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'.

 

[Haldrik]

They went slaving to the south so it would be impossible to not have DNA from Kush in Egypt.

Yeah, but it seems that many of the "dynasties" were contemporaries in different regions with different pharaohs. So different regions may be in larger numbers because of local situations, more like a patchwork. The later DNA would result from local events of previous centuries.

In any case, the article acknowledges that the "Upper Egypt" pharaohs, especially the celebrated Dynasty 18, was probably more Nubian.

 

[Zardnaar]

Yeah, but it seems that many of the "dynasties" were contemporaries in different regions with different pharaohs. So different regions may be in larger numbers because of local regions, more like a patchwork. The later DNA would result from local events of previous centuries.

In any case, the article acknowledges that the "Upper Egypt" pharaohs, especially the celebrated Dynasty 18, was probably more Nubian.

Yeah did an Egyptian refresher on Amazon. There's some good documentaries on there.

Last campaign was not Egypt on Midgard.

Extinct cultures seem safer to use for D&D. Well long extinct cultures. Pharoah got immortality of a sort.

 

[Haldrik]

You want permission.

It is less about "permission".

It is more like, if I dont like the rules of a game, I would play different game whose rules I like.

When it comes RPGs, the flexibility is less because of the amount of work (hours and years) that goes into creating an RPG.

And over all, I love D&D.

That fact that I care about rules, is also why I care whether D&D rules are problematic about racism. If they are, I want the rules updated, so that I can enjoy the game more.

Consider all of the players here who want the rules to be as less racist as possible. You could tell them that they dont need "permission" to remove racism from their own tables. (And many do remove racism.) But all of us want the official D&D rules to be as helpful as possible.

 

[Morrus]

Consider all of the players here who want the rules to be as less racist as possible. You could tell them that they dont need "permission" to remove racism from their own tables. (And many do remove racism.) But all of us want the official D&D rules to be as helpful as possible.

That's about representation, not permission. A different issue entirely.

 

[InnocentPope]

This is why I couldn't get into Superman as a kid.

I didn't really like superhero comics they don't seem to translate well to other cultures.

I did like some of the movies and Batman movies are generally good to great.

Superman and Spiderman movies very hit and miss. Wonderwomen was good, 2/3 Blade were good, MCU bit hit and miss but nothing dreadful.

GI Joe didn't do it for me either. Had these though.

Commando (comics) - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

I actually really like both Superman and Wonder Woman when they are written well; they are ultra-squeaky-clean characters who are much more powerful than most of their opponents, and virtually morally faultless, and with a decent author who really understands the character, you can tell amazing stories about them. Sometimes it can be a case where some even more powerful creature comes along and threatens Earth and only Superman can stop it; stories like that have worked, but it's inherently not the ideal template, which is why a lot of writers tend to fail at it, and walk away saying it's hard to write for a character that powerful. Likewise, if you're focusing on his moral unimpeachability rather than his physical impregnability, and your story is about how that iron wall cracks because something slammed into it really hard, that can work. But IMO it's much better to tell stories that embrace the character for what they are, and focuses on them whole-heartedly.

Possibly the single best Superman story ever told is just a single page, where someone is about to kill themselves by jumping off a roof, and Superman just shows up and holds them and tells them that they shouldn't give up hope (since the #1 thing Superman, as a character, is all about is Hope - the hope that a superpowered savior will rescue you if you just survive long enough, not the hope that a superpowered villain is invincible unless Superman can hit them hard enough). Technically you don't have to be Superman to save a jumper's life, but he has two advantages that make him great at doing it - he has super-senses that let him find that person a couple seconds before they take the plunge, which is better response time than just about any normal human could manage, and more importantly, he's Superman, the living symbol of impossible Hope, so when he tells you that you don't need to go up, you believe him. Movies like Man of Steel sucked because they didn't understand that this is what Superman is all about, and didn't show even a glimmer of this kind of stuff happening.

Wonder Woman has a bit easier time having great stories told about her than Superman, for a number of reasons that I won't get into, but her issues are similar and she just kind of inherently manages them a little better. Some MCU characters, notably Captain America, can tap into this well a bit, but overall the Marvel universe lends itself less well to this approach to superheroes; they're a little more "gritty", in large part because they're newer (DC's core characters all go back to the 30s, and Marvel was technically around at the time, but only like three of their flagship characters from the time have survived, notably including Cap; the rest of their stable was all invented in the 60s).

Batman and Blade meanwhile are an entire other branch of story; the Grim and Gritty tropes that things like Man of Steel and Infinity War tried to bring into more "four-color" superhero efforts (the former mostly failed and the latter mostly succeeded, but still) are built to be good for characters like these, and misguided creators then try to misapply them elsewhere with mixed results. And G.I.Joe is pretty much just U.S. Army propaganda; I was never part of the fandom so I shouldn't trash them too hard, but based on what little I know, virtually everything they've ever done well was done better by franchises like Captain America or maybe James Bond.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

Or creating monolithically evil humanoids whose culture is not transparently based on any real-world influences, or on enough of a mix thereof that they can't be regarded as demonizing anyone specific.

(Personally I think the hobgoblins haven't been identifiably "oriental"-like for a long time, but if you really think they're still objectionable, just hire more original creative designers, who can come up with a hobgoblin look that's totally alien and can't possibly be equated to anything Terrestrial.)

Just going to say, "oriental" isn't a term Asians use to refer to themselves.

And the hobgoblin in 5e looks pretty Japanese warrior-esque. Banded mail, big shoulder pads and a top-knot hairdo?

 

[InnocentPope]

Just going to say, "oriental" isn't a term Asians use to refer to themselves.

Aware of that. Hence I added the quotation marks. I felt like it was the only word that fit the context, but I knew it was somewhat unsavory, so I wanted to be clear that I was using it to quote the word, not to call anyone the word.

And on the art side, I get what you're getting at, but IMO it's very vague and not even close to a direct parallel. I think it'd be hard to see this if you weren't actively looking for it.

 

[Haldrik]

That's about representation, not permission. A different issue entirely.

I agree representation is a goal.

And part of inclusivity includes not every elf being an English elf. But the concepts of elf from elsewhere are also welcome.

It is a more regional example of the same principle. Not everything in D&D needs to be European. Neither does everything need to be English (Shakespeare, Tolkien).

I happen to care about the elf. But other people from other ethnicities will similarly care about how their folklore gets represented as well.

 

[Morrus]

I agree representation is a goal.

And part of inclusivity includes not every elf being an English elf. But the concepts of elf from elsewhere are also welcome.

It is a more regional example of the same principle. Not everything in D&D needs to be European. Neither does everything need to be English (Shakespeare, Tolkien).

I happen to care about the elf. But other people from other ethnicities will similarly care about how their folklore gets represented as well.

I don't really know what that has to do with what I said.

 

[Haldrik]

I don't really know what that has to do with what I said.

Heh, now I dont know what you are saying.

I want to say, that representing other cultures includes representing other cultures (including the folklore of other cultures).

D&D is bigger than the worldviews of Tolkien and Shakespeare.