RPG Evolution: Do We Still Need "Race" in D&D?

The term "race" is a staple of fantasy that is now out of sync with modern usage. With Pathfinder shifting from "race" to "ancestry" in its latest edition, it raises the question: should fantasy games still use it?

“Race” and Modern Parlance​

We previously discussed the challenges of representing real-life cultures in a fantasy world, with African and Asian countries being just two examples. The discussion becomes more complicated with fantasy "races"—historically, race was believed to be determined by the geographic arrangement of populations. Fantasy gaming, which has its roots in fantasy literature, still uses the term “race” this way.

Co-creator of D&D Gary Gygax cited R.E. Howard's Conan series as an influence on D&D, which combines Lovecraftian elements with sword and sorcery. Howard's perceptions may have been a sign of the times he lived in, but it seems likely they influenced his stories. Robert B. Marks explains just how these stereotypes manifested in Conan's world:

The young, vibrant civilizations of the Hyborian Age, like Aquilonia and Nemedia, are white - the equivalent of Medieval Europe. Around them are older Asiatic civilizations like Stygia and Vendhya, ancient, decrepit, and living on borrowed time. To the northwest and the south are the barbarian lands - but only Asgard and Vanaheim are in any way Viking. The Black Kingdoms are filled with tribesmen evoking the early 20th century vision of darkest Africa, and the Cimmerians and Picts are a strange cross between the ancient Celts and Native Americans - and it is very clear that the barbarians and savages, and not any of the civilized people or races, will be the last ones standing.

Which leads us to the other major fantasy influence, author J.R.R. Tolkien. David M. Perry explains in an interview with Helen Young:

In Middle Earth, unlike reality, race is objectively real rather than socially constructed. There are species (elves, men, dwarves, etc.), but within those species there are races that conform to 19th-century race theory, in that their physical attributes (hair color, etc.) are associated with non-physical attributes that are both personal and cultural. There is also an explicit racial hierarchy which is, again, real in the world of the story.

The Angry GM elaborates on why race and culture were blended in Tolkien's works:

The thing is, in the Tolkienverse, at least, in the Lord of the Rings version of the Tolkienverse (because I can’t speak for what happened in the Cinnabon or whatever that other book was called), the races were all very insular and isolated. They didn’t deal with one another. Race and culture went hand in hand. If you were a wood elf, you were raised by wood elves and lived a thoroughly wood elf lifestyle until that whole One Ring issue made you hang out with humans and dwarves and halflings. That isolation was constantly thrust into the spotlight. Hell, it was a major issue in The Hobbit.

Given the prominence of race in fantasy, it's not surprising that D&D has continued the trend. That trend now seems out of sync with modern parlance; in 1951, the United Nations officially declared that the differences among humans were "insignificant in relation to the anthropological sameness among the peoples who are the human race."

“Race” and Game Design​

Chris Van Dyke's essay on race back in 2008 explains how pervasive "race" is in D&D:

Anyone who has played D&D has spent a lot of time talking about race – “Racial Attributes,” “Racial Restrictions,” “Racial Bonuses.” Everyone knows that different races don’t get along – thanks to Tolkien, Dwarves and Elves tend to distrust each other, and even non-gamers know that Orcs and Goblins are, by their very nature, evil creatures. Race is one of the most important aspects of any fantasy role-playing game, and the belief that there are certain inherent genetic and social distinctions between different races is built into every level of most (if not all) Fantasy Role-Playing Games.

Racial characteristics in D&D have changed over time. Basic Dungeons & Dragons didn't distinguish between race and class for non-humans, such that one played a dwarf, elf, or halfling -- or a human fighter or cleric. The characteristics of race were so tightly intertwined that race and profession were considered one.

In Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, the changes became more nuanced, but not without some downsides on character advancement, particularly in allowing “demihumans” to multiclass but with level limits preventing them from exceeding humanity, who had unlimited potential (but could only dual-class).

With Fifth Edition, ability penalties and level caps have been removed, but racial bonuses and proficiencies still apply. The Angry GM explains why this is a problem:

In 5E, you choose a race and a class, but you also choose a background. And the background represents your formative education and socio-economic standing and all that other stuff that basically represents the environment in which you were raised. The racial abilities still haven’t changed even though there is now a really good place for “cultural racial abilities” to live. So, here’s where the oddity arises. An elf urchin will automatically be proficient with a longsword and longbow, two weapons that requires years of training to even become remotely talent with, but a human soldier does not get any automatic martial training. Obviously, in both cases, class will modify that. But in the life of your character, race happens first, then background, and only later on do you end up a member of a class. It’s very quirky.

