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'.

 

[pemerton]

Fair enough. But historical and cultural context is relevant. While I'll grant you that it was still problematic, it wasn't as "wrong" as it would be today. In other words, I'll meet you halfway but not all the way.

One could argue the other way, of course. For instance: I think Gone With The WInd probably did more to contribute to the oppression of Black people in the US than has anything written by Gary Gygax. Part of why so many people now - including WotC - are prepared to recognise and talk about the racism in D&D is because Black people and other people of colour have had success (some, obviousluy not total) in their liberation struggles.

 

[Derren]

So you’re saying that because owning slaves was socially acceptable for much of US history, it was not unethical at the time? I think you’ll find very few laypeople and no ethicists agree with you on this.

Getting a divorce was once considered unethical. Do you think it still is? What is considered good or bad is a product of its time and in a century or even a few decades things we consider normal now will be seen as bad and people will decry the past as morally corrupt.

You seem confused. No one is accusing orcs of being racist. They're identifying real people - REH, HPL, JRRT, Margaret Mitchell - as producing works infused with racist ideas, language and tropes.

No, people are inventing a connection between describing a fictional, clearly non human race and how humans have been degraded in the past and equating that it is the same, which it isn't. And imo they do that to create drama to have some injustice to fight against. Not real ones as fighting against that would take effort, but some imagined racism which can be done from the couch.

 

[pemerton]

I think that there is little point, in this thread, in arguing about the objectivity of morality (duties of other-regard) and ethics (what makes for a good life).

As a matter of biographical fact, among professionals whose job it is to debate these thigns - ie academic philosopher - my estimate is that the objective view is more common. This is not for reasons of fundamentalism (contra @Mercurius) but because there are some fairly obvious features of evaluative language and argument that are hard to reconcile with a relativistic or subjectivst account.

If you have access to an academic library, you can find a brief but sophisticated attempt to defend a non-objective account in an article by Stephen Barker in Analysis for 2000, called "Is Value Content a Component of Conventional Implicature?" You will see that it is focused entirely on technical questions of semantics and inference - which is where the debate resides - rather than on questions of fundamentalism or epistemic access.

Whether or not morality and ethics are objective, I would hope that most could agree there was always a duty not to kidnap people and impress them into slavery.

 

[Charlaquin]

Actually they do, depending upon how you understand ethics. Ethics are culturally and historically relative, at least to some degree - unless you are coming from a religious or ideological perspective that espouses absolutisms. The idea that "wrong is wrong, no matter when it occurs" implies absolute ethics, hard-wired into the universe--or at least human organism. I personally don't think that's the case, or at least not a specific set of universal ethics that can be promulgated in 21st century undergrad ethics courses.

There are many theories of ethics, and the philosophy has certainly evolved. But if a given ethical framework is true, then it should theoretically hold when applied to times before the theory was described.

This is relatively easily provable in that ethics are always changing; what you view as right and wrong at this instant in time will likely (hopefully) change in the years to come.

Human understanding is constantly evolving, as is the understanding of individual humans. This is not proof that ethics change, but that common understanding of ethics does.

Or at least that has been my experience. Some things remain consistent, but subtleties and nuances develop. And some things change significantly.

Now maybe I just don't get it--whatever this hypothetical set of absolute ethical laws is--and some people do, and I'm merely on the way to getting what the Keepers of True Ethical Law know. But that smacks of fundamentalism, and is the general outlook of fundamentalists of different kinds.

Of course our current understanding is not perfect. I never claimed it was.

 

[pemerton]

Getting a divorce was once considered unethical. Do you think it still is? What is considered good or bad is a product of its time and in a century or even a few decades things we consider normal now will be seen as bad and people will decry the past as morally corrupt.

The claim what was considered good or bad is a product of context seems fairly obviously true. You wouldn't try and explain why George Wallace said "segregation now, segregation forever" without talking about the history of Alabama.

That doesn't tell us anything about whether or not George Wallace was right. I take it as fairly obvious that he was wrong.

You seem, without argument, to be assuming that things are true just because people believe them.

Of course, some things probably weren't believed. I doubt that very many of those engaged in kidnapping, for example, really believed that they were doing the right thing.

people are inventing a connection between describing a fictional, clearly non human race and how humans have been degraded in the past

No one is inventing it. They are noting it.

The authors have even told us. @Doug McCrae quoted JRRT telling us that orcs are modelled on Mongols. It won't take you much googling to find REH and HPL telling us there views about Black people and other people of colour.

