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'.

 

[Flamestrike]

Its quite rare that I say this but you are just wrong on pretty much every count here.

No, I'm not. 'Race' is a social construct. Thats the accepted scientific consensus.

Culture is about ideas, customs, values and social behaviour. It is totally independent of ethnicity.

In a sense yes, you're correct. Both are related (but independent) concepts, and both are social constructs.

I dont think you have read much about Birthright, or maybe have just relied on a skim read of a fanpage. The Anuireans (your western germanic Europeans - whatever that means) are absolutely not more civilised than the Khinasi (far more educated) for instance or the Brecht (far more advanced technologically) whatever civilised means. As I said, they are absolutely not the standard of success in fact are seen as fairly ineffectual. One of the classic goals of Birthright campaign was to create a kingdom that would capitalise on that.

So the setting assumption of Birthright is 'different ethnic groups and cultures, with inherent qualities, which are blatantly superior or inferior to other ethnic groups and cultures, or more or less 'civilised' with leaders of those cultures and belonging to one of those ethnic groups hell bent on conquest'?

You dont see a problem (several problems) here?

As I have said, the Vos people focus on war and not intellectual persuits because they are surrounded by monsters in a environmentally challenging climate not because they a racially stupid!

Whats the difference!

Player: 'Hey DM, I would like to play an Intelligence 18 Vos PC'
DM: 'You cant; youve been 'surrounded my monsters and in a challenging climate' so you're limited to an Intelligence of 17'

Vos are still dumber than other human races. The 'environment and monsters' that they find themselves exposed to may be what made them stupid and barbaric, but they're still stupid and barbaric as an inherent trait.

Your characterisations are pretty disengenious and ill informed. As is bringing Godwin into the discussion.

Its an exception to the Godwin rule actually. We're literally discussing a game that has [not Germans] and depicted as 'wise and cultured and civilised' people, and the [not Slavic people] depicted as 'barbaric people who are stupid and brutal.'

Seriously man. That argument has been run before by someone.

 

[jasper]

Elves have a base lifespan of roughly a thousand years, and they never sleep. They're not human. Period.

have you ever seen a coffee shop in D&D. No. Because the elves are hording it all.

 

[DND_Reborn]

The problem is, these gay characters are completely invisible unless they are kissing each other in front of the adventuring party.

There needs to be more ways to make gay characters visible − such as two kings running a realm together.

Maybe marriage rings are worn on a different finger if a samesex couple?

Sheer visibility during a game.

As it is now, the stereotype that all D&D characters are straight is vast and totalitarian.

Honestly, with NPCs we encounter, I am more concerned about whether the individual is someone I can trust, isn't lying to me, and who won't try to kill my PC when they get the chance, than whether that NPC is gay or not.

 

[Dire Bare]

Its quite rare that I say this but you are just wrong on pretty much every count here.

Culture is about ideas, customs, values and social behaviour. It is totally independent of ethnicity - though some ethnicities may have specific cultures.

Making differences between characters being based on culture not ethnicity or race allows people to make choices and excercise free will, while still allowing us to recognise that there are differences. As a european who travels a lot in Europe I can absolutely say there are differences in ideas customs and social behaviours between the French, Spanish, British, German and Italian cultures. It is a fact! They are not overwhelming and there are exceptions of course but society does change values and what is encouraged.

I dont think you have read much about Birthright, or maybe have just relied on a skim read of a fanpage. The Anuireans (your western germanic Europeans - whatever that means) are absolutely not more civilised than the Khinasi (far more educated) for instance or the Brecht (far more advanced technologically) whatever civilised means. As I said, they are absolutely not the standard of success in fact are seen as fairly ineffectual. One of the classic goals of Birthright campaign was to create a kingdom that would capitalise on that.

As I have said, the Vos people focus on war and not intellectual persuits because they are surrounded by monsters in a environmentally challenging climate not because they a racially stupid! You have the ability to play those kingdoms and make them what ever you want. The Vos were originally the servants of the God of Magic.

Your characterisations are pretty disengenious and ill informed. As is bringing Godwin into the discussion.

Edit - Skin colour really is irrelevent when looking at culture, unless you're talking about over lapping cultures. I have no problem with a rule that says people who are raised in X culture have an inherant bonus in X (I would prefer to avoid penalties because players dont like penalties, theyre not fun) and are more likely to be Y. I dont think skin colour needs to come into it at all.

I don't see how this is any different to Uthgardt Tribes, Sembian Merchants, Dales Farmers or any of the other cultural regions in the Forgotten Realms.

Dude, Flamestrike is right on the money. He is speaking (purposefully?) from a scientific perspective. Take any anthropology or sociology "101" course for the same perspective. Culture isn't separate from ethnicity, it is a part of it. Of course, the lines between cultures, are just as fluid and a continuum as ethnicity is.

You claim that culture is a choice? How many folks "choose" their culture? You are born into a culture. Later, as you grow, you can choose to try and move away from your culture and/or adopt a different culture . . . but can you ever really fully leave your birth culture behind?

 

[Li Shenron]

Personally I hate the term 'race'. Elves are not a different 'race' they're a different species. Even among humans, the term race is often used in a naive way, and ignorant of the fact that 'race' or 'ethnicity' is a social construct (and not a discrete biological distinction with inherent traits).