Perhaps this is why Pathfinder decided to take a different approach to race by shifting to the term “ancestry”:

Beyond the narrative, there are many things that have changed, but mostly in the details of how the game works. You still pick a race, even though it is now called your ancestry. You still decide on your class—the rulebook includes all of the core classes from the First Edition Core Rulebook, plus the alchemist. You still select feats, but these now come from a greater variety of sources, such as your ancestry, your class, and your skills.

"Ancestry" is not just a replacement for the word “race.” It’s a fluid term that requires the player to make choices at character creation and as the character advances. This gives an opportunity to express human ethnicities in game terms, including half-elves and half-orcs, without forcing the “subrace” construct.

The Last Race​

It seems likely that, from both a modern parlance and game design perspective, “race” as it is used today will fall out of favor in fantasy games. It’s just going to take time. Indigo Boock sums up the challenge:

Fantasy is a doubled edged sword. Every human culture has some form of fantasy, we all have some sort of immortal ethereal realm where our elven creatures dwell. There’s always this realm that transcends culture. Tolkien said, distinct from science fiction (which looks to the future), fantasy is to feel like one with the entire universe. Fantasy is real, deep human yearning. We look to it as escapism, whether we play D&D, or Skyrim, or you are like myself and write fantasy. There are unfortunately some old cultural tropes that need to be discarded, and it can be frustratingly slow to see those things phased out.

Here's hoping other role-playing games will follow Pathfinder's lead in how treats its fantasy people in future editions.

 

[Riley37]

It's not? Are you sure you're not descended from Pedants whose lineage can be traced back to Roman times?

Depending on what emerges from the playtest, I might have Pedant Ancestry features even with another Origin.

On another hand, if by Roman times, you mean the Republic and/or Empire (roughly 500 BCE to 400 CE), at that point the exemplar of the lineage was a "paedagogans" (plural "paedagogantes"), in the sense of a teacher in an school for children. This evolved into pedant, in the sense of "person who trumpets minor points of learning", sometime around the 1590s.

On yet another hand, if by "Roman times" you mean my semester at the Intercollegiate Center for Classical Studies, then yes, since the ICCS campus is on the Gianicolo hilltop, and I descended from the Gianicolo, into downtown Rome, many times.

 

[Riley37]

That's one reason why I find all the people screaming about Trump being Hitler and a Nazi to be so offensive.

Side topic, and again, personal, if you're willing to honor the question, but since you say so...

You find these people offensive?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...607e0e265ce_story.html?utm_term=.278e3d7d2ab8

And these ones?

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/media/92487408-132.html

Do you perhaps prefer these ones?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_German_National_Jews

 

[Riley37]

You have very persuasively argued that WotC should immediately cease to print the swastika symbol in all their books.

By no means! They should work with Darren Watts and his upcoming new version of "Golden Age Champions", which already plans for "Mutants and Masterminds" compatibility. That will include swastikas, just as "Raiders of the Lost Ark" prominently featured swastikas, as did "Return to Castle Wolfenstein". If you arrive late to a GAC game, just as the Big Fight starts, and you're not clear on who your character should punch: you can't tell good guys from bad guys by skin color, nor ear shape, nor by who has fangs, but anyone wearing a swastika is a valid target.

Meaning varies by context. My objection to Mein Kampf isn't its use of the word "Jew" (or "Jude"). It's the MK *perspective* on "Jew" that really rubs me the wrong way. And it's the GAC *perspective* on "swastika" that I'd like to see more of. Which is rather different than a swastika painted on the door of a synagogue or a mosque; that's rude.

But then you just sort of waved your hands and said, "the word 'race' is like that". When it... isn't.

I waved my hands? Pictures or it didn't happen. Strong claims require strong evidence!

You are sure punching the snot out of that straw man argument, "no one should ever say the word race". Wait, lemme quote: "this writer uses 'race', so they're racist". I don't think you're gonna get much more XP from driving that straw golem further into negative HP. Also: FNORD!

(I say fnord, sir, but I do not call you fnord, sir.)

If you wanted to understand my position on use of "race" in P2, you'd get that from posts 993, 995 and 1023. (See also 1004 by TomTiBatonti.) As long as you're fixated on the strawman, then I can lead you to water but I can't make you drink.

Also, as you may have guessed, I'm generally on the same page as DannyAlcatraz and Afrodyte. Birds of a feather... no, wait, that's not what we are. All we have in common is that we're each somewhere on the Niemoller Scale of whether they come for you first, or second, or later, or in the endgame. Holocaust, eugenics, Trail of Tears, Middle Passage, Inquisition, an Gorta Mór - different parties, same dance. But if none of your people were ever invited to any of those parties, then you'd have to cultivate understanding *across difference of perspective*, to understand at all. (Which you totally can... you clearly have the INT minimum, and then some... whenever you choose to.)

