RPG Evolution: Do We Still Need "Race" in D&D?

The term "race" is a staple of fantasy that is now out of sync with modern usage. With Pathfinder shifting from "race" to "ancestry" in its latest edition, it raises the question: should fantasy games still use it?

“Race” and Modern Parlance​

We previously discussed the challenges of representing real-life cultures in a fantasy world, with African and Asian countries being just two examples. The discussion becomes more complicated with fantasy "races"—historically, race was believed to be determined by the geographic arrangement of populations. Fantasy gaming, which has its roots in fantasy literature, still uses the term “race” this way.

Co-creator of D&D Gary Gygax cited R.E. Howard's Conan series as an influence on D&D, which combines Lovecraftian elements with sword and sorcery. Howard's perceptions may have been a sign of the times he lived in, but it seems likely they influenced his stories. Robert B. Marks explains just how these stereotypes manifested in Conan's world:

The young, vibrant civilizations of the Hyborian Age, like Aquilonia and Nemedia, are white - the equivalent of Medieval Europe. Around them are older Asiatic civilizations like Stygia and Vendhya, ancient, decrepit, and living on borrowed time. To the northwest and the south are the barbarian lands - but only Asgard and Vanaheim are in any way Viking. The Black Kingdoms are filled with tribesmen evoking the early 20th century vision of darkest Africa, and the Cimmerians and Picts are a strange cross between the ancient Celts and Native Americans - and it is very clear that the barbarians and savages, and not any of the civilized people or races, will be the last ones standing.

Which leads us to the other major fantasy influence, author J.R.R. Tolkien. David M. Perry explains in an interview with Helen Young:

In Middle Earth, unlike reality, race is objectively real rather than socially constructed. There are species (elves, men, dwarves, etc.), but within those species there are races that conform to 19th-century race theory, in that their physical attributes (hair color, etc.) are associated with non-physical attributes that are both personal and cultural. There is also an explicit racial hierarchy which is, again, real in the world of the story.

The Angry GM elaborates on why race and culture were blended in Tolkien's works:

The thing is, in the Tolkienverse, at least, in the Lord of the Rings version of the Tolkienverse (because I can’t speak for what happened in the Cinnabon or whatever that other book was called), the races were all very insular and isolated. They didn’t deal with one another. Race and culture went hand in hand. If you were a wood elf, you were raised by wood elves and lived a thoroughly wood elf lifestyle until that whole One Ring issue made you hang out with humans and dwarves and halflings. That isolation was constantly thrust into the spotlight. Hell, it was a major issue in The Hobbit.

Given the prominence of race in fantasy, it's not surprising that D&D has continued the trend. That trend now seems out of sync with modern parlance; in 1951, the United Nations officially declared that the differences among humans were "insignificant in relation to the anthropological sameness among the peoples who are the human race."

“Race” and Game Design​

Chris Van Dyke's essay on race back in 2008 explains how pervasive "race" is in D&D:

Anyone who has played D&D has spent a lot of time talking about race – “Racial Attributes,” “Racial Restrictions,” “Racial Bonuses.” Everyone knows that different races don’t get along – thanks to Tolkien, Dwarves and Elves tend to distrust each other, and even non-gamers know that Orcs and Goblins are, by their very nature, evil creatures. Race is one of the most important aspects of any fantasy role-playing game, and the belief that there are certain inherent genetic and social distinctions between different races is built into every level of most (if not all) Fantasy Role-Playing Games.

Racial characteristics in D&D have changed over time. Basic Dungeons & Dragons didn't distinguish between race and class for non-humans, such that one played a dwarf, elf, or halfling -- or a human fighter or cleric. The characteristics of race were so tightly intertwined that race and profession were considered one.

In Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, the changes became more nuanced, but not without some downsides on character advancement, particularly in allowing “demihumans” to multiclass but with level limits preventing them from exceeding humanity, who had unlimited potential (but could only dual-class).

With Fifth Edition, ability penalties and level caps have been removed, but racial bonuses and proficiencies still apply. The Angry GM explains why this is a problem:

In 5E, you choose a race and a class, but you also choose a background. And the background represents your formative education and socio-economic standing and all that other stuff that basically represents the environment in which you were raised. The racial abilities still haven’t changed even though there is now a really good place for “cultural racial abilities” to live. So, here’s where the oddity arises. An elf urchin will automatically be proficient with a longsword and longbow, two weapons that requires years of training to even become remotely talent with, but a human soldier does not get any automatic martial training. Obviously, in both cases, class will modify that. But in the life of your character, race happens first, then background, and only later on do you end up a member of a class. It’s very quirky.

