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'.

 

[Xenonnonex]

But "purely fictional" is very, very rare--unless we make all evil creatures to be utterly alien, with no semblance of real-world analogs. And of course that veers far from the world we live in, where there are examples of "evil" people in all nations, cultures, ethnic groups, and genders.

Caricatures are unavoidable. Of course WotC should avoid the most obvious, but there is no way to make everything perfectly nuanced and caricature-free.

You have a whole of slew of purely fictional evil in the monster manuals.
Then more research is needed. Even for a roleplaying game. No one said it would be easy. But it is a step Wizards is taking.

 

[Xenonnonex]

Of course, but that goes without saying. Not sure what your point is? I shouldn't share my view?

If people object. They are free to do whatever in their own games. What. I cannot share my view?

 

[Xenonnonex]

Why not ask WotC to boycott Amazon?

Are you aware of what they did w

And if Europeans start complaining about some of the art?

Dwarves often depicted as Scottish or Scandinavian.

Throw in the game is often about killing and looting and people like posting Amazon thread here a company that union busted and forced staff to work in Covid warehouses?

The blatantly bad art has already been fixed. Hobgoblins a stretch so is over analysing the ability scores and drawing conclusions that aren't really there.

How vigorous are going to be? D&D is going to fail a lot of purity tests if you look hard enough.

They made a lot if effort with 5E but thing like succubus still a problem. Do you just stick an R13 label on it?

If there are problems with depictions. Then Wizards should find other ways to depict them. The problem is other people upset at changes after the fact.

 

[Zardnaar]

If there are problems with depictions. Then Wizards should find other ways to depict them. The problem is other people upset at changes after the fact.

Vistani stuff was bad even in the 90s. The non human stuff is a bit silly and if you can make those associations there's plenty of other things you can nitpick.

Eventually you'll have to draw a line somewhere or make 6E.

 

[Xenonnonex]

Vistani stuff was bad even in the 90s. The non human stuff is a bit silly and if you can make those associations there's plenty of other things you can nitpick.

Eventually you'll have to draw a line somewhere or make 6E.

Changes to Vistani are a start. Good start. Changes to orcs are a start. A good start. And changes to other non humans will be a start. More good starts. Of course you are free to do whatever you want.

 

[Mercurius]

I'd say the topic is quite the contrary. The original outcry was against how orcs and drows were portrayed given that they were designed/interpreted to be representation of African Americans. Therefore the "always evil" depiction of them was deemed offensive. The answer is not to increase representation of the player base in the game but REMOVAL of representation of the player base. Do not try to make orcs or drow sympathetic and likeable, that would only aknowledge that they were, indeed, representing the African Americans and they woudl still be doing that. Racists everywhere could say "Orcs are /insert dismissive term for African Americans/ except they are great poets". Or worse "except that a few can turn out good". As long as you try to represent the player base (ie, real life humans) into your fantasy, you're going to do more harm than good. Represent humans as humans, and have other creatures be alien (in the sense of weird) enough to clearly dissociate them from any potential player base (including WASPs).

I have no idea what any of that means.

My sense is that what Galandris is saying is that the best way to solve the orc/drow problem is not to make them more accurately represent black people (or women in the case of drow), but to de-couple them from that association altogether. Make orcs orcs, drow drow. Galandris isn't talking about representing the player base, but the (hypothetical) connections of D&D races to real-world peoples.

Orcs and drow are problematic for different reasons, but the problems are relatively easily rectified in both cases. I'm not sure what the orc/African American association is, although do remember some being upset that they had darker (although more grayish) skin in the LotR movies, but that seems a bit of a stretch. There's the quote from Tolkien about Mongolian people, but regardless of whether or not what he said is problematic, D&D does not equal Tolkien (and remember when orcs had pig-snouts? What was that about?). But again, there's really only a problem if there's any connection to African Americans (or Mongolians), so rather than try to make them more accurately representative--which is going in the wrong direction--why not separate them from that connection entirely? If orcs are just orcs, it doesn't matter if they're evil and brutish.

As for drow, the complaints I've seen are two-fold. One is that dark skin = evil, especially the earlier ideas that they were cursed by Corellon and darkened. But I'm pretty sure that is a defunct artifact of the halcyon days of D&D and I'm pretty sure was long ago expunged from D&D canon. But other than non-white skin, there is really no connection to African Americans in any way, so deleting that early bit of lore has already been accomplished, so I don't see any weight to this concern except through false equivalency (i.e. dark skin means they are African American, which doesn't make sense for a variety of reasons).

The other complaint is matriarchy = evil and oppressive. This complaint impliesthat a female-centered society couldn't be evil, which is itself a subtle form of sexism (women are only good, and thus not as complex or diverse as men, who can be good or bad). The simple solution here is to provide examples of matriarchal races and/or cultures that aren't oppressive and good and/or neutral.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Also how far do you want to go?

This is not the unanswerable rhetorical question you seem to think it is. Indeed this is pretty easy to answer - if the depiction links to extant real-world groups who are currently facing racism and you are aware of it, then probably think twice about it eh? Maybe think three times?

Scandinavians are not facing any kind of meaningful racism in the West. Nor are the Welsh (off-colour rugby-player-type jokes notwithstanding). Irish people faced relatively serious racism up into the very early 1900s, but it more or less vanished as "white" became a thing and "WASP" less of a thing.

Whereas black people still face massive racism, often using ideas that were first mooted in the 1600s, 1700s, or 1800s, and which should have died in those centuries, but which unfortunately people have chosen to keep promoting and repeating. Japanese people face little racism in the UK, but in the US there's a more significant amount of racism, and unfortunately some of that does rely on stereotypes that were promoted in the 1940s, and revisited with updated-but-related stereotypes in the 1980s. Hobgoblins are described with the term "brutal civility" - it's literally one of the headings. This unfortunately plays directly into stereotypes associated with Japan, and popular in the US. The fact that it then talks about "military honor" and so on (again associated with Japan via stereotypes) doesn't help.

