D&D 5E The word ‘Race’

[Jester David]

Dragonborn are caucasoid? That's news to me.

Maybe it's my Darksun days, but I don't see halflings as caucasoid either. More aboriginal. Large foreheads, flat faces, high cheekbones, neotenous. Arguably more Asian than caucasoid.

Many of my human nations are not caucasoid. Ti'en Ch'i is Asian for example.

Drow are not caucasoid. They're not afroid either BTW.

There's no reason to think elves in general are caucasoid, in fact. They're generally depicted as light-skinned, but that could just mean they're Japanese. Or, you know, nonhuman.

Drow are non-standard elves, certainly not always core, and pretty darn evil as well. Dragonborn are non-humanoid. And traditionally, the presentation of humans has been European only, and not going to, say, Kara Tur.
There's not a lot of people on colour in the 1e and 2e core rulebooks. Even in the 4e books it's pretty white.

In past editions it was really clear that white people were the norm. Heck, the 3e PHB tried to remove the token white male, not including one in the iconics. The iconic fighter was going to be Tordek, the dwarf. But WotC vetoed that idea and made them include a white male. Redgar the fighter, who suddenly appeared on all the advertisements and promotional material for 3e, being the D&D iconic character. (The D&D team didn't much like Redgar, which is why horrible things kept happening to him in the art.

Personally, I think the 5e PHB did an excellent job here. The human in the PHB is a black woman, and the fighter is a black male. Excellent representation. And it emphasises that humans come in all different colours by devoting some of the page count to listing different ethnicity.
This is what needed to be done. They didn't just ignore the issue as "not their problem" or say that people could play other ethnicities. They actually went for representation.

 

[Sunseeker]

Actually, that is NOT the dividing point, and a few species (Ursus arctus, Ursus maritimus; panthera leo & panthera tigris, amongst many others) are capable, but due to range differences, naturally do not breed across populations.

Oh, and Lynx rufus and felis familiaris can produce reproductively viable offspring... but the offspring are slightly malformed... by either parent species' standards... They tend, however, to be offspring of a female FF and a male LR, and have bob-tails, twisted ears, extreme size, and short lifespans (8 years as indoor pets is what I've heard from several friends with them). And they can be reproductively viable - the second gen are FF sized, not lynx sized, but still bob-tailed and tufted.

There's a lot of problem with modern taxonomy being inaccurate.

I actually added that note just a few lines later:

However, the inability to create fertile children is not universally accepted as a differentiation between species.

 

[Alzrius]

Really? So you think CS Lewis's version of Jesus died twice? Once on Earth and once in Narnia? That's a pretty radical claim from a theological standpoint, and I am skeptical that Lewis meant to make such a claim. I think it's just an allegory, perhaps one that got muddier with subsequent books.

It's not an allegory. Lewis flat-out stated as such (from The Quotable Lewis):

If Aslan represented the immaterial Deity, he would be an allegorical figure. In reality however, he is an invention giving an imaginary answer to the question, 'What might Christ become like if there really were a world like Narnia and He chose to be incarnate and die and rise again in that world as He actually has done in ours?' This is not allegory at all.

This is why Aslan appears at the end of Voyage of the Dawn Treader as a lamb and says that that's how he appears on Earth.

 

[Sunseeker]

I don't agree that it's a question of "failing to see the other side." I think those of us who aren't sympathetic to the "D&D is racist" argument do, in fact, see the other side. We just don't find validity in it.

Because you're looking at the argument as though it is saying D&D is racist. That's not the argument being made. The argument is that D&D draws from racist source material (as many things in our modern world still do). This is a problem with the source material, which D&D has done a lot to overcome, but more could be done.

Not seeing the validity of an argument and not agreeing with an argument are two different things. If you're not seeing the validity of an argument, I tend to find that's because you're either reading it wrong, or not really taking the time to consider it. Or it is quite possibly, the worst argument ever put forward, but even simplified down to: D&D retains racist elements because those elements exist in the material it draws from; I don't see how someone can find that as invalid given that you'd either have to be unaware of the racism in the historical material, or not think it was racist.

