D&D (2024) How did I miss this about the Half races/ancestries

[Faolyn]

They were included in 2E's The Complete Book of Humanoids.

True; I'd forgotten. But it's not like they've gotten much attention since then.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Then what exactly do you want?

Let's start with not having the PH tell to use racism against a certain core species as a default.

How about we set that as a very simple base camp: not direction to include racism in the core.

That way we're very specific and people can't make up stuff about wanting to keep Noted DM who totally has something to do with this discussion, Quintin 'Doctor Feet' Tarentine from making a movie or whatever. Let's put a berm at the end of that useless slippery slope to start.

 

[Frozen_Heart]

Let's start with not having the PH tell to use racism against a certain core species as a default.

How about we set that as a very simple base camp: not direction to include racism in the core.

That way we're very specific and people can't make up stuff about wanting to keep Noted DM who totally has something to do with this discussion, Quintin 'Doctor Feet' Tarentine from making a movie or whatever. Let's put a berm at the end of that useless slippery slope to start.

I mean, from the looks of the new playtest material, that is happening. The species descriptions do not include racism as far as I can see.

 

[Faolyn]

I'd argue that a lot of creatures are villains just because they're that creature. Fiends are villains because they're fiends. Zombies are villains because they're zombies.

The designers wanted scary monster which eats people and raids villages, so they made a generic bad guy to fit it. That generic bad guy was designed as scary thing called orcs.

The attention got drawn onto orcs in a way which made people question them being generic always evil bad guys for two reasons. One being other media such as WoW started to use orcs in a non antagonistic way. And the other being half orcs. If they can breed with humans, they must be pretty close to humans themselves. Which makes calling them always evil dumb brutes distasteful as it draws comparisons to irl treatment of human cultures and races.

But meanwhile no one questions it with things like bullywugs, despite being basically a reskin of early dnd orcs. Because they haven't had other media exploring them from a non evil perspective, and there has never been a 'half-bullywug' playable.

Fiends and zombies are supernatural creatures. Fiends are literally evil made flesh, and zombies are animated with (often dark) magic. Orcs are natural people, just like humans, but we're expected to believe that, unlike humans, they are always going to be evil.

I am using "orcs" as a general term here--I, personally, also have these issues with bullywugs, kobolds, gnolls, goblinoids, duergar and derro, lizzardfolk, drow, gith, and all the rest of the humanoids. I never liked it, back in 2e, when humanoid and demihuman were treated as two different things, and the demihumans were considered to be so much better, smarter, and more civilized than the humanoids were.

 

[AnotherGuy]

Let's start with not having the PH tell to use racism against a certain core species as a default.

How about we set that as a very simple base camp: not direction to include racism in the core.

Out of interest where is the racism in the core. I just read the entire half orc entry for the first time. It is pretty decent. It said the humans and orcs war often but that they do make alliances. Nothing about racism. What did I miss?

 

[AnotherGuy]

Orcs are natural people, just like humans, but we're expected to believe that, unlike humans, they are always going to be evil.

I am using "orcs" as a general term here--I, personally, also have these issues with bullywugs, kobolds, gnolls, goblinoids, duergar and derro, lizzardfolk, drow, gith, and all the rest of the humanoids. I never liked it, back in 2e, when humanoid and demihuman were treated as two different things, and the demihumans were considered to be so much better, smarter, and more civilized than the humanoids were.

Faolyn there are some practical hurdles here - the size of the PHB, the number of racial variants and lazy standard of that race, the number of playable races, will there be a go to setting because that would likely set the standard of those races, right?
How do you imagine it?

 

[Frozen_Heart]

Fiends and zombies are supernatural creatures. Fiends are literally evil made flesh, and zombies are animated with (often dark) magic. Orcs are natural people, just like humans, but we're expected to believe that, unlike humans, they are always going to be evil.

I am using "orcs" as a general term here--I, personally, also have these issues with bullywugs, kobolds, gnolls, goblinoids, duergar and derro, lizzardfolk, drow, gith, and all the rest of the humanoids. I never liked it, back in 2e, when humanoid and demihuman were treated as two different things, and the demihumans were considered to be so much better, smarter, and more civilized than the humanoids were.

I'd say depending on the setting, gnolls are an issue or are not an issue. In 5e, they're created directly by fiends, and spawn from the bodies of hyenas who eat corpses of people killed by Fangs of Yeenoghu. They're not actual sapient creatures with free will. Though I also believe that this depiction of gnolls days are numbered, as other settings are already depicting them as more natural creatures like orcs. In an edition or two, they will undergo the same process which orcs have been through.

As for the others, yeah I totally agree. If they're a sapient player character option, by definition they have free will, and can't be simply labelled as 'always evil'. If they're not smart enough to be a player character option, but are a natural creature like bullywugs or gnolls in some settings, they don't have the agency to be 'evil'. They're unaligned, just like a lion or a shark. Sure they may raid caravans and villages, and eat the species which are player characters. But so do many predatory animals, and they're not called 'evil' for doing so. If they're in the latter category, they should just be classified as beasts.

 

[Minigiant]

I fail to see how that matters. They were released by WotC with full approval. Those are WotC settings regardless of who designed them.

They didn't design it. They didn't flesh it out.

That's why the designers lack connection to it and can discard half orc easily.

 

[Remathilis]

Eberron and Wildemount.

2 settings not designed by WOTC nor the D&D team in house.

Wrong.

We think of Eberron as Keith's child, but Eberron was developed in house by the whole D&D team using Keith (and apparently others) ideas. You can argue that Wildemont was Mercer's project that was greenlit by WotC, but Eberron has more than just Keith's hands in it.

50%.

 

[Maxperson]

They didn't design it. They didn't flesh it out.

That's why the designers lack connection to it and can discard half orc easily.

Correlation does not equal causation. Your second sentence does not automatically follow from the first. They did in fact review and approve those settings. I don't see why they would care less about those than any other setting they stamp their name onto. It's no different than hiring some independent contractors to work on one of your projects.