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.

 

[MacConnell]

... I know there has been comments from people of color (yourself included) where some have a problem with it and some don't. I figure that's reason enough to swap a word out for something else that works just as well (if not better), because people should have fun playing these games rather than being uncomfortable with something unnecessarily included just because it's always been that way. If it is replaced there is literally zero harm to me and my games, and it helps others. Sounds great to me!...

I am offended by the replacement of he with she.

I am offended by the term Dwarf.

I am offended by the term Halfling.

I am offended by the term Ogre.

I am offended that everyone will not treat me as the most important person in the universe, especially since I am pandered to have the emotional stability of a toddler.

I am offended by whatever I am convinced by popular media is to be the offensive term of the week.

None of that is , of course, true, but it is indicative of the progression of all mitigation to universal appeasement. It is all crap designed to create a problem where none exist; after all, conflict is profitable, and contentious people cannot be appeased.

 

[Aldarc]

So answer what I posted(which clearly was not everything) instead of evading.

I don't think "evading" means what you think it does, nor is there any way to "answer" the nonsense that you posted. You posted a ridiculously hyperbolic and fallacious, non sequitor slippery slope argument (about everything other than "race") that failed to address the question in any real, meaningful manner. If you want to see what evasion looks like, then I recommend this post:

Everything. The "issues" with race are the among the smallest of all the "issues" with D&D. If we change race, we need to change the following greater issues. Fighters, because far more people dislike violence in the real world than there are white supremacists. Clerics, because there are far more religious people in the world than white supremacists. Druids, for the same reason as clerics, but in addition you will have druids running around claiming climate change, and others who say that they are crazy. Rogues, because a great many people in the real world dislike crime. Wizard, sorcerer, and warlock(pacts with evil anyone), because religion. Paladin, see cleric and druid. Monk, see cleric and druid due to their mysticism. I'm sure if I tried I could find an issue with ranger. Monsters(especially demons and angels) run afoul of religion.

All of those are greater issues than [MENTION=22644]the_redbeard[/MENTION]'s example of a fraction of the population(racists), who play D&D(fraction of a fraction), and who are too stupid to understand race and confuse it(fraction of a fraction of a fraction).

This is the response given to a question about what would be lost if the term "race" was changed to something else presumably less offensive or loaded with connotative social baggage. As you can see, the quoted post evades the initial question through its hyperbolic use of whataboutisms, disrespectful ad hominems, and a slippery slope argument. Nowhere do they bother answering the question "what would be lost" in their post, apart from their initial assertion of "Everything," which comprises the first sentence, but is left argumentively unsupported by literally "everything" that follows in the post.

 

[Gradine]

I care about it. I don't encounter RPGing primarily as a "community" thing. I encounter it as a cultural thing - it's a hobby I engage in, and it brings with it a whole lot of stories and artefacts (books with words and pictures).

Most of my friends are not RPGers. Many think it's silly at best. One thing that reinforces their negative judgements is the preponderance of pulp-era sexist and racist tropes. I have many RPG books that I wouldn't want my young children to read, in part for these reasons.

Fair enough. Far be it from me to minimize the harm and damage this causes to you.

Maybe it's because I didn't really get into the game until the pulp-era obvious sexism & racism (but then again, 4e Chult), but this was never a huge problem for me and my peers in terms of entry to the genre. Far more problematic for them is the fact that most of my close friends are women, who spent much of time around nerd culture being told, either implicitly or explicitly, that tabletop games weren't for them, or that they just wouldn't get it.

And maybe it's the academic circles I run in [most of my friends have degrees in Critical Race Studies, and I'm currently working on my second master's degree in Sociology (go ahead anti-PC brigade, roll your eyes if you must, if it helps I also work at the university)], and I've never encountered the notion that "race' is an archaic or offensive term, either in modern, real world parlance or in the fantasy context. Maybe that's on me. It probably is. I'll eat crow on that one. Lord knows how difficult it can be to recognize the dehumanizing etymology of terms that have long since saturated common vernacular (see also, "gypped" or "lame".)

So maybe that's why I struggle to see the urgency of the issue, particularly given what appear to be much greater problems in our hobby. Case in point, but you bring up ToA, an adventure filled with casual racism. An adventure that had not a single person of color contribute anything to it. A problem caused by gaming being (a) still a predominantly white hobby, and (b) the professional creative and publishing world still being very much a "good old boys" club, where who you know often matters more than talent. And how every time a company hosts an initiative or contest aimed at bringing more diverse voices to the table they are shouted down by the community at large for calls of "reverse racism" or "reverse sexism".

Or how, when conventions put out zero-tolerance policies against discrimination or harrassment, a significant portion of the white male snowflake community start throwing tantrums about how some hypothetical vindictive harpy is going to get them kicked out of their fantasy game party, and how isn't that the real crime here?

Maybe this is a change that's simple to do, actually benefits people, and is, at least in the long-run, relatively non-controversial. The first two seem self-evident at this point, and should very well be good enough. I do worry about the third; not because it matters what these people think, but because I worry about how that might distract time and energy away from issues that appear, at least to be, to be more urgent.

And maybe that's the wrong way to think about it. I'd be willing to concede that. Maybe we can walk and chew bubblegum at the same time.

 

[Curmudjinn]

This topic is a meme. It's like a Yahoo news article.

