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'.

 

[Charlaquin]

But orcs were created by an evil god.

All races in D&D are created by gods, yet only the ones created by evil gods seem to have fixed alignments. This is not a compelling argument.

I don't see a reason that slapping an "evil" label on a religion really means anything different.

Because religions are collections of beliefs. Beliefs, unlike genes, have moral value.

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?

I don’t know what this means.

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

Race, species, whatever. The issue is assigning villainy based on genealogical group. It is equally a problem whether you draw that dividing line at species, or ethnicity, or bloodline, or hair color, or anything else. Genes have no moral value.

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".

Again, is painting an entire social group (be it a religion, a nationality, a club, or whatever) as evil a perfect alternative? No. But it is less bad. Until someone suggests a perfect alternative, I’m gonna advocate for the least bad one.

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.

Right, but if the I Love Cabbage Fan Club espouses evil ideals, that’s a reasonable statement to make. If the I Love Cabbage Fan Club includes killing all lettuce eaters as part of its mission statement, that’s evil, and it’s not unfair to say that people who join it knowing that, or remain a part of it after learning it are evil.

Is there more nuance to be found there? Absolutely. There could be other factors involved such as brainwashing or coercion causing its members to participate for reasons other than evil. But leaving that room for nuance is part of the reason that identifying villain groups by ideology rather than genealogy is preferable. It leaves more room for nuance by removing the moral essentialism from the equation.

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.

It’s not about the berbalangs.

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.

I just don’t understand how fixed alignment could be the only thing that sufficiently differentiates a type of creature from humans to you. Can you explain to me what is so special about alignment restrictions that make them sufficient to mark a type creature as non-human in away that literally nothing else does?

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.

I don’t think that’s an unreasonable position to hold, but I think “and therefore it’s okay for humanoids to have fixed alignments” is not the best conclusion to draw. If you insist on consistent treatment of all creatures, then no creatures should have fixed alignment.

Personally, I perceive a qualitative difference between humanoids and extraplanar entities that to me makes assigning fixed alignments to the latter acceptable (and it has nothing to do with them looking human). But there are strong counter-arguments to be made against my position, and if you so strongly oppose the idea of humanoids and extraplanar entities having different standards for alignment, then I think the best solution would be not giving them fixed alignments either.

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.

I don’t think you’re racist for being fine with always-evil orcs. This is a systemic issue, not an individual issue.

It’s not about the orcs.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

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

Don’t get me wrong — I’m not convinced orcs are an analogy for black people. But it’s your logic I’m discussing here. White middle class hobbits are good, right? You’ll probably claim no. But I submit that would be an unusual claim.

Question to the board, not just @Morrus

Has your game ever included the "country bumpkin" stereotype?

I am a white, straight, dude. I live in the USA, and specifically the state of Kentucky. My wife grew up in the state of New York. We met online and she moved here to be with me 16 years ago. Whenever I go to New York to visit her family, you have no idea the amount of "corrections" I have to hand out to all of her family as to what life in Kentucky is like, as pretty much every assumption they have is wrong...and almost always in a way to paints KY as inferior to NY.

Kentucky is one of the poorest states in the USA. It has a hard time because its two former biggest industries (coal and tobacco) have both been ravaged over the past 50 years. We have three decently sized urban areas, several smaller college towns, and a LOT of small rural communities. Most of the money in the state is centered in a small area forming a triangle at the top of the state. Those not in this triangle are widely considered to be "rednecks" or "hillbillies" by the residents of KY, and the entire state is considered so by those on the coasts.

In the US, "rednecks" and "hillbillies" are one of the few groups that remain acceptable to make fun of by everyone. Those that you would consider progressive make fun of them for being ignorant, racist, backwards, and poor. Those that you would consider to be conservative make fun of them for being ignorant, backwards, and poor. When I visit NY, all my wives relatives assume that EVERYONE in the entire state of KY is a "redneck" or "hillbilly" because they just don't know any better, and any portrayal of the rural poor in KY is almost invariably negative.

The crushing poverty that created the stereotype that is the KY Hillbilly is the same crushing poverty that created the stereotype of the Urban Hood. It's not generated solely because of skin color or race, but also by economic, civic, and cultural circumstances that aren't "equal" across the country.

There is room in the world for change. There are far more changes that can be made than just renaming or swapping around labels. There is room at every table to take a moment to figure out how your game might be improved. Racism isn't the right word to use, but as a resident of KY I am affected by unfair stereotypes, and currently those stereotypes (the redneck or hillbilly) are alive and well in media. They exist for everyone.

 

[Doug McCrae]

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.

Then why does D&D have evil races? Why not just evil individuals?

