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'.

 

[tommybahama]

No it's not.

It literally is. I am an Asian American. I know enough American history to know that most white Americans came to this country to flee religious or ethnic persecution or extreme poverty. Just like my ancestors only a generation before me.

 

[Giltonio_Santos]

(..) D&D is a game about racism.

I ask myself what you're doing here, then. If I believed that, I wouldn't be playing D&D, and the last place I'd like to be is a message board full of people who play it. Maybe you're an icho.io indie game designer and is here to dissuade us to keep playing it?

 

[Morrus]

It literally is.

No it's not.

If hearing me say that being a white American male is an advantageous position is "most disgustingly racist thing [you've] seen in a long time", take a look at the news.

 

[Haffrung]

The suicide rate is reaching epidemic frequency, as is drug addictions and other symptoms of despair.

Bah, unemployed and drug-addicted rural whites who were raised by alcoholics in communities with no decent jobs should just pull themselves up by their bootstraps and move to Seattle to become software developers or open craft breweries.

 

[Haldrik]

It does people drift towards extreme ideologies when the economy is in the toilet and/or when inequality becomes extreme and there's no way to change it.

I want to focus on issues of racism within D&D.

I wont go further, but will point out, most extremist violence comes from middle class educated young adults, precisely as originators of extremist ideologies.

Generally, poor people are just too busy surviving to ever get involved in extremist ideologies.

It takes social upheaval before poor people can feel anything different from the ruins that are for them the normal daytoday reality.

Ideology is definitely the problem. Sane ideologies that respect the other and allow the other to be other, are the solution.

 

[Var]

It literally is. I am an Asian American. I know enough American history to know that most white Americans came to this country to flee religious or ethnic persecution or extreme poverty. Just like my ancestors only a generation before me.

If you had led with that rather than a fairly aggressive blanket statement like this one

That is the most disgustingly racist thing I've seen in a long time. It is reducing people to a racial category and erasing their individual identities. Truly horrible.

It might have helped sell your point.

Just sayin' presentation is part of selling whatever and whenever you're out to convice the world you're the new hot stuff that deserves attention for a valid oppinion.
Going to be hard to convince people you're selling diamonds, not glass, if you transport them in a stained brown paper bag.

 

[TheSword]

With respect, that may be because you are asking the wrong question.

Let's do some role playing. Anyone can join in! I have a pre-generated character for you.

Your character is a contemporary human in a contemporary world. He's never played D&D, does not know its history. He's dark-skinned, and lives in the USA. The primitive tribal origins of his people is often rasied, though that was centuries ago. His people are known for their physical prowess, due to their prominence in professional sports. When seen on the street, the initial reaction to his people is "very possibly a violent criminal", enough that passersby often physically shy away. Enough of the dominant culture around him feel he is sub-human, that a cop might just feel he could get away with casually and slowly killing him.

Now your character is given a description of orcs - dark skinned, strong. Dumb, primitive, tribal. Violent such that vigilante adventurers are often sent to kill them to protect society.

How does your character feel?

This is where culture just doesnt translate internationally. I don't believe in the UK (and a lot of other countries outside of America) many of those points are raised. At least I don't see it across any but the most outragous far right who people do not take seriously - hence the 100 people marching in london for the far right compared to the tens of thousands of people protesting for BLM, even the 100 claim to be protecting statues. I don't believe in the UK we do assume black people are 'very possibly a violent criminal' and shy away in the street, or that they are viewed as subhuman by either the dominant majority or by the police force. There are people who are obviously derranged and get ignored but they are not the norm.

Thats not to say there isnt disadvantage, discrimination and stereotyping, just that it doesnt come close to what you're describing. As I said earlier my partner is black and he just doesnt recognise what you have just described in the UK. [Edit: So just because my partner doesnt see it or hasnt confronted it, doesnt mean it doesnt exist].

That creates a problem when an American follows that up with a comparisson to tribal orcs, and I think, what the hell is this guy talking about. Why are you even making that comparisson.

Perhaps that ends up with the unfortunate effect of lumping me in with prejudice-blind, American reactionaries when it comes to debating this issue. In which case that's frustrating, beacuse then it feels that because America hasnt got its act together the rest of the world can't hold a tennable position that its acceptable to have monstrous tribal groups in fantasy literature/gaming.

