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'.

 

[Hoffmand]

I have no problem with the typical orc having intelligence 6 and a very rare orc having a 18. Or an extremely rare one being LG. But D&D is not about species and sci-fi. Races in mythology represent an archetype of sorts. So I may not like where this is ultimately heading. But I am willing to wait and see what they do.

 

[Coroc]

Greyhawk's orcs are such things. But Eberron orcs are actually noble and sensible people. It all depends on the setting.

I know, I was just joking in a very british style (oh was that a stereotype now?)

 

[Haffrung]

If it weren't them the players would be slaughtering generic human bandits wholesale, which is one of the other core 1st level encounter tropes. It's basically a game where problems are frequently solved with violence and players typically kill their enemies to a man. If it too often being Orcs who get to be the villains bothers you than have the low level heroes respond to a call for aid from a peaceful Orcish farming community constantly being raided by vicious, barbaric Halflings or something.

Yes, in my experience D&D players solve virtually every problem with lethal force. And in the campaigns I've run with few humanoids, it's evil humans who are put to the sword.

You see this even in milqtoast adventures like Lost Mines of Phandelver. The PCs reach Phandalin and hear there are ruffians bullying people around. They go to the gang's hangout and confront them. The thugs jeer and threaten. The PCs unleash ferocious violence and slay every thug in three rounds (18 seconds).

Villager to PCs at tavern: "Did you find the ruffians who were harassing and bullying townfolk?"

PCs: "Yep. You won't have any more problems [point to a half-dozen eviscerated and scorched corpses flopped on the road]."

Villager: "Our thanks, strangers! Sit and have an ale."

We chuckled at the absurdity of it.

 

[Stefano Rinaldelli]

We chuckled at the absurdity of it.

IT IS A GAME. Is funny cause it is the way it is. Let's burn every copy of Quentin Tarantino films.

 

[Umbran]

This is all very interesting, but missing a central point that invalidates aaaaaall the academic: this is a make-believe game.
...
Hey, looks like that most of this game is actually fantasy!

This seems very glib. It treats the operation of physical aspects of the world on the same moral level as how we think of people.

The word "fantasy" does not just wipe away the moral character of the resulting stories.

 

[Coroc]

Yes, in my experience D&D players solve virtually every problem with lethal force. And in the campaigns I've run with few humanoids, it's evil humans who are put to the sword.

You see this even in milqtoast adventures like Lost Mines of Phandelver. The PCs reach Phandalin and hear there are ruffians bullying people around. They go to the gang's hangout and confront them. The thugs jeer and threaten. The PCs unleash ferocious violence and slay every thug in three rounds (18 seconds).

Villager to PCs at tavern: "Did you find the ruffians who were harassing and bullying townfolk?"

PCs: "Yep. You won't have any more problems [point to a half-dozen eviscerated and scorched corpses flopped on the road]."

Villager: "Our thanks, strangers! Sit and have an ale."

We chuckled at the absurdity of it.

Well but that example is very historically accurate. They did not have prisons back then, at least not as a method of punishment.

They also did not have news, or wide range communication, they needed pragmatic solutions which worked on the spot and they found them, we today find these mostly cruel, but we are not viewing the whole context.

 

[Horwath]

So can’t we just say that it is two solutions

Orc, medium humanoid
any alignement, can be a player race.
vs
Orc, medium fiend
chaotic evil or other evil, cannot be a player race.

why should almost always evil be argument against a PC character to be of that race?

Isn't the most of the charm to play an Orc or Drow PC to fight against the default?

To be shitted on at every step and to prove the world wrong?

 

[Cadence]

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.

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.

Is one of the problems the difference between using the idea of alignment at the individual level and what happens when an alignment is assigned to some entire creature types (pit fiends might be intrinsically evil, but we know there have been good drow).

It feels like it's one thing to go after an individual who has just done evil things and seems intent on continuing*. On the other hand, is going after the village of "evil" humanoids without giving a chance to negotiate a bad thing if you don't know if they're all evil? Would the truly "good" try to find out if there were one good one there and spare it? (I'm thinking back to an earlier discussion on here about a Paladin who lost their Paladinhood for trying to negotiate instead of jumping right to genocide.)

* I haven't played much 5e. Has there been a big discussion about the change to Detect Evil? I just noticed it. It certainly allows for high level infiltrators and assassins a lot easier now, which I like. I'm wondering why they kept the name.

 

[Stefano Rinaldelli]

The word "fantasy" does not just wipe away the moral character of the resulting stories.

Absolutely true. And It is for this kind of consideration that removing -2 INT on Orcs is even more ridicolous. The same is for TV shows rated 13+ with guns, murders and blood spilling everywhere but rated 18+ if there is a little piece of sex.
We are responding to racism with hypocrisy.

 

[Krachek]

why should almost always evil be argument against a PC character to be of that race?

Isn't the most of the charm to play an Orc or Drow PC to fight against the default?

To be shitted on at every step and to prove the world wrong?

You can make a world where even Orcus can become a good fellow and eventually a patron of mercy and compassion. This is the modern way, a global humanism à la Star Trek. It don’t fit to every table.