D&D (2024) What new jargon do you want to replace "Race"?

[Bedrockgames]

I read a short story in a collection recently that had lots of game terms in it, wow... it was painful.

On the other hand, the different groupings of elves in Tolkien, always, seems pretty natural. As do different fields of magic study in Earthsea and others.

I think part of D&D's problem, which isn't really a problem but more like something that makes this uniquely challenging, is it isn't a little general, not really built around a specific. I do think the language of middle earth works very well. One reaction I always have to Tolkien (and I am not a Lord of the Rings uber fan but I like to re-read it once in a while) is the langauge and world building. I also find Tolkien's prose very engaging and warm. I get what you mean on Earthsea. Personally I always had a bit of trouble with Le Guin's writing style (not that it was bad, just her prose technique, which seemed deliberate, created a bit of a barrier for me as a reader). I think what those have that D&D doesn't is, their settings, their stories, and their terms are pretty unified wholes. A lot of fantasy RPGs are like that, their mechanics are specific to one particular world. D&D might have default cosmologies, even default pantheons and settings, but there is always the understanding that those need to be generic enough or not interwoven enough, that you can for example cut out the pantheon and replace it with your own, play in a different world, etc. Every world, unless you revise the mechanics and core components, is going to have a certain D&D feel, but it is a longstanding tradition that you make your own setting. I think that is why diegetic stuff gets weird. It even gets weird when they try to create an in game lexicon sometimes (I remember hating "The Weave" when that first started showing up in novels) and I remember all the jumping through hoops when characters would talk around concepts like levels, spell memorization, etc and try to use other words or in world explanations for those things. My favorite is a conversation Victor Modenheim had with a magic user in a novel, think the title of the book was just Mordenheim. The character of Victor Mordenheim doesn't believe in magic, because he is a man of science, and they had to preserve that in the story despite him encounter a spell caster who visibly cast spells. So he started calling magic "The New Science".

 

[Charlaquin]

My guess: Because "species" sounds off to them, but "it sounds off" is a poor counter to "sensitivity readers have said 'species' is the least problematic term", so they are reaching for something else to justify their preferences.

It’s she, and I have objected to the use of “species” to describe the playable humanoids of D&D since long before this announcement on these same grounds. On these very forums, among other places. So, no, your guess is incorrect.

 

[Bedrockgames]

It’s she, and I have objected to the use of “species” to describe the playable humanoids of D&D since long before this announcement on these same grounds. On these very forums, among other places. So, no, your guess is incorrect.

Which term were you in favor of using (I am losing track of peoples positions on that)?

 

[Yaarel]

I know this term was brought up before but I think race and class in D&D never really were meant to be diegetic. I remember there was a Drizzt book, and I think many other TSR novels around that time, where they had characters speaking about class and it was really strange (someone said to Drizzt something like "you know what you are, you are a ranger"). And it wasn't just dialog. It was a plot point about Drizzt coming to understand himself and what he was deep down. But it always struck me as something the writers might have been instructed to do in order to make those terms diegetic (though I doubt anyone was using that particular term at the time at TSR).

For how wizards do these things in game, I think looking to something like Aristotle.

Diegetic − nice word!



"Class" can be an in-world term. Each class is a different kind of combat fighting style, whether fighting with swords or spells. That an army refers to different "classes" of warfare approaches, sounds plausible to me.

"Species" or some synonym is a likely in-world term.

 

[Hriston]

Although species in its non-biological sense is a fine substitute for race or its predecessor type, the dominance of the biological definition in the public consciousness makes it an unsuitable term to describe fantasy races, in my opinion, because it makes everything about biology, whereas race/type, as a game term in D&D, has always encompassed more than just biological difference and has done so at a level of abstraction that leaves it up to the user to imagine which traits are attributable to nature and which to nurture. This can be seen up to and including the recent playtest where the Ardling is given proficiency in Perception. It isn't stated whether they are naturally more aware due to their biology or if this is something in which they have been trained, and that's the way I prefer it because it makes the rules more flexible in the imagined fiction they support.

