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'.

 

[TheSword]

Wouldn't it be far simpler to 1) change the depictions of orcs and other problematic beings or cultures such that they're nowhere near as identifyable with any current real-world cultures, 2) keep 'em evil as all-get-out in general, and 3) make it very clear these are not intended to be player characters - ever.

My understanding is that the associations exist, and it is difficult if not impossible to remove all inspiration from the real world in art.

However instead of pandering to stereotypes It’s better to subvert them instead Or confound them. For instance have a couple of different tribes of orcs, with different goals and approaches to problems. Get rid of the monolithic evil and have some nuance, different skills, art. Be smart and instead of drawing these from traditional stereotypes come up with something new... for instance the Druidic orc gatekeepers in Eberron.

 

[Zardnaar]

So...colonialism. The game is about colonialism.

You could make that arguement.

Early D&D you go beat up the baddies and build a domain from the lands.
I don't think the intent was bad but violence and sex sells right?

Or it's fun at least. You don't see many ugly people in the MCU and they're always beating on someone.

 

[TheSword]

So...colonialism. The game is about colonialism.

It is if it’s the civilized adventurers taking it from the savage dumb tribal creatures.

I only just realized how problematic the Sid Meyers Civilisation games. They basically involve becoming as advanced as possible so you can conquer or culturally assimilate your neighbors.

 

[Weiley31]

Samurai Hobgoblins seem pretty cool.

 

[Mirtek]

I guess it’s problematic that the only Japanese based culture is monolithically evil and conquering. If there were other cultures based on the same that were well researched, accurately portrayed and offered an alternative viewpoint then the hobgoblins wouldn’t be so anachronistic.

No culture in D&D is well researched and accurately portrayed. Each european'ish culture is a wild mix of inaccurate popculture sterotypes drawn from different centuries and different countries before being thrown into the blender.

So the best you should demand would be a non-evil culture drawing from this source. And not getting offended when this non-evil fantasy japan actually includes stuff that is drawn, in a popcultured version, from China, Korea and India.

 

[Olrox17]

I only just realized how problematic the Sid Meyers Civilisation games. They basically involve becoming as advanced as possible so you can conquer or culturally assimilate your neighbors.

That's how human civilization worked for millennia. The game is accurate in its simplicity. Is making historically accurate media going to be problematic from now on, because history is so "offensive"?

 

[Haldrik]

I used to be fond of it myself, long ago, but I recognised a decade or so back that it was doing more harm than good to my arguments, because it can make it actively harder to understand the real problem, or create separate arguments. With STR it's particularly unnecessary, because PCs are limited to 20 STR, period, in 5E (very unlike earlier editions), and most races have no bonus or penalty to STR (including small ones). Even some larger ones have no bonus (Loxodons - who are literally described as "strong") or just +1 (Firbolgs), whereas we have smaller-than-humans like the Locathah and Mountain Dwarves with +2 STR. Among size S races, only one has a penalty - Kobolds. Even a 3ft tall, 40lb Goblin (my god I could tuck under one arm) has the same STR range as a human for combat purposes. I should think the fact, rather than hyperbole, would put paid to any debate.



As silly/ignorant, sure, but as dangerous/harmful? No. Especially not compared to modern stuff which is impacting real people right now.

Also, Rome was a culture, not an ethnicity/race (from pretty early on they had multiple ethnic group involved - initially closely-related ones but it rapidly broadened out). It's impossible to be "Racist against Romans" - bigoted, sure, but they're not a race, and any prejudicial dislike is bigotry. Unless I guess it was specific to "Romans, actually from Rome specifically!" (even then it's more bigotry against a location though - the Romans themselves engaged in some fairly complicated bigotry based on ethnic stereotyping and perceived traits but nothing remarkable - they weren't outstanding racists for their era, though their formalized lists of ethnic traits perhaps acted as forerunners to later cultures formalized racism, just as they laid the foundation for so many other things).

I should also say I am not prejudiced on Rome. Prejudice is prejudgement. I don't automatically assume anything Roman sucks. But unlike a lot of Westerners, I also don't automatically assume it was "basically a good thing", because as I studied ancient history, it became clear it was a lot more complicated than that. But bring me an unfamiliar example of Roman conquest and I'm not going to automatically assume they wrecked the place - but nor will I assume it was a brief period of fighting followed by hundreds of years of lovely aqueducts and baths and wine, because very often that portrayal is the actually prejudiced one. It's possible to say they were remarkable and changed the world, but that they were pretty vile even by the standards of the time (they never shied away from a truly epic bloodbath, massacre, or torture session, nor incredible levels of mass enslavement).

I understood your post as following. You use the term "Roman" to mean moreso a specific ideology, a kind of brutal imperialistic ideology, that you resolutely object to. In that sense, I agree with you. I oppose that Roman ideology in the same way I oppose N*zi ideology.

You do not use the term Roman to mean an ethnic group, similar to not using the term N*zi to mean an ethnic group.

If so, I get that.



At the same time, I do see Romans as an ancient ethnic group. Some ethnicities can be complex. Moreover one person can belong to several ethnic groups simultaneously. Also, an ethnicity can be fluid, evolving over time, and developing differently in different regions. An ethnicity can merge or split.

Consider the United States. Being an "American" is an complex ethnicity. A citizen of the US can be both an "American" and a "Jamaican" at the same time, for example. (In the US, it is polite for multinationals to wave an American flag at the same time as celebrating the flag of an other nation.) Or a Jew, or a Chinese, or a Kenyan, or so on.

With ancient Rome, the Roman ethnicity comprised a few regional ethnicities early on, and expanded to included much of Europe. Think of Romanians who self-identified as Romans. England was Roman, Scotland was not. Ethnicities evolve differently.



There are various factors that can form an ethnicity: shared parentage, shared language, shared religion, shared history, and so on. And complex factors can be operating independently.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

man I don't even read comics and that sounds awesome. have they really not done that already? I guess as a complete reboot maybe not, huh.

Not yet, but they really should at some point.

That's how human civilization worked for millennia. The game is accurate in its simplicity. Is making historically accurate media going to be problematic from now on, because history is so "offensive"?

You know it's a game, right?

 

[Haldrik]

You do realise many cultures considered outsiders uncivilised and their "shamans" charlatans. The Greeks called all others barbarians and did not include them within the Olympic Games. These others at the time were whites.

EDIT: So whites did thise to other whites. Muslims did this to non-believers. So browns did this to other browns. And I'm assuming the same would have happened amongst the African people.

Greeks are not so "white". The region has roughly about 25% yDNA from "black" Africa. Archeologists are still trying to piece together how this happened.

 

[Xenonnonex]

No culture in D&D is well researched and accurately portrayed. Each european'ish culture is a wild mix of inaccurate popculture sterotypes drawn from different centuries and different countries before being thrown into the blender.

So the best you should demand would be a non-evil culture drawing from this source. And not getting offended when this non-evil fantasy japan actually includes stuff that is drawn, in a popcultured version, from China, Korea and India.

So. Do better research. And better portrayals. Saying "stop getting offended" is insane.