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

[MarkB]

That's not what I was suggesting. I was talking about its group identity. I.e. does it identify as an orc, or a dwarf, or a human?

And when used in that context it strays far too close to sexual identity, which is at least as fraught a real-world subject as racial identity.

 

[Hriston]

Race as used in D&D is about biological identity. All the terms you suggested above are about social identity. That's a useful thing to define for a character, but it's not the thing that's being defined by the term formerly known as race.

No, it isn't. Look at the races in the PHB. Dwarves get weapon training, tool proficiency, language proficiency, possible armor training, and they're knowledgeable about stonework. These are all cultural traits. Even darkvision is explained by the fact that dwarves customarily live underground.

D&D races have always been abstract packages of traits many of which are easily interpreted as cultural if not outright stated to be so, and the idea that race in D&D only represents biology is revisionist.

 

[MarkB]

No, it isn't. Look at the races in the PHB. Dwarves get weapon training, tool proficiency, language proficiency, possible armor training, and they're knowledgeable about stonework. These are all cultural traits. Even darkvision is explained by the fact that dwarves customarily live underground.

D&D races have always been abstract packages of traits many of which are easily interpreted as cultural if not outright stated to be so, and the idea that race in D&D only represents biology is revisionist.

A lot of those are stripped out in One D&D, and many traits cannot easily be explained as cultural. How does a human brought up by dragonborn manage to breathe fire?

 

[CreamCloud0]

this is why i think biological species and learned culture should be separated into different build categories, you can be an elf biologically but of been raised by and socially identify as a member of halfling society or as one of the dragonborns or any other culture, you have trance and charm resist, you can speak halfling but not a word of elvish and picked up some of their natural hospitality.

 

[Hriston]

And I'm saying the word, identity, is a poor usage when considering its current contextual use.

Huh?

 

[Hriston]

A lot of those are stripped out in One D&D, and many traits cannot easily be explained as cultural. How does a human brought up by dragonborn manage to breathe fire?

I'm sorry, is "human brought up by dragonborn" an option in one of the current playtests?

Anyway, you made a claim about "Race as used in D&D". I don't think whatever's in the playtest is definitive of what that is.

 

[Kinematics]

I am finding the term Monstrosity to be nonuseful and in some contexts problematic. Nonuseful: why is an Owlbear a Monstrosity rather than a Beast? If it looks like a beast and walks like a beast, and behaves like a beast, then it is a Beast. Problematic: sometimes Monstrosity comes across as if an always "Evil race", an overall impression that Yuan-Ti gives off, even if technically imprecise.

There was a thread on the Monstrosity category a while back that showed a lot of people had issues with it, and it seems to always be a bit of a grab-bag of stuff that didn't fit elsewhere. The main definition that seemed to be of use was "a creature that only came into existence due to the magical manipulation (or perhaps magical warping) of other 'natural' creatures". This would include a lot of chimeric mixes (eg: owlbear, yuan-ti, minotaur, hippogryph, etc), as well as unnaturally sized creatures (eg: crag cat, ankheg, giant slug, etc).

They're not 'evil' so much as 'unnatural'. Of course 'unnatural' is a bit of a vague term, and it's sometimes hard to properly define what is 'natural' in a world of magic and gods and multiple planes of existence.

 

[Scribe]

Huh?

Its certainly not this difficult, take it easy.

 

[Kinematics]

D&D races have always been abstract packages of traits many of which are easily interpreted as cultural if not outright stated to be so, and the idea that race in D&D only represents biology is revisionist.

I would say not so much revisionist as subject to refactoring. A certain tool (race) has been accumulating stuff for a long time, and is currently a bucket of traits that are a mix of inherent/biological and social/cultural. There are a lot of reasons to want to make use of those trait categories separately, so you want to refactor the system to isolate the concepts and provide a proper separation of concerns. It's just an easier system to use and expand on, as seen in Level Up's Heritage and Culture building blocks.

Since the social/cultural side of things is easily identified using the Culture category, that leaves the biological side of things to be identified as 'race'. Except race has issues both with real-life hangups, and the historical baggage of being the identifying term that encompassed both biological and cultural aspects of one's development.

So it's not unreasonable to want another term that you can use to help people grasp what you're defining, and keep it separate from the old term. But one of many problems is changing the term used (such as species), but not changing the trait categorization (that is, leaving in cultural elements). Changing race to another word, but having it mean the same thing, would be revisionism. Changing it to mean only one aspect of the previous trait grouping would be refactoring, but with the possibility of some confusion over which version is meant at any given time if you don't change the term itself.

 

[Scott Christian]

No, it isn't. Look at the races in the PHB. Dwarves get weapon training, tool proficiency, language proficiency, possible armor training, and they're knowledgeable about stonework. These are all cultural traits. Even darkvision is explained by the fact that dwarves customarily live underground.

D&D races have always been abstract packages of traits many of which are easily interpreted as cultural if not outright stated to be so, and the idea that race in D&D only represents biology is revisionist.

I think it is very clear that some of the abilities are learned through their culture and others are innate. Here are some quotes out of the PHB:
"As a forest gnome, you have a natural knack for illusion and inherent quickness and stealth."
"As a rock gnome, you have a natural inventiveness and hardiness..."
"Your half-orc character has certain traits deriving from your orc ancestry."
"As a stout halfling, you're hardier than average and have some resistance to poison. Some say that stouts have dwarven blood."
"Your elf character has a variety of natural abilities, the results of thousands of years of elven refinement."
"Your dwarf character has an assortment of inborn abilities, the part and parcel of dwarven nature."

So when you have clarifiers like these prior to listing a species traits, which include resiliencies and vision and magic use, then many people can, and should, assume that much of these are innate. If Wizards wants to change all that, that's fine. But it is incorrect to call the other people revisionists when these things are stated as such.

Edit: I get that you are implying that it is both too.