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.

 

[bloodtide]

So I don't really get what this is about......is WotC going to put a disclaimer on each page of each book saying "anything on this page is an example only and anyone can be anything"?

 

[DammitVictor]

I'm curious where that rule might be found. With earlier editions of the game it's true that it'd be a rare group that followed all of the rules. But I cannot for the life of me remember such a rule in the 2nd or 3rd editions of the game.

AD&D 2e still used the 1e alignment definitions, still went by DM fiat being the Whole of the Law on alignment issues-- and still had the XP penalty for "changing" alignment. Third Edition did away with that nonsense, but over half of the classes in the PHB had alignment restrictions that could either take away your class abilities or prevent you from advancing in the class.

Only two those classes were Cleric and Paladin, which are the only two classes for which I consider alignment requirements justifiable.

Then break the rules. Ignore them. Reinvent them (along with your DM if you're playing, or establish the reinterpretation/reinvention for the group if you're DM'ing). Doing so is a pretty common thing among all groups I've ever played or run in the 30 years I've been playing.

I really, really hate it when people fire this off like it's actually a solution to something. It isn't a solution. It solves nothing.

First, you're assuming that when I am the DM, I am not already doing this. Of course I'm already doing this in my games.

Second, you're assuming that any and every DM I choose to play with is going to play ball with me on this-- one, this has not been my experience, and two-- crucially-- people who don't think there's a problem, like people who say "if you don't like the rules, just break them" are going to be the people least likely to cooperate on solving the problem, for reasons that should be fairly self-evident.

If the group you're a part of is unwilling to do so (or even have the conversation), then I would guess that particular collective is not conducive to how you would like to enjoy your D&D. Totally cool, happens all the time. Challenging though they may be to find, there are doubtlessly others who would be only too pleased to explore such options with you.

I've never viewed the rules as a straight-jacket but as a flexible platform.

Yeah, well. The Rules are the Rules. The Dungeon Master can always change them, but not changing them is always going to be the path of least resistance. I'm glad that Wizards of the Coast is recognizing that nothing about the alignment system is good or does what they want it to... but unfortunately, they learned this too late to apply it to games I have any interest in.

Who knows, though? Maybe Sixth Edition will surprise me. I've somehow become a fan of all the even editions.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

Imagining myself as a hypothetical player in such a framework, my issue wouldn't as much be with the genocide of orcs, but the idea of genocide itself.

That stems from my personal dislike of playing evil characters - I simply take no pleasure in play-acting things that I find extremely objectionable IRL. This doesn't mean that I take issue with killing in D&D, but that--for me--it has to be warranted, as part of some greater goal that my character feels is justified.

So while I'll happily play characters that are quite different from myself, there is a line that I don't enjoy crossing. This doesn't mean that I think players who play evil characters are evil--no moreso than actors who play evil roles--but that it is something that I personally don't enjoy.

I am with you on never playing evil characters. Mercenary types who are morally ambiguous who would be called an anti-hero? Sure, but never to the point of qualifying as evil by the rules. And I also will not play with people who enjoy playing evil characters.

And while the players of evil characters may not be evil in some way in real life, doing that long enough will mess with the person's mind. Just go and read some of the interviews given by actors about the evil roles they have played and what it did to their head and how long it took them to get away from that character afterward. There have been a few so affected by their character that it caused serious problems, including a couple of suicides, I think.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

Which is why the idea of having a consultant is completely silly as there is no one who can consult about a completely fictional culture in some other dimension with some sort of blend between magic and technology. In this dimension she likely comes for a culture completely alien to the real world and being black might not even make her a minority. Who is qualified to consult about that?

No, what they hired is not a consultant, but a PR specialist to make this character especially attractive to their target demographic. They just call it consultant because it sounds better and less corporate.

This has been explained to you a couple of times, but doesn't seem to have stuck, so I'm going to give it a shot. (With a coupe of examples that may help.)