As Tom Shippey says in The Road to Middle-Earth "There can be little doubt that the orcs entered Middle-earth originally just because the story needed a continual supply of enemies over whom one need feel no compunction, 'the infantry of the old war' to use Tolkien's phrase." Tolkien was telling stories about war so he needed an army of bad guys who were unquestionably evil. The fantasy supplement for Chainmail had the same requirement.

D&D doesn't because it's about individuals and small scale action, not armies.

 

[Haffrung]

Is that true, do you think? I think it's true in a lot of games, but I don't think it's "almost invariable" to the degree you say, and historically, it sometimes has outright not been true, or given limited appearance of being true, or more commonly, the supposed justification is quite hard to link up to the actual situation.

Very often I've seen adventures written where there's some room full of "evil" humanoids, and there's no particular explanation as to what they've done wrong, or are going to do, and they're not the focus of the adventure, but there's a clear expectation on the part of the adventure designer that you will boot in the door and kill them.

To be fair, sometimes this is done with humans (almost never with other demihuman races, oddly), where there are just some dudes sitting around waiting to get killed, but they'll usually at least have a direct link to the baddy, and be wearing his colours, and so on. I feel like this is kind of a subtle point, but often with "evil" humanoids there's no effort at justification beyond them being "evil humanoids", it's like assumed that we'll want to kill them.

Looking broadly at the two approaches to D&D, heroic vs dungeon-looting, the former typically provides the righteous justification I mentioned, while the latter doesn't really require any justification. If it has loot, and it's not evidently Good with a capital G, then kill it and take its stuff. Ogre, goblin, medusa, chimera - it's all the same.

But then I've also always run orcs as monsters, utterly depraved pig-men (like the Swine in Darkest Dungeons),whose dens are littered with the bones of human children. I missed the fantasy zeitgeist where they became analogous to barbarians.

 

[Haldrik]

But that returns me to the question: what do we do then?

D&D is a game about racism. That feels self-evident when pointed out.

What now?

First, concerns about racism, whether habitual or unintended, deserve honest consideration. And reform where necessary.

I am wondering about the implications.

Some thoughts I have at the moment.

• D&D is a play-space, it isnt reallife, and is an amoral safe place where players can act out various hypothetical roles
• ultimately all speculative fiction explores different ways of being human (different hypothetical environments etcetera)
• an advantage of fantasy races is it can explore ethnic diversity, identity and coexistence
• a disadvantage of fantasy racism is the biological predeterminism

At the moment, I am finding the biological predeterminism to be the deepest problem, structurally. The more this biological predeterminism looks like reallife humans, the more dehumanizing and problematic it becomes. Removing biological predeterminism (including removing "racial" ability score adjustments) seems to help.

You mention Star Trek. Notice how Vulcans and Romulans share the same genetic origins, but rapidly evolved into quite different ethnicities. I feel this fluidity and nondeterminism helps.

Also, drop the word "race" from D&D core rules, and distance D&D from the reallife conflicts involving racism.

 

[Var]

Question to the board, not just @Morrus

Has your game ever included the "country bumpkin" stereotype?

I am a white, straight, dude. I live in the USA, and specifically the state of Kentucky. My wife grew up in the state of New York. We met online and she moved here to be with me 16 years ago. Whenever I go to New York to visit her family, you have no idea the amount of "corrections" I have to hand out to all of her family as to what life in Kentucky is like, as pretty much every assumption they have is wrong...and almost always in a way to paints KY as inferior to NY.

Kentucky is one of the poorest states in the USA. It has a hard time because its two former biggest industries (coal and tobacco) have both been ravaged over the past 50 years. We have three decently sized urban areas, several smaller college towns, and a LOT of small rural communities. Most of the money in the state is centered in a small area forming a triangle at the top of the state. Those not in this triangle are widely considered to be "rednecks" or "hillbillies" by the residents of KY, and the entire state is considered so by those on the coasts.

In the US, "rednecks" and "hillbillies" are one of the few groups that remain acceptable to make fun of by everyone. Those that you would consider progressive make fun of them for being ignorant, racist, backwards, and poor. Those that you would consider to be conservative make fun of them for being ignorant, backwards, and poor. When I visit NY, all my wives relatives assume that EVERYONE in the entire state of KY is a "redneck" or "hillbilly" because they just don't know any better, and any portrayal of the rural poor in KY is almost invariably negative.

The crushing poverty that created the stereotype that is the KY Hillbilly is the same crushing poverty that created the stereotype of the Urban Hood. It's not generated solely because of skin color or race, but also by economic, civic, and cultural circumstances that aren't "equal" across the country.

There is room in the world for change. There are far more changes that can be made than just renaming or swapping around labels. There is room at every table to take a moment to figure out how your game might be improved. Racism isn't the right word to use, but as a resident of KY I am affected by unfair stereotypes, and currently those stereotypes (the redneck or hillbilly) are alive and well in media. They exist for everyone.

