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'.

 

[Giltonio_Santos]

If you think putting 8 encounters into a single adventuring day is hard now, you'll see it when killing things and taking their stuff becomes old fashioned.

 

[Cadence]

If you think putting 8 encounters into a single adventuring day is hard now, you'll see it when killing things and taking their stuff becomes old fashioned.

You just need to be like "13th Age" and define a day based on number of encounters....

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

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.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

Back on topic!

Much discussion has been made of orcs and drow...but a smattering of other humanoids.

Do you think it's just those races called out that receive a background tweak or do you think it will carry over in general to all humanoids?

Goblins seem to me to be almost as accepted as orcs for potential PC choice. Do they get a similar change? If they do, do all the other goblinoids follow?

 

[Ash Mantle]

You think? Working for a publicly traded company with an US office, several in Europe, Australia and Asia, I'm glad I'm the European branch.
30 days paid vacation, sick leave no questions asked, paid overtime, 40 hour weeks max (well technically), healthcare required by law, functional privacy/data protection laws for employees, hire and fire not being a thing....
The US Office has none of that. Being anything below the single digit percentage doesn't look fun to me.
What would be dream working conditions in a US company scratch what what would be considerd the bare minimum here - from below.

No idea what happened over there, probably more of a the rest of the world evolving without the US of A or something. For reference Canada is a place I'd be happy to work at. And then there's always the Nordics or Switzerland if you really hit the jackpot.

As an Australian working in a major tertiary teaching hospital, and despite quite an exhaustive workload, I'm very fortunate to have quite a good salary, compulsory superannuation, paid days off, paid annual leave and sick leave, managers that stand with their staff, and unions that fight to protect worker's rights. I'm personally fortunate to be working in a team with excellent people, with managers that listen, all in all I'm very lucky. As citizens, we have free healthcare in public hospitals, paid for by our taxes.

My dream, however, is for universal basic income for all, and universal healthcare for all. I wouldn't be surprised if people move within their means, which might influence thinking within those means, because they simply don't have the luxury to devote time other than to the simple things of putting food on the table or paying rent.

Connected to this is that history books, even the ones we're taught in schools, sometimes only teach the briefest glimpse of racial issues in history, and then there are people, even leaders in society, that simply refuse to see these issues. If D&D can at least start conversations, and create nuanced discussions as we're doing here!, in that space, that's a good thing.

Ultimately, it's a many faceted and complex issue that for too long has been allowed to simply be and remain the status quo.

 

[Haldrik]

@Giltonio_Santos,

Nonlethal encounters are common.

I ejected experience points long ago.

I count a set number "challenging" encounters before leveling. Difficult encounters count double (or so) and easy encounters count half, assessed in hindsight after the challenge concludes. (Generally, there are ten encounters per level, but only two to five for the lowest levels.)

The only thing that matters is if an encounter is "challenging". It can be a social encounter, an exploration encounter, a nonlethal combat encounter, a puzzle, an innovative idea if a player thinks brilliantly out of the box, etcetera. It all counts toward leveling.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

But, crucially, a person who is significantly less privileged can notice "Orcs" trending on Twitter, find this site on Google, make an account, and post here saying how offended they are, without having to have actually played, all in about a half hour which wouldn't even be enough to roll up one character at an actual game table. I'm not saying for sure this is actually happening, but it seems like it's very possible for people who don't actually have a horse in this race to show up and bash people who do, either because they just want to troll, or because they legitimately felt offended, but don't care about the fact that they're ruining the fun of a group that they aren't actually part of.

Look at the title under everyone's avatars. The new accounts aren't showing up for that side of the debate.

 

[CubicsRube]

I'm apparently very late to the game but I'd love to see this kind of additional item in the mix.

An ideal world for me would have ancestry that can retain some of the 5e features such as faire fire for drow, poison resistance for dwarves, etc.
Then culture, which could provide the training element such a sproficiencies and the like.
Then background, then class.
Ideally class would be the item that gave you a stat boost. If you chose wizard you get a +2 int because of your training. Etc.

I'd love to be able to have a wood elf that was raised by orcs, became a blacksmith, then a barbarian. He could have strength from being a blacksmith and barbarian, intimidation proficiency from growing up tough in an orcish clan, but still be fast and be able to naturally blend in with the forest.

Or a human rogue raised amongst dwarves as a quarry worker and gained stonecunning before leaving for greater glory.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

If you think putting 8 encounters into a single adventuring day is hard now, you'll see it when killing things and taking their stuff becomes old fashioned.

The Slavers trilogy from AD&D -- decades ago now -- show how easy it is to come up with a set of villains that everyone can say "yep, I'm sticking a sword in that guy's face."

If that's the style of play you like, it's never going to be hard to create a scenario like that. I don't believe any DM seriously would find that difficult.

 

[Giltonio_Santos]

Please let that guy post, then, instead of inventing him and attacking his issues.

I don't need to. I think it's pretty clear from my post what are the issues I'm attacking. Anyone who believes the issue (nonexistent, in my opinion, because I still get to have one) of D&D fundamental tropes as means of perpetuating colonialism is real, is free to make a counterpoint. I suspect must people won't bother too, because they agree with me, even if they are afraid of woke people, cancel culture, or whatever. I blame Michael Sandel and that lame book. It'll pass. It always passes.