D&D 5E Jeremy Crawford Discusses Details on Custom Origins

[Alzrius]

The rules say there are heroes and super-heroes. "Included in this class are certain well-known knights, leaders of army contingents, and similar men." doesn't read as exclusive to me. The creator of the game puts them in as whatever race they need to be when showing how the rules can be used for what they were designed to (having fantasy battles).

The turn of phrase "similar men" could easily be read as implying humanity specifically. Tolkien often did that. Likewise, even leaving aside that the book is predicated on a humanocentric basis (though as noted before, that's partially due to the focus on medieval battles for most of it), I'll reiterate that the elves and dwarves entries note particular characteristics they have, but which make no mention of applying those to the man-to-man rules.

It feels like its decent evidence that it puts it was happening pretty early... The phrasing made it sound to me like it was PC.

Well, it might have been, but at this point it's hard to say. There were certainly cases of the line between PCs and NPCs being somewhat porous in the early days, though my best examples of that tend to be from Gary's games; if I recall correctly, Quij was an NPC henchman of Robilar's, who was Rob Kuntz's character. It's really the old "who plays the henchmen, the DM or the PC they follow" bit, even if the rules for reaction adjustments and loyalty modifiers made it sound more like the DM.

Lots of things in Appendix N are not mentioned here. The 1974 article mentions that he thinks Conan, Mouser, and Elric are characters he thinks players will find more exciting than Aragorn et.al. He also says that Tolkien was influential. Apparently the article also says lots of players kept asking for more Tolkien. That seems consistent with him using Tolkien things and getting annoyed by folks liking it so much. (I'll check around for the article).

Right, but it's hard to deny that the foreword to the original 1974 boxed set (Appendix N was from the 1979 DMG) making mention of several authors suggests that they have a place of prominence with regard to influence on the game. Tolkien apparently being not one of them; that's not to say that he doesn't have any influence - he clearly does! - but not so much as to say he occupies a place of primacy.

The vast majority of things on the list occur in Tolkien. Everything that appears in Tolkien except the Oliphants occurs on the list. Every creature that is uniquely Tolkien, appears on the list. It's impossible for the entire list to be uniquely Tolkien because Tolkien didn't have that many unique creatures.

Which is sort of the point. You identified six that are explicitly Tolkien's out of a list of over twenty; as you note here, Tolkien doesn't really have that many unique creatures to contribute, and quite a few of the ones that appear in his works appear in quite a few other places. It doesn't seem controversial to say that, insofar as the monstrous entries go, he didn't add too much overall.

Clearly some of them weren't from Tolkien (Gnomes, Sprites, Giants), but no one ever claimed Tolkien was the only influence. But there aren't that many here.

Again, that largely relies on the interpretation that Tolkien's influence can be felt with anything that he used, even if it was for creatures that are also found elsewhere, which I think is listing a bit too far in terms of what can be credited to him. If particular monsters could conceivably come from another source, I suspect they would have, even if a few details might have been different.

I'm kind of surprised that Greek mythology got no play at all, but then I have to remember he was going for medieval feeling literature. There are a number of creatures from the first two Elric books and the first batch of Mouser books that could have made it. Kind of surprised they didn't.

One thing to keep in mind is that this list expands by a large margin when OD&D proper comes out in 1974, the list of monsters expands dramatically, further reducing the appearance that Tolkien was a large influence on the game itself:

I suspect this list would have a lot more Barsoom creatures on it as well, except that TSR released Warriors of Mars right after Dungeons & Dragons, and while I don't know for sure how much overlap there was with regards to the rules, it wouldn't surprise me if there was a lot, considering that, as noted elsewhere, "The original D&D books are rich with Martian references. The wandering monster tables contain references to the following monsters, all natives of Burroughs’ Barsoom: Thark, Thoat, Calot, White Ape, Orluk, Sith, Darseen, Apt, Banth, Red Martian, Black Martian, White Martian, and Yellow Martian." That's over a dozen monsters right there.

I'll let you know when I dig up that article.

Thanks!

 

[Chaosmancer]

Again, I'm not sure about the "nearly impossible" part (though at least this time you didn't use quotation marks), since I recall that I expressed the sentiment that the difference between two different classes of the same level was much larger than that of two characters of different races but the same class and level.


