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.

 

[TheIdeaOfGood]

As I said in the other thread already, I am all in favour of giving " always evil" humanoid species an overhaul. There's still enough source of conflict to be had. If, for example, orcs hold a certain spot of land sacred because, according to their legends, Gruumsh once shed a drop of blood there, they will not appreciate that new city being built there - and now you can still have all the fun of fighting off bands of orc raiders and maybe even have an adventure that does not end in just slaughtering the entire tribe because, well, they do have a point.

I am not too fond of getting rid of ability scores, though. Leaving aside that it's fantasy anway, we are talking about different species. Chimpanzees are primates, so are humans. We are more intelligent than chimpanzees, though. Is that racist? Not really.

However, if you want more diversity within your fantasy peoples (and why wouldn't you?), I recommend doing something similar to what Zweihander did: there, you have some adjustments from your ancestry that you gain automatically and then you either roll or choose two traits. So, yeah, your ogre may have a cast-iron stomach and a tough hide...the next ogre may not.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I'm sure there's a spell for that somewhere.

I would think hair coloring would be cantrip-level magic. Pink hair for anyone who wants it.

 

[Libramarian]

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.

Forgive my ignorance of the history of racist attitudes, but is it actually true that white people for hundreds of years believed that dark-skinned people were evil? That seems unlikely to me.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Look at the shitstorm Terry Crews got for asking for a two way dialogue to work things out rather than push blame from one side on the other.

That's coming in afterwords and trying to explain what the heck "black supremacy" was. His initial statement wasn't clear and certainly wasn't an obvious call for "two-way dialogue."

Damn I knew it. Being a gypsy descendant made me blind and unaware of other people's pain. Guess I learned nothing from my parent's and grandparents who raised me to treat all people with kindness, not just whoever is currently yelling "woe is me" the loudest.

No one's ancestry makes them magically immune to having dumb, or worse, opinions. I feel like celebrity culture, if it's good for nothing else, has been a good way of teaching us all that.

 

[Ibrandul]

Forgive my ignorance of the history of racist attitudes, but is it actually true that white people for hundreds of years believed that dark-skinned people were evil? That seems unlikely to me.

Of course not all white people have ever believed any particular thing, but if you mean "a whole lot of white people" then definitely yes. Google "Mark of Cain race" to learn about just one "justification" for such beliefs.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Forgive my ignorance of the history of racist attitudes, but is it actually true that white people for hundreds of years believed that dark-skinned people were evil? That seems unlikely to me.

The Bible was just to justify slavery in Europe and the United States, with people cherry-picking passages -- everyone's favorite pass-time throughout history -- to show that enslaved people were lesser, mentally, morally and spiritually, and that God is A-OK with it, just look at that passage here, no skip that one, now read that one, see?

Lots of quotes by ordinary people and politicians from the Reconstruction and Jim Crow eras about how groups like the KKK were necessary to protect whites from the "savagery" of Blacks.

There's a lot of depressing reading out there for you, if you want to Google it.

 

[Grazzt]

Hopefully they are honest about hiring BIPOC writers and designers.

Hopefully they change their hiring practices too. If the thread on rpg.net (with a few links to blogs or posts by contractors, freelancers, etc) is any indication, they still have a ways to go.

 

[Krachek]

Those are extremely narrow interpretations of the classes. Extremely. The book itself makes strong efforts to talk about the diverse way the classes can be implemented and viewed. Read the class descriptions. The fighter starts with three paragraphs showing a diverse approach to the fighter class, most of which are not evocative of a Christian Crusader.

You're saying in most of your critique that the classes are limited to a cultural representation, and that is just not true.

I play a human variant monk. That monk comes from a clan that lived in Ancient Halruaa (one of the Lapal tribes) that practiced supernatural rites. When the Netherese came, his clan fled and became wanderers. The clan develops supernatual capabilities (the Arcane Initiative: Warlock feat) allowing them to small magical tricks (prestidigitation), create a phantom hand (mage hand), and put their spiritual hand on the soul of someone (hex). I flavor all of the monk abilities to be extensions of the mage hand. His speed is created by being pulled along by the hand. His damage increases come from the extra force of the mage hand around his hand. His slow fall is being held aloft by the hand. His Way of the Open Hand push, being pulled prone, or being denied reactions - that comes from the spiritual hand interfering. Stunning occurs because the spiritual hand appears in the brain of the target, etc...

Now, how does that equate to a stereotype of Asian culture?

I agree I made narrow and sarcastic interpretation, And I do like Monk class and your monk is great.

i just Wonder how much long magic will be able to use the terms white creature, black creature, on their text card.

 

[Sadras]

Some of the VtM clans are meant to be ways to play classic fiction/movie vampires in the game -- most notably the Nosferatu. But any group of people outside the United States and Western Europe got turned into spooky vampire foreigners as interpreted by edgelords. Vampire assassin clan from Israel/Palestine/Jordan/Syria! Inscrutable creepy ancient Egyptian vampires! Mysterious African vampires! And, oh yes, magical untrustworthy Romani vampires!

And I loved all of them.

 

[Var]

As I said in the other thread already, I am all in favour of giving " always evil" humanoid species an overhaul. There's still enough source of conflict to be had. If, for example, orcs hold a certain spot of land sacred because, according to their legends, Gruumsh once shed a drop of blood there, they will not appreciate that new city being built there - and now you can still have all the fun of fighting off bands of orc raiders and maybe even have an adventure that does not end in just slaughtering the entire tribe because, well, they do have a point.

I am not too fond of getting rid of ability scores, though. Leaving aside that it's fantasy anway, we are talking about different species. Chimpanzees are primates, so are humans. We are more intelligent than chimpanzees, though. Is that racist? Not really.

However, if you want more diversity within your fantasy peoples (and why wouldn't you?), I recommend doing something similar to what Zweihander did: there, you have some adjustments from your ancestry that you gain automatically and then you either roll or choose two traits. So, yeah, your ogre may have a cast-iron stomach and a tough hide...the next ogre may not.

Ditching alignment altogether is the way to go.
Calling a force of nature like a demon "evil" is a misguided attempt to apply human values to something alien without a concept for emotions of kinship, love and kindness.

Cats kill for fun, are they evil since they lack a moral compass?
I'm okay with people having cats as pets, even though house cats are a devastating scrouge on the small animal life in the vicinity, not just the pests. Guess the cat's weight in songbirds is acceptable collateral damage.