D&D (2024) (+) New Edition Changes for Inclusivity (discuss possibilities)

[BookTenTiger]

I've been thinking about this a lot!

While I understand the idea of taking the setting out of the Player's Handbook, I do not know that it would improve inclusiveness. Because dwarves, elves, etc. are not real, any depiction of them is going to call on the author's biases of humans. If we take setting out of the description, then the only thing that defines dwarves, elves, and so on is their difference from humans. And in order to describe how something is different from humans, we then have to have an assumption of what a baseline human is.

I wonder what it would look like to go in the opposite direction. Have a strong setting in the PHB, with notes or columns noting that this is just one setting, and that much of the mechanics and descriptions are written to fit the setting. Then you could have parts of the DMG or other books have easy templates to apply in order to adapt the book to other settings ("when running a Dark Sun campaign, apply the following mechanical changes...")

In my dream 6e, we have a brand new setting. When creating characters, the creation process goes like this: culture -> background -> class -> lineage.

The new setting would have a few distinct cultures (military city-state, coastal island-hoppers, magic forest-dwellers, etc) in which live people of different lineages. The PHB would also include rules on how to create your own culture (like creating your own background). The culture grants proficiencies, and some bonuses.

After choosing a culture, you would then choose your background, your class, and your lineage. Based on all these you would have certain ability score bonuses, proficiencies, etc. Having those mechanics are a fun part of the game, and introduce a bit of the game in character creation itself. However, there could also be side mechanics for more of a "choose your own" bonus system.

Following this process, you could have an elf and a halfling both from the same sea-faring culture. They have proficiencies with ships and navigator's tools, maybe advantage on Athletics checks when swimming, a shared language... Their different lineages, however, provide some other narrative and mechanical truths (elves live to be hundreds of years old, halflings are lucky, etc).

That would be my idea!

 

[Coroc]

...
-- and those 50+ year olds who are hostile to anyone playing any character who is not precisely like a character who was a featured protagonist in Lord of the Rings.
....

O rly?

While I might like a game with characters resembling those of LotR, you paint us older guys a bit singleminded.
Get the life experience of someone over 50, then you would realize the (absolutely wrong) stereotyping of your rant.

I bet out of all characters I played in TTRPGs about 10% might have some resemblance of a LotR character, but why do I even try to justify myself against your totally black and white thinking.

You wonder why you get "hostile" reactions, we have a saying here it is roughly translated to English:
"Like you shout into the forest, the forest shouts back at you" I hope you get the meaning.

 

[Deset Gled]

The game would become more inclusive if the Game Master were renamed "Game Manager" and if monsters were called "creatures".

I am familiar with some tech types getting away from the "master/slave" naming convention. I think I first saw that over a decade ago. But I haven't run across anything yet that pushes for removal of the word "master" by itself. I was under the impression that the presence of "slave" is what made the convention improper, as "master" by itself has a lot more (non-racist) uses. IIRC, some of the "master/slave" alternatives still use "master/minion" or similar.

Can you expand a bit on why Game Master (or Dungeon Master) is problematic for you?

 

[BookTenTiger]

Thinking more about tying Ability Score Bonuses to lineages (I'm just going to use that word), or Attacks to Ability Scores..

I think some of the conflict comes from the dual nature of D&D as both a tabletop game and a storytelling tool.

I love how D&D facilitates incredible storytelling. There's something absolutely magic in the way a bunch of people can hold this shared story in their minds and memories... I think we all know that.

At the same time, I also love how D&D is a game. The mechanics of D&D are fun! I'm playing as a dwarven wizard, because I wanted to be a cousin to two of the other characters (dwarf cleric and dwarf fighter). Because a dwarf does not get any bonuses to Intelligence, it has been a fun mechanical challenge to figure out what kinds of spells I should cast, what benefits I do get from being a dwarf, etc. That's a part of the game, too.

So I agree that we should free Ability Score Bonuses from archaic ideas of eugenics and race... but at the same time I would enjoy a game that includes an aspect of gameplay in character creation.

 

[Argyle King]

The second question is answered by: "if removing the ability adjustments made the races the exactly same, why have races at all? You could just re-create all of them using variant humans!" But there's more to races than ASIs - and most of the specific features (ie trance, stonecunnning) are more distinctive and therefore do a better job making races feel distinct from each other. Just geting rid of the ability adjustment does not, when I've used a houserule to do that, make the races all feel the same.

BUT, if we're looking at this purely from an inclusivity standpoint, it's a distinction without difference. Either racial features promote race-essentialist thinking or they don't. Ability adjustments aren't significantly different form other features in this regard. You could take that to mean the entire concept of races as a game mechanic is problematic, and your logic would be both valid and reasonable, but the only solution is to remove races as a game mechanic entirely, which I think crosses into not-D&D for a lot of people.

You could remove racial ability adjustments as a compromise option, because the other features tend to be more overtly magical/inhuman, but like most compromise option this doesn't really make anyone truly happy.