How about noticing that I didn't say "so small not to be noticeable" nor imply it. Rather, the difference is comparative in nature. Compare a 20th-level human wizard to a 20th-level elven wizard to a 20th-level human fighter (obviously in 3E or later); do the two humans really seem more alike than the two wizards?

Again, I don't recall expressing the sentiment that the difference was completely undetectable (and if I did, I hope this makes it clear that it was hyperbole).

I don't know if this is shifting goal posts or if you were just exaggerating and that was not clear. But since my entire point was "yes, race makes a difference, even if it isn't as big as class" and you agree with that, I'm going to drop the point.

We're getting into issues of "how much" that can't really be measured. That said, I don't think that having only humans as playable races would have mattered very much (which is an extension of the discussion regarding Tolkien's influence; that is, a tangent). D&D's influence was such that it was basically able to largely define the niche it set for itself, even as it drew on a byzantine array of sources. To that end, I think that it's ability to set a standard is being underestimated; had it not featured demihumans as PC races, I'm of the opinion that it would still have occupied a place of prominence in the space it created.

And I disagree.

Even when we talk about the game derisively between ourselves we define it as "our pretend elf game". The ability to be a different race is baked too deep into the game to say with confidence that it would have grabbed the same cultural zeitgeist without that aspect.

As noted, the issue of "no demihumans whatsoever" is largely a tangent (again, note the poor, oft-overlooked gnome). That said, I don't see them being "tied" deeply to the game, simply because "the game" was what D&D said it was back in the beginning. While plenty of proto-RPGs were being bandied about in the Twin Cities area at the time, D&D swept over the gaming scene like a wildfire when it came out. I think that had less to do with available races than it did with simply offering a cohesive framework of play. Not having the option to play as a halfling doesn't strike me as impacting that much at all.

Maybe. But, being the first doesn't always mean you are going to be the one that lasts. Xerox was the first company to make a photo-copier. They took the world by storm to the point that using a photocopier is still referred to as "xeroxing" them.

Xerox nearly went out of business and sold of that property, and as far as I can tell, they no longer make or sell those machines.

DnD may have taken the scene by storm by having a cohesive framework of play, but if an equally good product had come along, with more options to fill in the "clear gaps" left by this hypothetical version of humans only, I think it would have been very easy for DnD to get dethroned.

I feel the need to point out again that we're slipping between the main debate (the degree of influence Tolkien had) and a tangent (does D&D need non-human playable races to be D&D?). Likewise, we're also bouncing back and forth between examining the game when it emerged versus the contemporary depiction. That's worth keeping in mind.

Sure, we are bouncing back and forth, and again, if your entire point was just how much influence Tolkien had, I can see it being fairly minimal. DnD became its own thing fairly rapidly. It had a lot of "posts" laid down by tolkien, mostly kept into prominence by fans still insisting about them (see conversations about Gandalf, or "spell-less rangers") but it is overall, a fairly small percentage of the influences and more importantly the culture of DnD.

But I want to seperate out "races" from "Tolkien" because I think it was the mixing of those two ideas that led to this whole tangent.

Again, that's a response to a related, but not identical, tangent. It shoots down the idea that more races as a whole are some sort of selling point, since a game that came out hot on the metaphorical heels of D&D had more in that area (along with other selling points, such as ease of access with regards to understanding the rules) and yet didn't do as well.


That's sort of what I was implying though. A generic thrust of "D&D couldn't have worked with just one races" is a position that can be blunted in terms of its underlying argument (that more is better) by pointing to T&T. That shifts the focus back to it needing those particular demihuman races, which implies Tolkien, circling the discussion back around to that.

But you are getting into a black and white fallacy.

Maybe it didn't need "those races" maybe it just needed a few races. There is the idea of diminishing returns. In a game where there are three playable characters, adding two more is a huge upset to the game as it exists. In a game with 200 characters, adding two more is a blip on the radar, maybe.

Maybe they needed specific Tolkien names, they certainly didn't take the Tolkien ideas. But, maybe they just needed some recognizable names and a tie in to fantasy culture that people could identify. Maybe T&T was too late, maybe it was too small, maybe it had poor distribution, maybe the idea of three more races wasn't enough to shift the scales and make it over take DnD.

