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'.

 

[Haldrik]

In the same way that Monopoly is a game about fantasy real estate, D&D is a game about fantasy racism.

The saving grace is, there is only one human "race", and all the other "races" are nonhuman.

Nevertheless, the other races are stand-ins for reallife "races". Each D&D race remixes various reallife "races". Some "races" tend to be taller than others. Some "races" tend to have different complexion. Some "races" tend to speak a different language. Some "races" have different economies (nomadic, agrarian, urban, imperial, etcetera). The "races" are in origin and in roleplay use, humans who look different.

Accidentally, some fantasy "races" are more objectionable than other fantasy "races". However, the problem itself is systemic. The problem is, the existence of the concept of "race" in D&D in the first place.

The reallife concept of a "race" is a fluid arbitrary social construct, whose origin is archaic bad science. The term survives in antiquated US legalese, and among some taxonomists today who try to reinvent this word with a more palatable meaning. Historically and most of the time now, the word "race" means "racist supremacism". In reallife, the word "race" comes across as highly charged and highly offensive. Personally, whenever I hear the word, it feels like the kind of expletive that deserves censorship in polite company. To ever hear the phrases "black race" or "white race" cannot end well.

Remarkably, the gaming rules of D&D employ this arbitrary social construct called "race", and use it to mean "racist supremacism", precisely. So that, "racial superiority" is objectively true, and reinforced by actual mechanics.

Meanwhile, each "race" is often presented as a monolithic homogeneity, and described by a convenient stereotype.

D&D is a game about racism.

 

[Warpiglet]

Sure. Bad guys can only be pseudo European.

Yet Look at the 5e players with backgrounds. There is a player character, presumably a hero, wearing the same. So it can only go one way?

Further, the hobgoblins are smart and disciplined. They are cool. They happen to be militant conquerors. Again, all traits have to be desirable if this creature wears anything with design elements reminiscent of non-European arms/armor?

So militant conquerors must have European style armor in all aspects exclusively (and this plate armor is not consistent with samurai to large extent).But OK, the style of this armor has some design elements that remind one of samurai armor.

So: some aspects of the armor looks similar to Asian armor. The creature is nonhuman—doesn’t look like any known folk on Earth. But since it is not good, and wears something similar in some ways to Asian armor, we are saying Asians are evil with this depiction.

I think this is jumping the shark big time.

We went from skin tone other than ‘white’ right to any armor other than medieval armor from Europe being inappropriate for any villanous creature.

My concern is that if this is all taboo, artists have a very, very limited palette to draw on for their designs.

Completely agree here. The issue isn't that there are monstrous races, it's that too often because D&D's starting assumption is "Fantasy Europe" the monsters are drawing cultural ideas from everything "Not-Fantasy Europe." Which can mean drawing from Africa, Indigenous communities, Asia, and the Middle East.

Consider for example the hobgoblin (and this is 5E art), clearly drawing upon Japanese samurai with both the design of armor and the haircut. It's a great design, but also not great when hobgoblins are usually assumed to be evil, militant conquerors.

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[Zardnaar]

I personally barely ever use orcs as villains. I would have nothing wrong with making the base orcs neither good nor bad.

I don't have anything wrong with this. Anyone that does, please say why.

Personally I see Orcs as evil. Not all of them have to be if course.

I don't associate orcs with any ethnic groups and I don't really get the Hobgoblins as Japanese.

I don't use orcs much, goblins and kobolds I use more.

Drow default should probably be the Lolthite ones we all know and love/despise.

Don't care what other world's do. Eberrons not FR or GH.

Hobgoblins and Dragonborn I tie more to Rome in my home games to the extent my not Byzantine Empire is going to use latin and worship the Greek Pantheon in the PHB.

Hobgoblins are in not Mexico but they won't be Aztecs they're the Empire of Steel.

 

[Hexmage-EN]

The only reason you can say that is because you’re a white guy who’s game isn’t affect by racism against you.

If D&D made white middle-aged ‘Americans’ an evil, stupid race, I bet suddenly thousands of people would suddenly reverse their opinion.

I'm white, but personally I'd love to try a role reversal game where indigenous people band together to run the European settlers back across the Atlantic. I know there's at least one game like this called "This Land is My Land" where you have to kill white settlers and destroy their encampments before they bring more of their kind into indigenous territory.

I still find this separate from the orc discussion, though. As far as I'm concerned orcs are like if Hitler found out how to make people Nazis from birth and the only way to stop that is to kill Hitler.

 

[Oofta]

D&D sidesteps this pretty well by having religions with literally evil tenets, which have largely but not entirely been absent from human history (yes, Aztecs, I am looking at you and frowning).

Succubi are problematic but it helps that they're actually supernatural beings, not just "naughty people". It might help more if they were more clearly Incubi/Succubi in both name and typical imagery, rather than that being immediately true in the text (as it is in 5E, literally the first line in their entry is "Succubi and incubi inhabit all of the Lower Planes, and the lascivious dark-winged fiends can be found in service to devils, demons, night hags, rakshasas, and yugoloths."), but not something you'd know from just looking at the picture/name/statblock.

