D&D General WotC’s Official Announcement About Diversity, Races, and D&D

Following up on recent discussions on social media, WotC has made an official announcement about diversity and the treatment of ‘race’ in D&D. Notably, the word ‘race’ is not used; in its place are the words ‘people’ and 'folk'.

 PRESS RELEASE

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Dungeons & Dragons teaches that diversity is strength, for only a diverse group of adventurers can overcome the many challenges a D&D story presents. In that spirit, making D&D as welcoming and inclusive as possible has moved to the forefront of our priorities over the last six years. We’d like to share with you what we’ve been doing, and what we plan to do in the future to address legacy D&D content that does not reflect who we are today. We recognize that doing this isn’t about getting to a place where we can rest on our laurels but continuing to head in the right direction. We feel that being transparent about it is the best way to let our community help us to continue to calibrate our efforts.

One of the explicit design goals of 5th edition D&D is to depict humanity in all its beautiful diversity by depicting characters who represent an array of ethnicities, gender identities, sexual orientations, and beliefs. We want everyone to feel at home around the game table and to see positive reflections of themselves within our products. “Human” in D&D means everyone, not just fantasy versions of northern Europeans, and the D&D community is now more diverse than it’s ever been.

Throughout the 50-year history of D&D, some of the peoples in the game—orcs and drow being two of the prime examples—have been characterized as monstrous and evil, using descriptions that are painfully reminiscent of how real-world ethnic groups have been and continue to be denigrated. That’s just not right, and it’s not something we believe in. Despite our conscious efforts to the contrary, we have allowed some of those old descriptions to reappear in the game. We recognize that to live our values, we have to do an even better job in handling these issues. If we make mistakes, our priority is to make things right.

Here’s what we’re doing to improve:

• We present orcs and drow in a new light in two of our most recent books, Eberron: Rising from the Last War and Explorer's Guide to Wildemount. In those books, orcs and drow are just as morally and culturally complex as other peoples. We will continue that approach in future books, portraying all the peoples of D&D in relatable ways and making it clear that they are as free as humans to decide who they are and what they do.
• When every D&D book is reprinted, we have an opportunity to correct errors that we or the broader D&D community discovered in that book. Each year, we use those opportunities to fix a variety of things, including errors in judgment. In recent reprintings of Tomb of Annihilation and Curse of Strahd, for example, we changed text that was racially insensitive. Those reprints have already been printed and will be available in the months ahead. We will continue this process, reviewing each book as it comes up for a reprint and fixing such errors where they are present.
• Later this year, we will release a product (not yet announced) that offers a way for a player to customize their character’s origin, including the option to change the ability score increases that come from being an elf, a dwarf, or one of D&D's many other playable folk. This option emphasizes that each person in the game is an individual with capabilities all their own.
• Curse of Strahd included a people known as the Vistani and featured the Vistani heroine Ezmerelda. Regrettably, their depiction echoes some stereotypes associated with the Romani people in the real world. To rectify that, we’ve not only made changes to Curse of Strahd, but in two upcoming books, we will also show—working with a Romani consultant—the Vistani in a way that doesn’t rely on reductive tropes.
• We've received valuable insights from sensitivity readers on two of our recent books. We are incorporating sensitivity readers into our creative process, and we will continue to reach out to experts in various fields to help us identify our blind spots.
• We're proactively seeking new, diverse talent to join our staff and our pool of freelance writers and artists. We’ve brought in contributors who reflect the beautiful diversity of the D&D community to work on books coming out in 2021. We're going to invest even more in this approach and add a broad range of new voices to join the chorus of D&D storytelling.

And we will continue to listen to you all. We created 5th edition in conversation with the D&D community. It's a conversation that continues to this day. That's at the heart of our work—listening to the community, learning what brings you joy, and doing everything we can to provide it in every one of our books.

This part of our work will never end. We know that every day someone finds the courage to voice their truth, and we’re here to listen. We are eternally grateful for the ongoing dialog with the D&D community, and we look forward to continuing to improve D&D for generations to come.

 

[Remathilis]

And to be fully fair D&D never depicted medieval europe but "popculture" idea of medieval europe which was nothing but a bunch of stereotypes from many different countries thrown together.

So the complaint "the asia supplement is mixing together stereotypes from Korea Japan and China accross several periods into one fantasy land" always felt hollow to me since that is merely the exact same formula how D&D was building it's europeanish fantasy lands

Oh no, D&D and historical accuracy are on opposite ends of the 10 foot pole. But the pop depiction of fantasy Medieval Europe has changed to look more like the 20th century with longswords.

Just an observation, but the "Men in Tights" model of medievalism is an outdated trope and D&D is not immune to the death of it.

 

[Professor Murder]

Thank you for pointing us toward those articles—good reads.
I’m a little confused by your closing remark which seems to undercut the rest of your post, like your takeaway is that those being marginalized are at fault.

That's a fair take, but not my intentions, so I am happy to clarify.
When I say "Not everything is about you" I am speaking to gamers who get defensive when changing cultural norms find their way to our hobby. It is a counter to the cries of "This change ruins my game." Not everything is about you, or your game. It is about larger issues than just your game. People need to step back and look at the selfishness in requiring that their media hurt people in order for them to properly enjoy it.
I hope that helps, but I admit I may have just muddled my position further. For that I apologize in advance.

 

[Sacrosanct]

That is exactly how I see it. I'm still a young-ish D&D player, and when I see these old players getting all Gran Torino because of a game I'm like: ''are these players living under a rock? Do they think they still have some kind of moral high ground? Do they really think that what they want out of that game is common in the modern times?''.

I mean, I see so much people crying '' I want my game to be escapism, I dont want politic in my game!'' ; is a world of sexist, racist, black & white morality and easy violence is the world you want to fantasize about after an hard day's work?