But, using it to insist that DnD could have risen like it did with only humans is not supported by anything except your own insistance of the that position.

How significant is that "better" martial ability? There's no particular increase of their to-hit bonus, and any enchantments could just as easily be applied to a dagger or crossbow (for a human wizard). The best you can get is increasing the damage die from a dagger (d4) to a longbow (d8), which increases the average damage from 2.5 to 4.5. Not much at all at 20th level!

How about that increased range for the longbow? That isn't exactly a small benefit. And if you are level 20, and you are using a steel longsword, you have a problem, maybe it is a Flametongue, which would be a 1d8+2d6, increasing it from 2.5 to 11.5. Maybe 9 points of damage isn't much at level 20, but it is a rather huge difference in practice. In fact, it is enough to make them more than capable of one-shotting a weak minion that might try and ambush them.

Sure, they are better off using the magic, but even having this option makes for a pretty big change in how you look at your character. You don't need a melee cantrip as badly, since you can actually use a decent melee weapon.

Phrasing it as a "problem" strikes me as a rather unfair way of putting it. My overall point is that the people saying "there is no D&D without Tolkien" are wrong, self-evidently so. His works are a single, modest part of a much larger tapestry of influences on what made D&D the way it was when it came out, and that if there hadn't been any there then it wouldn't have made much of a difference. His footprint simply seems larger because, for one reason, the demihuman races are mostly his, and the player-facing nature of those options come across as being a large part of the game. They're not, and notwithstanding the race-as-class aspects of B/X and BECMI, choice of race overall isn't the major factor that a lot of people seem to think it is.

And I can completely agree with that point, to a degree. I think that the races are a big part of the game, because they have been one of the two big aspects of player facing rules in the entire game. I build backstories based largely on how the race would interact with the world. I think about that aspect a lot, and it also effects world-building.

Is there no DnD without Tolkien? I doubt it. Maybe it wouldn't have looked exactly the same, but Tolkien was only one part, like you said, not the entirety of the game.

 

[Chaosmancer]

You really don't get it, do you? Part of it is that it's just one more step towards race having little or no impact more than a Halloween mask, it's chipping away at archetypes that make D&D what it is.

"Chipping away at archetypes?" No. It isn't.

Or if it is, then those aren't really archetypes that are at all compelling to anyone I've ever played with. Because, you are basing this archetype solely on the mechanical difference. This archetype of the dwarf or the elf is based solely and completely on their physical bodies.

But, not even DnD focuses on that.

What is the most compelling aspect of the Dwarves who show up at the Baggins residence? People might give many answers. "They are tough and hardy" is not one of them. Personally, I find the idea of them being a people adrift, without a home and seeking to reclaim that home.

I think a lot of people at WoTC and TSR tended to agree, because the narrative of the Dwarves returning home, or seeking their home, or defending their home is a huge part of most dwarven stories in most settings. The second big one is the clan, the family, insular groups who are suspicious of outsiders. In fact, dwarves are famously stubborn, and not in a physical way, but in a mental one.

Note, I've never once mentioned their con score, because that is the part of them that is mechanical, it doesn't actually play into their stories.

The Elves? Same deal, and the game started taking these ideas and playing with them every once in a while.

The Sun Elves of FR are your traditional, isolationist, haughty forest lords. The Aereni of Eberron are a group that is still isolationist and perfectionist, but they are defined by their relationship with death, and the living undead gods who help guide their society while being maintained by the love and worship of their descendants.

Timelessness, disconnection from the modern world, the long view, again xenophobia. None of it requires being particularly graceful or able to run along a balance beam.

More importantly it's not about and never has been about playing a "gimped" character. It's about playing an unexpected or unusual combination. Sometimes I want to celebrate people who overcome perceived shortcomings and expectations. Not because that dwarven wizard was as good as the high elf wizard because he had exactly the same advantages, but because while he had (minor) deficit in one area he made up for it in others.

In a future where everybody uses Tasha's, a dwarven wizard will no longer an unexpected or unusual combination, there will be no built-in prejudice against the build that I can prove to be false.

I want to acknowledge that while not everyone is the same it doesn't mean that they can't be special in a different way. My dwarven wizard wasn't quite as intelligent at lower levels, but he was a lot more durable and had a better AC.

