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'.

 

[DammitVictor]

This is a good direction. And another great indication of why I've very much fallen out of favour using attribute modifiers on the different species/races/ancestries.

Largely, my problem with them is that absent the race-as-class of Classic D&D and class restrictions of AD&D, the ability score adjustments for nonhuman PCs are the only mechanical incentive reinforcing "stereotypical" race/class combinations... and they reinforce the wrong goddamned ones. If I never see another Dwarf Wizard or Druid in my entire lifetime, it'll be too soon...

And in 3.X, at least, Tieflings were the worst "common" player race for Sorcerers and Warlocks.

There are only six ability scores... and Charisma makes strange bedfellows.

But the biggest thing, as others have pointed out on this thread already, is that while perhaps the average Wookie is big and burly, just as we have amazing diversity of body types among humans, why wouldn't we have the same with Wookies? Especially as we are playing heroes, who are by and large out of the ordinary.

Humans have a STR range from 8-18. Halflings have a STR range from 6-16. Orcs have a STR range from 10-20.

If all the Orcs have a STR of 20 or more, it's due to a combination of point-buy and the fact that people play Orcs because they want a STR of 20. My problem with these racial adjustments is that they're not significant enough to mechanically represent what they represent in fiction-- maybe we only want the strongest Orc to be +2 compared to the strongest Human, but the average Orc and the weakest Orc should be significantly stronger.

(In some of our D&D games, we allow a player to choose both a mechanics 'race' and an RP 'race'. In world, you are fully your RP choice, but your character is built using the mechanics choice.

It solves a number of mechanical problems with "race" in D&D, including a few that really bother me... but man, this bothers me even more. This is... right up there with the people who don't want race to have any mechanical effects in the game at all.

If there is not a meaningful distinction between the different playable nonhuman people in your game, why do we have multiple kinds at all? If they're all human underneath, just make them all human. It's easier to balance and it isn't going to run afoul of any of the nonsense we're discussing in this thread... unless you then panic and give a bunch of human ethnic groups racial adjustments.

Upto now, I want the D&D Nonhuman races to have ability bonuses. Because I want them to optimize with some classes and not others, because I want these classes to inform their cultures.

I'm going to guess here that you'd be completely uninterested in the suggestion that, instead of "soft banning" race/class combinations by making them unoptimizable... you "hard ban" them instead, on the argument that they're not human and thus they are not necessarily mentally or magically capable of doing all of the things humans do.

I'm glad that CON/WIS makes Dwarves well-suited to being Fighters and Clerics. I'm less glad that it makes them equally well-suited to Druids and Monks and other similar classes. I dislike that their CHA penalty makes them poor Paladins, and that they are better Wizards and Magi than Bards.

I don't care if anyone else wants to change those restrictions at their table-- I just want the game to start from the assumption that restrictions are meant to exist.

If a Lawful Good society was forced to embrace slaughter of POW's and genocide as tools, it ceases to be a Lawful Good society.

Surely if one side is ethically Good, and the other side is ethically evil, thats what separates them. The fact that the Good guys demonstrate mercy, compassion and altruism, while the evil guys do not.

No, really, no. When a person says that morality is "black and white"-- in fiction or reality-- what they mean is that it is a "red or blue" team jersey. Black and white morality has nothing to do with behavior: your enemies are born Evil, and nothing they do can make them Good; your allies are born Good and the only way they can become Evil is by betraying your cause, including by suggesting that your enemies might merit some sympathy or compassion.

This is not the place to discuss my feelings about this philosophy in real life; I will only note that I find it extremely distasteful in gaming and fiction, to the extent that I will not play with people who enjoy it regardless of whether or not it reflects their real-life views.

 

[DammitVictor]

The debate is already pretty harsh,
So another question : Do orc can have psionic?!!!

Orc can do make psionic.

And in 5e you are also not allowed to drop them on something, even if its named Forgotten Realms , just kidding

See, and this is why I stuck to AD&D-- in the Spelljammer setting, high-level Dwarves are widely considered an effective form of siege weaponry against groundling forces.

 

[kudolink]

Gonna take a moment to plug James Mendez Hodes, a cultural consultant who has associated with Wizards in the past. Dan Dillon gave him a shoutout in the recent Twitter discussion referenced in the OP. James also done RPG design work, his most notable work I believe being the PbtA RPG Thousand Arrows.

