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'.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

And contrary to the AD&D description, Dwarves are almost always depicted as having the complexion of Scots, rather than 'deep tan to light brown'.

Yeah this bothered me literally since I first played D&D. I was like "Ooooh, Dwarves sound interesting in appearance, these aren't like Warhammer's Dwarves, who are just a bunch of squat Northern Englishmen - not Scots, note - with big beards!". And then I see pictures. And they're all bloody white, and yes, quite similar to my relatives in skin and hair colour.

I do agree that the main cause of this is "artists didn't read the description, assumed they knew what the thing look like", but it is a real pity it persisted edition after edition after edition, despite the same editions relentlessly emphasizing the non-pale-pink-skinned appearance of many races.

But in the end, the buck stops with two people:

1) The art director.

2) Whoever is in charge of that edition as a whole.

The art director should be going back to the artists, and saying "Uh, buddy no". I know art directors hate doing this, but it's literally their job. I've had to act in a similar role, and it's painful, but it's necessary. Especially because it keeps happening. Over and over. And this isn't new lore - this is how it's been for over thirty years.

If the art director can't do it, or feels he doesn't have the budget to make an artist re-paint stuff or is getting pushback from the artist or whatever, then it's up to whoever his superiors are, and ultimately, whoever was in charge of that edition, to step in and say "No, stop it, artist, paint them right, or don't work for us!". And honestly I suspect most artists would have been pretty keen to correct this.

Even if you put in a piece of art which was otherwise brilliant, and though the fact that the skin tone wasn't correct wasn't a big enough issue to make it worth changing, you could at least feed back to the artist in question that this was a problem. Yet this doesn't seem to have happened, because whilst I'm not going to zing particular artists, they should have got that feedback the first time this occurred, and yet we see them doing it over and over.

 

[Raunalyn]

The word race seems to be a misnomer from a time when racialized people, nationality, ethnicity, religion, where all conflated together.

Species might be more accurate, but opens up another cane of worms.

But technically, aren't Orcs, Goblins, Drow, etc. different species? Or would they be subspecies of humans?

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Turks and Arabs are white

I think what you mean is that they're "caucasian" in the sense of the large anthropological/archaeological group.

White is a purely social construct and it's very clear that whilst many Turkish people might be regarded as such, many Arabs are not, and traits are explicitly attributed to them as a "race", and have been for hundreds of years. So claiming you can't be racist towards Arabic people because they might technically count as "caucasian" is beyond ridiculous and into outright denying reality. Race is a construct, and the construct that is "white" disincludes Arabs, even thought that's genetically and anthropologically nonsensical. Hell, it disincludes a lot of people at different times. It's even disincluded the Irish on occasion.

 

[Guest 6801328]

I don't see any problem with Drows

Fixed that for ya.

(Funny how I was JUST quoting Sgt Schulz upthread.)

 

[Guest 6801328]

Lol...just realized that Orcslayer must be somebody who got kicked out of the thread. Or off Enworld.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Drow. Can be purple. In official art.

1e Fiend Folio: "Drow are black-skinned and pale-haired." FF 34.


5e PHB:
"Also called dark elves, the drow have skin that resembles charcoal or obsidian, as well as stark white or pale yellow hair." PHB 24.

While artists often take liberty for all sorts of reasons, I do not believe there is any textual reason to believe that drow are purple.

 

[Umbran]

I want politics out of D&D, even politics I may potentially agree with.

All fiction (including the fiction that comes out of our games) is a product of its times - containing the themes and ideas that are in the minds of the players and authors. So, RPGs are apt to be as politics-free as literature.

 

[Sadras]

Purple. I mean, if you squint, you can claim the Xvarts. But it's pretty slim pickings after that.

*Xvarts and Purple worms

 

[Oofta]

Drow. Can be purple. In official art.

While I don't have a problem with purple (or gray) drow, in art it's normally for much the same reason that Superman's hair was blue. It's difficult to paint pure black and have any dimensionality to it.

 

[Olrox17]

But that's a nonsensical position, because there's no such thing as "politics" in the way you're describing them. You're simply taking a "fish doesn't know what water is" approach to politics. You assume that, because D&D, as you know it, largely conforms to the social norms of the society you've been living in, it's "not political". But that's not true. It may not be overtly political, but it still expresses a stance and an approach. What you're calling "politics" is essentially "change".

I've made my position clear in this (admittedly huge) thread before. If people want a D&D setting that embraces a relatively recent political outlook on people and humanity, and WotC goes ahead and publishes such a setting, I'd be totally fine with that.

What I don't want, is WotC retconning Forgotten Realms drow, Greyhawk orcs, and such, because of PR worries. I'm fine with noble Eberron orcs. I'm fine with cannibalistic DS halflings.
I'm fine with a new spin on all humanoid races. Just don't murder existing canon and material, give this new stuff their own space, their own setting.

Comparing the satanic panic and people pushing for less racism is also a bit rich, frankly. If you can't see a difference that extends far beyond "I agree with one, but not the other", you're being very silly. The satanic panic wasn't about morality or behaviour, it was about belief in literally supernatural forces influencing people. Saying "Drow are deeply problematic" is a fundamentally different category of statement to "D&D makes people into satanists, and satanism gives people magical powers and opens the door to occult evil!".

I don't feel comfortable delving into this specific topic any further. I don't want to break enworld rules.