D&D (2024) One D&D Permanently Removes The Term 'Race'

In line with many other tabletop roleplaying games, such as Pathfinder or Level Up, One D&D is removing the term 'race'. Where Pathfinder uses 'Ancestry' and Level Up uses 'Heritage', One D&D will be using 'Species'.

Moving On From 'Race' in the 2024 Core Rulebooks

We understand "race" is a problematic term that has had prejudiced links between real world people and the fantasy peoples of D&D worlds.

www.dndbeyond.com

In a blog post, WotC announced that "We have made the decision to move on from using the term "race" everywhere in One D&D, and we do not intend to return to that term."

 

[Olrox17]

I agree, but I fear what the translators would do. Species isn't better, it can even be worse but I doubt the translator will keep the original term. He might translate species the easiest way, and it will sound very strange.

Also, it establishes elfs and humans are different species. When we described them as race, it made distinction between orcs, elves and humans unacceptable, by analogy with the real world term. I am not sure I like the implication of having them being different species.

Translators will be probably be on their own, using their best judgement.
I suspect that, in many cases, they may just keep using the translated term they have been always using, unless WotC puts its foot down and forces a change of terms, which could be really bad: let the translators do their job, they are the experts.

Yeah I don't really like species either, for the reasons you listed and more (feels too modern and science-y).

 

[jasper]

If you seriously have to ask that question, I doubt your ability to engage in this discussion in a productive way.

"Breed" has been used in the real world in ways equally as icky as "race" has. Calling different categories of sentient, playable D&D creatures different breeds has the same negative connotations, if not worse ones, than "race" does. There are few people that are actually offended by the term "race" being used. There are a lot of people that think it's a bad term and evokes bad themes, and a small part of the community that is actually offended, but most of the people that object to the use of the term aren't actually personally offended by its use. There are, however, a lot of people that would be genuinely offended by "breed" due to bigots using the term to denigrate them in real life, and it's even less accurate than "race" was.

My cat breeds, American Short hair. American Long Hair, Maine Coon, Persian, and Bob Tail. And I never heard of word "Breed" being used in a bad way. But thank you, you did follow up with more than one sentence to explain your view.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

My cat breeds, American Short hair. American Long Hair, Maine Coon, Persian, and Bob Tail. And I never heard of word "Breed" being used in a bad way. But thank you, you did follow up with more than one sentence to explain your view.

Racists have called mixed-race people "half-breeds" for centuries. The word is definitely one of the worst suggested replacements I've seen on any site that's been discussing this topic.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

My cat breeds, American Short hair. American Long Hair, Maine Coon, Persian, and Bob Tail. And I never heard of word "Breed" being used in a bad way. But thank you, you did follow up with more than one sentence to explain your view.

Real question: how would sound half-breed to call a mix of Elf and Human? I think it sounds vaguely offensive, but I really am not familiar enough with English to be sure.

 

[DEFCON 1]

My cat breeds, American Short hair. American Long Hair, Maine Coon, Persian, and Bob Tail. And I never heard of word "Breed" being used in a bad way. But thank you, you did follow up with more than one sentence to explain your view.

Racists have called mixed-race people "half-breeds" for centuries. The word is definitely one of the worst suggested replacements I've seen on any site that's been discussing this topic.

There's a guy who used to work for the CBS television network in the USA for the National Football League named Jimmy "The Greek" Snyder... whose entire career was brought down due to him using the word "bred" in regards to human beings. That was my very first recognizable exposure to what we now call "Cancelling".

Yes... using "breed" and all of its alternate word forms does have exceedingly negative connotations when used regarding people.

 

[glass]

I mean, the Origins playtest explicitly says your character can be half-anything.

Which is all well and fine, but nothing about that implies that (for example) giant/halfling hybrids come about by mummy halfling and daddy storm giant getting up close and personal. How would that even work?

Try "What kind of folk are you?" instead.

Still sounds weird to me, and more to the point is still too ambiguous.

As for "improve society", what the hell? That's obviously not something a one-word change in D&D is going to do

I disagree; it definitely will improve society. Only a tiny amount, but every little helps. Less racism is always good.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Which is all well and fine, but nothing about that implies that (for example) giant/halfling hybrids come about by mummy halfling and daddy storm giant getting up close and personal. How would that even work?

It doesn't say anything about different creature types being able to mate. It just mentions that the humanoid races can. And, as for the question of how that even works for most of the combinations, the answer, as usual, is magic.

 

[DEFCON 1]

The way I look at it... I got used to the word 'Warlord' even though I didn't really like it and preferred a different one. I'll get used to whatever word WotC goes with for this replacement too.

 

[Cadence]

As an aside, humanoid only goes back to 1870 in the OED and seems really science and sci-fi.

 

[Umbran]

If everything in a world can commonly have any trait and regularly interbreed with everything

So, it would really be good if you checked what I actually said again. Specifically, I said that you could have whatever arbitrary rules you want.

You don't want everything commonly breed with everything, then don't!

Note, again, that the PHB is for making player characters. Indeed, in 5e, NPCs don't use the same rules as PCs for creation. So, the world population doesn't have to work that way.

The point is to let a player have the kind of character they want, without giving them grief over it.