Perhaps this is why Pathfinder decided to take a different approach to race by shifting to the term “ancestry”:

Beyond the narrative, there are many things that have changed, but mostly in the details of how the game works. You still pick a race, even though it is now called your ancestry. You still decide on your class—the rulebook includes all of the core classes from the First Edition Core Rulebook, plus the alchemist. You still select feats, but these now come from a greater variety of sources, such as your ancestry, your class, and your skills.

"Ancestry" is not just a replacement for the word “race.” It’s a fluid term that requires the player to make choices at character creation and as the character advances. This gives an opportunity to express human ethnicities in game terms, including half-elves and half-orcs, without forcing the “subrace” construct.

The Last Race​

It seems likely that, from both a modern parlance and game design perspective, “race” as it is used today will fall out of favor in fantasy games. It’s just going to take time. Indigo Boock sums up the challenge:

Fantasy is a doubled edged sword. Every human culture has some form of fantasy, we all have some sort of immortal ethereal realm where our elven creatures dwell. There’s always this realm that transcends culture. Tolkien said, distinct from science fiction (which looks to the future), fantasy is to feel like one with the entire universe. Fantasy is real, deep human yearning. We look to it as escapism, whether we play D&D, or Skyrim, or you are like myself and write fantasy. There are unfortunately some old cultural tropes that need to be discarded, and it can be frustratingly slow to see those things phased out.

Here's hoping other role-playing games will follow Pathfinder's lead in how treats its fantasy people in future editions.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Should the works of literature be altered in their vocabulary due to the propaganda of politically motivated societal manipulation? No.

While I take issue with some of your vocabulary there, I agree with the conclusion.

As mentioned upthread, I’m black. A decade or so ago, certain publishers of classic literature decided to edit in less inflammatory language than the writers used, such as was used in racist character names. In response to this, my family in unison went on a book buying spree.

...to buy the unedited editions.

Not big fans of revisionism, us.

 

[Mallus]

Quick question: How many people who are arguing this issue are people of color?

I am. Though I don't usually identify as such because, well, I'm kinda old now and the term became popular long after my formative years.

Personally I'm fine with the term "race", but that's just me. It obviously has a load of baggage and ... unpleasant connotations. So I'm equally fine ditching it in favor of any one of a number of other terms.

My top three replacements are "people", "species", and "kin/kind". I don't have any objections to science-y sounding words like "species". D&D is full of them already, and from a language standpoint, D&D's terminology reflects its numerous, idiosyncratic source materials, so any appeal to a kind of genre-purity falls on deaf ears with me.

I like "people" because it subtly reinforces the idea that everything you can play (and a decent chuck of the things you can fight) in D&D qualify as "people".

You know, my first post in this thread was a joke; an immortal elf and partly-made-out-of-stone dwarf agreeing "race" is a social construct. I'll stand by that. It's possible I'm at my most insightful when I'm trying to be funny...

 

[Jester David]

Bringing up another term as a flase equivalence isnt supporting this case.

How, pray tell, is this a false equivalency? How are the terms different by an order of magnitude?

Shouting out the name of a logical fallacy isn’t an “I win!” button.

 

[MacConnell]

To the best of my knowledge, no one on this thread is advocating that the vocabulary of past texts should be altered to accomodate modern sensibilities, not even past editions of Dungeons & Dragons. We do recognize, however, that these authors and works of literature are products of their times and that their vocabulary (or translations) often reflect this reality...

I love educated people. Nice response!

 

[Shadow Demon]

It's not like D&D is free of poor naming. You don't have to look far, with Oriental Adventures published in 3rd Edition, despite people knowing for many, many decades that "orientalism" was problematic. Unless you want to defend that term as well. After all, we also used that term for decades without issue. And it’s not like Kara Tur is a real place.

