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."

 

[Michael Linke]

One of the most iconic Hybrid species characters of all time is Star Trek's Spock. He's the iconic Vulcan, and doesn't seem to have abilities much different from any other Vulcan, even if he's part Human. So in some ways as a D&D One playtest example, someone just picked "Vulcan" for their character abilities and then wrote how they were Part-Vulcan Part-Human in the characters concept. Roughly the same thing applies for Deana Troi who's Part-Human Part-Betazoid, in that she just used the "Betazoid" abilities.

Hard to say since we see so few non-human Vulcans in classic Star Trek.

 

[Mercador]

Can you elaborate on that?

@Marandahir got it right already but from my native language, "species" are used to talk about animal species, I wonder how they'll translate that. From my perspective, "species" is a more offensive word than "races" but it might be a matter of translation.

 

[Micah Sweet]

One of the most iconic Hybrid species characters of all time is Star Trek's Spock. He's the iconic Vulcan, and doesn't seem to have abilities much different from any other Vulcan, even if he's part Human. So in some ways as a D&D One playtest example, someone just picked "Vulcan" for their character abilities and then wrote how they were Part-Vulcan Part-Human in the characters concept. Roughly the same thing applies for Deana Troi who's Part-Human Part-Betazoid, in that she just used the "Betazoid" abilities.

Full Betazoids are demonstrably stronger telepathically than Deanna Troy, her mother being the prime example.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

Hard to say since we see so few non-human Vulcans in classic Star Trek.

T'Pol and Tuvok who are both full-on Vulcans and regular characters in their respective series don't seem to be that much different, from what Spock can do. And one can argue in the character creation of B'elanna Torres the player picked "Human" over "Klingon".

 

[Marandahir]

I'm curious which other words were nuked due to what came up during... 'The term "species" was chosen in close coordination with multiple outside cultural consultants.' I assume that many of them were tried out.

Just because they chose it in "close coordination with multiple outside cultural consultants" doesn't mean most of the alternatives are nuked or that they wouldn't accept changing it.

They want a dialogue with us about it, so come 12/21/22, we should be prepared to give our thoughts to them in the OD&D UA #3 survey feedback window. Their outside cultural consultants might even have pushed toward a different option, but WotC decided that Species was "good enough" for their cultural consultants (i.e., NET least-hated option by their panel of 2+ consultants) to go forward with. Maybe each one preferred a different term but the other consultant(s) though that term was awful, and none of them hated Species as much as they hated the other's pick of Ancestry or Heritage or Lineage or Origin or People or Tribe or Thingy or whatever.

Species may have been the Nash Equilibrium of replacements for Race - when considering the limited sample size of however many (but clearly at least 2) cultural consultants that WotC hired.

That sounded more cynical than I meant it, though. I'm optimistic that the cultural consultants are good people who genuinely make the game better. People have different opinions, though, and the player-base sample size could encourage them to go back to said cultural consultants and say, "hey, a lot of survey respondents feel upset by the term species; it suggests their Drow character is somehow lesser than other Elves when we call it a subspecies. The general suggestions were Ancestry, Heritage, and Lineage. Can we review those terms again and why we didn't go that way earlier?"

Maybe the cultural consultants will shoot them down again, or the general response will be something that wasn't even considered previously. Maybe there would be a change of mind. Or maybe they'd bring in new consultants and broaden their cultural consultant sample size. There are a bunch of options and this isn't a closed door that we need to accept Species because they said it was closely coordinated and this is what they came up with.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

"Species" is the word that to a modern ear means the thing D&D always (primarily) meant by "race". Trying to keep a separate in-game definition of "race" based on quasi-archaic usage in fantasy, when "race" has become so many people's favorite word in the 21st century just isn't viable, even with decades of prior usage in the game. Sometimes the writing is on the wall.

 

[Mercador]

They should just use ancestry. Yeah, Pathfinder has it. So what? Ancestry fits fantasy a little better than species. We can give them feedback, the term isn’t set in stone yet.

I agree. There's no shame using the best alternative (in my opinion), Paizo have no rights on the word, it's just part of the language.

 

[Marandahir]

@Marandahir got it right already but from my native language, "species" are used to talk about animal species, I wonder how they'll translate that. From my perspective, "species" is a more offensive word than "races" but it might be a matter of translation.

Thanks for your input, Mercador, I was looking forward to hearing your response and am glad I didn't stop you from responding when I jumped in.

This just goes to show how messily-entangled linguistics and biology and anthropology etc are! What is offensive in one language or culture (consideration of humans as a type of animal) is readily accepted in another, or vice versa. That's before we get into the idea of considering some people a species and others just human, which is the slippery slope I spoke to in my tangential concern. Your point raises how it can be offensive to even consider human(oid)s as animals. I get that - it's weird that a huge list of character options are in Monsters of the Multiverse (and Volo's Guide to Monsters had a similar issue, as does of course the Monster Manual by listing off PC-playable non-monsters with monster stat blocks). It's a dangerous sea of otherisms, and that's what racism bubbles out of. We need to be VERY careful.

I could imagine that if they go forward with Species as their final decision, they might have to change the word usage entirely for some foreign-translated editions lest they run into this sort of offense taken.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Removal of race: good.

Species? Meh. Give me ancestry or heritage -- or even "people"; species causes me to ask questions about interbreeding and biology and I really dno't want to deal with that in my fantasy game.

Of course, now we need to deal with specist terms like dwarf or halfling ... why have a people defined by their relation in size to another people?

Alternate solution: It's just class. Dwarf is a class, elf is a class ...

 

[Scribe]

Does the word Ilk have any bad connotations?

It's not a pretty word, so if it doesnt, it should.