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'.

 

[Giltonio_Santos]

For a campaign that was written over 20 years ago, that's beyond progressive.

I never thought of Rufus and Burne as anything other than a gay couple. If Gygax didn't want them to be, he communicated it pretty badly.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

False, if you leave a baby in predator-free woods near a source of food and they grow up as a feral child, they will not be naturally empathic. Feral children have actually happened IRL so we know this with pretty much total certainty

Those kids don’t actually lack empathy, first of all.

Second, those kids can’t be used as models of what is natural for humans, because isolation isn’t natural for humans. We are possibly the most social mammal species in the world. We literally can be driven mad by isolation. Very easily.

Humans are naturally cooperative and empathetic. It’s literally part of how we survived before advanced tool use made survival easier.

 

[Flamestrike]

I never thought of Rufus and Burne as anything other than a gay couple. If Gygax didn't want them to be, he communicated it pretty badly.

Huh. You know I never though of that.

Im running RttToEE at the moment, converted to 5E. Thats how Im gonna run them now. Two adventurers who met and fell in love, and just want to be left alone.

 

[Bitbrain]

Reply to OP.

Nice to see WOTC addressing some of the community’s concerns on this subject.

 

[Olrox17]

History books written in 1820, 1920 and 2020 about Roman history are vastly different.

Are we talking about history books written by actual historians? Because information in those usually is updated when new, undiscovered historic facts come to light.
For example, historians didn't rewrite Roman history when Western society (finally) decided to admit that women were equal to men. Women weren't treated as equals in those times, and that was wrong, but true.
Revisioning history to manipulate current politics is one of the worst sins an historian can commit. It happened in the past, and it's never good (before you accuse me of strawmannirg you again, I'm not saying you suggested revisionism in the post I'm quoting).

All art is political, because creators are a product of their environment. Even an attempt to not be swayed by the current era is a reaction to the current era.

All right, I think we'll just have to agree to disagree here. You'll never convince me that Caravaggio's Basket of Fruit is somehow political because, according to you, all art is. There are literally thousands of art pieces, in all art fields, that can be defined as descriptive. I'm not going to change your mind, so I'm moving on.

 

[Helldritch]

Too many people here confound real life and a fantasy game. Race, as a concept, has no place in real life. We are all the same. We are all equals, we are one.

On the other hand, race in fantasy genre is essential in many games. Many want evil to be evil. No questions asked, no answer needed. It is a game. No need to go further.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

Sexuality, gender, and orientation are all related, but independent, concepts. Just because you aren't playing out sexual encounters between NPCs doesn't mean these three concepts don't exist in your world (or should). I also don't roleplay out sexual situations in my own games, but a world without sex sounds like a really weird one.

Things I don't ever mention OR roleplay in my games, but that probably happen off-camera.

1. Peeling potatos.
2. Taking a dump.
3. Cleaning your boots.
4. Sharpening swords.
5. Repairing armor.
6. Intercourse between one or more consenting adults.
7. Difficulty inserting a bung into a bunghole.
8. Estimating ballast on a sailing ship.
9. Having an extra good night of sleep.
10. Reorganizing your spell components ever once in awhile when they get jumbled together.

I am baffled why you think my desire for no sexy-time meant that in my game world nobody ever had sex. I am fully understand the difference between sex, gender, and sexuality and how all three are different things and none of the three are binary but that knowledge has literally nothing to do with why I don't usually assign a sexuality to my NPCs.

 

[Mercurius]

Social-cultural mores are changing all of the time. The D&D game grew out of 1970s America, and has changed over the last four and half decades to reflect various socio-cultural changes. I suspect that this will continue to happen.

Meaning, it is a misunderstanding to think that in the 70s we had it "wrong" and now we have it "right." At most, we can say that we have changed--hopefully for the better, in a more inclusive way--but that we aren't done cooking (and probably never will be...or I hope not!).

A problem arises, however, when there is an implication that any particular way is how the game "should" be played, or that the game should be codified around a specific set of values. On one hand, WotC provides a base game with a set of rules and cultural assumptions that will inevitably reflect contemporary values to some degree. On the other hand, not only will those values continue to change, but there is no codified set of what those values are. At the least, there are variations within different nations, cultures, sub-cultures, ethnic groups, families, etc.

As far as WotC and the rulebooks are concerned, I would suggest that they take an open-ended and "customize as you like" approach. It may be that the best (or at least, least-problematic) approach would be a new chapter or section of a chapter that involves guidance on how to customize the game to your liking it, be it racial statistics, assumptions about good and evil, etc.

That said, D&D is also a tradition, and while I think it should be adaptable and customizable, there are still going to be certain default assumptions embedded in the rules. I don't think there is a "right" answer to that--that's part of my point--but would suggest that taking D&D tradition in mind is important.

D&D is a fantasy game. While real-world issues will inevitably trickle into any form of art or imaginative experience, we need not feel that it must accurately depict all aspects of real life. For instance, while there are no or few real-world examples of historical cultures that were inherently evil, that doesn't mean that this is how it must be in a D&D world. For the tropes of a game, it makes sense that illithid are evil, even if we can imagine a scenario where one might not be. Or how traditional drow represent a fallen sub-species of elves--that is their story, and what makes them interesting.

 

[pukunui]

I would appreciate a more modular, customizable approach to race / species / ancestry / whatever you want to call it. 5e in particular seems to lump cultural elements into the race packages. If I want to play a dwarf who was raised by halflings, I have to ask the DM to let me customize the dwarf race package because my dwarf would more likely know Halfling than Dwarvish, and may not have learned how to use typically dwarvish tools or weapons.

 

[Haldrik]

All right, I think we'll just have to agree to disagree here. You'll never convince me that Caravaggio's Basket of Fruit is somehow political because, according to you, all art is. There are literally thousands of art pieces, in all art fields, that can be defined as descriptive. I'm not going to change your mind, so I'm moving on.

Basket of fruit was cultural − with the newly discovered science-based skills of realistic art including perspective, properties of light, and so on. Of course, the Renaissance itself was extremely political.


Think of all of the paintings, murals, statues, and mosaics portraying the Madona − an important figure for sexual identity politics.