There have always been ways to play a wizard that was optimized by the numbers, if Tasha's is used, there will no longer be a way to show that you can overcome built in expectations and prejudices. That just because you are not "as good" in one sense that you can't be just as successful by emphasizing different strengths.

I find two things wrong with your position here.

The first is that you are forgetting that just because you can change the scores to anything, doesn't mean you have to. A "post-Tasha" world can still have a dwarf with a +2 str/+2 con.

But the second is just that your position is self-contradictory. It isn't about playing a character with low stats, but if you aren't forced to have low stats you cannot possibly have a character whose arc is about overcoming expectations and prejudices? That is just flat out wrong. There is are at least three archetypes in literature built on the idea of actually being incredibly good at something, despite everyone thinking you are bad at it. And I mean across all literature, not game mechanics.

You are taking the potential for change, assuming it is permanent and will be used the way you expect, and then assuming that you are now more limited than you were before, because you are no longer going to be unique. Because, you can still play the exact same character. Only now it is a choice. You and me and everyone else gets to choose how they use these points, instead of being forced to.

And I see the potential for more unusual builds. I see the chance to finally tell some stories that I could really not tell before. I can play an Elven Aasimar, with that classic +2 Dex that elves traditionally have. I can play an Air Genasi Half-Orc with a +2 strength and the mantle of storms. I can play a body-building Elf, and a Demagogue Dwarf.

You see the death knell of playing strange combinations, I see those combinations flourishing. And time will prove one of us right (and likely neither of us, as most people will likely just play the PHB and not even utilize Tasha's at all)

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But the common thing around which change happens is ‘dwarf.’

if there is no dwarf, there is no point in asking ‘whaddya mean?’ Because nothing is surprising at some point.

If it’s not a weird combo, it’s just this skin and this class, ‘oh well.’ You can pair any class and any skin without repercussions.

but it’s true, the game changes and part of the reason it is exciting is because of some basis in shared lore.

edited for autocorrected nonsense!

What makes a dwarf a dwarf?

To me, they are more than a +2 Con score.

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I am with you. I was a bit more curious as to how the DM views the setting of the world, and its impact on these variant rules. I have had DM's say, Dragonborns don't exist. I am fine with that. And I am fine with a halfling having a 20 strength (although deep down I tend to ignore it rather than embrace it).
But my question really revolved around the DM's view of setting as much as anything. I doubt any DM here, especially those that favor keeping tropes, would care if a skill or attack bonus was +6 or +7. The only thing that matters to are min/maxers. And everyone knows half the reason variant rules exist is to appease the outcry of min/maxers. It is the game within a game. (And it is fun to play.)

Oh, in terms of setting I love this on so many levels, but the biggest one is frickin proficiencies.

I can build elves who are proficient in different crafting tools. I can make half-extraplanar versions of different races if I want (I don't think I do, because making that a human thing has interesting implications I think). I can do so much in making the setting feel so much freer and more alive with this. It is wonderful.

 

[Alzrius]

I don't know if this is shifting goal posts or if you were just exaggerating and that was not clear. But since my entire point was "yes, race makes a difference, even if it isn't as big as class" and you agree with that, I'm going to drop the point.

It wasn't even an exaggeration on my part. Insofar as I recall, I haven't expressed a sentiment of "PC race makes no difference whatsoever with regard to character." My point (in the scope of the larger discussion about Tolkien's influence) is that it's a comparatively minor overall part of the character compared to several other aspects.

And I disagree.

Even when we talk about the game derisively between ourselves we define it as "our pretend elf game". The ability to be a different race is baked too deep into the game to say with confidence that it would have grabbed the same cultural zeitgeist without that aspect.

I disagree strongly. It could just as easily have been "our pretend wizard game" or something similar. A related sentiment for describing D&D that I've heard is "you play Conan, I play Gandalf, and we team up to fight Dracula." And yes, I know what that says about Tolkien's perceived influence, though I think it works just as well if you substitute Merlin in there instead (as one early player did, though his character got a slight rename later on).