τῇ καλλίστῃ !

 

[Maxperson]

Side topic, and again, personal, if you're willing to honor the question, but since you say so...

You find these people offensive?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...607e0e265ce_story.html?utm_term=.278e3d7d2ab8

And these ones?

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/media/92487408-132.html

Do you perhaps prefer these ones?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_German_National_Jews

For the first two yes, I find them offensive. There's nothing sacred or saintlike about being a survivor that prevents them from using a past horror to their current political advantage. For the last one, I don't understand why you even put it here.

 

[Aldarc]

Sorry that I missed this.

Close to "evolution". Its usage extends well beyond supremacist discourse. People often talk or write about race without claiming that some races are superior to others, just as people often talk or write about gender and religion without claiming that one of those things are superior to the others. When I see objections to "race" used in a non-supremacist context, my reaction is the same as when I see creationists tying any mention of "evolution" to Nazism.

The bold is an irrelevant non-point. Just because the usage of "race" extends beyond racial supremacist discourse does not mean that this implies that everything about "race" as a term is otherwise hunky-dory and harmless to use. People often talk about "race," because those socially placed in certain categories are repeatedly getting shafted by socio-politicial realities regardless of whether (1) race is a meaningful concept, and (2) they are nominally supposed to receive equal status and privileges. We still talk about "race," because the racists of the past got to dictate its initial terms of discourse. So a lot of "race" talk exists for the expressed purpose of its deconstruction, dismantling, and invalidation rather than its preservation as a valid concept. Like who in the flying flippity-floppity do-dah would ever ask anyone "What is your race?" outside of the context of fantasy gaming, the US Census Bureau,* or racists? Our hobby has perpetuated an antiquated term.

Furthermore, racism still exists outside of racial supremacist discourse, and we do a huge disservice to combating racism when we relegate the harshness of racism strictly to something that "those" extremists or supremacists do. It's trying to get away scot-free of any of our own culpability in perpetuating racism as individuals and in our socio-economic and political systems.

And it's precisely for this reason that "benign racism" is some of the most difficult racism to combat, because people think that racism is something that extremists do rather than something they perpetuate through their own behavior, words, and deeds. Going back to my earlier example of the racism in Warcraft: I don't think, for example, that most of the creators of Warcraft's world of Azeroth are intentionally racists who think white Europeans are superior to Afro-Caribbean and Mesoamerican peoples and cultures. But they nevertheless have incorporated racist tropes into their world as part of their "races." Again, non-racial supremacist use of the word "race" does not mean that its usage is non-racist or detached from the discourse of racism.

*And how could the US Census Bureau possibly be racist? It's "official." But even then, statements from the US Census indicate that they use the term not because they like or think that it's benign as a term but because it reflects persisting social constructions that still negatively impact various citizens to this day.

Centrality doesn't seem like it establishes your point here. "Race" and "class" and "sex" and "gender" and "religion" and "god" are all central to various strains of hateful discourse, but the rest of us use them too, both in real life and on D&D character sheets.

And your use of false equivalence doesn't seem like it establishes your point here, though perhaps you play with a different set of rules where "gender" and "sex" provide you with differing mechanical benefits, privileges, and statuses. Are these the alternative rules that state if you play a female character you get seven silver pieces for every gold piece that your male adventurering equals acquire?

I might say that the notion of "race" was misappropriated by imperialists and slavers as a means to justify their activities.

I'm not interested in what you "might say"; I'm interested in what you are saying.

You focused on the first sentence of that paragraph, but my point was in the second. Pick anything. Show it to Stormfront. Watch them twist it into their worldview. Does that make the thing you picked suddenly more problematic, or is it Stormfront that's "problematic"?

Both.

 

[Gradine]

“Poor optics” to be sure. (I believe the phrase of yesteryear would be “tin eared”.)

Go to New Orleans (and other places in Louisiana, Texas and Mississippi) at any point prior to @1985, you could find a lot of places serving an Italian salad called “W*p salad”.
http://www.gumbopages.com/food/app/wop-salad.html

There are places that, up until the 1960s-70s had names like “N****r Creek”.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negro_Creek_(Tongue_Creek)

Most locals wouldn’t have blinked twice about those usages, and probably had no racial animus in their heart.

But we know the words offend, so they were changed.

Some people are saying now that the way “race” is used in FRPGs is distasteful or offensive. Why discount their narrative?

There's a dive bar about 45 minutes inland from me that, until about three years ago, was named "Simon Legree's Bar".

 

[Phasestar]

I think that part of the disconnect in this thread is between the academic and the practical or "non-theoretical".

