D&D 5E WotC's Jeremy Crawford on D&D Races Going Forward

On Twitter, Jeremy Crawford discussed the treatment of orcs, Vistani, drow and others in D&D, and how WotC plans to treat the idea of 'race' in D&D going forward. In recent products (Eberron and Wildemount), the mandatory evil alignment was dropped from orcs, as was the Intelligence penalty.

@ThinkingDM Look at the treatment orcs received in Eberron and Exandria. Dropped the Intelligence debuff and the evil alignment, with a more acceptable narrative. It's a start, but there's a fair argument for gutting the entire race system.

The orcs of Eberron and Wildemount reflect where our hearts are and indicate where we’re heading.

@vorpaldicepress I hate to be "that guy", but what about Drow, Vistani, and the other troublesome races and cultures in Forgotten Realms (like the Gur, another Roma-inspired race)? Things don't change over night, but are these on the radar?

The drow, Vistani, and many other folk in the game are on our radar. The same spirit that motivated our portrayal of orcs in Eberron is animating our work on all these peoples.

@MileyMan1066 Good. These problems need to be addressed. The variant features UA could have a sequel that includes notes that could rectify some of the problems and help move 5e in a better direction.

Addressing these issues is vital to us. Eberron and Wildemount are the first of multiple books that will face these issues head on and will do so from multiple angles.

@mbriddell I'm happy to hear that you are taking a serious look at this. Do you feel that you can achieve this within the context of Forgotten Realms, given how establised that world's lore is, or would you need to establish a new setting to do this?

Thankfully, the core setting of D&D is the multiverse, with its multitude of worlds. We can tell so many different stories, with different perspectives, in each world. And when we return to a world like FR, stories can evolve. In short, even the older worlds can improve.

@SlyFlourish I could see gnolls being treated differently in other worlds, particularly when they’re a playable race. The idea that they’re spawned hyenas who fed on demon-touched rotten meat feels like they’re in a different class than drow, orcs, goblins and the like. Same with minotaurs.

Internally, we feel that the gnolls in the MM are mistyped. Given their story, they should be fiends, not humanoids. In contrast, the gnolls of Eberron are humanoids, a people with moral and cultural expansiveness.

@MikeyMan1066 I agree. Any creature with the Humanoid type should have the full capacity to be any alignmnet, i.e., they should have free will and souls. Gnolls... the way they are described, do not. Having them be minor demons would clear a lot of this up.

You just described our team's perspective exactly.

As a side-note, the term 'race' is starting to fall out of favor in tabletop RPGs (Pathfinder has "ancestry", and other games use terms like "heritage"); while he doesn't comment on that specifically, he doesn't use the word 'race' and instead refers to 'folks' and 'peoples'.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Because morality in the Great Wheel isn't subjective, it is quite absolute and cosmic.

And it's just coincidence then that the absolute and cosmic Greet Wheel just happens to lay out all the moralities of good and evil exactly how we human beings that created the game do? What are the odds?!?

Or is it more that the Objective reality of the Great Wheel was created by the Subjective reality of humans like Gary Gygax who had to imagine what all the other Outer Planes of the multiverse would be and he wrote what he knew?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I'm not sure why this needs new books to address. Fix it in errata and subsequent printings. Even the Vistani in CoS could be addressed via flavor.

I can see why the Vistani and groups like them are fun for designers, but it's possible to have a troupe of magical folks -- heck, any group of actual bards in 5E would qualify -- without having that be baked into their ethnicity.

 

[Undrave]

If Orcs weren't Always Evil then Half-Orcs don't need to tiptoe around their origin anymore, they'd just be like Half-Elves but greener.

Just spitballing here, but maybe the game mechanics solution could come in the form of separating physiological differences (STR, DEX, CON) from cultural differences (INT, WIS, CHA). The term "Race" can relate to the former, while backgrounds or maybe a new category of "Culture" can govern the other? We know a big minotaur man will be, in general, stronger than a halfling. But cultural values will dictate whether a character has spent time honing an aspect of their mind and personality.

That is what I would do myself. You have your Race, what species you were born as, your Culture which is where you were raised, and your Background with details what you were doing before being an Adventurer. And THEN you add your Class.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Again, I'll point out, most games are about going into dungeons or whatever and fighting what the PCs consider bad guys. Not everyone wants the moral complexity of whether or not they are really bad guys........