When I create world for a game, I make it so that escaping there is actually better than the one we leave behind for a night.

'' Be DM the change you want to see in the world'' and all that.

Honestly, and this might just be my opinion, but positions like that are coming from a position of privilege. (Yikes, I bet a few people just cringed at that word lol).

Disclaimer: privilege doesn't mean you're a bad person, or mean, or bigoted, or anything else. It's just an inherent benefit that chances are you never gave a second thought to because you never had to worry about it before.

The reason I think it comes from a position of privilege is because as a white person, it's easy to identify orcs or drow as evil, or vistani as "gypsies" because you've never been part of a demographic that has had the exact same stereotypes and racial identifiers attached to your ethnic group before. It's hard for D&D to be inclusive to dark skinned ethnicies in real life when the dark skinned people in D&D are generalized as having moral failings or evil tendencies---the exact same things said by white people towards dark skinned peoples for the past 500 years. to a white person, that correlation might never even be made. Orcs are fantasy, they aren't meant to represent black people, etc. But to that dark skinned player, I guarantee they see that connection. Why? Because they keep telling us.

So yeah, these changes, even if you might not agree with them because it doesn't feel right compared with what you're familiar with, comfortable with, or tradition, or whatever, are not a bad thing, and certainly nothing to get offended over. Anyone who does, is going to be on the wrong side of history on this one, just like those people who insist that female PCs should have capped STR scores.

 

[Sadras]

I'd say minimums and maximums are even worse than bonuses/penalties. Bonuses/Penalties allow characters to play against type for a bit more expense, whereas min/max amounts don't allow that choice to be made.

My whole idea is this.
Have the base core races - use ancestry, culture, background of whatever, have minimums/maximums or bonuses/penalties or combination. If you want a supes game where halfling strength = minotaur strength, because PCs could be exceptional for the story, then have the option available too where one removes the limitations/caps/bonuses/penalties. Kinda like how we do feats.

I'm saying it is easier to work that way forward (internal consistency to super character) than from a super back to "realism".
That is my suggestion as it caters to both styles and the leg work is done by WotC instead of us.

AND if you remove the limitations/caps then perhaps that (along with feats, magical items and other options) factors into designing the various levels of difficulty for combat encounters...etc

 

[Professor Murder]

The difference between ability scores and other abilities is this:
In our real world, Intelligence, Strength, Charisma, ect exist. The idea that a given group of people are by dint of birth are superior to others in one of these regards is one of the most basic positions of bigotry and racism.
In the real world, Darkvision or the ability to cast a cantrip at will do not exist.

 

[plisnithus8]

That's a fair take, but not my intentions, so I am happy to clarify.
When I say "Not everything is about you" I am speaking to gamers who get defensive when changing cultural norms find their way to our hobby. It is a counter to the cries of "This change ruins my game." Not everything is about you, or your game. It is about larger issues than just your game. People need to step back and look at the selfishness in requiring that their media hurt people in order for them to properly enjoy it.
I hope that helps, but I admit I may have just muddled my position further. For that I apologize in advance.

Wow, I’m glad I asked because I totally misread your intentions there. Thank you for the clarification.

 

[Greg Benage]

Perhaps the term “cultural consultant” works better for you?

I think the overall initiative from Wizards is extremely positive and woefully overdue. And I think "cultural consultants" are a good idea for companies that want to sell products in a multicultural, globalized world. And I think the D&D rule books should be made as inclusive and sensitive as they can possibly be, both because it's the right thing to do and because we want the hobby to be as culturally and demographically broad and inclusive as it can possibly be. (It needs to start with hiring: It can't just be cultural consultants to check the work of their white guys.)

That said, once you move beyond the rule books to things like campaign settings, I worry about it a little. I'm a HUGE fan of the HBO series Deadwood. I think it's a masterpiece. And I always try to imagine a "sensitivity reader" reading through its scripts. They'd probably have a stroke.

At least part of the writer part of me thinks creators should be left to do their art, realize their vision, and then take their lumps. If my setting (Midnight, for example) features spiritual essentialism (NOT "biological" essentialism), with orcs that have been corrupted and remade in the image of an evil deity, then I want to publish that setting without some sensitivity reader telling me I can't because someone might draw an association with some real-world ethnic group and rightfully be offended by it. I want to publish my setting with evil orcs and if I screw up the depiction, the community can let me, the creator, have it, and I can listen and maybe learn something, and we can talk about it, and maybe I gain some wisdom and we come to understand each other a little better.

To be clear, I don't think our main problem as a hobby has been excessive concern about inclusivity or cultural sensitivity -- far from it, I don't think it's on our list of problems. I think we have a long way to go before that becomes any kind of problem. But I can kind of see it from here, and that worries me a little. I hope we can talk about problematic elements of a whole swath of traditional fantasy without throwing it on the pyre and that creators will still feel able to take risks, do their best, and then take their licks if and when they screw it up. I think the input of sensitivity readers can be valuable and should be heard, but I also don't want sensitivity readers getting the final say on what art (or entertainment, if "art" is too pretentious) sees the light of day.

 

[InnocentPope]

Back when DM's Guild first became a thing, there was talk about how Wotco would occasionally buy the rights to officially publish fan works that were premiered there.

I don't obsessively follow gaming news, but I never heard anything about them actually doing this.

But this announcement seems to apply imply that they may very well have paid the guy who wrote "Ancestry and Culture" to let them turn it into an actual book.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I am not that impressed. It feels like they are just jumping on the train. And much of it is unnecessary. What about hiring a few non-white folks instead?

“Instead”?
Did you read the announcement?

 

[Lem23]

It's a great step forward, and if it helps drive out some of the broflake racists and bigots out of the hobby, then it's a win-win as far as I'm concerned.