On the orc matter, he has written two pretty lengthy articles about the tropes used in regards to orcs on his site, so if anybody here hasn't already read that, feel free to do so. Orcs, Britons, and the Martial Race Myth, Part I; and Part II. But I feel a later and shorter statement of his says it a lot louder and clearer:



Incidentally, James was on Morrus' podcast just yesterday. Go have a listen if you like.

EDIT: I'm also gonna recommend this Twitter thread (collated in Thread Reader), which I also think is good though it's a lot shorter. The most important point in that thread IMO is as follows:

This is all very interesting, but missing a central point that invalidates aaaaaall the academic: this is a make-believe game.
His point of "There is no warrior gene. There are no martial races. No one is born to kill" clashes on the fact that - TADA - there is, in my fantasy game! Together with elves, that don't exist in the real world! And the dragons, that don't exist in the real world! And spells! And demons!
Hey, looks like that most of this game is actually fantasy!
So thanks James for his very precise analysis that has the same value as a Nobel in Physics insisting that "you can't just fly by uttering specific words and weaving you hands".

Then, I play D&D since 1992. I played with good people, bad people, racists, anti-racists, men, women, straight, lgbtq, young, old, violent people, pacifists, poor, rich, middle class, people from every continent, born locally or immigrated.
This doesn't make my experience predominant to anyone else, I acknowledge that before anyone else; with all the opportunities this could have happened in my tables not one time, not 1 single time, EVER, anyone CONFUSED for one spit second the game of make-believe we were playing with the real world and its issues. If that was the case with you or your players, how can you accept to play a game that involves violence and murder as its pillar?
If that happened to you, you and your friends were doing something wrong; try to fix that, and not the game, which does nothing bad.

From all the angles this conversation tastes exactly like the time we were discussing if D&D pushes people into satanism. No, people pushes people into satanism. It's the same here.
The fact that my characters pursue killing orcs because they are evil, or that I don't see any problem with the fact that Drow are dark-skinned, IN A GAME, doesn't makes me accept for a split second all the dehumanization that non-white people constantly endure, IN THE REAL WORLD.

And I would not be ok if D&D were to write down something like "you get a certain bonus and malus if your character is a black human". You would see pictures of me burning the red box, believe me.

All of this conversation takes effort and distracts from the real issues. It's worthless. If WoTC really wants to "help the cause" they should address their company policies and show us how they improved in that, because when they are done fixing the game then the world it's still going to be the same naughty word place as before and all the people that now cheer this waste of effort will feel so proud and and comfortable on the moral high ground to still feel the need of doing something for real. IN THE REAL WORLD.

 

[Flamestrike]

There are literally canonical examples of Greyhawk orcs that are not evil, and who have assimilated into a human culture (with problems, but hey).

They're drawn to savagery and have quick tempers, and that coupled with their evil societies and deities make them tend towards evil, but they are not inherently evil any more than an elf is.

 

[Flamestrike]

Largely, my problem with them is that absent the race-as-class of Classic D&D and class restrictions of AD&D, the ability score adjustments for nonhuman PCs are the only mechanical incentive reinforcing "stereotypical" race/class combinations... and they reinforce the wrong goddamned ones. If I never see another Dwarf Wizard or Druid in my entire lifetime, it'll be too soon...

And in 3.X, at least, Tieflings were the worst "common" player race for Sorcerers and Warlocks.

There are only six ability scores... and Charisma makes strange bedfellows.



Humans have a STR range from 8-18. Halflings have a STR range from 6-16. Orcs have a STR range from 10-20.

If all the Orcs have a STR of 20 or more, it's due to a combination of point-buy and the fact that people play Orcs because they want a STR of 20. My problem with these racial adjustments is that they're not significant enough to mechanically represent what they represent in fiction-- maybe we only want the strongest Orc to be +2 compared to the strongest Human, but the average Orc and the weakest Orc should be significantly stronger.



It solves a number of mechanical problems with "race" in D&D, including a few that really bother me... but man, this bothers me even more. This is... right up there with the people who don't want race to have any mechanical effects in the game at all.

If there is not a meaningful distinction between the different playable nonhuman people in your game, why do we have multiple kinds at all? If they're all human underneath, just make them all human. It's easier to balance and it isn't going to run afoul of any of the nonsense we're discussing in this thread... unless you then panic and give a bunch of human ethnic groups racial adjustments.



I'm going to guess here that you'd be completely uninterested in the suggestion that, instead of "soft banning" race/class combinations by making them unoptimizable... you "hard ban" them instead, on the argument that they're not human and thus they are not necessarily mentally or magically capable of doing all of the things humans do.

