Mainstream News Discovers D&D's Species Terminology Change

Several mainstream news sites have discovered that Dungeons & Dragons now refers to a character's species instead of race. The New York Times ended 2024 with a profile on Dungeons & Dragons, with a specific focus on the 2024 Player's Handbook's changes on character creation, the in-game terminology change from race to species, and the removal of Ability Score Increases tied to a character's species. The article included quotes by Robert J. Kuntz and John Stavropoulos and also referenced Elon Musk's outrage over Jason Tondro's forward in The Making of Original Dungeons & Dragons.

The piece sparked additional commentary on a variety of sites, including Fox News and The Telegraph, most of which focused on how the changes were "woke." Around the same time, Wargamer.com published a more nuanced piece about the presentation of orcs in the 2024 Player's Handbook, although its headline noted that the changes were "doomed" because players would inevitably replace the orc's traditional role as aggressor against civilization with some other monstrous group whose motivations and sentience would need to be ignored in order for adventurers to properly bash their heads in.

[Update--the Guardian has joined in also, now.]

Generally speaking, the mainstream news pieces failed to address the non-"culture war" reasons for many of these changes - namely that Dungeons & Dragons has gradually evolved from a game that promoted a specific traditional fantasy story to a more generalized system meant to capture any kind of fantasy story. Although some campaign settings and stories certainly have and still do lean into traditional fantasy roles, the kinds that work well with Ability Score Increases tied to a character's species/race, many other D&D campaigns lean away from these aspects or ignore them entirely. From a pragmatic standpoint, uncoupling Ability Score Increases from species not only removes the problematic bioessentialism from the game, it also makes the game more marketable to a wider variety of players.

Of course, the timing of many of these pieces is a bit odd, given that the 2024 Player's Handbook came out months ago and Wizards of the Coast announced plans to make these changes back in 2022. It's likely that mainstream news is slow to pick up on these types of stories. However, it's a bit surprising that some intrepid reporter didn't discover these changes for four months given the increased pervasiveness of Dungeons & Dragons in mainstream culture.

We'll add that EN World has covered the D&D species/race terminology changes as they developed and looks forward to covering new developments and news about Dungeons & Dragons in 2025 and beyond.

 

[Oofta]

I feel a lot of the issue with species ASI's isn't the with there being a problem with the concept itself, but rather 5e's bounded accuracy and minimum expectations of starting primary stats.

It essentially resulted in your character not being functional if you chose the 'wrong' species for the class. If you picked a character without a positive modifier, or god forbid a negative, you would statistically be missing most turns at level 1. Which combined with level 1 characters not having much beyond that, resulted in players rolling once, missing, and getting back onto scrolling their phone for multiple turns in a row.

My dwarven wizard was plenty effective even though he didn't start with a +2 to intelligence. That 5% difference on some of his spells wasn't a big deal. At the same time it made him stand out as different and unique.

It never, ever, totally nerfed a build. We played with a guy back in 3.5 that had a dwarven sorcerer (kind of inspiration for my wizard) back when they got a -2 to charisma. He was still effective.

 

[T4lkingSKU-11]

If the change is as simple as swapping "race" with "species", then I don't think that anyone would mind. It's what people want to see that is an issue.

And while I kind of preferred it when bonuses were tied to a specific species (makes sense than an elf would be more agile than a dwarf, and that an orc would be tougher than a regular old human), giving players a way to play their favorite combination without making them feel "weaker" or having made a sub-optimal choice is not a bad idea.

 

[Honorable Intent]

My only irk with the change was that "species" comes off as too scientific/sci-fi for my tastes. Ancestry makes the most sense to me, but I'd also have been cool with Kin, People, etc.

Big agree. Ancestry fits the best (a la Pathfinder 2e), not only because it catches the weird edge cases like Tieflings (who can be born to any race, theoretically) and Aasimar, but also because it changes the starting choices for character creation into Ancestry, Background, and Class (ABC). So much cleaner. The change to Species without enough of a mechanical change to justify the name (humans and elves can still interbreed, and their children aren't sterile) seems to be a means to check a box rather than a thought-out decision. Which fits, sadly, because most of the changes they have made are sloppy bandaid fixes over the years. Even 3.5 was a sloppy bandaid fix for 3e's issues, and came with a whole host of its own.

 

[Ringtail]

I find it really funny that a bunch of conservative news outlets are mad about D&D "going woke."

A probably not insignificant portion of their viewer base probably still believes in satanic panic nonsense. So they're going to be stirred up by changes in a game they already condemn?

Really just goes to show you how manufactured it all is.

 

[Bae'zel]

Every time this comes up, all other RPG publishers twiddle their thumbs and act inconspicuously innocent in the back of the room, hoping nobody will notice them.

 

[crazy_cat]

Every time this comes up, all other RPG publishers twiddle their thumbs and act inconspicuously innocent in the back of the room, hoping nobody will notice them.

As far as the rest of the audience for these stories knows there aren't any other RPGs or RPG publishers - except maybe Warhammer.

 

[Remathilis]

Every time this comes up, all other RPG publishers twiddle their thumbs and act inconspicuously innocent in the back of the room, hoping nobody will notice them.

IKR. Pathfinder put goblins (previously described as comedic simpleton creatures who like fire and hate dogs and reading) as a core ancestry and nobody raised an issue, but D&D putting orcs in the PHB several years later has gotten hackles raised. Same thing with removing the word Race in favor for a synonym, decoupling or changing how racial ASI work, and separating biological and cultural elements from race design. D&D 24, PF2e, TotV, and A5e are all guilty of these changes, but D&D being the big-fish is going to attract the lightning rod of controversy.

 

[Bae'zel]

I mean, no one seems to bat an eye at sci-fi RPGs with near-human races with key differences (eg, Star Trek and Star Wars), or other crowd pleasing fantasy D&D-like darlings (eg, Dragonbane, Shadowdark, Pathfinder, Old School Essentials etc...).

 

[Azzy]

I mean, that’s the goal of wedge issues. Get the public fighting each other over unimportant things so they don’t organize and use their collective power against the ruling class regarding actual important issues.

This is exactly it.

 

[beaumontsebos]

In the early 80s when I started learning D&D I immediately wondered why they used the term "race". Even as an ignorant kid, it didn't make sense to me. As I've turned into an old man and become less ignorant about race, it makes even less sense to use the term for the different playable species in D&D.

This change was a long time coming. Those that complain about D&D no longer relying on the term "race" are either more ignorant than my fifth-grade self or simply jerks.