The language of the piece generally seems to link them more to a Roman-style deal, particularly with the "Legions" (I don't think anyone would dispute Rome was both civilized and incredibly brutal, and somewhat honor-obsessed), but the artist has gone for what is basically "What if O-Yoroi was made of metal?" take, combined with a Japanese-style topknot, and some outright fantasy styling as well (the sword, the belt/waist armour are just fantastical, and don't resemble any real-world weapons). Oddly the artist has done this twice - there are two different pieces which both match this description and are of Hobgoblins.

I don't think there's an negative intention here, and I don't think it's the best example, but attempting to deny that there's influence and so on just smacks of pointless evasion and Nelson-esque "I see no ships!". And worrying about non-existent racism against Scandinavians just seems like flippancy of a kind of heartless and unpleasant type, given real people are harmed by stereotypes of this kind, and real racism occurs against Japanese people in the US (even if it doesn't here in the UK).

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Orcs and drow are problematic for different reasons, but the problems are relatively easily rectified in both cases. I'm not sure what the orc/African American association is, although do remember some being upset that they had darker (although more grayish) skin in the LotR movies, but that seems a bit of a stretch. There's the quote from Tolkien about Mongolian people, but regardless of whether or not what he said is problematic, D&D does not equal Tolkien (and remember when orcs had pig-snouts? What was that about?). But again, there's really only a problem if there's any connection to African Americans (or Mongolians), so rather than try to make them more accurately representative--which is going in the wrong direction--why not separate them from that connection entirely? If orcs are just orcs, it doesn't matter if they're evil and brutish.

I take it you didn't read much of the thread? Orcs are basically presented in a way that is extremely similar to how 20th century racists described the inherent characteristics of black people (fecund, stupid, aggressive, etc.), and they're humanoids and quite close to humans in appearance. And whilst you can say "Well people don't read those books anymore!", the ideas are still around - US anti-black racism (including specifically how the police are more violent towards black people) relies on those exact tropes (as does some UK police anti-black racism, note - it's nowhere near as extreme, but I've personally experienced it in quite a wild form, but that's a long story). Nowadays the ideas are passed more person-to-person, or by fringe pseudo-science websites, or Facebook, or far-right radio and TV and especially YouTube and so on, but they're if anything harder to get rid of, because they're somewhat underground.

Drow are the only major very-dark-skinned race in D&D, and the only major matriarchy in D&D, and they're super-ultra-evil. And yes they're dark-skinned because there's cursed. You're sadly wrong to believe that it's gone as an idea. They've played it down, and I believe it's no longer part of the "generalized" backstory of the Drow, but it was certainly present in 2E and 3E, and I think it may even be in SCAG. As well as making it clear that the curse story is nonsense and coming up with some other clear story (instead of no clear reason why), they need to show more example of Drow who aren't evil. It's not like this would be a retcon - it's been a common theme for a long time, way back into 2E and 3E, it just keeps getting sidelined or hidden or retcon'd out of existence in favour of Menzoberranzan-style Drow.

There have also been unfortunate connections to African-American people, like the covers on 1E material (at least one reprinted in 2E, possibly others), and Jarlaxle dressing like a stereotypical "pimp" (and somewhat talking that way too), which recently has been retcon'd a bit, so now he's more just a guy with a big hat with a feather in it, and a lot less bling and dark clothes instead of eye-wateringly-bright ones.

You're flatly wrong to say that the complaint is subtly sexist re: matriarchy, because you're adding something to the complaint, which is on you. The complaint is simply that the only major matriarchy in D&D is stone-cold evil as all hell, like staggeringly evil (and in a somewhat sexist stereotype of female way - it's cruelty and torture-oriented, rather than brutally fascist or the like - misogynist men often complain about the "cruelty" of women or how they're being "tortured" by them). There's no suggestion that women can't be evil inherent to that. That's on you. However you are correct re: the solution, which is to offer more examples of matriarchies, ones which aren't evil as all get out. I get where this came from - it's a whole deal with the spider connection, but it should have been addressed decades ago. It was obviously deeply problematic even in the early 1990s (especially when all the BDSM stuff comes in as well).

The issue with Drow is less that they're connected directly to black people, and more than they're the only major very-dark-skinned race (where that's actually a major trait of their appearance, not a variable thing like humans), especially that is powerful and civilized, and they're incredibly evil. It'd be difficult to introduce more new races to D&D who were dark-skinned but not evil, because it would take years to make them "major" and it might seem very forced. So the better solution is to make dark grey the default skin-tone for Drow (distancing them from human skin-tones), whilst playing up the fact that they're not inherently evil, and it's not at all just a wild weird "Mary Sue" thing to be a non-evil Drow, that's there's just a large Drow culture that is evil (people are totally willing to accept that a culture can be evil). This will, of course, deeply offend some nerds who married to the idea that anyone who wants to play a good Drow or even has good Drow in their campaign is some kind of "Mary Sue" (god the inaccurate usage...) loser who loves Drizzt and so on, but I think that's fine, and they need to get over their juvenile deal.

 

[Hussar]

Who's to say what's a caricature. We've been encouraged to play X cards which don't allow for any dissent if offended.

Tone deaf snark is not really contributing anything of value is it?

 

[Bagpuss]

We're talking about player characters though. So why not have a halfling that's as strong as the minotaur, if that's the player's vision? Why have the rules prevent that character choice? PCs are heroes!

They can be under the current rules, by increasing their Strength, as they advance, they would end up stronger than a character that doesn't increase their strength and they are all tied to a maximum of 20 anyway.