In my games, elves are biologically "one race" with humans, as J.R.R. Tolkien states in his letter #153. My elves don't even have pointy ears. The differences between humans and elves (in my game) are spiritual and cultural rather than biological. Attributing those differences to speciation would seem to run counter to that preference in a way other terms wouldn't.

 

[Charlaquin]

It's not effective for you; it's apparently perfectly effective for lots of other people. Trying to parse how many are in each camp, and how strong their objections are, is something I'm glad WotC has to do and not me!

Well, other people are clearly fine with it. And if it’s what WotC ends up going with it, I’ll live with it just as I’ve lived with them using race. But I don’t think it paints an accurate, nor flattering picture of the way D&D handles these groups.

No matter what term is used, it feels really odd to me to think that wizards and the like wouldn't do some sort of taxonomy on living things in their bestiaries and theories (What does "Charm Person" affect? "Charm Monster"? What can one be reincarnated into? What can be turned by a cleric? How do we classify these things?). Just as it didn't for Linnaeus, a taxonomic system for living creatures doesn't need to be explicitly based on phylogenetics - it just needs some set of principles.

Are the fourteen types of creatures in DnD part of a taxonomic system? Is whatever grouping they decide on for the thing formerly known as race part of one too?

Well of course they’d have some system of categorization. And yes, I do think the creature types fit that bill, to an extent. I just don’t think “species” is a good choice of words to describe individual types of humanoid within that system, whatever it may be.

In any case, I completely agree with you that instantiating phylogeny into the game isn't a route to go.

Interesting that you agree with me on that but still don’t seem to have a problem with using phylogenic terms in the game.

 

[Yaarel]

It matters because the entire system of taxonomy just doesn’t apply in a world of gods and magic. None of it makes any sense in that context. Since dogs and cats exist in real life, it’s acceptable to use the same term we use in real life to describe them, much as it’s acceptable to, for example, call the metal mercury by its name, even though it’s named after a god that doesn’t exist in the setting, because we’re describing a real thing that exists and has been ported over to the fictional setting.

I dont understand the argument: "it doesnt exist in reallife".

Because − hypothetically − if Elf, Dwarf, Celestial, etcetera did exist in reallife, then reallife science would probably use the term "species" to classify and taxonomize them.

 

[Charlaquin]

I do think the presence of magic, the fact that this is a fantasy setting where in many or most settings something like evolution probably isn't even a thing (EDIT: Misspelled Thing as Think), these scientific categories are not going to be precise matches.

We agree on that much.

Still I think it is a perfectly accurate term in terms of what it conjures up in peoples minds, and I think using the word species in a setting where things might have different origins due tot he nature of the worlds in question works (humans and elves are analogous enough to humans and neanderthals, and species is used enough to distinguish those two things, that I think it is fair).

This is the fundamental point of disagreement. Certainty, I think if the relationship between humans and elves was meaningfully analogous to that between humans and Neanderthals, species would be a perfectly cromulent way to describe them. But I do not think it is meaningfully analogous, because of the point above on which we agree.

If you do want a term that absolutely holds up in every circumstance, type is probably your best bet. But the problem with that is it is so uninspiring and bland.

I don’t think it needs to absolutely hold up in every circumstance, I just think it needs to adequately describe what these groups are. They aren’t the furthest ends of the branches of a tree of life, they’re groupings of traits a character inherits from one or both of their parents. As @Cadence observed earlier, it’s more Lamarckian than Darwinian. I would call them heritages, or ancestries, or parentages, or something to that effect, communicating that the relevant factor is descent from parent to child, not phylogenic category.

 

[Cadence]

Interesting that you agree with me on that but still don’t seem to have a problem with using phylogenic terms in the game.

Because I'm fine with species and taxonomy predating phylogeny and being able to be used separately of it still today. :: It looks like the article I linked talks about reconciling the two in light of how phylogeny is going and how it doesn't fit nicely with the Linnaean classic taxonomic levels. (Although I don't vouch for my fast skimming of the first page).

 

[Charlaquin]

Which term were you in favor of using (I am losing track of peoples positions on that)?

There are a few I’d be fine with. Currently I think heritage would be the most accurate, but I would be fine with ancestry, which seems to be the top contender next to species, at least in this specific poll. People would actually be my first choice.