On the first point: there's whole other threads about this, but the gameplay advantage would be in opening up more 'viable' character concepts. Changing racial ASI's is one way to do this, and there are some really simple ways to implement it. But that's not really an inclusivity argument.

I think I both agree and disagree.

Yes, I agree that there are more interesting differences than +X to stat to differentiate "races."
(Indeed, other games I play focus much more on those other differences, with the +X game found in D&D being uncommon.)

On the other hand, there are already times when I feel as though there is little to differentiate certain "races" (or weapons or various other things) from each other in D&D.

I think there is also a potentially valid argument to be had for considering how connected/divorced the mechanics are from the fiction. Can the tortoise defeat the hare in a race? In fiction yes, with mitigating factors. What does the story look like on a drag strip with a straight roll of the dice, and how does that hypothetical outcome match player expectations of the fiction?

Perhaps a little more granularity in character creation and advancement might help...? I don't know. I don't believe there are many who want to go back toward the complexity of 3rd Edition, but I do believe there is a lot of room between that and where 5th currently resides. I certainly wouldn't be opposed to a few more moving parts to allow for more character features which are more interesting than +X to something; in fact, I'd like that in regards to both characters and magic items.

I'm completely on board with inclusivity. At the same time, are there areas of design conflict at which certain choices may go against what is accepted as D&D and/or established expectations of fantasy?

On a personal level, I don't have any sort of emotional connection to what's regarded as "true D&D" and keeping it. I regularly play other games exactly because they do things which aren't that. Even so, from a design and branding standpoint, I believe it to be something to consider.

Inclusivity wasn't a problem for newer versions of Star Wars, Ghostbusters, and so on, but figuring out how to add or better highlight those things without undermining the core spirit of what constituted the perceived brand of those products was. I believe that designing a new edition of D&D would have similar challenges.

 

[ART!]

Setting already determines culture, with the cultural details in the core rules being very generic and subject to setting-specific changes. I do, however, think it would be good to separate culture from race. Instead of the dwarf race granting proficiency in axes, hammers, and mason’s tools, make a “clan crafter” background or whatever that does so. Maybe give long-lives races a second background or something.

Changing the depictions of various monsterous races and removing the associations between such races and shamanism go hand-in-hand with removing inherent alignments for humanoids and making culture more setting-specific. Definitely good moves to make though. Along with these changes, I would like to see more player options for traditionally monstrous races, and for those options to be balanced as any other PC race option would be.

Detaching proficiencies from race would near the top of my list of relatively quick-and-easy changes.

Folk would probably be the best term and Lineage could be the Subraces. Or just keep Subrace really.

The term "subrace" always seems way too close to the term "sub-human" to me, but regardless if we aren't using "race" then I'd say definitely lose "subrace" as well.

It gets pretty far from what people traditionally think of as "D&D", but having "racial" distinctions come down to just appearance descriptors is not a terrible idea. Is the Sunlight Sensitivity of drow purely a function of biology, is it magically inherent, or does each individual develop it just from living their lives underground? It might make sense to have a base, descriptive-only, version of each "race", followed by common "racial" builds (complete with ASI's, features, and maybe even proficiencies.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

I don't think so. A bad flavor is still a flavor. I just want to see some ideas promoting inclusion that make the game more interesting rather than more generic. I want to see what that would look like.

You don't think so what? That flavor is a matter of opinion, or that I, and others, like some of the changes that have been discussed?

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

If ability scores are divorced from Ancestry/Lineage/etc selection, what effect would that choice have on character creation and why does the choice remain relevant?

If dwarves are functionally identical to elves, is there is a reason for both to exist?

Why would they be functionally identical? Dwarves would still have Poison Resistance, Elves would have Trance, etc. It would only be the ASIs that are more freely moved around, and this would promote more character freedom when they make their characters.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

5E has plenty of inclusivity. How does changing any thing like race adjustments to floating adjustments, verbiage changes, etc promote inclusivity. IF you don't like a penalty to playing a monster race don't play it. If you can't stand some of the verbiage of monsters/races/encounters change in your world.
NO one here has given me a good reason to change the racial adjustments. Some have given good reasons to change some of the verbiage due to stereotypes.

5e is inclusive, but that doesn't mean it's perfect. There's almost always room for improvement. I mentioned the changing ability scores from their racial attachments because WotC mentioned it in their D&D and Inclusivity announcement. WotC seems to agree that it's an inclusivity problem to have races attached to ability score increases. The verbiage changes promotes inclusivity because certain parts of the 5e rule books describes Orcs in ways that mirror the language used by White Supremacists, and getting rid of that language would make the game more inclusive.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

The game would become more inclusive if the Game Master were renamed "Game Manager" and if monsters were called "creatures".

Um, why and how? Does having Dungeon Master being the title for the person who runs the game bar anyone from the game? I also think that the Monster Manual did a good job at defining what "monster" means in 5e.