D&D 5E WotC On Tasha, Race, Alignment: A Several-Year Plan

WotC spoke to the site Dicebreaker about D&D race and alignment, and their plans for the future.

• On of the motivations of the changes [character customization] in Tasha's Cauldron was to decouple race from class.
• The 'tightrope' between honouring legacy and freedom of character choice has not been effectively walked.
• Alignment is turning into a roleplaying tool, and will not be used to describe entire cultures.
• This work will take several years to fully implement.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

I'm pretty sure all orcs in 5e have been portrayed with gray skin, while the vast majority of drow have also been portrayed with some shade of gray. There are a few black-skinned drow in Out of the Abyss but most of them are gray-skinned as well. In fact, one drow NPC gets two pieces of art, one that gives her black skin and one that gives her gray skin.

But yes, the drow in Tasha's do seem to have a much lighter shade of gray skin than previously depicted, whereas the orcs look the same to me.

Ords do have grey skin in 5e, but not the same light grey depicted in Tasha's.

Spoiler: 5e Orcs

Admittedly, there isn't a ton of orc art in great lighting, so it's difficult to tell their real skin color for 5e canon, but all of this art has a lot darker skin color than Tasha's orcs.

 

[polyhedral man]

Obviously if your PC can be an orc and doesn’t have to be evil, it is demonstrably not true that all orcs are evil. You can say “orcs tend to be evil,” but that then raises questions of why they tend to be evil and why they are sometimes not. And there just aren’t answers to those questions that aren’t uncomfortably reminiscent of bigoted things that have been said of real life groups of people.

Do you know all the answers? Comfortable to whom? And how is what people have said about real life groups relevant to a fantasy game that involves a fantastic race that is designed to evoke "otherness"? (In a similar fashion to, as someone said, every single culture and world mythology has done, either consciously or inadvertently - it doesn't really matter- since the dawn of time). Is it relevant because very opinionated people think it is? Nope. It's just relevant in their opinion.

Which is fine. As long as they don't go about preaching it as "the one true way" because that gets repetitive and boring. Everything i've seen about Tasha sounds good, i like the ability to customise. Aside from the fact that I don't like Wizards playing identity politics with bloody orcs (newsflash - they don't exist. It's fine not to be represented accurately or proportionally when you don't exist), but we're never going to solve that one, as this thread and numerous others in this esteemed forum have previously demonstrated.
Though we do try.

"That is why you fail." Yoda might say.

 

[DND_Reborn]

Giving Humans darkvision is likely just to relieve players of the unspeakable horror of having to keep track of their light sources and durations at low levels.

Sad.

I know, those darn cantrips are so hard to get in most parties, huh?

 

[Charlaquin]

No. This is not a legitimate generalization you're making. I pointed out multiple adventures WOTC published for 5e demonstrating their support for that play style. I mentioned some do still enjoy that play style, in addition to other kinds of play styles, and several others here have said they agree. You had no response.

You pointed out two books that are both largely reprinted materials from dungeon adventures from D&D’s past. I didn’t respond because I took your point and didn’t think it was really worth arguing about.

Your continued mischaracterization of that play style as somehow extreme-fringe to the point where you'd accuse that poster of it being JUST his table and the entire "rest of the gaming community" is different than that poster is gate-keeping and baloney.

I’d say that’s a pretty radical interpretation of what I said. Obviously it isn’t just Lanefan’s table that enjoys “killing monsters and taking their stuff” gameplay. Plenty of people do, and my point is not that such gameplay is wrong or fringe, but to point out that the assertion that it’s “what D&D is about” is just not accurate.

So, why are you engaging in this kind of gate keeping? Are you trying to make someone feel alienated in what they enjoy in D&D? Why are you telling people there is only one acceptable way now to play and it's not the one he enjoys? I want to know your motivation for this kind of behavior. Are you just having a bad day or something?

I’ll concede that I am perhaps not expressing this as well as I could be and apologize for any misunderstanding my framing may have caused. It seems you and I in particular have communication styles that clash, so I’m just going to leave it at that and move on.

 

[Charlaquin]

I'd argue that while this is entirely true, the killing/taking aspect is less the point of the exercise than it used to be. Back in very early D&D, you'd have adventures centred around actual treasure seeking. Dungeon of the Fire Opal etc. PCs who explicitly got together to go adventuring to seek treasure.

This is something that has been de-emphasised progressively over time. I can't think of the last D&D adventure where the primary character motivation was 'find cool treasure X for the benefit of my personal wealth!' SKT - stop the giant attacks. ToA - fix broken resurrection magic. Rime - end the eternal winter. They're in-world benevolent goals, and in many cases a lot of the intermediate steps to achieving these goals can be achieved without violence. The killing and the taking is incidental to the goal, rather than central. Not to say that old-school adventures like this didn't exist, or even weren't common, but these days you simply don't see the default assumption that PCs are treasure-hunting in modules any more.

None of which changes the fact that the 'gameplay loop' (as the video game jargon goes) is very kill thing/take stuff focused. Combat in D&D is time-intensive and we all spend a lot of real-world game time on it. But (without looking) I'd guess that the proportion of the PHB devoted to combat rules in 5e is probably smaller in relation to stuff about character motivations and backgrounds for instance, than it has been in any other D&D version. The emphasis has evolved and changed massively, and the evolution is generally away from killing/taking. This isn't a new thing either, it's been in progress for many years.

This expresses the point I was trying to make far more eloquently than I did. Thank you.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Yes, both biological essentialism and cultural essentialism are poor reasons for orcs to universally be better barbarians and worse wizards than everyone else. Which is why giving them a bonus to the game statistics that the majority of barbarians’ abilities key off of and a penalty to the game statistics that the majority of wizard abilities key off of is a bad idea. Biological essentialism is not a bad reason to say that orcs are taller, or able to carry more, or see better in the dark than other races. Those traits just aren’t problematic in the same way.

Whilst I understand the argument that races shouldn't favour classes, this has really nothing to do with the problematicness. If it is problematic to say that different fantasy species have biologically essentialist differences, then it is problematic regardless of how exactly it is represented mechanically, or even it is merely represented in the fluff.

 

[Hurin70]

What? Someone can't play the scrawniest bull in the herd?

Sure, but the scrawniest bull in the herd is still a bull, and therefore larger than the largest Halfling.

This is why we divide bonuses due to individual attributes from bonuses due to race.

 

[Charlaquin]

Whilst I understand the argument that races shouldn't favour classes, this has really nothing to do with the problematicness. If it is problematic to say that different fantasy species have biologically essentialist differences, then it is problematic regardless of how exactly it is represented mechanically, or even it is merely represented in the fluff.

It isn’t problematic to say there are biological differences between fantasy races. It is problematic to say that because of these differences, some races are inherently good/evil/lawful/chaotic, or that because of these differences, some races are better suited to certain professions or roles than others.

 

[DemoMonkey]

And if it isn't problematic, then it isn't problematic regardless of how exactly it is represented mechanically, or even it is merely represented in the fluff.

I'm not sure I understand your point.

 

[Lanefan]

I’ve been in the same discussions you have. No one has ever suggested there be no mechanical differences between races.

OK then, in your view what form(s) should those mechanical differences take? Before answering, please consider the following:

Stat variance is off the table, it seems.
Alignment variance is off the table, it seems.
Vision differences just came off the table, it seems.

What's left?