Is there a lot of moral complexity about wiping out the assassin's guild or slavers? There's never been a problem with individuals being bad news. Just don't make it a species-level issue.

Those bad guys in the dungeon are soldiers serving the evil wizard, zealots intending to burn the countryside in the name of the god of slaughter or simply ruthless bandits who don't leave witnesses alive to identify them. Slaughter away.

 

[Zaukrie]

I never thought of the association between Gnomes and certain antisemitic stereotypes until they were pointed out to me. But Orcs and Goblins often get painted with that "Mongrel Savages" stereotype that was very common. And by some extent I have seen Elves pointed out as some Aryan ideal on humans.

There was also for the longest time when only Humans were depicted as being ethnically diverse, but other races like Dwarves and Elves weren't.

What's the answer for goblins or even trolls? Like, I really would like to talk to James Mendez Hodes and better understand how to have a game where it is ok to go into dungeons and fight goblins and orcs and other species......Maybe it is not possible to have a game where it really is ok to do that w/o having to worry about whether or not what you are fighting is evil (like I said, there are redeemed devils, for example.....can I go to Hell and kill devils? Do I have to make sure each of them has done something bad before I do so?).

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

But why are they raised by an "evil" god? Why is their god "evil" then?

Because there are nihilistic supernatural entities in the D&D multiverse that either want to see existence erased or who gain power from the suffering of others.

Sometimes, a cigar is just a cigar.

 

[Zaukrie]

Is there a lot of moral complexity about wiping out the assassin's guild or slavers? There's never been a problem with individuals being bad news. Just don't make it a species-level issue.

Those bad guys in the dungeon are soldiers serving the evil wizard, zealots intending to burn the countryside in the name of the god of slaughter or simply ruthless bandits who don't leave witnesses alive to identify them. Slaughter away.

Then what is the difference between species? If it isn't mechanical, and it isn't cultural, is there an actual difference? I don't know the answer, btw. This is a genuine question.

 

[Oofta]

But why are they raised by an "evil" god? Why is their god "evil" then? It's only evil because we're using human morality to determine their placement on the line. By rights, if orcs are an entirely different species then they shouldn't have an alignment attributed to them at all, or at the very least it should be reflective of their own culture and not in relation to human culture.

If an orc leave their tribe and goes to live in a human city, they're the ones who should be considered Chaotic Evil from the orc's point of view. They are evil for having forsaken their own people and gone to live with the creatures who have been trying to kill them for millenia. And they've done something completely against their nature and moved off the reservation. That's not order there, that's chaos.

But we don't make those morality shifts when it comes to alignment though, instead everything is always reflected through the lens of humanity. But is that right? Is this methodology that we have always used for alignment for the last 40 years the actual way it should remain?

I don't think relative morality is useful to the game. What I dislike is "culture A is evil because they don't believe the same things we believe" or "If X just believed everything I believe they would be good." I think alignment, like most rules in D&D, is an over-simplification of morality but I do think there are evil individuals. If there are evil individuals then there could be evil sentient species.

That's my story, I'm sticking to it. Either throw out the whole concept of good and evil or accept that some creatures in the MM are hard wired to be evil. Do not blame 99% of a specific type of monster being evil because of culture. A gnoll is no more or less human than a red dragon or a beholder.

That's all. I'm not going to get into another debate on philosophical morality 301 debate. Have a good one.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I think everyone involved in this discussion means well. But I'm pretty sure the people protesting right now have far bigger concerns besides the terminology in D&D. People of Color and Black People are getting murdered in the street by Police and the systemic racism that has impacted their daily lives for 400 years.

My personal opinion is that if you look at a fantasy race or heritage or ancestry and see a Human Ethnic Group you probably have some issues to work out.

Or, alternately, when you want a break from the pain of the world, being told "oh, go kill these guys; they, as a people, are less deserving of life than you are because that's just who they are" will break a lot of people out of the game and keep others from ever being interested in it to begin with.

It's not hard to find an accommodation that still lets you slaughter bad guys that doesn't remind some players that there are people in power in their real-life countries who view them the same way.

 

[Zaukrie]

Or, alternately, when you want a break from the pain of the world, being told "oh, go kill these guys; they, as a people, are less deserving of life than you are because that's just who they are" will break a lot of people out of the game and keep others from ever being interested in it to begin with.

It's not hard to find an accommodation that still lets you slaughter bad guys that doesn't remind some players that there are people in power in their real-life countries who view them the same way.

Agreed. 100%