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

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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?

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

Michael Tresca

Mike "Talien" Tresca is the managing editor of the EN World Columnists Program, author of The Evolution of Fantasy Role-Playing Games, releases daily game-related content on his Patreon, and has over 50 D&D 5E products for sale on DriveThruRPG. He is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to http://amazon.com. If you like what we do here at EN World please consider supporting our Patreon.
J

james501

First Post
The thing is the alternative of "ancestry" just sounds awful. Same with its synonyms : heritage,descent,origin.
They dont translate as well.

Just like "ethnicity" and "descent" arent interchangable in everyday language, so are these.

-Species sounds the closest fitting one, barring its more scientific or sci-fi connotations

-Scion, maybe ?

-Genus ? Which is basically Greek for "race".

-Tribe ?
 

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J

james501

First Post
Dannyalcatraz said:
Regardless of its origins, “race” has been hanging around with bigots long enough for that hateful stench to seep into its pores.
.
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Yeah, and the fact that for decades fantasy media with millions of fans have used the term without controversy should tell you that most can disasociate one context from another.

Maybe it could change, I am not completely against it.
But lets not pretend that this is some really hot issue that society anguishes over.
 

Jester David

Jester David

Hero
Tanin Wulf said:
Hmm. I'm not sure I'd go quite so far as to say "race" is 100% a sociopolitical construct. There do seem to be some DNA-level differences that ignoring racial factors harms our understanding of the disease. For instance: sickle cell anemia.

NOTE: This is in no way an endorsement of racial superiority, or saying the differences in the races are important to society or anything else stupid/white-power-y.

Of course, the fact that my Gypsy (his preferred term over Rom) friend from Wisconsin has sickle cell disease... and he's the whitest (i.e. pale and pasty) guy I know. But his great grandmother was black, so he MOST LIKELY inherited that trait from her.

My point being it's probably not... 100% sociopolitical. Just mostly. Like 99%.

Put another way: genetics is really fun and cool if you can set aside all the politically loaded nonsense that non-geneticists throw around like they know what those terms mean in the context of genetics instead of sociology!
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Funny thing though, the sickle cell gene is a poor indication of “race” as it primarily affects Central Africans and not Northen or Southern, who would generally be considered the same “race”. Meanwhile, the same anemia genes are found in Arabian and Indians, who are a very different “race”.

There are some genetic differences, but they’re surprisingly minor. Humans differ less genetically than individusls from other species, a result of us evolving from a small population some 150,000 years ago.
 

Jester David

Jester David

Hero
james501 said:
Yeah, and the fact that for decades fantasy media with millions of fans have used the term without controversy should tell you that most can disasociate one context from another.

Maybe it could change, I am not completely against it.
But lets not pretend that this is some really hot issue that society anguishes over.
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Except for all the times there has been controversy or problems.

Pathfinder has a great example of the problem.

I expect most people here are familiar with their splatbooks. Ultimate Combat, Ultimate Magic, Ultimate Campaign, and Ultimate Intrigue. All the focused non-theme PC splatbooks have "Ultimate" in the name. And, for a while, they were planning on releasing Ultimate Race.
They changed it to Advanced Race Guide for reasons that should be pretty obvious.

I mean, who would want to see the ads Google Analytics would throw out of you searched for "Ultimate Race" a few times. The books Amazon would suggest if you ordered from that site. Is it a book you would feel comfortable requesting from a library? If you were the head of a chain book store, would you order & stock a book called "Ultimate Race"?

This highlights the issue with the word and its problematic and undeniable connections to racism and white supremacy. It is not a term I'm completely comfortable having in my books and certainly not a term I want to fight for and defend.


It's not like D&D is free of poor naming. You don't have to look far, with Oriental Adventures published in 3rd Edition, despite people knowing for many, many decades that "orientalism" was problematic.
Unless you want to defend that term as well. After all, we also used that term for decades without issue. And it’s not like Kara Tur is a real place.
 

Maxperson

Maxperson

Morkus from Orkus
Aldarc said:
I don't think "evading" means what you think it does, nor is there any way to "answer" the nonsense that you posted. You posted a ridiculously hyperbolic and fallacious, non sequitor slippery slope argument (about everything other than "race") that failed to address the question in any real, meaningful manner. If you want to see what evasion looks like, then I recommend this post:
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Other than the "everything" at the beginning, there was no hyperbole in that post. All of the rest was true as I stated it, with the exception perhaps of the global warming humor. There was also no slippery slope involved, as one thing did not lead to another, an then another, etc. It was simply the "If you give one kid in class candy, you have to give them all candy" principle. Those other issues are every bit as great, greater in fact, than race is in an RPG(hint, race in an RPG isn't even an issue outside of a few extremists on both the right and left). If you change race, you have to change the other "issues" as well, or you are quite literally singling out race only for the sake of it being race, which is racist.
 