Some folks here are clearly well versed in critical race theory and other similar philosophies that are currently popular among academics and many of those academics fully believe that the lens created by these theories shows the present and the past in the most accurate way. Others are arguing from the more practical standpoint of how have gamers and D&D used this term and if there hasn't been a problem, why should there be one now, which (in my opinion correctly) leaves the non-game problems aside and focuses on the confines of the game.

A few good points have been made on connections where the real world issues have inevitably crossed that fiction/non-fiction divide and those are in my opinion the strongest in favor of why a word that is not used offensively could still cause offense. Some of those points have been convincing to me. However, while I understand that, I also disagree that there is a better term for the game's purposes and I disagree that the number of people who would actually be offended is large enough or the game's usage of the term bad enough, that it must be changed rather than the questionable "real world" usages simply left in the non-fiction dust which is gradually receding in our rearview mirrors as time marches on.

The last point of disagreement I have comes from the compromised origins of critical race theory, which was devised as a tactic not aimed at seeking truth, but to do whatever it took - including twisting truth and creating perceptions of oppression even if untrue - to further a perceived end of justice, but in actuality to create division through oppressor/oppressed class warfare. The best-case characterization is "the end justifies the means", but it's actually more cynical than that. I question anything that is based on a view through that lens and doubt the positive outcome of any efforts towards justice that start without a genuine desire for truth and reconciliation, but rather a never-ending and somewhat self-perpetuating search for the next oppressor in order to achive ulterior motives. In my lifetime, I've seen this point of view generate more division and bitterness than progress and justice. Real justice and progress comes from a more constructive truth-seeking view, in my experience.

I'd also like to ask, if Morrus is still reading this, if there are any rules against insinuating that other posters are Nazis based on nothing but polite disagreement. I've had about enough of seeing that here and it's happened more than once so far in this thread.

 

[Gradine]

The last point of disagreement I have comes from the compromised origins of critical race theory, which was devised as a tactic not aimed at seeking truth, but to do whatever it took - including twisting truth and creating perceptions of oppression even if untrue - to further a perceived end of justice, but in actuality to create division through oppressor/oppressed class warfare. The best-case characterization is "the end justifies the means", but it's actually more cynical than that. I question anything that is based on a view through that lens and doubt the positive outcome of any efforts towards justice that start without a genuine desire for truth and reconciliation, but rather a never-ending and somewhat self-perpetuating search for the next oppressor in order to achive ulterior motives.

I certainly have concerns over the actual efficacy of academic, theoretical models for changes, but this right here is, if you'll pardon me a language, is a load of horse. I could just as easily (if not much more easily, given the long and storied history of anti-justice & anti-equality movements) disparage the motivations of those who downplay evidence of oppression and dismiss concerns of offense. I try not to; I almost certainly have done as much, in other contexts, so it's not like I don't understand the impulse. But this arguing in bad faith developed from a theory with no grounding in fact.

But history of critical race theory is grounded in centuries of resistance movements and struggles for justice. To suggest that such divisiveness and inequity was invented in an ivory tower only recently is to ignore history.

Either cite your evidence or start arguing in good faith.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

Do Native Americans offended by the name of Washington’s NFL team need to accept that there are also potatoes called redskins? Was the term originally translated from native tongues to English? Does either fact mean they shouldn’t be offended?

No, because "redskin" is a racial slur.

But Half-orcs and the Orcish half of their ancestry are not described in positive ways...almost ever. Is it coincidental that their attribute adjustments- bonuses to strength, deficits to intelligence and charisma map neatly with old descriptions of Africans and American slaves? Probably, but that doesn’t make it any less problematic. And why did the first evil elves havevto be black?

That the context still exists unchanged in conjunction with the term with the checkered past just plays right into the dreams of racists and nightmares of minorities.

All those things persist in Pathfinder, though, except the term. (More so than in D&D, even, which got rid of attribute penalties in 5E.) If that's where the problem lies, this terminological discussion has just been a massive 102-page distraction.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

Do you honestly think that critical race theory or the US Civil Rights Act are seeking to preserve the use of the term "race" in society, much less in D&D?

I think "seeking to preserve" is the wrong way to put it. The Clean Water Act isn't "seeking to preserve" the use of the term "water" -- it's just using the natural term for the thing it pertains to.

Do you think that D&D's use of "race" is equally as magnanimous in its use of the term "race" as Critical Race Studies or the US Civil Rights Act?

When Gygax was writing? No. In 5E? Getting there.

Probably because its your strawman reaction.

@Dannyalcatraz's words were, "We in this thread may know/believe the designers aren’t racists. But someone new to the game or hobby won’t necessarily be able to figure that out." If this is a strawman, it isn't mine. It's like some strange inversion of the strawman where a hypothetical person is set up to make a mistake, and this is used to support an argument.