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.

 

[Zardnaar]

Hmm, just brainstorming a bit here...

Thinking a bit about how in fantasy worlds, the standard bad guy species (orcs, goblins, drow, etc etc) tend to be assigned cultural/visual markers (tribal life, black skin, distinctively non-human features, etc) that 'other' then from the standard good guys, who tend to adhere to more quasi-medieval-European norms (generally paler skin and humanish features, agriculture and settled townships, shops and some sort of capitalist coin-based economy, perhaps monarchy or some sort of quasi-democratic ruling council, priests and temples as opposed to shamans, etc).

Wondering a bit how you'd turn that dynamic on its head in a campaign world, and it just so happens there's a prime candidate, in my mind....

So, I'd like to see a 5e Dark Sun iteration that makes it explicit that Athas is a world where the predominantly-evil race that is a threat to everyone on the planet is ... 'civilised' city- or village-dwelling humans. It's entirely canon, after all. All the sorcerer-kings are (were) human, and they're the setting's big bads. The Cleansing Wars, that broke the ecology of the planet, obliterated entire intelligent species, and left the place a howling hell-hole were a human attempt to commit genocide on everyone else (though it's amazing how rarely canon non-human characters talk about this, even very long-lived ones). Rajaat was a pyreen, but 4e retconned 'pyreen' into an epic destiny, so maybe he was originally human too. Tithian was human. Most templars are human, most defilers too. Humans are the dominant species by population on the planet, and the place they've built is a mess of slavery, oppression, and life being held cheaply. Anyone who wants to play a member of a stereotypically evil race who is rebelling against their own corrupt heritage in Dark Sun can play ... a 'civilised' human. I'd love to see a Dark Sun setting book that talked about how the 'default' heroic PC is most likely non-human, while humans when spoken of in general are greedy, ambitious, and prone to violence, and even good-aligned human PCs are will be looked on warily or with hostility by others as their species is notoriously responsible for genocide and all sorts of atrocities.

(Bit of a snare there is that the various city-states are heavily influenced by real-world largely non-European cultures, so there's STILL a bit of othering from the quasi-European norm going on, but you get the idea...)

Why do you think DS appeals so much.

It's very different and they watered the concept down in 4Es Dim Sun.

 

[thatparanoidguy]

Just spreading information so people can less rely on speculation and have examples how this announcement will affect D&D going forward.

Roll20 announced that Curse of Strahd & Tomb of Annihilation have already patched in their changes to be more inclusive.

I don't own the books on Roll20 but these two threads have posters listing out and detailing the changes.


Theres a full breakdown in how the use of Exotic, Savage, & Tribal is used for Tomb in the top comment of the thread.

No mention of dropping the term "Race" from either book as it is used in both. That may end up being just for the next book or a Sixth Edition thing.

People had me worried first about these changes but honestly this seems more than reasonable.

My only concerns remain with how they handle those changes for how stat bonuses are allocated. Maybe it'll be fun but I'm too attached to the idea of certain races having certain stat bonuses and it lets them shine in certain areas. Hopefully its just a variant option in the next book and thus skip-able if its no good.

I'll try to keep open mind about it.

 

[Coroc]

Hmm, just brainstorming a bit here...

Thinking a bit about how in fantasy worlds, the standard bad guy species (orcs, goblins, drow, etc etc) tend to be assigned cultural/visual markers (tribal life, black skin, distinctively non-human features, etc) that 'other' then from the standard good guys, who tend to adhere to more quasi-medieval-European norms (generally paler skin and humanish features, agriculture and settled townships, shops and some sort of capitalist coin-based economy, perhaps monarchy or some sort of quasi-democratic ruling council, priests and temples as opposed to shamans, etc).

Wondering a bit how you'd turn that dynamic on its head in a campaign world, and it just so happens there's a prime candidate, in my mind....