I'm glad that CON/WIS makes Dwarves well-suited to being Fighters and Clerics. I'm less glad that it makes them equally well-suited to Druids and Monks and other similar classes. I dislike that their CHA penalty makes them poor Paladins, and that they are better Wizards and Magi than Bards.

I don't care if anyone else wants to change those restrictions at their table-- I just want the game to start from the assumption that restrictions are meant to exist.




No, really, no. When a person says that morality is "black and white"-- in fiction or reality-- what they mean is that it is a "red or blue" team jersey. Black and white morality has nothing to do with behavior: your enemies are born Evil, and nothing they do can make them Good; your allies are born Good and the only way they can become Evil is by betraying your cause, including by suggesting that your enemies might merit some sympathy or compassion.

This is not the place to discuss my feelings about this philosophy in real life; I will only note that I find it extremely distasteful in gaming and fiction, to the extent that I will not play with people who enjoy it regardless of whether or not it reflects their real-life views.

Your views on good and evil are not reflected in the rules though man. I also find your definitions of them as nothing more than labels indicating what team you're on to be all kinds of messed up.

Good has meaning. It means doing good things (defined in DnD as altruism, mercy, charity and compassion). Evil also has meaning, namely doing acts that harm others (rape, murder, torture, slavery and so forth).

I wholly reject what you're saying here.

 

[jasper]

Best terminology to use -> Call them all meatbags.

And the evil races will be broccoli bags

 

[DammitVictor]

Your views on good and evil are not reflected in the rules though man. I also find your definitions of them as nothing more than labels indicating what team you're on to be all kinds of messed up.

I find it messed up, too, but it's absolutely the way the rules of the game work-- they don't make sense, otherwise.

I'm not asking you to agree with it, because I don't. I'm asking you to understand that this is where most of the defense of the indefensible in D&D comes from-- that when you're trying to argue that the concept of "evil races" is morally heinous, this is the position you're arguing against.

Like I said... I can only barely refer to the argument here, because I conflate this attitude toward fictional morality with very similar attitudes toward real morality and I find it extremely distasteful.

 

[Stefano Rinaldelli]

I really, really don't understand.
Create a race to be functional to a narration and then remove the traits that make that race functional to your narration?
Orcs are stupid and cruel because Tolkien needed stupid and cruel creatures to oppose the Free People. This doesn't mean that all Free People are smart and good and for narrative purposes you can create a very freaky smart and gentle orc if you need such a character for your narration.
And remember... orcs do not exist. You are not offending anybody creating a stupid race.
All this racial attention that is starting from a true problem that has to be solved is growing irrationally to some sort a witch hunt and, in my opinion, is going ridicolous.
What about Alien creature? Why depict it as a cruel human hunter? And Vampires? It is unfair to treat them all as scary!
In my opinion the only real rule to be cutted is alignment that in fact says that all the single members of a class of creature is good, evil or neutral. And this is a very childish rule. But differences in ecology and stats are perfectly legit. And let me say that if you remove -2 INT on orcs, than, to avoid racism against human you have to avoid +2 STR on Orcs and +2 INT on sun elves. And so on, and so on... I really don't understand. Excuse me.
How this grizzly bears dare to be stronger than humans?
How this humans dare to have a brain overdeveloped in comparison to mosquitos?
And so on, and so on... I really don't understand. Excuse me.
There is no need to make D&D politically correct. Starting from the fact that you can play different (fictional remember fictional) races and suffer or benefit from the difference between those races in comparison to human standard is a great expression of antiracial mood itself. To negate the differences between different races is to kill the true reason for these races to exist: narrative need of sentient beings in conflit or alliance with humans.

 

[Flamestrike]

I find it messed up, too, but it's absolutely the way the rules of the game work-- they don't make sense, otherwise.

No, that's NOT how the game works, and it does make sense otherwise.

Good people are altruistic, charitable, compassionate and merciful (good) They avoid harming others (evil) unless that harm is reasonably needed to prevent harm to others, is proportionate to that harm, and no other option reasonably presents itself (reasonable self or collective defence).

Evil people avoid altruism, compassion and mercy (being good). They have no qualms about harming others, and some even actively pursue harming others as sport or for pleasure.

Neutral people lack the convictions to go out of their way to help others, and also have sufficient reservations about killing and harming others to also avoid such acts.

'Good' and 'evil' are not just team labels. Theyre indicators of a person's moral code - good people help and avoid harm, and evil people harm and avoid helping.

I wholly reject your argument here.

 

[DammitVictor]

I wholly reject your argument here.

Reject it all you want. It's not even mine.