 

[Remathilis]

Any others?

Hmmm....

* Remove all humanoid racial features. Humans, elves, dwarves, orcs, goblins, halflings, etc receive no special racial traits at all; no darkvision, no ability score mods, no bonus proficiencies, no racial weapons, nothing. This should promote the notion that members of any species are unique individuals and are not stereotyped into certain roles.
* Disassociate Physical Stats from combat ability (to hit/damage, hp) and Mental Stats from Magic (Save DC/Effect). Such notions are ableist and promote the notion that only physically fit characters can be good at combat or mentally gifted people can use magic. The latter is especially problematic, since the idea that only smart or social characters can use use magic can be distressing for players who fall along the autism spectrum or have other handicaps.
* Remove Gods, Religion, and Clerics. The idea of gods are real and clerics wield their power could offend Atheists and other non-religious people.
* Remove alignment and any attempt to objectively define right or wrong. This is especially true of defining whole races, religions/philosophies or species as "evil". Alignment promotes tribalism and one-true-wayism.
* Remove Angels, Devils, Demons, Heaven, Hell, and other religious monsters and iconography that could be viewed as offensive to both believers and nonbelievers.
* Remove the "cursed" girdle of femininity/masculinity. Its transphoblic.
* Remove the half-orc because of its rape-assumed origins.
* Rename the half-elf (or remove it) because being a called a "Half"-creature could offensive to those of mixed race.
* Remove tieflings and warlocks. Both can be viewed as permissive to Satanic believes and promote the notion that such people are heroes worthy of admiration. The same should probably be done for necromancers as well.
* Remove druids and monks because they can be viewed as offensive stereotypes of real-world practicing Wiccans and Buddhists.

That might be a good start to getting rid of all the potentially offensive material in D&D. I'm sure I might have missed a few (does the Thief/Assassin glamorize/promote criminal behavior? Should classes offer more nonviolent means of conflict resolution?) but I think its a good start at making D&D more inclusive.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

It's not an allegory. Lewis flat-out stated as such (from The Quotable Lewis):



This is why Aslan appears at the end of Voyage of the Dawn Treader as a lamb and says that that's how he appears on Earth.

Okay. Thanks for the citation.

 

[Jester David]

OK, let's assume that I believed that D&D perpetuated racist ideas (which I most assuredly do not).

What SPECIFICALLY would you do to change it?

I've heard:

• Replace "race" with another word, which I think most people have agreed fixes nothing as other words can carry the same connotations.
• Remove ability score modifiers and use features to distinguish races. This just hides the issue under a different name.
• Remove all races except human? Not sure this was actually proposed or just mentioned in passing. Boring? 1st edition AD&D was definitely "humanocentric", but people sought ever-expanded roles for demi-humans.

Any others?

Removing racial bonuses is certainly an option for more rules lite systems.
The DragonAge RPG lumps racial mechanics in with other "backgrounds", with different subraces being different backgrounds. So "dwarf noble" and "dwarf surfacer" are slightly different but treated like circle mage or Fereldan Craftsman. And it's possible to get simmilar bonuses from a variety of other backgrounds, so the races are less monolithic. Plus, an elven circle mage and human circle mage would be mechanically identical.
And you can mix-and-match to some extent, especially in the FantasyAGE book, where you can effectively crossbreed any race (highlighted in Titan's Grave with the half-elf, half-dwarf character and the half-surial, half-orc character).

They could have "cultural backgrounds" easily in D&D. Make bonuses for being "dwarf raised" or "farm raised" or "city raised". So an half-elf raised by humans in a city would be different than a half-elf raised by elves in the woods.