But orcs were created by an evil god. I don't see a reason that slapping an "evil" label on a religion really means anything different. After all, plenty of people in my imaginary world believe cabbage heads follow an evil god, or at least an evil ideology. I mean who walks backwards through front doors?

This is specifically not saying that people of ethnicity X are evil, orcs are a different species.

Again, it's just moving the goalposts so to speak. It seems to me that religious differences have justified just as much evil as has "they don't look like us".

There are unifying ideologies that are not religious in nature if that bothers you. But yeah, I would absolutely say it’s better, because religious beliefs are not an essential part of one’s nature. Is it a perfect solution? No. But I’d say it’s a step in the right direction.

But that's still just saying "because they belong to the I Love Cabbage fan club they're evil". Again, just creating a different grouping of identifiable enemies.

It would be different if I supported something along the lines of "people of ethnicity X are all evil". I don't. I don't see orcs as being any more human than berbalangs.

This idea that if orcs (or whatever group) aren’t by nature tied to an alignment, they’re “just another human-with-slightly-different-packaging” comes up a lot in these discussions, and no one has been able to explain to me where this association comes from? Why must a sapient being have an inherent alignment to be sufficiently distinguished from humans in your view?

The issue with there being too many races that are effectively human in most campaign worlds is my hangup. I tend to weed out races/monsters that serve no real purpose.

So for me if orcs have alignment "any" they no longer serve a purpose and they wouldn't exist in my campaign any more than dragonborn. If you want furries ... umm ... tabaxi in your world feel free.

But I go back to my original post. If it's okay for some monsters to be evil then I see no issue with others that happen to look more like humans being evil. If a creature is sentient, as intelligent as humans, self-aware and conscious then the same rules should apply to all of them.

But I'm probably just ranting about stuff we'll never agree on. You may think that makes me racist, but at least I'm not a formist. I do not ascribe certain traits to imaginary creatures that do not and can not exist solely based on their form.

 

[Hexmage-EN]

To clarify, I've never been a fan of orcs in the first place. They just serve as generic cannon fodder in evil armies and don't have any identity outside of being bad guys that other races couldn't fill. I don't flat out say "orcs don't exist in my world", but they're never onscreen.

 

[InnocentPope]

You would probably find what counts as "reasonable" different if you had someone kneeling on your neck, either literally or metaphorically.

I really don't think that I would. I would blame the guy who was doing the kneeling, not the 50 other people within a two-block radius who did not all form into a vigilante mob and attack the guy to get him off my neck. I would be more scared to live in a society that embraces that kind of groupthink than in one which simply has a handful of violent people in positions that occasionally let them get away with crime for a while, before they are eventually noticed and punished in a legal, prosocial fashion.

 

[Morrus]

I would be more scared to live in a society that embraces that kind of groupthink than in one which simply has a handful of violent people in positions that occasionally let them get away with crime for a while, before they are eventually noticed and punished in a legal, prosocial fashion.

It’s easy to proclaim your bravery when you’re not on the receiving end.

 

[Var]

The only reason you can say that is because you’re a white guy who’s game isn’t affect by racism against you.

If D&D made white middle-aged ‘Americans’ an evil, stupid race, I bet suddenly thousands of people would suddenly reverse their opinion.

Did you really just assume my privilege? On a DnD forum?

Mate I'm German, so you guessed correctly. I'm a 30 year old white cis male.
You haven't the slightest idea how many nazi jokes I get to hear from my friends, got an Indonesian buddy who throws them out like candy. The German black guys I know love to sling them too. Worst offender by far are the Americans, lots of unresolved cultural issues or something.
Anyway I laugh it off because I honestly don't mind.
My great grandparents are Danube Swabians who went to what is today Hungary to escape utter poverty during the times of Maria Theresia. Had to flee from Serbs, Russians and Germans across half of Europe and my granddads had a long walk home from Russian mines after WW2.
So technically speaking I'm a 2nd generation descendant of what would legally have been gypsies with a German passport.

"My people" haven't been treated kindly by history, and I get naughty word for the result of my grandparents settling back in the country that ran them through hell. Didn't let that get me down.
But dunno I live where I live now and get the white cis male stamp and that's that, so who cares where I came from or what I think in 2020.
At least people love Germans, no matter how many nazi jokes I get to witness, no one ever gave me personally naughty word for the past. Looks like the country I live in learned a lesson or something and did better than those who came before them.

Dunno, I just always lived here, my DNA is kinda from everywhere around central Europe and the Balkans. The result is most definitely white cis male though, there's really no denying that and I should naturally always be reminded of and reduced to that.

 

[InnocentPope]

If D&D made a clear analogy for white middle-aged ‘Americans’ an evil, stupid race, I bet suddenly thousands of people would suddenly reverse their opinion.

I would not. I would happily build a Ranger with "Favored Enemy: Walmartian" or whatever they were called. Part of the fun of D&D is getting to slaughter something that's a thinly veiled allegory for whatever obnoxious person has been making your life difficult recently. Your boss has been bragging about his latest golf vacation while the department he's supposed to be running falls apart around him? Next week's campaign features a villainous town alderman who wagers the city treasury on his favorite Pro Goatball League instead of repairing the old mill. It's a healthy catharsis for the frustrations of daily life.