 

[Mercurius]

I'd kind of like to distinguish between the acts being wrong and how much blame the individuals who did them should get. Does that make sense? I don't think it was less wrong, but the judgement on those who did it might be less harsh given the situation.

Yes, it makes sense. I view it someone differently, even if I agree with your underlying point--or the gist of it. I'll try to explain.

You and I both probably agree that when a four-year old child kills an ant, they deserve less judgement than an adult does--or, say, a ten-year old child (Assuming that killing an ant is wrong!). According to your statement, it is no less wrong of the child to do so than the adult, but I personally think it actually is less wrong, because the child is less aware of various factors that would make it wrong. Meaning, they don't know any better, and "knowing better" makes it more wrong (or at least, more malevolent).

This doesn't justify the act itself, in the same way that an act of xenophobia from someone who has never actually interacted with a member of another ethnic group and/or has been enculturated to be xenophobic, is justifiable or any less harmful than if they "know better." As I think you are saying, xenophobia is xenophobia. But a more worldly person--someone who has interacted with a diversity of people and still exhibits xenophobia is, in my mind, "more wrong" than someone who hasn't had the same education, exposure, cultural context, etc.

In that regard, when we look back at authors fromprevious eras, we should include in our critique the fact that they haven't been exposed to what we have been exposed to. Tolkien probably interacted with a diversity of people to some degree, but probably not nearly as much as someone living in contemporary urban America or London, Paris, etc. Tolkien didn't have the internet, nor did his university have the same emphasis on cultural education that many contemporary universities do.

This doesn't justify any racism in his work, but it points out that he grew out of very different soil, and thus the racism in his work--to whatever degree it exists--is less racist (and thus less wrong) than if it were written by, say, George R.R. Martin.

 

[Charlaquin]

Getting a divorce was once considered unethical. Do you think it still is?

I don’t think it ever was unethical, regardless of how it may have been considered.

What is considered good or bad is a product of its time

What is considered good or bad is not necessarily what is good or bad. As well, we must ask “considered good or bad by whom?”

and in a century or even a few decades things we consider normal now will be seen as bad and people will decry the past as morally corrupt.

Obviously.

 

[Mercurius]

One could argue the other way, of course. For instance: I think Gone With The WInd probably did more to contribute to the oppression of Black people in the US than has anything written by Gary Gygax. Part of why so many people now - including WotC - are prepared to recognise and talk about the racism in D&D is because Black people and other people of colour have had success (some, obviousluy not total) in their liberation struggles.

One can argue any number of ways, of course . I don't know about GwtW vs. GG, but it sounds true. But I would include both the degree to which racist tropes were in their work, and relate that to the era in which they arose. I haven't seen GwtW in decades, but my memory is that it was far more overtly racist than most of what Gygax created.

 

[Derren]

The claim what was considered good or bad is a product of context seems fairly obviously true. You wouldn't try and explain why George Wallace said "segregation now, segregation forever" without talking about the history of Alabama.

That doesn't tell us anything about whether or not George Wallace was right. I take it as fairly obvious that he was wrong.

You seem, without argument, to be assuming that things are true just because people believe them.

Of course, some things probably weren't believed. I doubt that very many of those engaged in kidnapping, for example, really believed that they were doing the right thing.

No one is inventing it. They are noting it.

The authors have even told us. @Doug McCrae quoted JRRT telling us that orcs are modelled on Mongols. It won't take you much googling to find REH and HPL telling us there views about Black people and other people of colour.

No, please read whats actually written, not what you want. JRRT did not made orcs to be mongols, but took the idea of mongols as a culture (which was pretty violent) and then made them completely inhuman.

And unless you believe in a higher power there is no one but humans to judge what is right or wrong and that judgment changes over time and cultures. What is considered a grave sin in one culture could be completely normal on the other side of the world. And what is considered completely fine now can be considered bad in 50 years while something we condemn might be considered to be no big deal.

An absolute view on ethics like you propose leads to the unhelpful conclusion that every person in the past was bad as no one conformed to the ethical standard we have now. The same way we all will be considered bad by the people in 2-3 generations the same way as a person from the past would be shocked about our unethical ways.

 

[PsyzhranV2]

Do we really have to hash out the cognitivism debate in this thread? Is it even relevant? How did we go from "Wizards is doing a thing" to "bad takes, ethical philosophy edition"?

Two people can certainly disagree on whether moral statements are truth-apt propositions, and if they are, which propositions (if any) are true, while still recognizing recurring themes in fiction that echo real-life racist attitudes. I don't know why we need to drag the moral realism vs anti-realism argument into the thread when it's already enough of a mess as is.