So, I'd like to see a 5e Dark Sun iteration that makes it explicit that Athas is a world where the predominantly-evil race that is a threat to everyone on the planet is ... 'civilised' city- or village-dwelling humans. It's entirely canon, after all. All the sorcerer-kings are (were) human, and they're the setting's big bads. The Cleansing Wars, that broke the ecology of the planet, obliterated entire intelligent species, and left the place a howling hell-hole were a human attempt to commit genocide on everyone else (though it's amazing how rarely canon non-human characters talk about this, even very long-lived ones). Rajaat was a pyreen, but 4e retconned 'pyreen' into an epic destiny, so maybe he was originally human too. Tithian was human. Most templars are human, most defilers too. Humans are the dominant species by population on the planet, and the place they've built is a mess of slavery, oppression, and life being held cheaply. Anyone who wants to play a member of a stereotypically evil race who is rebelling against their own corrupt heritage in Dark Sun can play ... a 'civilised' human. I'd love to see a Dark Sun setting book that talked about how the 'default' heroic PC is most likely non-human, while humans when spoken of in general are greedy, ambitious, and prone to violence, and even good-aligned human PCs are will be looked on warily or with hostility by others as their species is notoriously responsible for genocide and all sorts of atrocities.

(Bit of a snare there is that the various city-states are heavily influenced by real-world largely non-European cultures, so there's STILL a bit of othering from the quasi-European norm going on, but you get the idea...)

Careful in your plans, think about that your Darksun humans most likely more or less are persons of color, as you partially seem to recognize yourself in your last sentence, so again you trigger real life associations.

That's one of the reasons I still say keep real life and game apart.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Just spreading information so people can less rely on speculation and have examples how this announcement will affect D&D going forward.

Roll20 announced that Curse of Strahd & Tomb of Annihilation have already patched in their changes to be more inclusive.

I don't own the books on Roll20 but these two threads have posters listing out and detailing the changes.


Theres a full breakdown in how the use of Exotic, Savage, & Tribal is used for Tomb in the top comment of the thread.

That really doesn't address the issue with CoS: that it depicts colonialism without even hinting that there might be moral issues...

 

[Staffan]

So, I'd like to see a 5e Dark Sun iteration that makes it explicit that Athas is a world where the predominantly-evil race that is a threat to everyone on the planet is ... 'civilised' city- or village-dwelling humans. It's entirely canon, after all. All the sorcerer-kings are (were) human, and they're the setting's big bads. The Cleansing Wars, that broke the ecology of the planet, obliterated entire intelligent species, and left the place a howling hell-hole were a human attempt to commit genocide on everyone else (though it's amazing how rarely canon non-human characters talk about this, even very long-lived ones).

You make a good point, and one I hadn't really considered in a Dark Sun context (and Dark Sun is one of my favorite settings). But as for the historical in-setting aspects: the Cleansing Wars are the "secret history" of the setting. None of the PC races is super-long-lived – dwarves live the longest, and they max out at 200+3d20 years. The Cleansing Wars ended about 2000 years ago, and the sorcerer-kings and their minions have actively suppressed knowledge of history. Literacy is illegal in the cities for anyone who isn't a noble or a templar. The timeless nature of the setting is enhanced by using a rolling system for naming years which cycles around every 77 years – sure, something may have happened in the year of Priest's Contemplation, but was that 33, 110, or 1003 years ago? In the novels, the history of Rajaat and the Cleansing Wars was a thing that the main characters had to learn from various places. It was not a thing they already knew.

The original boxed set, written in-character, has this to say about history: "What generally passes for the history of Athas is, in my opinion, a jumble of folklore and propaganda. Most people are too concerned with the problems of the present to devote themselves to the lessons of the past. The few who have any interest in history are the flattering lackeys of kings undertaking the project to glorify their sovereign. The resulting chronicles are implausible fables or mutually incompatible fabrications, and never should you trust what you hear in them."

But yeah, humans are definitely the Big Bads of the Dark Sun setting. I hadn't quite realized it before, but that was another thing that was watered down in the Revised boxed set, with the addition of several external threats.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I'd say that it is not entirely possible, I'd say that is the obvious reason.

