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]

The War of Spider Queen series (one of my favourites) shows a nuanced version of Menzoberranzan and drow once Lolth is removed from the picture even temporarily. It features at least 2 main characters wrestling with what it means to be good after being removed from a facist, society ruled by insitutions that use brainwashing, gas lighting, and fear to control their own priestesses let alone the general population. It pretty much sets as canon the fact that drow are not essentially evil, but are rather forced to be that way by the institutions that control their society.

Incidentally that series started in 2002 and finished 2005 (half way through 3.5 edition) and the church of Elistraee and a commnity of her followers featured heavily in the series. The storyline wasnt fully concluded until 2008 with the conclusion of the Lady Penitent trilogy and after dominating the fiction for almost all of 3rd edition it was probably time to tell some other stories. You can't say that Elistraee and good drow havent had some good representation.

I agree, I see now that I overstated 3E's hate for good Drow. But as good as that was, it didn't seem to leave really lasting results in the general D&D player perception of good Drow, to judge from, say, the 5E reddit (which skews drastically younger than here). If anything, you're less likely to immediately get called a "Mary Sue" for thinking good Drow make sense here, in this giant pile of grogs, than on the 5E reddit.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Quite, and it's worth noting that even if someone waved a magic wand, and actual racist attitudes/structures/training disappeared overnight/instantly, the descendants of slaves in the US would still face a massive uphill struggled because of the poverty that has endured as a result of slavery (preventing people having anything) and then oppression (preventing people having very much at all, and preventing them from voting in people who would help, in many cases), and the latter didn't even arguably stop until the 1960s. This is because we're in a society where going to better schools/universities/etc. and being part of the right social networks and so on, which is massively made easier by having generations of money behind you, determines how far you get to a large degree (other stuff does matter, but in aggregate, money dominates).

Still, the attitudes going away would be a great start!

I agree completely. I as a white male didn't understand until recently how hard it was for African Americans in our current society. (I'm 18, so I'm not one of the boomers that thinks racism doesn't exist.)
I knew racism was a huge problem nowadays, but didn't really know the extent of it.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Well but all lives matter, and it would have been a more inclusive slogan imho (with clarification that no matter what skin color, religion, gender, age etc. they matter). Of course I do not want to dismiss the actual problem which BLM is based upon with that reply, which exists, especially for black Americans but not exclusive for them.

This is crap. Black Lives Matter doesn't mean that other lives don't matter. Go to this comment of mine in another thread to see why not to say exactly what you just said:

RPG Sales for Black Lives Matter

If you would like to give something to the Black Lives Matter movement, there are some great RPG-related options! DMs Guild has a Black Lives Matter spotlight. You can buy D&D material from people of color. There are 11 items in the spotlight, including a couple of bundles. One of them, a...

www.enworld.org

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

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.

Less worms opened than race, IMO.

 

[Doctor Futurity]

Um, I think that the existence and popularity of retroclones, OSR, and various revivals, including but not limited to the re-use of old material with Goodman Games and even WoTC might mean that there are probably some people still playing that way, even today.

I play those retroclones, too. They most definitely do not prohibit you from playing the game as you wish. I didn't even have "exclusively evil orcs" in 1981 when I started gaming, one of the first NPCs my players adopted was an orc in Keep on the Borderlands when I introduced the moral quandary of baby orcs while they were smashing through the caverns of chaos...and I was only 10 at the time. If there's an individual in the OSR espousing a one true way approach, bear in mind s/he's not the spokesperson for all OSR fans, no matter who he or she is.

My statement isn't really intended to say, "No one has evil orcs." Rather: "No one plays by the rules as written and only ever allows evil orcs." Also, I guess with the caveat that: Individuals in the hobby may like the tradition, but the game never required the tradition to play. And I think over the years the number of people who don't assume alignments are written in stone grew as the hobby itself expanded to encompass a wider range of fantasy interpretations (World of Warcraft, for example, has had a big impact on the concept of orcs) and as the audience has matured and wanted more depth out of their games than the baseline.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Species tends to be used more in relation to the animal kingdom or in scientific literature, doesn't it? We reference ourselves as "the human race" in for the most part, for dogs, cats or homo sapiens we'd probably use species. Definitely looks like that can of worms you mention.

Not just animals, but yes in general. Species refers to a collective group of genetically similar organisms, which can include Animals, Plants, Fungi, Bacteria, Viruses, and so on.
It's a can of worms, but awfully smaller can than calling them races or ethnicities in my opinion.

 

[Morrus]

Yes, to increase diversity towards black characters and players in game, but black people have nothing in common with fantasy races.

When I ask you not to post again in the thread, I mean it. Now you won't be able to post again on the whole site for a few days.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Drow. Can be purple. In official art.

Mind Flayers too. Beholders can be purple. Purple Worms are purple (obviously, how did they miss that?). Quite a few monsters are purple.

 

[Zardnaar]

The War of Spider Queen series (one of my favourites) shows a nuanced version of Menzoberranzan and drow once Lolth is removed from the picture even temporarily. It features at least 2 main characters wrestling with what it means to be good after being removed from a facist, society ruled by insitutions that use brainwashing, gas lighting, and fear to control their own priestesses let alone the general population. It pretty much sets as canon the fact that drow are not essentially evil, but are rather forced to be that way by the institutions that control their society.

Incidentally that series started in 2002 and finished 2005 (half way through 3.5 edition) and the church of Elistraee and a commnity of her followers featured heavily in the series. The storyline wasnt fully concluded until 2008 with the conclusion of the Lady Penitent trilogy and after dominating the fiction for almost all of 3rd edition it was probably time to tell some other stories. You can't say that Elistraee and good drow havent had some good representation.

That series doubled down on the Drow being depicted as BDSM soft lesbian porn.

Good series and Ryld was more interesting than Drizzt but even then parts of it were lol.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Not just animals, but yes in general. Species refers to a collective group of genetically similar organisms, which can include Animals, Plants, Fungi, Bacteria, Viruses, and so on.
It's a can of worms, but awfully smaller can than calling them races or ethnicities in my opinion.

I'm really digging Ancestry (for like, basic, in-born traits that are going to occur without training or the like) and Culture (for learned traits). With crossover traits (like maybe Drow aren't born with 120' Darkvision, it's an adaptation from growing up in the Underdark), you could say "If your Ancestry gives you trait X, modify it this way".