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.

 

[zarionofarabel]

Tolkien Orcs couldn't choose to be not-evil, could they? I thought Tolkien Orcs were Tolkien Elves who were corrupted by the evil god and thus had to be evil, cause the evil god said so. Strange though, but can't Tolkien Elves decide to be evil?

 

[DND_Reborn]

That's interesting, because ogres, minotaurs, trolls, orcs, kobolds, and goblins all eat humanoids in my D&D. Always have. Goblins aren't a pesky nuisance who steal the occasional sheep. Goblins are vicious predators who snatch up children in the night and devour them. Their lairs are littered with the bones of humans, dwarves, other goblins, etc. They're monsters.

So, no goblins with a conscience then? None that a player could make into a PC and want to "break away" from their (the goblins') culture?

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

That's interesting, because ogres, minotaurs, trolls, orcs, kobolds, and goblins all eat humanoids in my D&D. Always have. Goblins aren't a pesky nuisance who steal the occasional sheep. Goblins are vicious predators who snatch up children in the night and devour them. Their lairs are littered with the bones of humans, dwarves, other goblins, etc. They're monsters.

But they don't have to eat humanoids, at least not by the rules of 5e. Human cannibals have existed (and do exist) in the real world, but that's a choice.

In D&D terms, anything that has a statblock is a monster. Commoners are monsters, but you can play humans.

 

[zarionofarabel]

If I were a betting man, I would bet that Gygax is never going to be cancelled. He created the hobby. Sure, he had some outdated and controversial opinions, but that doesn't negate the fact that he invented D&D. George Washington owned slaves, but we don't cancel him.

GW gonna be cancelled soon, don't worry, Canada is in the process of cancelling our first Prime Minister!

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

GW gonna be cancelled soon, don't worry, Canada is in the process of cancelling our first Prime Minister!

You can condemn a person's actions while still respecting the good things they did.

 

[DND_Reborn]

George Washington owned slaves, but we don't cancel him.

The way things are going? Seriously, watching the Washington/Dallas football game today, we had a discussion when Washington, D.C. would be renamed because it was named after a slave-owner.

I won't say anymore than that. It borders too much on political posting.

 

[tetrasodium]

I'm going to steal some of this, if that's okay with you. In my world, Yeenoghu has died, making the gnolls break free of their demonic nature, making them be just as morally grey as any of the other humanoid races.

EDragon367 touches on the znir pact gnolls for a page or two & exploring eberron 93-95 expands on various things. Keith Baker has also written a good bit about them here, should be lots of good info for you, especially the later ones. RftLW mentions gnolls a bunch as well but all over & in ways that make it a lot of work to cite or summarize

 

[Umbran]

Or is it bigoted to treat any fantasy creatures in a game as evil monsters to be slain?

Well... what else do you call labelling people before you have proof of actual wrongdoing?

"We didn't see them do anything wrong, but we assumed they were bad and killed them," does not sound like a good way to treat sentient beings, does it?

 

[DemoMonkey]

"We didn't see them do anything wrong, but we assumed they were bad and killed them," does not sound like a good way to treat sentient beings, does it?

Depends. Do they have any magic items we can use?

 

[Mistwell]

Creating a fictional justifications for genocidal fantasies doesn't make them any less disgusting.

Are you saying that fantasizing about genocide of a purely fictional people in a purely fiction setting gives you the same level of disgust as fantasizing about genocide of a real people in our reality? I am actually asking, and not inferring you do believe that.