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'.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

And don't forget that some of them are now trying to make Hawaiian shirts a part of racist iconography (those "Blue Igloo" people). The mental gymnastics required there boggle the mind. Hands off tiki culture, racists!

I was reading a Vox article about the Boogaloo quasi-movement earlier today. I love my Hawaiian shirts and am not interested in ceding them to a bunch of "let's start another civil war" creeps. Interestingly, the modern popularity of Hawaiian shirts started with Native Hawaiians in the Hawaii legislature starting an "Aloha Shirt Friday" tradition as a point of islander pride. (It morphed into "Casual Friday" on the mainland.)

I'm a big fan of tiki, but the racial/colonialist aspects to that are tangled up pretty deeply. Some tiki bars, like Jungle Bird in Sacramento, have dumped anything that looks like they're making fun of real world religious beliefs (Jungle Bird just goes with imagery of jungles and birds, hence the name). Other tiki bars have really dug in their heels and are angrily denying there's anything problematic about taking someone else's cultural or religious imagery and making it into something that's at least gently poking fun at it. (You don't see much of that with Western religions, which is a sign that there's some unfortunate components to this thinking.)

I hope there's a way to make tiki culture more celebratory and fantasy and less holding up a real world group and their religious and cultural practices up as something to make into a bit of a joke. I think there probably is.

 

[Cadence]

The trouble with species is that they aren't. Half-Elves can breed true. Humans and Elves are definitely the same species. So are Humans and Orcs. And it's not a scientific world, it's a magical one, where miracles happen, so taking a science-based term isn't a great approach, especially when it is "wrong" immediately.

Science has numerous examples of species that can breed with one another successfully (Humans and Neanderthals; Macaws of various types) or with various lesser degrees of success (Chickadees, more so than Mules and Horse or Lions and Tigers). I find it hard to believe that biologists would put Elves and Humans, one with a 700-year lifespan, the other with a 100-year one, even with a hybrid that lives 180 years, in the same species. Much more similar species (recently red pandas?) seem to be separated based on just DNA distance. Can Elves and Orcs breed to? Or is this akin to a classic example of ring species?

Edit: AcererakTriple6 beat me to it.

 

[jasper]

Ancestry, Race, Origin, Lineage, Breed, Kindred, Genealogy, Pedigree, Heritage, Species, all are going to sound clunky in some ears. We will just have to agree to whatever we use, it will be thought of game jargon giving a playable humanoid statically bonuses and or minuses before the adventurer class is chosen.

 

[Oofta]

...
Wait where is this coming from? I'm not saying it's not true, and there are a lot of "subraces" of Elves, but is that actually a lore thing?

You know, I was trying to find the reference just now and I can't. I know the reason we have so many sub-races of elves is because of their adaptability, but any justification we have now in game is probably just because they existed in LOTR.

Although now I'm curious why we have half-orcs. I mean, in 5E it's called out as a blessing from some deity or other, but why were they introduced in the first place? I always assumed it was because they didn't want orcs as a playable race back in they day.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Wow that applies uncomfortably well to Warcraft, huh, where the Orcs manage to play both roles (but because we always saw their perspective on matters, never quite seemed as "uncomfortable" as D&D's usage of them).

Warcraft orcs, at least by this point of continuing levels of detail and lore being added, are clearly not good or bad as a species, but individuals. There have been creeps who've led them in bad directions multiple times in the past, but Warcraft has also made a point of showing that pretty much every one of their fantasy societies have had creepy leaders and done bad things at one point or another. Even the tauren, who are probably the closest the game world has to purely good guys, has the villainous Grimtotem tribe.

 

[Helldritch]

Wow, that is quite scary!

But perhaps you can appreciate how different your experiences were from those of a lot of other people, especially younger ones? For you, you needed this line to justify the game. Whereas for me, if I'd said that to my parents, they'd probably have taken the game away as a bad influence, because it was teaching me that killing intelligent, free-willed beings en masse was "okay" because they were "inherently evil", and they'd have seen that as horrifying and echoing Nazi ideology and so on (I'm not saying it necessarily does, but that is how it would have appeared to them).

But I never saw D&D that way. The D&D I was shown in 1989 didn't tend to have irredeemable intelligent humanoid races. It had ones with very bad cultures, or bad religions, but not who were "born that way" (and the idea of them being "born that way" was creepier than the alternative). Most orcs were evil, but orcs weren't born evil (ornery, perhaps, but not evil).

Now I understand your position, and I do understand it I think, they'd have taken away the game if you weren't effectively "slaying demons". Because slaying "bad people" was wrong, but demon-like beings was not. Whereas my parents didn't object so much to a medieval deal where we fought "bad people" (in fighting, people die), but the idea that we were "entitled" to slaughter an entire humanoid race just by default would have appalled them.

And I think the latter perspective is more common in society now.

