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'.

 

[Warpiglet]

Beat me to it.

First, the drow are the “inky black of a moonless night” back to their origin. They have been drawn with sometimes red eyes and white hair. I have never seen anyone resembling that irl.

Duergar are gray. Goodly svirfneblin are earth tones.

I dunno. Does not remind me of any group on earth. Goodly dwarves are often brown (a favorite of mine).

It’s like a projective test. If you want to find racism in this, you can. Forget that humans in the game are of any color. That’s right, black and brown heroes are totally included if you choose to do so.

So are women, non-binary whatever if you want to.

Sorry, hulking green gray orcs with tusks also do not bring to mind any real group of people.

That...sounds like the opening to a very inflammatory post. I hope I'm wrong.

No, of course not. Fantasy is not a label you can slap on at will to avoid all criticism.

Ah, but yes, yes we do. It's called escapism. It's a thing.

Stories are also that. Often, even. Not always. Not every story is about preaching morals.
I love Metal Gear Solid, and that videogame is as preachy as they can get. I also love Dark Souls, a rich fantasy world with no moral message whatsoever.

I see, go on...

Ah, so the problem isn't really about "All people who look a certain way are enemies". Conveying that notion is allowed, but only if those "people" are "dissimilar enough from the depiction of any real-world peoples".

So, people are getting offended because they think that evil orcs and drow look too similar to real life ethnicities? Huh. I've never seen a living person that looks like an orc or drow, cosplayers notwithstanding.
Why, is it because drow have dark skin? That's enough to draw a strong comparison? Cmon now...Warhammer dark elves are very pale, and they're just as evil as their D&D counterparts. There's plenty of pale skinned evil monsters. It can't possibly be about this.

I would have an issue with that. Mostly, because of serious lack of creativity, but I get your point.

D&D is doing better than ever, right now, with all the comically evil orcs and drow. The need for that product is, at the very least, debatable.

 

[TheSword]

I had no idea the base Dwarf, Elf, Halfling, Half-orcs and Human didn't even have entries as monster types in the main part of the MM anymore.


The Duergar, Drow, Svifneblin, and Orcs do. They all have gray or darker skin (inspite of me picturing things living underground usually becoming paler, and the base Dwarf, Elf, and Gnome pictures in the PhB being white) and 3 of the 4 are expressly evil.

im sorry this is incorrect. You are assuming that these races have darker skin because you’re assuming that the core player races have light skin, which is patently demonstrated as not being the case in the players handbook and other documents. The solution is surely to keep reinforcing this issue to make it clear that you don’t have to be from Chult to have black skin.

Duergar are depicted as having grey skin because they have the joy wiped out of them, Not because they’re evil. it’s a pretty cool concept.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

No one is saying that the government should ban Lord of the Rings. What people are saying is that we should be aware of the effects of the colonialist and racist views of the time upon it and how that's trickled down into today's fantasy tropes. And then saying that maybe we should examine how those tropes make this game not as welcoming for all people.

And I say all this as a person that loves Tolkien and Middle-Earth enough to have a tattoo in Khuzdul.

"Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past." - George Orwell, 1984

It's extremely dangerous to let people go around censoring artistic history for ANY reason.

 

[Stefano Rinaldelli]

Well, let us see if we can help increase your understanding, then.

I agree totally with what you are saying. And this is not a paradox because... it is our turn to explain you:

We are not talking about a narration. We are talking about a fictional world in which some races (not cultures) are ontologically bad and their cultures reflect this. This kind of way to depict the world has very deep roots in our brains. Let me say that the Orc could be a suggestion coming from the ancient struggle between Sapiens and Neanderthal. Epic fantasy literature has the polarization as a topic. Polarization is functional to create an Epic. Maybe when an author translate the enemy from a different human culture to an evil, not human race, do this for the exact purpose that the censorship try to revert. The author don't want to complicate his narration with a struggle between humans, because this would mean to simplify too much the human nature or make a childish portrait of a war between bad and good. The author create Bad Creatures because he needs an opponent against which the only way is to fight.
I bet that Tolkien were thinking about Orcs as stupid, ignorant, violent, racist and greedy men and create Orcs because he weren't so stupid to assign this traits to an entire human enemy folk.
So what you stigmatise as an "out of the modern moral highness" or "not respectful" kind of narration is exactly the opposite. Tolkien try to describe and to put us aware against the human traits that we have to fight and concentrate them into an irredeemable kind of creature: to make it clear and simple: when a boy, having read Tolkien, look at a bad guy in real life, he will think of how much is similar to an Orc (in behaviour) and understand immediately how to set his mind against him. This is the purpose of ontologically bad creatures.
D&D offer all the instruments to elevate the moral complexity of the world in which we play. Is up to us. But it make no sense to destroy the concept of the "monster" itself to not be accused of racism.
And now I want to come to this phrase you have written:

When you create a race that has too many points of similarity to how a group of real world people are also often depicted, then you do offend people.

False. Removing some elements from that race in response of the fact that some racist can make a parallel between Afroamericans and Orcs means two things: you are admitting that you were thinking of Afroamericans when you were in the process of creating Orcs. An this is false. Otherwise means to surrender to some paranoic antiracist that pushing themselves too far from what is reasonable, accuse you of the same thing. Is a not requested apology that's equal to a self accusation.
Orcs and Afroamericans do not have nothing in common, period. And who think it is a racist or a stupid antiracist (look I haven't sad stupid racist for obvious reason). I don't like to surrender to stupidity.

 

[Stefano Rinaldelli]

Who's they?

Tolkiens estate? Are they pulling the book or something?

The ones who want to adjust game or literature to avoid complains. The ones who want to change the dictionary believing that this adjust the world.

 

[Envisioner]

Once upon a time, D&D was the niche hobby of people who had been rejected by the mainstream social order.

I don't think it's a coincidence that only now, with the giant influx of "normies" who lack a geeky, intellectual background and a sense of social ostracism that makes them cleave tightly to their beloved subculture, that we're suddenly getting all these complaints.

Pretty much anything that goes mainstream ends up getting crappier as a result. Because the majority of people suck. You have to ruin a thing to make it popular, because otherwise it will be too smart and complex for a bunch of yokels to "get it".

 

[Stefano Rinaldelli]

No one is saying that the government should ban Lord of the Rings. What people are saying is that we should be aware of the effects of the colonialist and racist views of the time upon it and how that's trickled down into today's fantasy tropes. And then saying that maybe we should examine how those tropes make this game not as welcoming for all people.

And I say all this as a person that loves Tolkien and Middle-Earth enough to have a tattoo in Khuzdul.

What are you describing is Culture. The mean to diversify and go deep into things. We must build schools for the ignorant. Not change books or games until they become stupid-proof, just to surrender to the fact that our economic system make differences among people. And that is more true if you think about the fact that stupidity can be infinite.

 

[TheSword]

My understanding from some of the articles and interviews that some of the real issues In 5e are a lack of representation in writing, portrayal in fiction that civilizations formed by people of colour are beholden or taught by white-caucasian civilizations, stereotypical descriptions of language and dress, depictions of POC as overly sexualised or the clumsy corruption of traditions, images or rituals that have meaning to people who are alive today.

 

[Stefano Rinaldelli]

Because the majority of people suck.

I disagree. Starting from a obvious arithmetical fact, only one half of people suck. The other half is above the average. The point is: must we make stupid proof things because of the stupids exists?

 

[Envisioner]

I disagree. Starting from a obvious arithmetical fact, only one half of people suck. The other half is above the average. The point is: must we make stupid proof things because of the stupids exists?

When your entire society is a consumerist capitalist engine designed to move as much product as possible, in order to harvest the maximum possible product before the next financial quarter comes up, then yeah you pretty much do.

Which is why we should stop operating that way.