I've always thought the same, why did they chose the term "race" in the first place?

There's still a lot for me to think about this topic and its issues, I don't have a stable opinion on it, so don't take what I say too seriously, but here are a few thoughts I had for quite a long time...

I've never used to think that having elves or orcs as alternative playable "creatures" (that's what I would call them rather than the slightly too modern "species") could be an issue to some, for me they've always been a bit like intelligent beings from another planet, very separate from humankind. In fact, I always used to say that the main interesting factor in playing a non-human shouldn't be the mechanical advantages, but rather the chance of roleplaying a being with a very different mindset: when you have the expected lifespan of 1000 years like an elf, you got to have a very different way of thinking.

But, perhaps one problem is that roleplaying rarely goes like that, and is instead typically diluted, if not ignored completely, particularly when an edition takes the "character building" route and many gamers only choose race based on bonuses. When 99% of the players end up roleplaying everything in the same way as a human + a funny accent, and meanwhile the game designers are afraid to describe all humanoid civilization anything but mere slight variants of humankind, you have effectively "humanized" every playable creature. Then maybe it starts to sound like, that when we called them "races" we really wanted to be "racist" after all...

An exacerbating problem is half-races. You start with half-elves and half-orcs in the first core book, and then soon someone starts asking "why can't I play a half-dwarf then", or something similar. Most editions add more half-races with supplement books at some point. Hybrid creatures (also partly human) are a fantasy staple at least since ancient Egypt, but if you have them as regular creatures (rather than near-unique exceptions), then you are really blurring the boundaries between humanoids. They are not separate anymore.

I am not sure if separating humanoid creatures further can help, or instead make things even worse. Perhaps the way out is indeed to just forget about having different creatures, reboot and treat all humanoids as a big family of the same species, minimizing stereotypes for each "group". But then, how are we going to handle the next tier, when someone wants to roleplay an undead or why not even a beholder or a dragon... are we going to say that such creatures also should be made identical to a human to avoid issues?

I am also not completely sold on the idea that the problem exists only for player characters, and therefore if we make all player characters identical then we solve the problem (note: I have been actually using exactly this idea in the majority of my 5e games, where all PCs use the human stats and race is a cosmetic choice only, but I have done this for very different purposes).

So I am pretty much still confused and thinking about it... but my general feeling at the moment is that if we just (1) stop calling them "races" and using "creatures" or "species" instead (but not "ancestry" nor "heritage" please, these are even more confusing!) and (2) avoid half-races as much as possible, then we probably would already take a big step forward. Those two, and of course most important of all, never ever differentiate stats between ethnic groups (or gender) within humans!

 

[Envisioner]

So the setting assumption of Birthright is 'different ethnic groups and cultures, with inherent qualities, which are blatantly superior or inferior to other ethnic groups and cultures, or more or less 'civilised' with leaders of those cultures and belonging to one of those ethnic groups hell bent on conquest'?

You dont see a problem (several problems) here?

No, I really don't. This is a party line that several cultures used to justify their imperialism; in real life it is a myth, but in Birthright's setting it's factually true. This is no different from the fact that the Chimera was a mythical creature in real-life Greece but actually exists in the D&D world.

If you think there's something awful about these stereotypes, then make a character who lives to defy the stereotype, and get a sympathetic DM to build a campaign around you (in part, the other players have to be having fun too) where you get to prove the stereotype wrong and change the minds of several powerful people in the campaign world, creating real political change forever thereafter in the campaign world. That's an awesome concept, why would you not want to play that?

 

[darjr]

As far ast LGBTQ+ representation in WotC D&D adventures Mr. Crawford had some good things to say. For instance it’s cannon that “Corellon Larethian is often seen as androgynous or hermaphroditic, and some elves in the multiverse are made in Corellon’s image”

Here is an interview from 2017

DUNGEONS & DRAGONS Rolls A Critical Hit With LGBTQ+ Representation

tktk

geekandsundry.com

 

[Flamestrike]

If nothing else, this thread shows we have bigger fish to fry.

POTT.

Im relieved most of it comes from ignorance, and not malice. I can handle the former; its the latter I cant stand.

 

[TheSword]

No - that's really not true at all. There are some ethnicities that are defined separately from culture while others aren't. Ultimately, that just enhances the evidence that ethnicities are fundamentally social constructions.

Ethnicities are social constructions of course. That doesnt mean they dont have an importance. Particularly when analysing representation for instance. What ethnicity a person identifies with can depend on many things and the names and boundaries are continually changing as societies change.

Of course culture overlaps. However an ethnicity can be broken down into many different cultures or one culture could include many different ethinicities. It is also possible to be part of multiple cultures. [Edit and multiple ethnicities].

In our fantasy game it is useful to have the people of one kingdom or nation have an easily identifiable set of customs, values and societal traditions. It brings them to life and differentiates them. If Tarabona's wear their hair in braids and Domani women wear veils the world starts to be a bit more recognisable.

 

[Olrox17]

All art is created in the context of its times.

Even "apolitical" art is inherently political, by choosing to be intentionally retrograde in its views.

Art can be entirely descriptive. I want d&d to be that.
I already deal with far too much actual, real life politics because of my job. I want that stuff out of my leisure time hobby.