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.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

While I find the term a little anachronistic for most D&D campaign -- though I could very well envision Eberron using it, they are more steampunk than med-fan, I think it's a term that work for a lot of crowds.

• It makes happy people who thought that race was a term that shouldn't be used, at all, because of the implications of the word, especially by people who advocated removing all representatives of a race,
• It makes happy people who identified some traits of orcs and gnolls as shared real life groups designated by racist as "races" in real life,
• It makes happy people who just want to kill some orcs en masse, because they can do that and not be accused of being racist in disguise (removing species wholesale is something humanity does daily for various reasons going from "we think they are dangeros" to "we like to eat them" to "we want to transform their habitat for our use") and doesn't carry the same bagage as fighting a "race",
• It makes happy people who were displeased with the idea that a bird (aaracockra), a reptile (dragonborn), a human and a machine (warforged) were races of the same species.

That's a lot of people being happy for the price of using a "modern" term in a medieval context -- but in such a context, you'd also encounter the race of kings, which has definitely no idea of a specific difference of people, just a lineage.

 

[Remathilis]

The culture war will continue until... well, until things get interesting, I suppose.

The culture war will continue as long as there are rubes willing to consume media from grifters getting ad revenue from hate.

 

[CreamCloud0]

These kinds of special abilities aren't mutually exclusive. A rabbit should not be breaking down doors that a 18 STR character can break down. Probably also want a pretty hefty STR penalty on that rabbit if you are going to make it a core race/species

Assuming this is a rabbit humanoid species and not just literally a real rabbit as a PC, no i would not want STR penalties to it, everybody can exist on the same 3-20 stat scale and nobody needs any additional species ASI modifiers as their traits should be doing all the work differentiating them already, then ASI exist purely as an internal species scaling, 11 STR is average strength equally amongst halflings humans and goliaths but goliaths are still ‘stronger’ due to having traits that play into representing that strength like outsized might and bend bars, break crates.

 

[GnomeWorks]

The culture war will continue as long as there are rubes willing to consume media from grifters getting ad revenue from hate.

That, uh... is certainly an opinion you can have, I suppose?

 

[Azzy]

That said, I find nothing in that definition to be particularly "nasty;" rather, the implication that those who believe in biological essentialism think biology is the only source of various qualities is rather narrow-minded.

It has been and still is used to justify all manner of bigotry, so, yeah, it's pretty nasty.

 

[Oofta]

Indeed. The literal definition of different species is that they have essential biological differences. Thus complaining about bioessentialism in such a context is bizarre. To get rid of it would require removing every difference besides purely cosmetic ones.

There certainly has been a lot of problematic in how D&D has represented the species; I've been complaining about it for decades. I just don't think that this particular angle is quite coherent. And this is not to say that some specific things being biologically essential still isn't bad. Like species that are born evil is rather problematic. But I don't think that a species having different capabilities due differing physiology is the same thing at all.

While we don't currently have other species running around with human level intelligence, based on our best understanding Neanderthal were just as intelligent as we are, perhaps even more intelligent. They were also stronger although exactly how much stronger is open for debate. On the other hand they may not have had as high an endurance.

Current theories of why they didn't come to dominate the planet like homo sapiens is that they were not as social. They did not cooperate or share techniques with each other. Neanderthal made tools and art but the tools were unique to a group, whereas you can see the spread and acceptance of a technique in homesapien groups, sometimes to the point of stifling innovation. But in the long run that cooperation helped our ancestors dominate.

So I don't have an issue with intelligent species, even ones we would classify as humanoids, having different default strengths and weaknesses. Any one individual Neanderthal may not be as strong as some homo sapiens, but the strongest homo sapiens would not be as strong as the strongest Neanderthal.

So physical, mental and social attribute tendencies were different from one of our closest relatives. So personally? I had no issues with attribute modifiers and other built in traits. You could always play against type if you wanted to and I did. Same goes with general attitudes and approaches to life. Does every halfling have a happy-go-lucky attitude and value friendship and a good meal over material wealth? No, but most members of a species having a different outlook on life and approach to survival like neanderthal and homo sapiens was a very real thing.

In any case this doesn't really affect my home campaign much. There are still going to be tinker gnome inventors and dour dwarves, whether those traits are official or not.

 

[GnomeWorks]

11 STR is average strength equally amongst halflings humans and goliaths but goliaths are still ‘stronger’ due to having traits that play into representing that strength like outsized might and bend bars, break crates.

So I can sort of see this argument, but that's an awful lot of complexity when we can just adjust the numbers.

It has and still is used to justify all manner of bigotry, so, yeah, it's pretty nasty.

That isn't how things work. I'm sure most people have beliefs that were, at one time or another, used to justify terrible actions. Just because a thing can lead to bad things does not necessarily make that thing bad itself.

 

[Azzy]

So I can sort of see this argument, but that's an awful lot of complexity when we can just adjust the numbers.



That isn't how things work. I'm sure most people have beliefs that were, at one time or another, used to justify terrible actions. Just because a thing can lead to bad things does not necessarily make that thing bad itself.

Considering that the concept is pretty exclusively used by bigots to justify their bigotry and isn't used by respectable people, I think that it can safely be said to be a bad thing.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

While we don't currently have other species running around with human level intelligence, based on our best understanding Neanderthal were just as intelligent as we are, perhaps even more intelligent. They were also stronger although exactly how much stronger is open for debate. On the other hand they may not have had as high an endurance.

Current theories of why they didn't come to dominate the planet like homo sapiens is that they were not as social. They did not cooperate or share techniques with each other. Neanderthal made tools and art but the tools were unique to a group, whereas you can see the spread and acceptance of a technique in homesapien groups, sometimes to the point of stifling innovation. But in the long run that cooperation helped our ancestors dominate.

So basically, Homo Sapiens gets -1 to INT, -1 to STR, +1 to CON and +1 to CHA compared to the baseline Homo Neanderthalensis?

I wonder if a lot of the problem with linking ASIs to species was on part because Human were thought to be the default and back then, species were called race, and it could sound like some 19th century racist depiction of people (grouped by continent because subtlety was lost) like "group X is intelligent and hard-working, group Y is strong and stupid, group Z is intelligent, strong, pretty" (generally written by people who identified with group Z).

Once you speak of difference among species, I think it doesn't evoke the same baggage, when one say that Neanderthal was stronger, they don't tend to get grilled for that... (or when they say that cheetahs are faster, or when article in common newspaper runs story like "which is more intelligent, the cat or the dog?").

 

[CreamCloud0]

So I can sort of see this argument, but that's an awful lot of complexity when we can just adjust the numbers.

If a bit of extra complexity is the cost for removing ASI then I’m willing to pay that price, as it has been shown over and over ASI are simply too important for character building, sure they’re simple but i think they’re too simple and have no nuance, the cost of that simplicity is disproportionate and far reaching impact across character build