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.

 

[shesheyan]

I started playing in 1980 and I am happy D&D as evolved and changed for the better over time. It's a role-playing game after all. It makes sense that intelligent humanoids be less unidimensional as a group otherwise they are just zombies of various shapes and forms. When things a predictable, they are boring.

 

[Desrimal]

If D&D survived the loss of THAC0, I think we can survive this.

Now keep in mind WotC has not said that there will not be evil drow or orcs. That would be as silly as removing evil humans. What is it about having a more nuanced depiction of drow and orcs that you think would alienate D&D players?

Hey - I'm still mad about the THAC0 thing. Can you be a little sensitive about it please - I'm easily offended

I guess I feel like orcs and drow should be monsters. Good orcs and drow should be very rare and outcasts.

Humanity (in all it's forms) should be reserved for humans.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I look forward to seeing what WotC comes up with in the way of variant rules, and have no problem with using the game to be more inclusive. It doesn't change a table's ability to play how they want, and changing the default to something less likely to offend is a good thing. The only issue is potentially see is the idea that using content instead of creator politics to determine one's buying habits is being seen as a weakness of character. Is that wrong? Is that not how things are going now?

 

[BookTenTiger]

Hey - I'm still mad about the THAC0 thing. Can you be a little sensitive about it please - I'm easily offended

I guess I feel like orcs and drow should be monsters. Good orcs and drow should be very rare and outcasts.

Humanity (in all it's forms) should be reserved for humans.

I feel like this is tangential to, and not related to, the announcement WotC made. I think there are a lot of players who share your preferences, and a lot of players who don't. But nothing WotC announced takes away from this style of D&D.

 

[Oofta]

I still think there's a part of you that wants to dive deeper! That's what keeps pulling you back in! Examination of tropes and stereotypes and biases can be fun! It's neat to get at the roots of where images and themes of D&D come from (like the recent awesome bullette articles).

You say you wanted to understand why people have an issue. Do you feel like you have gained this understanding?

Part of the reason I pulled out my long defunct account was because I wanted to understand the thoughts of people whose opinions were different than mine. I feel like I have gained an understanding of where you are coming from. Do you feel the same?

I appreciate that some people have taken the time to explain more than just "racism is wrong". That doesn't mean I necessarily agree with the conclusion or that I'm going to change the role of orcs in my campaign.

What's funny is that I rarely use orcs as protagonists and my campaign wouldn't change much if they had never existed.

 

[imagineGod]

If D&D survived the loss of THAC0, I think we can survive this.

Now keep in mind WotC has not said that there will not be evil drow or orcs. That would be as silly as removing evil humans. What is it about having a more nuanced depiction of drow and orcs that you think would alienate D&D players?

Sometimes people talk about "To Hit Armor Class 0" like it was a long lasting thing. I think only AD&D 2nd Edition used it. I first encountered it in the computer games by Black Isle Studios. It was never used in the pre-AD&D era or in the post AD&D era, so was just a short blip on the RPG radar.

 

[Remathilis]

I think you might be muddling my point.

You can still have Drizzt be an outsider rebelling against the system without simplifying it to "almost all drow are evil."

If instead you say "almost all drow in this city are slave-owners and backstabbers" and Drizzt is not, that's the same story without the simplification right?

The slave owning and the backstabbing are signifiers of evil without having to paint an entire race with a broad brush.

Maybe I'm missing the forest from the trees, but isn't that basically already what we have? Alignment in D&D (with few exceptions) are tendencies and not absolutes, the existence of Drizzt and the drow in the PHB already spells out those exceptions. PCs have normally been said exceptions to the rule. There have also been NPCs or other characters that have likewise broken the mold. I don't think anyone but the hardest of the hardcore are arguing Drizzt shouldn't exist and no drow can ever be anything but Evil.

I guess I'm seeing that goblins, orcs, drow, and other "antagonist" races will become another PC race that occasionally appears as a villain, like dwarves and elves do.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

Maybe I'm missing the forest from the trees, but isn't that basically already what we have? Alignment in D&D (with few exceptions) are tendencies and not absolutes, the existence of Drizzt and the drow in the PHB already spells out those exceptions. PCs have normally been said exceptions to the rule. There have also been NPCs or other characters that have likewise broken the mold. I don't think anyone but the hardest of the hardcore are arguing Drizzt shouldn't exist and no drow can ever be anything but Evil.