C

clearstream

(He, Him)
talien said:
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?
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Story Now requires that at least one engaging issue or problematic feature of human existence be addressed in the process of role-playing.
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from http://www.indie-rpgs.com/_articles/narr_essay.html

Maybe the second quote answers the first?
 

J

james501

First Post
Jester David said:
Except for all the times there has been controversy or problems.

Pathfinder has a great example of the problem.

I expect most people here are familiar with their splatbooks. Ultimate Combat, Ultimate Magic, Ultimate Campaign, and Ultimate Intrigue. All the focused non-theme PC splatbooks have "Ultimate" in the name. And, for a while, they were planning on releasing Ultimate Race.
They changed it to Advanced Race Guide for reasons that should be pretty obvious.

I mean, who would want to see the ads Google Analytics would throw out of you searched for "Ultimate Race" a few times. The books Amazon would suggest if you ordered from that site. Is it a book you would feel comfortable requesting from a library? If you were the head of a chain book store, would you order & stock a book called "Ultimate Race"?

This highlights the issue with the word and its problematic and undeniable connections to racism and white supremacy. It is not a term I'm completely comfortable having in my books and certainly not a term I want to fight for and defend.


It's not like D&D is free of poor naming. You don't have to look far, with Oriental Adventures published in 3rd Edition, despite people knowing for many, many decades that "orientalism" was problematic.
Unless you want to defend that term as well. After all, we also used that term for decades without issue. And it’s not like Kara Tur is a real place.
Click to expand...

A lot of things can look bad out of context.
That doesnt make the in-context concepts problematic in and of themselves.


Bringing up another term as a flase equivalence isnt supporting this case.
 

Afrodyte

Afrodyte

Explorer
Jester David said:
It's not like D&D is free of poor naming. You don't have to look far, with Oriental Adventures published in 3rd Edition, despite people knowing for many, many decades that "orientalism" was problematic.
Unless you want to defend that term as well. After all, we also used that term for decades without issue. And it’s not like Kara Tur is a real place.
Click to expand...

No, no, please, don't bring up the o-word. There was already one thread that just got shut down with people arguing about that.
 


Aldarc

Aldarc

Legend
MacConnell said:
[MENTION=5142]Aldarc[/MENTION]
The original question to which you refer is too far back for me to find but to address your reiteration of "What would be lost?":

The answer is sovereignty.

Should the works of literature be altered in their vocabulary due to the propaganda of politically motivated societal manipulation? No.

A person who is actually offended will not read Twain or Dickens or Dostoevsky or Tolkien or Martin, but their works, or future works in the case of Martin, should not be altered. This creates a grander issue of promoting prejudice as written works such as Slaughterhouse Five, Lolita, The brothers Karmonov, The Bible, and The Quran have all been targeted fro destruction by those 'offended' by their existence.
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To the best of my knowledge, no one on this thread is advocating that the vocabulary of past texts should be altered to accomodate modern sensibilities, not even past editions of Dungeons & Dragons. We do recognize, however, that these authors and works of literature are products of their times and that their vocabulary (or translations) often reflect this reality.* That is most definitely true for all the works that you listed, but also other obvious literary giants such as Shakespeare, Milton, and Goethe, whose vocabulary often requires footnotes for contemporary readers. However, I suspect for purpose of our discussion that no one would want, much less demand, that contemporaneous authors to be obligated to use the exact vocabulary of their predecessors, especially if the cognitive meaning, connotations, or intellectual history has since changed. Likewise, I doubt that current creative writers/publishers for D&D are obligated to use the same terms, vocabulary, or whatever else of past editions. They are new writers writing new editions for new audiences. Was sovereignty lost when the "thief" was renamed to the "rogue? Or the "magic-user" was renamed to the "wizard"? Or the "fighting-man" renamed to the "fighter"? Do we lose sovereignty when publishers publish errata? Do we lose sovereignty when we publish new editions? Our hobby is not set in stone nor is it simply "a book." It evolves. It is culturally dependent. We change the system periodically so that it can memetically survive and thrive in new cultural climes and norms. That may include changing the rules. That may include changing concepts. That may include changing terms. The suggestion of changing the term "race" is not about erasing, rewriting, or censoring the past but about embracing the current cultural clime and possibly future clime, when I hope that future writers, players, and game masters select an even more appropriate term than our alternative one to "race."

* When I teach the Bible at university, for example, I often have to explain to students the historical socio-political backdrop of the text(s), differences in values between modern and ancient cultures, discuss translating the original languages of the texts (Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, etc.), the history of textual reception that has accrued a lot of textual baggage around the text, and a range of other complex issues. And for the record, the Bible is a work of literature that has been "altered in their vocabulary due to the propaganda of politically motivated societal manipulation," particularly when it comes to translations: cf. Luther Bible, King James Bible, etc.
 

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