Yep, another word I don’t consider to be problematic let alone dehumanizing. it would no more or less offensive than Asian Adventures. I guess I have spent my nearly 49 years offended by....nothing. From Wikipedia,
[FONT=&amp]
The Orient is the East, traditionally comprising anything that belongs to the Eastern world, in relation to Europe. In English, it is largely a metonym for, and coterminous with, the continent of Asia, divided into the Far East, Middle East, and Near East.[/FONT]
[FONT=&amp]The term Oriental is sometimes used to describe people or objects from the Orient.[/FONT]

 

[clearstream]

The suggestion of changing the term "race" is not about erasing, rewriting, or censoring the past but about embracing the current cultural clime and possibly future clime, when I hope that future writers, players, and game masters select an even more appropriate term than our alternative one to "race."

I could easily relinquish the term, but what about the layer of game mechanics that sits there? Races are an idea of having ability packages that are selected from and work in combination with other choices, such as class. So does this mean that what races are (ability packages) is valuable and should be kept: the concerns are just about the label?

I think they must be, otherwise generating characters using the standard method is also problematic: some are inherently stronger than others. I point this out because I often see a sort of deceit where a mechanic is labelled or re-labelled as X, but isn't X at all. It's still Y.

 

[james501]

How, pray tell, is this a false equivalency? How are the terms different by an order of magnitude?

Shouting out the name of a logical fallacy isn’t an “I win!” button.

From what I know mostly, Oriental is a specific term used in the specific context of European Imperialism and Otherism of the East.

"Race" as a concept as well as the term itself have existed in various cultures and languages without racist baggage.

 

[Tanin Wulf]

Funny thing though, the sickle cell gene is a poor indication of “race” as it primarily affects Central Africans and not Northen or Southern, who would generally be considered the same “race”. Meanwhile, the same anemia genes are found in Arabian and Indians, who are a very different “race”.

There are some genetic differences, but they’re surprisingly minor. Humans differ less genetically than individusls from other species, a result of us evolving from a small population some 150,000 years ago.

Agree. The differences are definitely much more minor than... whatever we want to call what D&D is calling race. But biological race applied to medicine is very much alive, and not in a eugenics/racial superiority way, but it in a way of understanding how genes tell us the story of where we've been, and how different races are all still human, but all divergent enough to mean that tailoring medicine/treatments creates better medicine/treatments. (With the ultimate ideal being tailored down to the individual.)

 

[Afrodyte]

If making the hobby more inclusive and welcoming to people of color is not relevant to you, this post isn't for you. Your priorities are different, and that's fine. You do you and leave me alone.

For the people who do care about making the hobby more inclusive and welcoming to people of color, this thread and similar discussions raise a few concerns for me. Before someone gets it twisted and puts words in my mouth, I need to say that none of what follows is me accusing anyone of anything or judging anyone who feels differently than I do about the issue at hand. I'm just expressing concerns. If that's valuable information to you, great. If not, please ignore.

While I'm glad that there are white people who are advocating for a more inclusive and welcoming hobby, I do have concerns about:

1. white people deciding on behalf of people of color what race-related issues in the hobby should take priority at any given time (as opposed to asking people of color what would make us feel more included and welcome in the hobby)
2. white people emphasizing symbolic gestures made on behalf of people of color over addressing structural and behavioral issues that make people of color flat-out state make us feel excluded and unwelcome in the hobby
3. white people spending more time fighting white people who don't want to learn or change than listening to people of color and working out ways to make the hobby more inclusive and welcoming.

That's just where I'm at right now.

 

[Jester David]

Yep, another word I don’t consider to be problematic let alone dehumanizing. it would no more or less offensive than Asian Adventures. I guess I have spent my nearly 49 years offended by....nothing. From Wikipedia,
[FONT=&]
The Orient is the East, traditionally comprising anything that belongs to the Eastern world, in relation to Europe. In English, it is largely a metonym for, and coterminous with, the continent of Asia, divided into the Far East, Middle East, and Near East.[/FONT]
[FONT=&]The term Oriental is sometimes used to describe people or objects from the Orient.[/FONT]

You *might* need to do more reading:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orientalism_(book)

The people it describes find it offensive. Isn’t that enough for you?

"Race" as a concept as well as the term itself have existed in various cultures and languages without racist baggage.

The concept exists solely to present the false idea that there are different types of people who are notably distinct. Which is false.
It is a term with incredible racist baggage that we should be excising from the game