Maybe. But, being the first doesn't always mean you are going to be the one that lasts. Xerox was the first company to make a photo-copier. They took the world by storm to the point that using a photocopier is still referred to as "xeroxing" them.
Xerox nearly went out of business and sold of that property, and as far as I can tell, they no longer make or sell those machines.
DnD may have taken the scene by storm by having a cohesive framework of play, but if an equally good product had come along, with more options to fill in the "clear gaps" left by this hypothetical version of humans only, I think it would have been very easy for DnD to get dethroned.

I think that a close examination of the game's history suggests that to be unlikely. Even leaving aside my repeated references to Tunnels and Trolls (which came out one year after D&D, with easier-to-understand rules and more PC races), there have been numerous other games that have attempted to do "D&D but better," typically by filling some perceived niche. To date, they've never succeeded in dethroning it. The closest that they've come is when D&D tripped over itself, not because of any issue of races, but because of core game-play elements changing (e.g. Vancian spellcasting being removed) that split the fan-base.

In that case, it wasn't so much that something which had never been there wasn't added, but that something which was already there - and had become definitional - was removed. But since D&D set that standard to begin with, that wouldn't have been the case if Jack Vance's system of magic hadn't been used in the first place. If D&D can make such an idiosyncratic type of magic into a standard, then it's ability to define what fantasy tabletop RPGs were like is a lot more notable than I think a lot of people give it credit for. Ergo, I'm confident that it would have done just fine without Tolkien-esque PC races (especially since we've seen Middle-Earth-based RPGs come and go).

Sure, we are bouncing back and forth, and again, if your entire point was just how much influence Tolkien had, I can see it being fairly minimal.
DnD became its own thing fairly rapidly. It had a lot of "posts" laid down by tolkien, mostly kept into prominence by fans still insisting about them (see conversations about Gandalf, or "spell-less rangers") but it is overall, a fairly small percentage of the influences and more importantly the culture of DnD.

Thank you.

But I want to seperate out "races" from "Tolkien" because I think it was the mixing of those two ideas that led to this whole tangent.

I agree.

But you are getting into a black and white fallacy.
Maybe it didn't need "those races" maybe it just needed a few races. There is the idea of diminishing returns. In a game where there are three playable characters, adding two more is a huge upset to the game as it exists. In a game with 200 characters, adding two more is a blip on the radar, maybe.
Maybe they needed specific Tolkien names, they certainly didn't take the Tolkien ideas. But, maybe they just needed some recognizable names and a tie in to fantasy culture that people could identify. Maybe T&T was too late, maybe it was too small, maybe it had poor distribution, maybe the idea of three more races wasn't enough to shift the scales and make it over take DnD.
But, using it to insist that DnD could have risen like it did with only humans is not supported by anything except your own insistance of the that position.

First, that's more commonly called a "false dilemma," which I don't believe applies to what I said, and secondly, the entire speculation of what might or might not have happened if X had been different isn't provable, so it's all going to come down to insistence. The question is which insistence is more plausible, and for that we have to look at history and try and make guesses that don't assume too much. And even then, it's still speculation.

With regard to "needing" more than one race, I find that to be an unconvincing argument because except for enabling a closer imitation of Tolkien, the game works just fine without them. In fact, there aren't really any game-play roles (i.e. niches) that require non-human races to play. We can look at the fighter, the wizard, the cleric, and even the thief and see how they all contribute to a party dynamic, but that doesn't change no matter what race they are. If D&D had been all humans from the beginning, you could still have been Gray Mouser, Conan, Merlin, or Van Helsing.

How about that increased range for the longbow? That isn't exactly a small benefit. And if you are level 20, and you are using a steel longsword, you have a problem, maybe it is a Flametongue, which would be a 1d8+2d6, increasing it from 2.5 to 11.5. Maybe 9 points of damage isn't much at level 20, but it is a rather huge difference in practice. In fact, it is enough to make them more than capable of one-shotting a weak minion that might try and ambush them.
Sure, they are better off using the magic, but even having this option makes for a pretty big change in how you look at your character. You don't need a melee cantrip as badly, since you can actually use a decent melee weapon.

I'll be honest: the increased range for the longbow strikes me as being a very small benefit. Likewise, suggesting that the longsword is magical doesn't really work, because that leaves open a counter-scenario where the human wizard's dagger is magical also. It's why these sorts of things tend to require "all else being equal" qualifiers. Remember that we predicated this on a 3E or later stance, so it's not like particular magic items of a given weapon type will be hard to find.

