's idea of black people.

To expand upon this a bit:

1. Orcs and other evil humanoids are almost exactly the same as human beings - shape, biological needs, lifeways, etc.
2. The respects in which they are not like human beings - evil, bestial, bloodthirsty, low intelligence, inherently uncivilised, sexual threat, fecund, physically superior, devil worship, etc - correspond to the ideas of racists. These negative traits are racial, biological, and inherited, like 19th/20th century race "science".
3. Orcs and other evil humanoids do possess some real non-negative traits of non-white peoples - non-white skin, shamans and witch doctors, hobgoblin's Japanese-style armour, less advanced technology during colonial period.

 

[Warpiglet]

I really hate to "well, actually..." you here, but...

In Tolkien's world, orcs are elves or humans (he apparently went back and forth on this) that were captured and corrupted by Morgoth. Very specifically it is said that Morgoth cannot create life, only twist and corrupt.

One wonders what gaming and fantasy literature would've been like, had Tolkien had some orcs turn against Saruon and aid Sam and Frodo in Mordor, or even one join the Fellowship?

Granted, there is a brief section where two orcs ponder throwing down their arms and fleeing somewhere to live in quiet, but that was a short aside.

Point taken. A being in league with the devil tormented and twisted elves into monsters.

I have read it

 

[Libramarian]

That isn’t what they said. At least be honest about what you’re reacting to.

For hundreds of years, white colonizers have attributed moral failings of all sorts to people of color as justification for their oppression, even to the point of claiming that, eg, slaves were better off under slavery.

I'm asking whether white people historically considered dark-skinned people Evil, because that's more relevant to the issue of whether the depiction of Orcs & Drow in D&D today hearkens back to older racist beliefs.

I'm aware that historically European peoples considered Others less intelligent and morally compromised, but Orcs & Drow don't just have "moral failings"; they're irredeemably evil and implacably dangerous. They're monsters -- more like forces of nature than wayward children. D&D Humans view them with fear, not condescension.

It would make me uncomfortable if Humans commonly kidnapped Drow children and placed them in residential schools, distinguished House Drow from Field Drow, etc. That would be inappropriate, no question. But...it's the other way around. Drow enslave Humans.

 

[reelo]

(WotC) are examining the tropes used in D&D and are asking "does this negatively target a group of people?"

I might be playing the devil's advocate here, and as a European from a country without "colonial baggage" or a history of slavery I might have a different outlook on things, but when I see "my" orcs, and I mean old-school pig-faced orcs, I don't see a connection to any group of actual people!
I understand and fully support their planned revision of the peoples of Chult, or the Vistani, or what have you, but monstrous humanoids, to me, aren't stand-ins for other cultures, they're monsters, not misunderstood "noble savages"...

 

[JiffyPopTart]

That is correct. However, the issue is are these fictional races modeled after either real world cultures (elves are commonly stand ins for Celtic peoples) or are they inspired by racist depictions of cultures. Orcs are shown to be large, muscular, dark skinned, uncivilized, often wearing little more than animal hides and using simple weapons, lacking in technological advancement afforded to other races. It's not much of a stretch to show parallels between them and racist depictions of non-European cultures.

That is a very good summary of the Celts, from a Roman popular perspective.

 

[Oofta]

I actually think that you might agree with what people are challenging you on, but you might be looking at it and arguing from a different angle.

Lets say I ran a game session in your campaign world. Your good aligned character finds 4 giant eggs and decides to hatch them to see what comes out. They all hatch and you get a baby human, a baby orc, a baby yuan-ti, and a baby succubus. Your party raises the 4 babies and they all grow into adulthood.

For me to GM your world accurately....would the human baby be the only one that could grow up to be a good-aligned NPC?

If you say yes to this question...then you DO actually disagree with everyone else and that every orc, yuan-ti, and succubus ever in the entire cosmos is going to be evil, no matter the circumstances of their upbringing. Essentially you say that their Nature is 100% of their being an Nurture makes no difference. If this is your stance, then people are asking you "Why does every usually-evil humanoid have to be this way to fit in your campaign?".

If, however, you said that an orc raised by good parents can also be good, but that most orcs aren't because they never experienced good and evil is all they know.....then you actually agree with everyone else AND with the "change" that WotC is talking about. You can still have every single orc in your campaign be evil, but you acknowledge that the existence of a good orc is possible, and may be occuring somewhere "off camera" in your world.

I have reserved always-evil-always in my games to creatures from the actual Evil planes (demons, devils, yugoloch), and even then you can sometimes get what you want peacefully from a devil or yugoloch if you offer a good enough deal. I think locking down any other group just limits your creativity if for some reason you wanted to explore the idea of where that would go. That being said...i've used evil aligned humanoid groups from almost every humanoid, and there are quite a few that these evil groups are the ONLY members of that creature that are ever encountered.

Take a look at some of my posts on the other thread ... I've explained my opinion and why I run it that way ad nauseum.

Short version: if an orc raised in the "correct" environment is good then I think it's worse. It's akin to when the US shipped all native Americans off to boarding school to "civilize" them, it's something we've seen time and time again when colonialist powers trying to strip away all cultural identity and heritage in order to "fix" the indigenous peoples.

No offense, I'm done with this conversation. It's pointless.