It depends on where you are. You should've seen the reaction to Harry Potter movies... Again, I much prefer to fight against racism, bigotry and sexism in real life than for what is perceived by some in a game book. D&D do not promote real life racism, sexism and bigotry IRL. Never did, never will. In fact, it is quite the contrary. In no other game (including sport) will you see different sex, religion and colored people get together to have so much fun and have their differences disapear around that table. Donald (an Haitian) was playing a dwarf at the time. My muslim friend is currently playing a cleric of Heironeous, War aspect at that, and he is a dedicated pacifist. One of the woman at my table is playing a barbarian and she is as strong as any other martial male character. In D&D, the ethnicity, gender and religious beliefs of the players have no bearing on the characters they play.

D&D can be used to show the ugliness of what some people do IRL. It can have a teaching value to show what not to do, what not to tolerate. I have a player that insisted on playing a half-orc in Greyhawk. He suffered from racism for a long time and still suffer from it from high Furyondan society. Even if he is a Paladin of Mayahein. And he was one to say that racism was not around in our town. With his experience with his half-orc, he started to see the signs.

Don't get me wrong, my little town is not worst or better than any other town around the world. We have a lot of good thinga and I do believe that these problems are not so prevalent in our town as they might be in some american towns we in the news... Yet, there is always this little something, this little fear of the other that many have to overcome. I much prefer to fight this IRL than in my games. D&D does not explicitly promotes any of these ugly snakes. It is quite the contrary. Where can you see so many different people work together toward a common goal?

As for redemption. Redemption is a common theme in my games. The bandit captain that surrender. The pirate that reforms. The thief that you let go. They all can come back and help you someday. This aspect of the game is what makes non player/spectator see the game with a positive eye and even acceptance. Nowadays, that acceptance has never been higher. I don't want to lose this degree of acceptance for what some people believe they are seeing. This is also why evil is evil in my games. By being clear about the enemy, by leaving no grey area that the enemy is utterly evil, those spectators can accept the game. Now, what is done in private games is an entire matter. All games set in other settings (Eberron comes to mind) have more greyish areas. Just as any other games you will see. Having a black and white game is not a bad thing. It has teaching value. Having a grey area game can have the same values, even a higher one depending on how it is done. But it does not have priority over other genre. I don't want someone calling racist because I play a black and white game. It is far from the truth and insulting. I want my evil to be evil. Different area, different fights. Mine are done IRL.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Do people even really use orcs as a major threat all the much?

I'm using them in my campaign, but mostly as a signifier that the player characters have left the area they called home for the first years of the campaign and are in territory where there are different groups, monsters, cultures, and so on.

Otherwise, I'm very much in the camp that uses villainous humans more often than anything else.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Umbran, why is anyone noticing and criticizing racist undertones in D&D now? 5e has been out for, what, 6 years. Was racism ok 5 years ago? Of course not. Why is everyone taking notice and being outraged right now?
Maybe people are shocked, angry, sad, and that makes them a bit less objective?

It isn’t a new thing. Players of nonwhite ancestry have been complaining about this for decades. It’s only NOW that white people are hearing the complaints.
Quoting myself from :

Well, whitewashed art in D&D products were all too common for far too long. Remember these?
View attachment 101953

View attachment 101952

(Those images are from 1Ed and 2Ed products.)

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Ancestry, Race, Origin, Lineage, Breed, Kindred, Genealogy, Pedigree, Heritage, Species, all are going to sound clunky in some ears. We will just have to agree to whatever we use, it will be thought of game jargon giving a playable humanoid statically bonuses and or minuses before the adventurer class is chosen.

I still think "folk" is the way to go. People objected to it in 3E, but it's been increasingly adopted since. It gets away from any illusion of it being a scientific term, but still connotes a recognizable grouping.

 

[Charlaquin]

This shows how varied the campaign settings and experiences have been for D&D. Because I have honestly never read or played in a campaign where dwarves and elves colonize the lands of humanoids. On the contrary, dwarves are typically clinging to fading glory in ancient halls, resisting the threat of orcs or other creatures from the depths, while elves play the same role of beleaguered defenders of remote forest enclaves against invasion from rapacious humanoids (so pretty much as sympathetic indigenous peoples). I struggle to think of a single setting where orcs and goblinoids are characterized as indigenous.

That's the catch-22 of any portrayals of conquest: if the humanoids are the conquerors, then they're crude stereotypes of barbarian invaders; while if humanoids are the conquered, then they're crude stereotypes of indigenous people. Both distasteful to modern sensibilities.

I don't see how a game like D&D can survive the application of modern mores and sensibilities across the board. You have to set aside modern enlightened values if you're going to play a game with heroes, villains, and monsters, where most problems are solved by lethal violence. Because some individual or group, possessed of identifiable traits, will always be the villain, and will always be overcome by being hacked to death or blasted to cinders.

But, again, it’s not about the orcs. The issue isn’t the mere fact that the villain is defeated by violence. The issue is the way in which the game tries to justify that violence. There are ways to allow heroes to be victorious over villains by violent means that don’t mirror the justifications used for racial injustice in the real world.