And I can completely agree with that point, to a degree. I think that the races are a big part of the game, because they have been one of the two big aspects of player facing rules in the entire game. I build backstories based largely on how the race would interact with the world. I think about that aspect a lot, and it also effects world-building.

Right, and races do serve a worthwhile purpose in terms of what they bring to D&D; I'm not suggesting otherwise. I just don't think that, had that not been the case from the outset, the game would have suffered overly for it. Even a brief glance at popular fantasy fiction with human protagonists shows us that there's a lot that you can hang a backstory off of. Social class. Circumstances of birth. Ancestry. Being a prophesied hero. "Right place, right time." Former occupation. Race adds an option, but if that option were closed off there's still a lot to work with.

Is there no DnD without Tolkien? I doubt it. Maybe it wouldn't have looked exactly the same, but Tolkien was only one part, like you said, not the entirety of the game.

I agree completely.

 

[Scott Christian]

In fact, dwarves are famously stubborn, and not in a physical way, but in a mental one.

I am curious, do you not coincide the two? The PHB does - health, stamina, vital force. Two of those can be defined as mental.

I think being mentally tough makes for a hardy individual. Ask any long distance runner. And any powerlifter. Actually, just ask any high level athlete that relies on constitution. The first trait they will talk about is not their lung capacity, but their mind.

What is the most compelling aspect of the Dwarves who show up at the Baggins residence? People might give many answers. "They are tough and hardy" is not one of them.

I don't know about this. It could be how they would be described. They are able to be comfortable during the trip, while Bilbo craves for the comforts of home. Now, if you are talking about a small snapshot of them just in his home. I guess. But even then, their bellies and appetite had some constitution.

 

[Maxperson]

Actually, it's not. You see, there's a difference between things that "occur" in Tolkien and things that are uniquely Tolkien. Even granting him elves and dwarves as being completely his, a significant number of those are found in other writings, as well as myths and legends, apart from Tolkien, and so can't reasonably be attributed to his work alone.

So six out of twenty-three, not including the variants that are listed for various creatures (e.g. four different types of elementals, etc.). That's not bad, but nowhere close to a plurality.

They don't need to be uniquely Tolkien, though. Whether or not they aren't uniquely Tolkien, it was to Tolkien that they went to get those things. The massive Middle Earth theme going on with those 26 entries shows that.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

So: Do people think that ASIs assignable to any ability score serve a purpose that isn't covered by simply assigning a high number to that score in the first place?

 

[Chaosmancer]

I am curious, do you not coincide the two? The PHB does - health, stamina, vital force. Two of those can be defined as mental.

I think being mentally tough makes for a hardy individual. Ask any long distance runner. And any powerlifter. Actually, just ask any high level athlete that relies on constitution. The first trait they will talk about is not their lung capacity, but their mind.

Sure, you can go that way. But Constitution is generally physical well-being. The classic "low con" is a sickly person. But I've met sick people who were harder to bend than adamantium rods.

Just because two concepts can be related, does not mean that they must be related.

I don't know about this. It could be how they would be described. They are able to be comfortable during the trip, while Bilbo craves for the comforts of home. Now, if you are talking about a small snapshot of them just in his home. I guess. But even then, their bellies and appetite had some constitution.

I'd point to the fact that they are travelers, and used to the rigors of travel. They were hand-picked for a long journey, and they had not been living lives of luxury before that.

Meanwhile, Bilbo was literally on his "first step" leaving the comforts of his home for the first time ever.

I don't think it was "inborn natural toughness" as much as it was experience.

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So: Do people think that ASIs assignable to any ability score serve a purpose that isn't covered by simply assigning a high number to that score in the first place?

Yes

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

Yes

OK. Are you able to elucidate?

 

[Don Durito]

So: Do people think that ASIs assignable to any ability score serve a purpose that isn't covered by simply assigning a high number to that score in the first place?

Probably not. In 13th Age races give +2 to a choice of two ability scores and classes do the same. You can choose one +2 from your race and one +2 from your class.

I ended up deciding that really this just added an unneccessary step to character creation and just increased the points availabe to buy ability scores - dropping the +2 altogether.