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.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Race is based on physical appearance such as how much melatonin has, not on actual genetic relationship. Race Is a Social Construct, Scientists Argue

And that’s why it was a wrong word for D&D. I don’t think that the difference between halflings and dragonborn is just a social construct!

 

[Remathilis]

DnD has established it's own identity and deserves to be far more of it’s own thing than just being ‘LotR:the TTRPG’

Ah yes, the famous "lost works of Tolkien" where Bilbo meets a beholder...

 

[Remathilis]

Yes, but AFAIK, instruction to do so is not in the game either. Mixed species is just not a thing anymore.

There are no rules for warforged in the 2024 books, so they're just not a thing anymore.
There are no rules for necromancers in the 2024 books, so they're just not a thing anymore.
There are no rules for artificers in the 2024 books, so they're just not a thing anymore.

We still have rules for all of them. They are the same exact rules that 2014 had. Not being updated =/= not having them anymore. The rules we have for mixed species are the exact ones we had in 2014: there are two unique PC options (currently in the depreciated PHB) and no rules for mix-your-own. At some point, we are going to get an updated warforged, an updated necromancer, an updated artificer, and updated mixed species rules. Just because we don't have the updates today doesn't mean the older versions don't still work/exist.

 

[Honorable Intent]

They can all interbreed and produce viable offspring, per the 2024 rules. You can absolutely have a character whose grandparents were a gnome, a goliath, an orc, and a tiefling.

Ancestry is probably the better word, but I get why D&D never, ever wants to copy anything from Pathfinder, so species it is. I'm not losing sleep over it.

Fun fact: a not-insignificant portion of 5e was lifted from Pathfinder already. Acrobatics and Athletics were from Pathfinder's "Consolidated Skills" optional rule (and indeed, the concept of consolidating 3.5e's skills was itself taken from that optional rule). Having a 20th level "capstone" feature was something Paizo invented that also was "borrowed" for 5e. There's more, but it's been years now and I forget.

 

[Corinnguard]

Fun fact: a not-insignificant portion of 5e was lifted from Pathfinder already. Acrobatics and Athletics were from Pathfinder's "Consolidated Skills" optional rule (and indeed, the concept of consolidating 3.5e's skills was itself taken from that optional rule). Having a 20th level "capstone" feature was something Paizo invented that also was "borrowed" for 5e. There's more, but it's been years now and I forget.

Just as the idea for Backgrounds having ASIs was borrowed from PF2.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

WRT races being a social construct...

Among humans and in the reading of the word regarding human populations. The evidence being that I guess nobody in the US would call someone coming from Ankara, Turkey an Asian-American, or someone coming from Vladivostck, despite both of them being from Asia, so they recognize people based on something other than geographic origin.

In taxonomy, race is a rank (a subdivision of species) : while there need to be a social consensus to create them, there is a physical difference between a Percheron and an Arabian Horse, or between a Labrador and a Teckel, in a way that goes beyond social construct.

 

[Honorable Intent]

I think the change to Species was done lazily, much like I think the Tasha's variant of "pick whatever attribute bonuses you want" was done lazily. It's not a researched, thought-out decision. It's a slapped on change, meant to bandaid fix the whole "the existence of race means the existence of racists" bit. Maybe it's meant to futureproof because they intend to do more Spelljammer.

However, if they had thought a little harder, I think they could have come to a much better term (ancestry, heritage, etc) and also come to a more interesting cross-pollination strategy than "elf/human hybrids are mechanically either a human or an elf". The fact that they choose the easiest, simplest answer and left it for a 3rd party source to 'fix' later means that they intend to do what they've done for all of 5e's lifespan still: make really cheap, bandaid fixes for the glaring problems people have with the game and thus, encourage someone to make something better and sell it on DM's Guild (where they take a 50% cut) or Drive Thru RPG (where they take a 35-50% cut) while spending none of the time paying people to make it. The world gets a better option, they get "free" money.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

There are no rules for warforged in the 2024 books, so they're just not a thing anymore.
There are no rules for necromancers in the 2024 books, so they're just not a thing anymore.
There are no rules for artificers in the 2024 books, so they're just not a thing anymore.

We still have rules for all of them. They are the same exact rules that 2014 had. Not being updated =/= not having them anymore. The rules we have for mixed species are the exact ones we had in 2014: there are two unique PC options (currently in the depreciated PHB) and no rules for mix-your-own. At some point, we are going to get an updated warforged, an updated necromancer, an updated artificer, and updated mixed species rules. Just because we don't have the updates today doesn't mean the older versions don't still work/exist.

I don't think a lot of people having bought the 2024 PHB will try to procure a 2014 PHB to include these in their game -- and I am pretty sure WotC would be very happy to sell them a brand new book featuring a warforged. There is no mention in the 2024 PHB that things can be lifted from earlier printings on the book wherever they differ. Backward compability has been mentionned by the company as a commercial argument, but it didn't make the printed product. The What's new in the 2024 version boxed text doesn't mention the possibility to still use previous content. If you join a brand new group with people who just bought the new material and tell the DM you want to play a warforged necromancer, I am expecting him to say "hu?"

It is quite easy to homebrew back in, though, for people who had been exposed to obsolete material since the rules are broadly compatible and operate on the same scale.

 

[Corinnguard]

I think the change to Species was done lazily, much like I think the Tasha's variant of "pick whatever attribute bonuses you want" was done lazily. It's not a researched, thought-out decision. It's a slapped on change, meant to bandaid fix the whole "the existence of race means the existence of racists" bit. Maybe it's meant to futureproof because they intend to do more Spelljammer.

However, if they had thought a little harder, I think they could have come to a much better term (ancestry, heritage, etc) and also come to a more interesting cross-pollination strategy than "elf/human hybrids are mechanically either a human or an elf". The fact that they choose the easiest, simplest answer and left it for a 3rd party source to 'fix' later means that they intend to do what they've done for all of 5e's lifespan still: make really cheap, bandaid fixes for the glaring problems people have with the game and thus, encourage someone to make something better and sell it on DM's Guild (where they take a 50% cut) or Drive Thru RPG (where they take a 35-50% cut) while spending none of the time paying people to make it. The world gets a better option, they get "free" money.

I agree that the name change to species was done lazily as that there are better terms out there. However, I find that the Tasha's variant of 'pick whatever attribute bonuses you want' to be more RL because now you are reflecting on the individuals within a given race/species instead of the whole race/species. The latter shouldn't be monolithic nor should it favor a particular class or classes.

Is it a band-aid fix? It certainly could be one.

Thanks to Level Up: A5e, I prefer the term heritage. I also like that RPGs approach to individuals of mixed heritages. If you want to play a Half-Elf in Level Up, you pick either a Human heritage or an Elven heritage first. So, if you want a Half-Elf with Darkvision, Fey Ancestry and Trance, you pick the Elven Heritage. Then you pick up a heritage gift, which is essentially a 1st-level feat, from the Human Heritage instead of one from the Elven Heritage. If you want your Half-Elf to be more human-like, then you can pick the Human Heritage and an Elven Heritage gift. After that, it's a matter of which Culture they're raised in, a Human Culture or one of the four Elven Cultures (Eladrin, High, Shadow and Wood).

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Race is based on physical appearance such as how much melatonin has, not on actual genetic relationship. Race Is a Social Construct, Scientists Argue

I think you mean melanin. And saying race is about skin color is a bit overly simplistic. You can be racist against someone that has the same skin color as you (anti-Irish racism in America is a good example).

But, yes, race is a social construct. Typically created to justify discrimination against a created group.