By the same logic, though, we must equally believe WotC doesn't actually believe in making good-quality or well-written products, or that balance matters, or really anything positive at all, because the only reason to spend money on these things is to avoid customers getting mad and keep them buying your product.

And maybe that's true. But it's not specific to any one issue.

And that's Hasbro, a faceless corporation. Individuals at that corporation certainly do genuinely care about the issue, even if the corporation itself is merely a monster which demands profit.

 

[Staffan]

Yeah, I agree with you that there are meaningful differences between humanoids and extraplanar entities that make them having fixed alignments both acceptable and potentially desirable. I’m just saying, if one insists on consistency in the matter, better that no creatures have fixed alignments than that all do.

I like the idea from Eberron that alignment-based outsiders* literally are incarnations of their alignment. It's possible but super-difficult to make one change alignment, but if you do their nature will fundamentally change. There's a canonical example with Radiant Idols, who are fallen angels.

* Outsider was a 3e monster type that encompassed all sorts of extraplanar beings, and in some cases non-extraplanar beings of a spiritual nature. In 5e, the creature type would cover fiends, celestials, and some aberrations, constructs, elementals, and fey.

 

[Bolares]

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.

Well for this to work then writers should strip this "monsters" of all it's human traits, both in form and in culture. If humanity is reserved for humans, we should stop using harmful steriotypes to describe orcs and drows.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Maybe it'll be fun but I'm too attached to the idea of certain races having certain stat bonuses and it lets them shine in certain areas. Hopefully its just a variant option in the next book and thus skip-able if its no good.

I suspect with 6E it'll be permanent, because it's been an idea that's been floating around for a long time, and it's a highly functional one, which balancing absolutely everything in the game easier, not harder. Indeed, with 6E, I'd expect it be more like the two highest stats in the standard array already have the bonus, or you get a +2/+1 to apply or something like that. Whatever replaces races (Ancestry, Peoples, whatever), will probably suggest what is likely - i.e. Elves may well have it suggested that the +2 go in DEX and +1 go in INT or CHA. In very few cases, this may even make more sense than current assignments - Loxodons for example, are directly described as "strong" and can be 8' tall and 400lbs, but have no inherent strength bonus. If someone wants a STR 18 Halfling, that will firmly be for them and the DM to hash out.nIt makes too much sense not to do it. I'd expect, if anything, fixed bonus might be an optional rule in 6E.

Non-stat bonuses are likely to get much better-balanced as a result, too, rather than the current situation where some races get a giant pile of awesome, and others get a handful of crummy stuff. Hopefully whoever does it will realize that natural weapons and low-end natural AC, as well as some spells are really irrelevant rubbish and stop need to be balanced as if they were awesome.

 

[shesheyan]

I suspect with 6E it'll be permanent, because it's been an idea that's been floating around for a long time, and it's a highly functional one, which balancing absolutely everything in the game easier, not harder. Indeed, with 6E, I'd expect it be more like the two highest stats in the standard array already have the bonus, or you get a +2/+1 to apply or something like that. Whatever replaces races (Ancestry, Peoples, whatever), will probably suggest what is likely - i.e. Elves may well have it suggested that the +2 go in DEX and +1 go in INT or CHA. In very few cases, this may even make more sense than current assignments - Loxodons for example, are directly described as "strong" and can be 8' tall and 400lbs, but have no inherent strength bonus. If someone wants a STR 18 Halfling, that will firmly be for them and the DM to hash out.nIt makes too much sense not to do it. I'd expect, if anything, fixed bonus might be an optional rule in 6E.

Non-stat bonuses are likely to get much better-balanced as a result, too, rather than the current situation where some races get a giant pile of awesome, and others get a handful of crummy stuff. Hopefully whoever does it will realize that natural weapons and low-end natural AC, as well as some spells are really irrelevant rubbish and stop need to be balanced as if they were awesome.

Considering how 5e is built, I wouldn't be surprised (and would be extremely happy) if an ability+race bonuses optional system was included in the next Xanathar like book. No need to wait for 6E to play test this with the community.