I guess I'm seeing that goblins, orcs, drow, and other "antagonist" races will become another PC race that occasionally appears as a villain, like dwarves and elves do.

Now:
D&D Book: This thing is always evil, it says it in the book.
Player/GM: I'm gonna switch this up and make them not all evil in my game.

Later:
D&D Book: This thing is sometimes evil and sometimes not.
Player/GM: I'm gonna switch this up and make them ALL evil in my game.

But, to a larger point, your summation is correct, all said and done its a pretty minor change to the game overall.

 

[Stacie GmrGrl]

The idea of specialized editorial staff make you cringe? Really?

No. The idea of needing someone to police creative work and have a say on what's allowed and what's not based on their own perception of right and wrong and thinking they have the right to dictate creative direction to appease their own political outlooks is what I have a problem with.

It's the notion that you must include a particular kind of human being in your work, company, design team that's insulting. Not just to the creative writer, but to the very person who either got hired to meet some metric of approval and became a token that the company can show and say "See, I hired this person to be a reader, or artist, or (insert reason here). Can I join your club of approval now?"

It's wrong to use people like this for the color of their skin, or their gender, or their neurological mind just to meet the approval of a group of people who thinks that this is inclusive when it's nothing more than using a person to meet another person or groups standard of approval.

If a person wants to do a Aztec Jaguar subclass for D&D, research Aztec culture. It's not hard. Pull up Aztec mythology. Study it a bit. You don't need someone who grew up in that area of the world to write it. Maybe consider an anthropologist if you must but to think you must find a person who grew up in a very specific part of the world to write about it is ludicrous. It's actually more insulting to think you must use them because majority of the time that is what's happening... They are being used.

On the flip side, if you are truly confused about something that you're working on and you've exhausted your own research and creative mindset and you think you need a consultant about something specific that you do not know what to do about it, then sure, get a consultant to help. Find a person who has real knowledge about it. Find a legit scholar and academic if you have to, someone who is neutral as much as possible. Or someone with a lot of experience. But do it out of respect, do it because the person would legitimately be a good partnership.

Do it with honor.

Needing a sensitivity reader for the sake of it to meet approval or some kind of public enforced standards of expectation isn't honorable. It's policing creative design.

 

[BookTenTiger]

Maybe I'm missing the forest from the trees, but isn't that basically already what we have? Alignment in D&D (with few exceptions) are tendencies and not absolutes, the existence of Drizzt and the drow in the PHB already spells out those exceptions. PCs have normally been said exceptions to the rule. There have also been NPCs or other characters that have likewise broken the mold. I don't think anyone but the hardest of the hardcore are arguing Drizzt shouldn't exist and no drow can ever be anything but Evil.

I guess I'm seeing that goblins, orcs, drow, and other "antagonist" races will become another PC race that occasionally appears as a villain, like dwarves and elves do.

I think you are right that the general understanding is "drow are often evil but don't have to be."

Then again, we have this from the Monster Manual:

Tens of thousands of years ago, the elves were divided, with those of benevolent disposition battling those that were selfish and cruel. The war among elvenkind ended when the good elves banished their malevolent kin to the subterranean depths.

This describes an entire race that is "selfish and cruel" and "malevolent."

No matter the mythic quality of the description, we now have a game in which we have a race of people who are all defined by the same negative traits. And they have dark skin.

Let's imagine we can go back in time and rewrite this story. What if, as you said, the drow were just another kind of elf. In this story, there is a war between factions of elves - high elves, wood elves, and drow on one side, and high elves, wood elves, and drow on the other. The losers of the war are forced underground.

Drizzt is now a drow who has grown up in a massive underground elven city where slavery, assassination, and backstabbing are the norm- amongst the many different kinds of elves who live there. His rebellion is still against his culture, but now it's been removed from the negative stereotypes about dark-skinned people that have permeated our game.

I'm not saying that something like this is the ultimate solution, or that we should even go back and change things that have been published. But if we free ourselves from associated races with good or evil, we can come up with still mythic stories that don't perpetuate racism.