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.

 

[Remathilis]

They are both game terms in A5e, and easy enough to understand as game terms.

So you could call them "humpfalumps" and "woozles" and it wouldn't change anytime?

 

[Micah Sweet]

So you could call them "humpfalumps" and "woozles" and it wouldn't change anytime?

Is that the inevitable conclusion of my words? Have fun with your strawman.

 

[Dire Bare]

Apologies on the skills, I completely forgot 4e made that change as well. I know that Pathfinder consolidated others as well in the variant, but I didn't have the time to look into those skills at the time. However, I'm not sure I'd call Epic Destiny capstones really equivalent. They tend to be a lot more generic than the specifically class-based capstones of PF1e.




Yeah, so, I called it lazy design and then also have other examples of lazy design. I hoped that context would be enough, but to further clarify, basically I was evoking a similar point to Corinnguard. The change to Species from Race is one with no mechanical difference; ergo, the laziest way to solve the problem (take the label off, stick a new one on, call it good).

By comparison, in PF2e, Paizo made a change from Race to Ancestry. When they did so, they evaluated the mechanics and made the change fit by adjusting them and designing them around the new name; it feels like your Ancestry and Lineage aren't just called that because the names were pulled out of a hat to offend the minimum number of people, but because they were a better way to evoke the feelings Paizo wanted from their playable critters while also respecting that "Race" is a charged term that deserved the axe it got.

Similarly, the change in TCoE to "pick whatever attributes you want" was lazy design. Actually, to call it that would be too kind. It wasn't design. It was saying, "you can do whatever you want," and not providing any actual mechanical rules or anything. By comparison, the shift of attributes to Backgrounds is a much more interesting mechanical solution, and one that actually has a mechanical solution. The space in TCoE was essentially wasted, because telling DMs that they can handwave and DM fiat things is not providing rules and options to players or DMs, it's just padding the word count in your splatbook.

Except that they did change the mechanics of race/species. Not by a lot, but they did.

Lazy? No. A design choice? Yes.

The 2024 rules are designed to push the game forward, but without leaving the existing 5E game behind. So changes overall were on the level of "tweaks" rather than full on revisions.

Personally, I would have liked a more thorough redesign of race/species, but I understand why WotC didn't go that route.

 

[Remathilis]

Is that the inevitable conclusion of my words? Have fun with your strawman.

You're saying heritage has a distinct meaning in the game that is unrelated to its normal definition. So if you replace it with a made up word, it shouldn't matter since its in-game meaning is unchanged and its normal definition is unimportant.

 

[Micah Sweet]

You're saying heritage has a distinct meaning in the game that is unrelated to its normal definition. So if you replace it with a made up word, it shouldn't matter since its in-game meaning is unchanged and its normal definition is unimportant.

I don't see it as something worth complaining about.

 

[Remathilis]

I don't see it as something worth complaining about.

So don't. But that won't stop me.

 

[Micah Sweet]

So don't. But that won't stop me.

I won't. But in my experience such a path is bleak and unrewarding.

 

[Corinnguard]

No offense, but the terms heritage and culture are synonymous. Heritage is something you gain by the status of your birth like status or community. You inherit it. It's not who you are though. If I was born in Mississippi, I can talk about my southern heritage, but if I'm born in Minnesota, I can't despite having the same parents. An elf can't stop being an elf nor is his condition of being an elf reliant on where and when he was born, he's an elf biologically, and that is species, not heritage.

Heritage and Culture in A5e are presented as two different sets of mechanical traits. Heritage covers things like Age, Size, Speed, Senses (like Darkvision) and a unique signature trait that is unique to that particular heritage (like a Dragonborn's breath weapon or an Elf's trance ability. Culture otoh provides you with a number of proficiencies (skill, tool, weapon and armor) and one or more languages (including sign language). Sometimes culture can also provide your character with resistance to particular damage type or one or more spells.

Another way to look at Heritage and Culture in A5e is to think of them as Nature and Nurture. Biologically an elf is still an elf. But if that elf was raised was by dwarves, they will be learning things as a dwarf would, not an elf.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Heritage and Culture in A5e are presented as two different sets of mechanical traits. Heritage covers things like Age, Size, Speed, Senses (like Darkvision) and a unique signature trait that is unique to that particular heritage (like a Dragonborn's breath weapon or an Elf's trance ability. Culture otoh provides you with a number of proficiencies (skill, tool, weapon and armor) and one or more languages (including sign language). Sometimes culture can also provide your character with resistance to particular damage type or one or more spells.

Another way to look at Heritage and Culture in A5e is to think of them as Nature and Nurture. Biologically an elf is still an elf. But if that elf was raised was by dwarves, they will be learning things as a dwarf would, not an elf.

@Remathilis seems to want to complain about the terms they used, not what they represent (which as I've stated are quite clear IMO).

 

[Remathilis]

I won't. But in my experience such a path is bleak and unrewarding.

The irony is so thick Alanis Morrisette wants residuals.