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.

 

[CleverNickName]

That's your main take-away, @Warpiglet ?

 

[Charlaquin]

Please explain to me why the campaign idea I presented is in any way racist, particularly when I didn't cite any specific race--real world or fantasy.

The one where evil is a mental illness and an entire race inherently possesses this mental illness? Because it is yet another regurgitation of the same rhetoric oppressors use to demonize the oppressed. It’s just that in this case, it’s simultaneously regurgitating colonialist rhetoric and ableist rhetoric.

SFF has a long history of being a lot of things, but its ability to explore a diversity of ideas is something that should be preserved. There's a reason its often called "speculative fiction." A core component is exploring What If scenarios, including ones that are often uncomfortable to ideologues of various kinds.

Explore a diversity of ideas, by all means. But do so critically. When exploring ideas that have been used to justify oppression and murder, good scifi and fantasy demonstrates the harm that comes from these ideas, or to satirizes and lampoons those ideas.

Exploring an idea doesn't mean a statement on that idea. Literature has been exploring the nature of evil for eons. But in this case, it involves a What If scenario: that "evil" is the result of a disorder of some kind. If anything, it suggests that evil people (or rather, people who commit evil acts) aren't inherently evil, but are psychologically ill.

Yes, and the bolded idea, which you yourself say it suggests, is deeply ableist. It suggests that the mentally ill are potentially dangerous or outright evil by nature - a very commonly held misconception, I might add. The reality is, mentally ill people are far more likely to be victims of violence than to perpetrate violence, and we should be criticizing the idea that evil is caused by mental illness rather than spreading it under the guise of “exploring a what-if scenario.”

 

[doctorbadwolf]

WotC is part of a publicly traded company which sells toys of various designs to people. It is all about the money.

You know that actual humans made the decision, right?

 

[Catulle]

Yes, but before it became a game that girls widely would come to enjoy, the white male population within the hobby had to grow. I'm sure as more and more black males get pulled into the rpg culture, they too will likely attract the black female population.

Well, that's a hetero normative slice of nonsense. Sociologically speaking, women (you know, rather than "girls" or the somewhat Ferengi "feemaaales"), like the rest of us are more inclined towards social scenarios where they are represented and supported rather than being seen as an outlier: as the majority, it's incumbent on us to be accessible and welcoming rather than demanding newbies conform to our nonsense shibboleths.

 

[Derren]

You know that actual humans made the decision, right?

And you know that all those people work for a corporation with the goal to make money and have to explain this decision to other people whos job is to ensure that the corporation makes money?

 

[Charlaquin]

You know that actual humans made the decision, right?

To be fair, money is almost certainly a major motivating factor. But a right decision made for the wrong reasons is still a right decision. I care about the outcomes of actions, not the motivations.

 

[Bohandas]

Right, which is one of many reasons species is a poor choice of words to describe them.

No its not. By way of analogy, imagine that we discovered another planet with its own native ecosystem of complex living creatures. That planet would still have distinct species but they would be wholly unrelated to any species on earth. They would be neither plant nor animal nor fungus nor protist nor archaebacteria nor any of the known groups of viruses. They would, while still having distinct species, be wholly unrelated to anything on earth. And an intelligent creature from this planet would be less closely related to a human than a human is to a portabello mushroom.

 

[Mercurius]

The one where evil is a mental illness and an entire race inherently possesses this mental illness? Because it is yet another regurgitation of the same rhetoric oppressors use to demonize the oppressed. It’s just that in this case, it’s simultaneously regurgitating colonialist rhetoric and ableist rhetoric.

You are taking it to an extreme that I find very problematic: that a person can't even suggest a hypothetical abstract people--with no defining characteristics other than psychopathy--without "regurgitating colonialist rhetoric."

Explore a diversity of ideas, by all means. But do so critically. When exploring ideas that have been used to justify oppression and murder, good scifi and fantasy demonstrates the harm that comes from these ideas, or to satirize and lampoon those ideas.

Doing so critically (or consciously) doesn't always lead to the same conclusions. If you re-read my hypothetical campaign idea, it doesn't in any way "justify oppression and murder." It is suggesting a scenario in which those are the norm, and the heroes are trying to change the norm. If anything, the scenario is anti-colonialist.

Anyhow, a question for you: do you include combat in your games? If so, why and how?

Yes, and the bolder idea that you yourself say it suggests is deeply ableist it suggests that the mentally ill are potentially dangerous or outright evil by nature - a very commonly held misconception, I might add. The reality is, mentally ill people are far more likely to be victims of violence than to perpetrate violence, and we should be criticizing the idea that evil is caused by mental illness rather than spreading it under the guise of “exploring a what-if scenario.”

Psychopaths are dangerous. That is not a misconception. I am not talking about the mentally ill as a group, but psychopathy in particular. Psychopaths lack empathy. That is dangerous. One could argue that acts of real evil generally involve lack of empathy, if only in the act of doing so.

A question for you: how would you define evil? What causes it? How can a person enact evil?

 

[Charlaquin]

No its not. By way of analogy, imagine that we discovered another planet with its own native ecosystem of complex living creatures. That planet would still have distinct species but they would be wholly unrelated to any species on earth. They would be neither plant nor animal nor fungus nor protist nor archaebacteria nor any of the known groups of viruses. They would, while still having distinct species, be wholly unrelated to anything on earth. And an intelligent creature from this planet would be less closely related to a human than a human is to a portabello mushroom.

Ok, I got where you’re coming from now.

 

[Cadence]

And an intelligent creature from this planet would be less closely related to a human than a human is to a portabello mushroom.

And presumably (unless it was Star Trek or Marvel Comics) they wouldn't be able to breed with humans - unlike Elves and Orcs with humans?