The "sensitivity readers"/cultural consultants/PR specialists are not there to point out whether content will be hurtful to orcs. They are there to determine whether content will be offensive to real people. The content checked isn't just the descriptions of fictional races, although that is a common place for hurtful content to slip in. It is any real-world-racist or otherwise troublesome content, whether that is illustrations, spell descriptions, or subrace mechanics.

For example, World of Warcraft has a race called the Pandaren, which are basically humanoid pandas, known for their monks, coming from a culture with solid parallels to China. Before they became playable, they were still a fairly popular and speculated-on part of the setting and had some content regarding them.
And one part of that content were depictions of Panadaran in full Samurai getup.
- It is bloopers like this that a clued-up sensitivity reader could have spotted and prevented the ensuing storm.

For a more recent D&D example, there was a particular piece of content in Tomb of Annihilation that was a racial slur. It wasn't deliberate: the writers, not having the mindset of racist jerks or having been the victims of racist jerks weren't aware that a phrase they used was a really unpleasant one already generally used by racists. Offense was not intended, but that didn't mean it wasn't given.
Again, a sensitivity reader should have spotted that and suggested a phrase that was not hurtful to a chunk of the population that D&D would like to include.

 

[Tun Kai Poh]

So I don't really get what this is about......is WotC going to put a disclaimer on each page of each book saying "anything on this page is an example only and anyone can be anything"?

No, I don't expect WotC to make that many changes at this time. I'm cynical - it'll be a few surface sops to "diversity and sensitivity." Which helps but doesn't address some of the deeper problems.

The real work in making inclusive games is being done elsewhere and WotC is just going to have to catch up.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Honest question: Are you ok with the Mind Flayers being depicted as a species seeking to dominate everyone in the multiverse?

If yes, why do you have an issue with all orcs being depicted as tribal raiders?

So far as I know, no official D&D product has ever used historical racist language/rhetoric to describe Illithid.

No book has an equivalent passage to the “even the most domesticated Orc” Paragraph in Volos, for Illithid.

Why not stick to things that are relevant to the topic?

 

[Bohandas]

I'm unsure where you're getting "ceased entirely" from my post.

But it behooves the writers of D&D to decide on the level of religious disturbance or racism that they wish to display in their product, and to change it if necessary. They did then, and they are doing it now.

They didn't have the resources to withstand it then. If there was a religious backlash against D&D now the proper course of action would be to ignore it.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Gone with the Wind has been removed from HBO's public library.
Already other movies, series have been removed from Netflix, BBC and other streaming channels or networks.

Gone with the Wind’s removal was not permanent. It was temporarily sidelined in order to give it a new intro to put the racist stereotypes in proper historical context.

I suspect some of the others may likewise return with similar contextual reframing.

OTOH, school boards all over the USA ban To Kill a Mockingbird because it makes people uncomfortable about inequitable race relations here...which is kind of the book’s point.

I was asked to stop trolling in another thread when I asked for a date and time of when the 2e book-burnings begin. Is it so far fetched. given what is happening?

Yeah, pretty much.

 

[Bohandas]

One could look at it from the aspect that mind-flayers are alien minds and thus do not see morality or ethics in the same viewpoint as we do. There is certainly a prescient for non-natural species to have thought processes that are so utterly different to a human's that they do not view their actions as any sort recognizable moral lens. To them, killing a human is like stepping on an ant; we don't consider crushing an ant homicide nor do we consider the pain of a tree when we chop it down for wood, so why would a mindflayer see us as different?

A tree? What the? For goodness sake, you're not one of those primary preception believers are you?

And why shouldn;t orcs have alien minds? They are, if anything, even less related to humans than the mind-flayers are

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Where do the rules say that?

Also, you don't commit genocide with the orc tribes because they are an inferior race. You commit genocide because they are about to storm your kingdom and burn it to the ground.

Evil people commit genocide. Good and nuetral people end a war and then leave it at that. Maybe take more land than was theirs before the war, things like that. Not pretty but, understandable. Like that extra kick at the end of a fight when you were unjustly attacked. It ain’t necessary, but it’s understandable. Taking the hand of the guy who started a fistfight would be a wholly evil act, on the other hand.