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'.

 

[Stefano Rinaldelli]

Actually I have quite good answers here:

1. They've already started painting them grey, rather than black. This is a smart compromise.

And now, the Grey Elves in Barovia?

 

[FXR]

Cultures would probably be better than "races", and species is too dry a term ("peoples" or something might work better). Cultures makes more sense, though, because you don't have Elven weapon proficiencies from being born an elf, you have them from being trained by that culture. You (probably) don't have the Wood Elf vanish from being "born that way", but rather being trained that way. And so on.

Is it? Maybe, in some world, all elves gain a proficiency with elves as a divine gift from the god of elves. Either you're an elf and you get the proficiency or you're not and have to learn it by hard work.

Also, I don't understand how culture would give you darkvision.

Anyway, culture seem to downplay the genetic aspect, if any, of "races" (which might not be the best term).

 

[Warpiglet]

Personally I didn't know this, and totally agree with you on this. It does lead back to the point that the concept of orcs isn't racist (they're not born evil, they become evil when corrupted), but their depiction (looking like Mongols) is very racist.

It’s probably a good time to realize that even if there was unintended racist stuff in the subconscious of the author, not all of his ideas need to be jettisoned.

I have played for decades and assumed initially that orca were piglike (porcine?) in terms of their visages.

Monstrous compendium 2e art did not look like any known group. Surely 5e is its own thing.

I suspect the trick is to make sure heroes of all kinds are present rather than getting rid of fantasy hallmarks.

Most people I have encountered are fine with evil monsters as are most cultures folklore.

Let’s welcome more people to play. But I do not think the answer is to get rid of villains, particularly irredeemable ones.

 

[Urriak Uruk]

Different historical periods. Mongols in Europe were a big nasty problem, guys. I remember their incursions, women and children crudely abused, young man killed, split apart by their horses. I myself almost died by their hands. Racist is not good, but the Mongols were really nasty.

Firstly, saying "Well back in the day they were really bad so that's why people were racist" is a weak excuse.

Secondly, how old are you if you were almost split apart by Mongolian horses? Wtf are you talking about?

 

[Urriak Uruk]

It’s probably a good time to realize that even if there was unintended racist stuff in the subconscious of the author, not all of his ideas need to be jettisoned.

Let’s welcome more people to play. But I do not think the answer is to get rid of villains, particularly irredeemable ones.

People are clearly ignoring my point if they assume that me agreeing that "Tolkien making orcs look like Mongols" is wrong somehow equals "Get rid of all villains."

Obviously you can have villains, just don't make your entire race of evil creatures look/sound a lot like a real-life group of people.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Unfortunately, Species, from the biological point of view, describe people that are fecund and create individuals that are indefinitely fecund. So for this definition, an Orc and a Human or a Human and an Elf are of the same Species. Otherwise Race means a fenotypical group without biological significance, so even race is not good for our purposes. If we accept a common ancestry, we can say Species for Races saving the possibility of breeding. But then an Orc and an Halfling are not of the same Species.
Guys, the truth is that this is a game. Relax.

There is no completely accepted definition of species.

 

[Dire Bare]

Species is too "science-y" a word. And brings in a whole debate about genetics and ethnic purity and a bunch of other nonsense that has no place in a place with kobolds and gnomes.

Species feels too sci-fi for me also, but the more I participate in this discussion the more I feel it is the best term to replace "race" with in D&D. However, "species" does NOT have connotations of ethnic purity or eugenics, the term with those connotations is "race". IRL, when we talk about different groups of humans, we don't use the term "species" both because it doesn't make sense scientifically but also because it's a relatively newer term. We use the terms race, culture, and ethnicity and not always perfectly at that.

For subrace, again it feels to sci-fi or modern for me, but I'm leaning heavily towards "ethnicity". So, in Dire Bare's future D&D, you would choose a species (elf, dwarf, orc, etc) and then an ethnicity (high elf, deep dwarf, lightfoot hin). No hard-coded stat adjustments at either level.

Most people are fine with the word "race" as it is used in fantasy. Its the depiction of some races people have a problem with, and why those depictions exist.

I agree that probably most white gamers are fine with how D&D uses the term "race" . . . . but that doesn't mean it's not problematic. I agree that IRL, the concept of race isn't always used in a racist manner . . . . but it nonetheless has its origins in racist thinking and continues to be too easily used in that manner. Most social scientists that I know (my undergrad years) would happily erase the word and concept from modern use IRL.

 

[Stefano Rinaldelli]

The images are not very grotesque are they? Sinister, yes!
These were the exact images I was expecting....

Drow can still be Demon Worshipping Dark Elves, but not all Dark Elves are Drow.

No one was playing a Drow PC in the original modules....times changed.

Here are some quotes from Robert e Howard’s Solomon Kane stories....

Robert E Howard was notoriously a white man with a strongly repressed homosexuality. All the fantasy history is rich of examples of this kind of latent racism even from Tolkien. It's a pulp literature written by white men for white men. It is normal that D&D has some of this topos in itself. And is good to correct this.
Just trying not to fall into ridicolousness with an excess of zeal whorty of a better cause.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Actually, you're not - you're both "caucasians", race-wise. Americans misuse "caucasian" to mean "white" thanks to racist usage early in the 20th century, but an anthropological and archaeological sense, it refers to a particular population wave. Europeans, Indians, Arabic, Semitic and Persian peoples and so on are all "caucasian". Genetically, those groups are somewhat more similar to each other than they are to other groups, too, generally speaking.

Races are nonsense anyway, but if you're going to claim the "caucasian" race, let's at least get as close to a scientific meaning as possible. Many American "caucasians" have significant Native American and other non-"caucasian" (by any meaning of the term) ancestry too, complicating matters.

Cultures would probably be better than "races", and species is too dry a term ("peoples" or something might work better). Cultures makes more sense, though, because you don't have Elven weapon proficiencies from being born an elf, you have them from being trained by that culture. You (probably) don't have the Wood Elf vanish from being "born that way", but rather being trained that way. And so on.

Sorry, I guess I mean white, not caucasian. That is the first I have heard of that, thanks for the correction.

Races aren't complete nonsense, though. Sure, it doesn't really mean a whole ton, but people of Tibet have different genes that let them live at higher altitudes than I have. Different races can have different features, though it isn't true all of the time, or even most of it.

 

[Guest 6801328]

If you believe them to look exactly like real life black people you can.

This suggests you really don’t understand the problem.