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.

 

[Koloth]

.......
Half-orcs were a PC option right back in 1st edition.

It really bugged me that I had almost finished obtaining ALL the D&D books when that new fangled AD&D version was announced. And most of my playing buddies wanted to adopt the all new version. Sigh...

 

[Jaiken]

What a slow news day.

 

[Bedrockgames]

It really bugged me that I had almost finished obtaining ALL the D&D books when that new fangled AD&D version was announced. And most of my playing buddies wanted to adopt the all new version. Sigh...

3.5 was the one that annoyed me

 

[Ruin Explorer]

You were able to read it? It wants me to pay them money or sign up for an account, neither of which I have any intention of doing.

I was able to read enough to see that bit, I can't remember what method I was accessing it by.

 

[Warpiglet-7]

Yeah I am not conservative or right wing, but I didn't like the changes (and I see some of them as being pretty regressive in some respects)

Yeah. I want to decouple preferences from modern American politics whenever possible. I like to talk about the game and its play.

Of course any change has costs and frequently unintended consequences no matter the intent. Calling a being that looks different from me a different species by default creates other issues. But again for me “whatever.” Make a decision and let’s play.

Where game play is impacted is where I take issue. And my solution is to engage on my terms where and how I want vs. freak out.

5e I think is as far from traditional as I want to be and that is fine. In fact I am thinking about some older edition play to get other needs met intermittently. All good.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Every time somebody in the media gets mad at D&D you can guarantee it gets a few more thousand units sold.

Years ago, Tim Kask said the Satanic panic is what led to the massive spike in sales. So, yeah. This.

 

[briggart]

But they’re not different species. Many are just different races of the same species. They can interbreed and produce fertile offspring, such as half-elves and half-orcs. Paizo’s “ancestry” makes way more sense.

Neanderthals, Denisovans, and Sapiens are generally considered to be different species yet they could successfully interbreed as proven by the analysis of modern day humans genome.

There are enough corner cases in the scientific definition of species that we can make a case for using it to describe the traditional D&D setup of Elves, Dwarves, Humans, etc.

I’m not trying to convince anyone on which term to use, just pointing out an interesting real world parallel.

 

[Clint_L]

I mean species is correct, and I actually don't hate the word. People only think of it as sci-fi because "race" absolutely doesn't work in the context of creatures from different planets. "Breed" would make people think of dogs though.

Species is certainly not correct, in the biological sense. It's not even relevant, since we are talking about non-biological processes that involve magic of various kinds, interbreeding without rhyme or reason, and neither genes nor evolution really matter. It's just a fantasy hodgepodge of ideas.

The most accurate thing to do would be to just coin a new word for it and call it a day. All of the problems are coming from trying to jam existing words with their real world context onto a nonsensical fantasy concept.

But since that seems unlikely to happen, and "species" is currently less loaded than "race," sure, let's use species. I don't care much what word we use.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Yeah. I want to decouple preferences from modern American politics whenever possible. I like to talk about the game and its play.

Of course any change has costs and frequently unintended consequences no matter the intent. Calling a being that looks different from me a different species by default creates other issues. But again for me “whatever.” Make a decision and let’s play.

Where game play is impacted is where I take issue. And my solution is to engage on my terms where and how I want vs. freak out.

5e I think is as far from traditional as I want to be and that is fine. In fact I am thinking about some older edition play to get other needs met intermittently. All good.

For me the biggest issue with the change is not having attribute modifiers anymore. I get that they used other things to distinguish races/species (so it isn't like an elf is the same as a human in the new book) but for me the ability modifiers are a really important part of making them feel different not just in terms of play but in terms of choosing a race in the first place

Lately I have played mostly older editions but I keep up with the current books because I will occasionally play 5E. My preferred edition is 2E (largely because I like a lot of the setting material so it is the least work if I want to use that stuff)

 

[Dausuul]

As far as orcs go, it's not all that hard to replace them as Generic Baddies without replicating their issues. Those issues arise because orcs live in tribal societies that look an awful lot like human societies, and adventurers heading out to kill them and take their stuff looks an awful lot like real-world genocides.

So what do you replace them with? Anything that isn't just humans in ugly suits. Undead are my personal favorite. Mind flayers and similar aberrations. Fiends. Non-sentient monsters. Take your pick.