I'm not really sure if you can be called the victim here.

Lack of access to education and prospects is a soul crushing downwards spiral. You get to reap a bit of the fallout, but generally speaking sneering at "hillbillies" is the same "we against them" thinking that fuels racism.
It doesn't help that the hillbilly side gets an incentive to rebel against the notion which can be fuelled into something nasty like the modern KKK.

Everyone is people. Everyone. You can't fix a problem like that by beating down the side you don't like.

 

[Morrus]

Question to the board, not just @Morrus

Has your game ever included the "country bumpkin" stereotype?

I am a white, straight, dude. I live in the USA, and specifically the state of Kentucky. My wife grew up in the state of New York. We met online and she moved here to be with me 16 years ago. Whenever I go to New York to visit her family, you have no idea the amount of "corrections" I have to hand out to all of her family as to what life in Kentucky is like, as pretty much every assumption they have is wrong...and almost always in a way to paints KY as inferior to NY.

Kentucky is one of the poorest states in the USA. It has a hard time because its two former biggest industries (coal and tobacco) have both been ravaged over the past 50 years. We have three decently sized urban areas, several smaller college towns, and a LOT of small rural communities. Most of the money in the state is centered in a small area forming a triangle at the top of the state. Those not in this triangle are widely considered to be "rednecks" or "hillbillies" by the residents of KY, and the entire state is considered so by those on the coasts.

In the US, "rednecks" and "hillbillies" are one of the few groups that remain acceptable to make fun of by everyone. Those that you would consider progressive make fun of them for being ignorant, racist, backwards, and poor. Those that you would consider to be conservative make fun of them for being ignorant, backwards, and poor. When I visit NY, all my wives relatives assume that EVERYONE in the entire state of KY is a "redneck" or "hillbilly" because they just don't know any better, and any portrayal of the rural poor in KY is almost invariably negative.

The crushing poverty that created the stereotype that is the KY Hillbilly is the same crushing poverty that created the stereotype of the Urban Hood. It's not generated solely because of skin color or race, but also by economic, civic, and cultural circumstances that aren't "equal" across the country.

There is room in the world for change. There are far more changes that can be made than just renaming or swapping around labels. There is room at every table to take a moment to figure out how your game might be improved. Racism isn't the right word to use, but as a resident of KY I am affected by unfair stereotypes, and currently those stereotypes (the redneck or hillbilly) are alive and well in media. They exist for everyone.

There is no version of this where White American Man is not in the top 1% of the world. It’s literally ALL the advantages. If you can’t make something of that, the rest of the world can’t help you!

 

[Zardnaar]

Rather than lecture sometimes show and tell works better.

Richest country in the world.

Small town NZ where my mother came from.


Economically depressed small town in 90s I grew up in. Buy a house for $10-40k USD (now more like $250k USD)


And where I live now.


But Zard you drunken white trash kiwi hillbilly you're only showing us the nice bits. Google NZ ghetto or skid row and compare.

You don't need to be an alt righter or antifa. Most are somewhere in the middle.

Not gonna lecture you on what to believe. At the most basic level though you would think your society probably shouldn't look like the top video.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

I'm not really sure if you can be called the victim here.

Lack of access to education and prospects is a soul crushing downwards spiral. You get to reap a bit of the fallout, but generally speaking sneering at "hillbillies" is the same "we against them" thinking that fuels racism.
It doesn't help that the hillbilly side gets an incentive to rebel against the notion which can be fuelled into something nasty like the modern KKK.

Everyone is people. Everyone. You can't fix a problem like that by beating down the side you don't like.

I'm not sure what you read in what I wrote that didn't come across as me saying "lets get rid of the hillbilly stereotype as being acceptable to make fun of".

 

[Haffrung]

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.

There are dozens of monstrous groups in D&D, some modeled off of European cultures (Berserkers, Ogres, Hill Giants, Frost Giants, Fire Giants) and some modeled off non-European cultures (Hobgoblins, Yuan-Ti). I don't see a preponderance of non-European baddies.

Good-aligned Samurai PCs were introduced early in D&D's history, as were Asian-influenced good monsters, like ki-rin and metallic dragons. So D&D's portrayal of Asian cultures ran the gamut from good to evil. Same with the Middle-Eastern.

D&D lifted monsters and cultural tropes from all over the world. But I don't see any systematic bias against non-European cultures. If any negative depiction associated with non-European cultures is undesirable, then you either:

A) Make all evil groups European, with no non-European baddies. This would be very limiting, IMHO.

B) Eschew real-world tropes and motifs altogether. Which I don't see happening in any broadly popular game. The audience for entirely original and non-derivative cultures and tropes is very small.