What is the best technical terminology?
So far, official sources have used:
• race
• subrace
• kin ( = race and subrace)
• lineage ( = race?)
• ethnicity
• culture
For a while, it seemed WotC was planning to remove the term "race". But recently, they seem to have walked that back. I support that removal, because many races are too human, making the term race too close to racist thinking. The buzz word has too much baggage. If the term race, as in the "human race", is to mean species, then the other races need to more clearly nonhuman.
That said.
The Players Handbook lists the Human having a number of "ethnicities". An ethnicity seems to blend "culture" and "physical diversity", such as average height, average skin color, etcetera.
If so, does subrace and ethnicity mean the same thing?
When I look at elves, the difference between High Elf and Wood Elf and Drow Elf, is easily an ethnic diversity. I suspect some might say the differences are mechanical differences. But. Ability modifiers no longer apply. Want a high Strength Drow? Done. Want a high Intelligence Wood? Done. Some traits are necessarily learned from culture, such as weapon training. Meanwhile other differences derive from diverse magical cultures. The difference between a High Elf and a Wood Elf is less than the difference between one Feat Human and an other Feat Human. And skin color does not a subrace make. These seem like Elven ethnicities.
Since ethnicity includes culture, I suppose "culture" means "proficiencies and background"?
It is unclear to me what the difference between race and lineage is. They appear to be identical, but some sentences use both terms in a way that implies a difference.
If you've been looking at the many recent attempts to get away from the term
race by various RPG companies . . . WotC, Paizo, others, and various fan-designers on the DMsGuild . . . you'll see the terms
lineage,
ancestry, and
heritage all used somewhat differently in place of
race. As uncomfortable as the word makes me, there isn't a straightforward substitute. I agree with
@MGibster, we're on a well-meaning euphemism treadmill, and these words are somewhat interchangeable . . .
lineage, ancestry, and
kin are straight up synonyms and refer to your familial inheritance (
biology mostly, but . . .), while
heritage refers more to cultural inheritance . . . but they are all used interchangeably somewhat in the real world.
Race is a word social scientists don't like, as it doesn't have a precise scientific meaning. It's a cultural construct, and refers to someone's background combining and confusing their cultural and biological inheritances alongside a healthy dose of stereotyping. But yet, it DOES have meaning, it IS a word we use in everyday life. It's use isn't wrong per se, but is easily made problematic, both in the real world and in our fantasy games.
Ethnicity IS a word social scientists like, and does have a defined, scientific meaning. Ethnicity refers to a social group that shares a culture and/or nationality, and can be associated with minor physiological differences like skin color. Of course, we use this word too confusingly in everyday life . . . if you were born to a white parent and an Asian parent, but have a black grandparent, you are born with dark skin and raised in mainstream American culture . . . what is your ethnicity? You'll be labeled by others as African-American, and you might even choose to identify that way yourself, but are you?
In traditional D&D, your
race usually and mostly correlates with your biology, your
species (if indeed,
species is even the right word). Your
subrace usually and mostly correlates with your
ethnicity, your culture. We can probably agree that all elves are part of the same species, and that the major differences between wood elves and high elves is cultural. There are differences in skin tone, hair color, and other minor physiological differences, just as in the real world. Of course, It doesn't quite break down that perfectly, as each
subrace often has abilities that don't seem cultural and go beyond skin color (etc).
I think we're going to be stumbling our way through this for a while now before we find our footing in the fantasy gaming and sci-fi scenes. I appreciate that we're having the conversations and that designers are putting forth ideas. We'll see what sticks.