Personally though, I think D&D 5e is doing a pretty good job. They've doubled down on presenting diversity through humans. Because they can't show variations in ethnicity in elves and dwarves as easily, a very high percentage of the humans in the art and the adventures are non-white. The art in the human and fighter entries of the PHB are people of colour, as is the warrior fighting goblins on the title page.
It's a way to be inclusive. It's a big change from the TSR policy that the central figure of the cover had to be a white male so the audience would have someone they could identify with.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Really? So you think CS Lewis's version of Jesus died twice? Once on Earth and once in Narnia? That's a pretty radical claim from a theological standpoint, and I am skeptical that Lewis meant to make such a claim. I think it's just an allegory, perhaps one that got muddier with subsequent books.

Aww, damn, I got scooped. I even went to the trouble of checking to make double-super-ultra sure that the quote on the Wiki page was, in fact, exactly the quote as given in the Lewis quote-book. (It is, if you ignore the bracketed bit explaining that Giant Despair is a char from The Pilgrim's Progress.)

And that's not even the most heterodox/"heretical"* thing that shows up in the books. Remember Emeth!

*I sincerely doubt that there are terribly many Christians who would consider Lewis a "heretic" without saying that most other Christians are heretics. His apologia are considered first-rate by a wide swathe of at least Western (that is, non-Orthodox) denominations.

 

[Mistwell]

Would it do you any harm to change the word? Then you shouldn't object to the the idea of changing that word - it'd be doing good things, and not hurting anybody.

Did the guy with the word "Midget" in his handle...an incredibly offensive term that went out of vogue decades ago now...just claim there is "no harm" in asking that people who have used a term for decades and decades to communicate a common meaning in their hobby, to change it to protect an extremely small minority of the offended?

OK, you first.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

That might be a good start to getting rid of all the potentially offensive material in D&D. I'm sure I might have missed a few (does the Thief/Assassin glamorize/promote criminal behavior? Should classes offer more nonviolent means of conflict resolution?) but I think its a good start at making D&D more inclusive.

Thief promotes criminal behavior. Assassin is religiously insensitive (the name comes from a racist caricature of Islamic warriors who abused hashish--the actual etymology of the word is not well-known), and promotes contract-killing, which is super duper bad. I'm quite surprised that you forgot "Barbarian," since that's usually the poster-child of 'offensive classes that need to be removed.' "Bard" probably need to be removed or fundamentally changed, as it is potentially insensitive to Gaelic culture and that of Ireland specifically. Sorcerer should probably be removed for the same reasons as Warlock--the root word refers to someone who casts "black magic." Many Wizard spells have to be removed; anything to do with undeath, mind control, imprisonment, or forced bodily transformation (e.g. polymorph) would have to be removed, as they allow individuals to violate others with impunity. Also, the fact that Wizards are effectively the scientists of D&D, yet they require fantastically expensive education and only the hyperintelligent (read: those with Int scores 16 or higher account for only 9.5% of the population, and that's if you use 4d6 drop lowest), reinforcing both socioeconomic divide and the stereotype that you must be far smarter than average if you want to get anywhere in a STEM career.

While we're at it, we probably have to remove at least dwarves and giants, because those are insensitive to real people who must cope with serious physical conditions (dwarfism and giantism, respectively). Dragonborn might be a problem, as they could be seen as supporting the "reptilians have taken over the government" conspiracy theory. And, as I said earlier, using the term "class" to describe all individuals of a particular vocation is "inherently" classist in some views, so we probably can't use the word Class anymore either--perhaps "Job"?

So that leaves us with...
Races Species: Human, Elf, Half-Elf ???, Half-orc ???, Gnome
Classes Jobs: Fighter, Bard(?), Rogue(?), Wizard(?)

And this doesn't even address the deepest concern about the entire thing: the problems of the world can be solved with violence.

Not real sure what to do about that one, since losing that nixes most of the game. Certainly makes "Fighter"--e.g. one whose job, skills, and life is fighting and nothing else--a problem.

Somewhat surprised that gnome made it through. Also--would the impossibly-thin, beautiful Elves count as a form of body-shaming, encouraging things like eating disorders since they encourage players to (self-?)identify with an archetype that is literally impossible? Would the impossibly-muscular half-orc qualify as a different kind of body-shaming, encouraging steroid abuse?