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

[Amrûnril]

The ONE playtest rules for this allow the mixing.

Again, the Origins packet explicitly makes it possible.

The relevant paragraph in the playtest reads:
"Thanks to the magical workings of the multiverse, Humanoids of different kinds sometimes have children together. For example, folk who have a human parent and an orc or an elf parent are particularly common. Many other combinations are possible."

This doesn't specifically put restrictions on what pairings are possible, but neither does it declare that all combinations are possible. The details are left open-ended, with general mechanics provided to facilitate whatever combinations are possible in a given setting.

 

[Bedrockgames]

This is one where I'd be interested what the sensitivity readers say. It would be convenient if it passed.

Personally terms like ethnicity, ancestry, peoples all seem much more like they have potential to be connected to ideas like blood and soil, than the way race is meant to be used in D&D (which as Celebrim pointed out, humans are all one race, drwarves and elves another, effectively different species, maybe distantly related to humans. I'm Jewish, Italian and Irish, someone having Jewish ancestry is certainly something that that has manifested in real world racism towards them. And all three of those, at least here in Boston, have cultural things associated with (things I experience when I visit different sides of the family). That concept of ethnicity or ancestry is different from the idea that all humans belong to one category: the human race (which is how D&D means it: like I said the one time I saw modifiers for different human groups in a D&D book, I found it pretty off-putting for that reason). The demihuman groups aren't really meant to be stand ins for human cultural or ethnic groups (we just draw on those and blend them to produce something new and interesting, or as shorthand: i.e. Dwarven vikings are an easy thing to grasp without much further explanation---but it isn't a commentary on viking culture, nor is it a lesson in it). To me, since there seems to be a lot of confusion around what race means in this context, species appears to be the closest thing to capturing its original meaning in the game. I would say Type could also work but that might lack flavor for people. At least that is how I have always viewed it.

 

[Micah Sweet]

My hesitancy over "Ancestry" is that Gygax when he used the word "race" meant definition 2a in the dictionary (as in the phrase "the human race"). The whole controversy is over the problem that 2a is increasingly an obsolete usage in the language (similar to how the usage "the race of my loins" is already pretty archaic) and so people seeing "race" confuse it with definition 1a which because of history is seen as insensitive or problematic.

The problem I have is that "Ancestry" is basically a synonym not for race definition 2a but for race definition 1a, so to me we are making a superficial label change that actually doubles down on the potentially problematic idea the label points to. There is to me a very strong danger that the idea now conveyed will not be race definition 2a, but race definition 1a.

I think having a second choice of "culture" helps defend against a little but not perfectly, as then "culture" might well end up pointing to race definition 1a. And all of this to me feels weird because hitherto, only race definition 2a ("the human race", "the elvish race", etc.) was even part of the game and change feels almost certain to make race definition 1a part of the game in some fashion.

It's all well and good to apply this to dwarves or elves, but as soon as you apply these changes to humans I think you have a problem.



How the heck are we going to tease apart nature versus nurture for an imagined species? Are dwarves good craftsman because they are inculcated in a culture that prizes it, or are they good craftsman because they are naturally gifted at artistic work and skilled and dexterous with their firm and strong hands? Or both? This isn't a trivial question because we know that while talents can be honed by practice, there are some real-world individuals just more naturally adept than the average at painting or the like than we are, and have perhaps higher ceilings at particular skills or athletic feats than we observe in ourselves. I'll never run as fast as Usain Bolt or even Kaitlin Touhy, for example. The very act of separating these two things is going to be an act of judgment and opinion, and it's likely going to reduce the alienness and diversity of the fantasy panorama. To me the first instinct is likely to be the instinct to make everything conform to human norms and expectations about what is cultural and what is ancestral, the very opposite of what I want which is comfort with the notion of alien and different.



And there it is. Race definition 1a is now a part of my D&D. You are pushing my game to your racist place. This is likely in the long run to work out no better than the Hadozee which I'm sure were created by well meaning people as well.

Level Up managed to separate heritage and culture just fine, for my money. WotC could easily have chosen to do the same, which as a side benefit would have cleared out the whole, "my god gave me these skills" issue.

 

[Yaarel]

My hesitancy over "Ancestry" is that Gygax when he used the word "race" meant definition 2a in the dictionary (as in the phrase "the human race"). The whole controversy is over the problem that 2a is increasingly an obsolete usage in the language (similar to how the usage "the race of my loins" is already pretty archaic) and so people seeing "race" confuse it with definition 1a which because of history is seen as insensitive or problematic.

From 3e onward race strictly means species.

But I was somewhat horrified to read Gygax Greyhawk using the term race interchangeably for both species and human ethnicities, and even speaking approvingly about racial purity. Yuck!

 

[Charlaquin]

How the heck are we going to tease apart nature versus nurture for an imagined species? Are dwarves good craftsman because they are inculcated in a culture that prizes it, or are they good craftsman because they are naturally gifted at artistic work and skilled and dexterous with their firm and strong hands? Or both?

It had better be because they’re inculcated in a culture that prizes it. Otherwise we’re implying that gifted ness at artistic work is an inherited, rather than learned trait, which brings us into eugenicist territory.

 

[Frozen_Heart]

Lets just use the term 'player entity'. Instead of race, species, or whatever else.

It covers every potential option in every setting, without corner cases and exceptions. And it has no connections at all to historically problematic words.

 

[Charlaquin]

This is one where I'd be interested what the sensitivity readers say. It would be convenient if it passed.

I wonder if having "Ancestry" for the one and "Background" for more cultural things would help.

I mean, I’m pretty sure that was the intent of the changes seen in the Origins playtest packet, moving ability score increases, proficiencies, and languages over to Background and leaving “race” to be strictly inherited traits. They kinda fumbled a bit on that with dwarves and dragonborn IMO, but it was at least their intent to silo learned traits in background and inherited traits in race.

 

[Bedrockgames]

It had better be because they’re inculcated in a culture that prizes it. Otherwise we’re implying that gifted ness at artistic work is an inherited, rather than learned trait, which brings us into eugenicist territory.

but we aren't talking about human groups. One can believe there is no measurable different between humans inherently in this case, but also acknowledge that different primates or different species of humans (like say neanderthals) may have different cultural tendencies do to their biology. Elves being long lived is likely to have cultural implications. Elves and Dwarves having better night vision than humans will also have cultural implications. Eugenics was about differences in human groups and the misguided idea that you could breed super humans by identifying different traits. That is repugnant. But it isn't the same as saying there is this mythical race of creatures who tend to have a totally different society than humans do, or tend towards different societies. Just like you could say humans tend towards towards certain social organizations (and there might still be tremendous variety there, but ultimately we are very social), and canines tend towards a different social organization (at the very least you can say humans have a visibly different physical culture than canines).

 

[Yaarel]

Part of the solution is, Dwarves are members of different kinds of cultures, some rural, some urban, etcetera.

 

[Charlaquin]

Tieflings and genasi are both part human so them being able to interbreed makes sense.

But I agree that there is certain inconsistency in their approach. On one hand using moniker species and getting rid of mechanics for half species, on the other hand saying that the species can freely mix.

Exactly. I take it you favor sticking with species as the monicker and being more restrictive with which ones can mix (at least without magical intervention), but I strongly suspect that the current majority preference is to allow unrestricted mixing, to the point that there is no chance that decision gets overturned through playtest feedback. In which case, I don’t think the moniker species is going to be appropriate.