I mean if what you say is true - and I take you at your word that black players of D&D in America feel that and the way they have been marginalised as a group means that the descriptions of orcs feel familiar, then I dont see how you can have barbaric, monstrous humanoids in the game period, let alone as player characters. How can you justify it at all? If what you say is the case is how people really feel.

I mean, yes 5e orcs were a slight throwback to earlier editions, but they are and have always been the strong, dumb, tribal and violent enemy of civilisation, along with bugbears, trolls, quaggoths, giants, and many other creatures not just in D&D but also a multitude of games and stories, along with beastmen in Warhammer, Trollocks in the Wheel of Time.

Is that a fair extrapolation of the end point of your reasoning?

[Edit: Theres no need to answer this. Now obsolete.]

 

[Guest 6948803]

I stand corrected. Straight White American Male is the most advantaged demographic on the planet.

And frankly, D&D is basically a romanticised simulation of how he got to be one.

By killing strangers, taking their stuff, appropriating their knowledge, and exploiting them. (Btw, autocorrect changed that to 'exploding', I'd say not a totally incorrect change!)

Now, what can we do about that? First, we can make sure that non-privileged people won't be gatekeeped and will get to share our little hobby. That benefits everybody.

Or we can realise and admit its BAD. And try to apologise for it by changing it. But we are unsure how to change things for them to remain fun (look, WotC tried fundamental changes in 4e and - without starting edition war here - we can agree it backfired and made people run to pulpy, meaty 1st ed Pathfinder).

Thats why, I am saying, sure, there is place for socially inclusive settings, with non-evil orcs, no dark, touchy themes. Its great they are written and sell well (like Wildemount). But don't blindly slap "insensitive bigot" on everyone who want to play game as it was. Don't polarise, don't cancel things that you find offensive now. I still love Conan stories and as I said before, I am sad, that here, on rpg forums I am potentially judged on that, just like I was when I was growing up.

I just read Mike Pondsmith take on the BLM. He did not mentioned fixing orcs in D&D. He mentioned fixing police. That I can fully support and relate to. Making sure that people won't get offended by thinking that D&D orcs are too close to real life people, I can not.

 

[InnocentPope]

If you had led with that rather than a fairly aggressive blanket statement like this one

It might have helped sell your point.

So, his opinion would have been more convincing, if he had announced he was the "right" color (ie not white) before he stated his opinion plainly.

(why do we not have a Spockbrow smiley? I demand that society address this most pressing of all injustices!)

 

[Cadence]

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, we in the rest of the world can’t help you!

I sometimes think it would be interesting to have a movie where the main character thinks they see numbers on everyone's head that appear to be how much of that person's success is due to luck, how much is due to hard work, and how much is due to background. One could even imagine the background is broken down into race, parents income, disability, abusive parents or not, etc... I'm pretty sure luck and background are pretty darn high for me (even if income growing up was lower middle class, that's still pretty high and I had all the other boxes checked) and that my hard work is embarrassingly low.

In the comic the New Mutants, at the beginning, before their powers manifest, how do each of the characters rate? How did all my former classmates who lived on the redlining produced high poverty level, high minority pct of town, that I got bussed to to take advantage of a special program rate (I assume their background numbers were a lot lower than mine, which means a bunch of them had a lot higher hard work number)? How do the folks in Appalachia who only get healthcare when a charity drive comes through rate and scrape meal to meal? At the State Fair every year I think I see more people with severe disabilities in some 20 minute spans than the entire rest of the year combined - how did we get to where that happens as a country, and how would they rate. How much does severe autism change things? Or a friend who was repeatedly raped by her older relative growing up, even though she checks all the other boxes? Or another friend who has been continually stopped by police and assaulted several times, just because he's an African American around 6' tall and it doesn't matter to then how many degrees he has?

I don't know. But I wonder if it could open the eyes of a lot of folks who don't believe in privilege. Or of folks who treat it like some folks do those with handicapped parking tags (where if the disability isn't immediately visible, why would they need the tag).