The origin of race was used to describe the difference in human culture groups. It makes sense to use it in games for a similar approach, but isn't a truly accurate term outside of a single species.
The root of the issue isn't the term, it's the people that use it negatively enough to create a bad taste from its use. Even if the term changes, the next term will take its place and do the same.
You can change how it's written or throw whatever term we want out there, but humans will be humans.

Change the roots to change the branches.

 

[Andor]

Quick question: How many people who are arguing this issue are people of color?

IIRC about 3 or 4 people in this thread have self-identified as people of colour. I have no idea, of course, how many have not.

 

[LazarusKane]

Whew..can't believe I got through that whole thread.

Congratulation!

(...)
The part that doesn't make sense is that D&D has never really treated the fantasy 'races' as being all that different, fundamentally, than humanity. I've very seldom seen someone portraying an elf character, for example, who really explores the idea of getting into the head of a character whose adolescence lasted about as long as the full lifespans of those around her, or who fully embraced the idea of coming from a culture that is drastically different from the human cultures we know. Basically, most players (and to some degree, the game itself) treats the other fantasy 'races' as different humans -- elves are skinny humans who are good with magic and sniff disdainfully at sentimentality, while dwarves talk about 'honor' and 'the clan' and basically drink twice as much as any sane human can. (And it's not just D&D; replace 'magic' with 'science' in the above statement and you can replace 'elves' with 'Vulcans' and 'dwarves' with 'Klingons' and not miss a beat.)

*That's* why the question of representation, what word we use, is important -- because insofar as the game presents non-humans as basically 'different humans', the concept of 'race' in D&D is precisely the concept of 'race' outside of D&D.

I disagree.
1.) Take for example the 3.5 Edition "Races of ..." Books. There is so much material to distinct the races.

2.) But the bigger reason is that the D&D (basic) races must keep approachable - the more "alien" a race is the harder it is to play (and if I remember correctly even in this thread someone made the arguments that you can´t play a different race (an elf) properly as an NON-Human (=alien) character... and that Thri-Keen shouldn´t be allowed as player characters... I witnessed even more than once the discussion that a male can´t even play a woman properly.


[/QUOTE]
The same is true for race. If you had a game where elves and orcs were sufficiently different from human that not just their mechanical portrayal but the actual way you'd play them in game makes them sufficiently different from human that they are clearly different and separate from humans, then you can probably argue that 'race' is being used as a clinical, descriptive term and not as an arbitrary construction. But in a game where elves and orcs are basically just humans with latex spirit-gummed onto different parts of their heads (hello Bright and its portrayal of orcs!), it's really hard to say 'oh, race is clearly the correct word, since orcs get a Strength bonus and elves get a Dexterity bonus, which makes them fundamentally different in their portrayal in-game'.

--
Pauper[/QUOTE]

That´s one of the reasons BRIGHT seems to be ripped from the Shadowrun Manual - the first Orks in Shadowrun are mutated humans - and that happened only 30 to 50 years before the actual timeline of the game.

 

[Celebrim]

Hmm. I'm not sure I'd go quite so far as to say "race" is 100% a sociopolitical construct.

For me, it doesn't matter whether it is or not. The topic is largely irrelevant and not worth fighting over. If it is the case that race is 100% a sociopolitical construct, then it doesn't change the fact that I am required to treat everyone regardless of race with the same love, compassion, tolerance, and respect. And if it is the case that race turns out to have some sort of biological basis, then it still doesn't change the fact that I am required to treat everyone regardless of race with the same love, compassion, tolerance, and respect.

What bothers me is arguments that seem to be of the form, "Because race is 100% a sociopolitical construct, then you should treat everyone equally.", because that strikes me as building a house out of sand. All you have to do to invalidate that proposition is demonstrate that there are biological differences between peoples. To me that puts a hard burden on you to engage with the universe through a bias. Proof that race is sociopolitical or proof that race is biological, or evidence that goes either way, doesn't change my fundamental opinion regarding the irrelevance of race. I can simply engage with those facts as, "Isn't that interesting." The opinion that starts "Because race is 100% a sociopolitical construct..." is not as bad as the opinion "Because race is biological, then you shouldn't treat everyone equally.", but it seems like its crafted from that opinion and strongly related it by accepting the implication if not the facts. I reject both claims.

Likewise, since the basis of my identity is not racial, the outcome of the argument doesn't really effect how I see myself either. So I literally don't care about the debate.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Regardless of its origins, it's been hanging out with scientists for long enough for that clinical stench to seep into its pores.

(Setting aside the question of how and why people in a typical FRPG are speaking English of any vintage...)

Regardless of its origins, “race” has been hanging around with bigots long enough for that hateful stench to seep into its pores.

And here we are, 30+ pages in...

Besides, if you look into most FRPGs- including and especially in the long history of D&D- thre’s all kinds of “scientific” terminology that has been used that would be part of the in-game linguistic lexicon:

Automaton
Clockwork (Horror)
Homunculus
Intellect (Devourer)
Psionic
Caryatid (Column)
Pyrotechnics

Etc.

 

[Aldarc]

So maybe that's why I struggle to see the urgency of the issue, particularly given what appear to be much greater problems in our hobby.

Maybe this is a change that's simple to do, actually benefits people, and is, at least in the long-run, relatively non-controversial. The first two seem self-evident at this point, and should very well be good enough. I do worry about the third; not because it matters what these people think, but because I worry about how that might distract time and energy away from issues that appear, at least to be, to be more urgent.

You raise a good point here about the relative urgency. But here I would say that a critical difference between the "greater problems in our hobby" and the propriety of the term "race" in our hobby is the amount of work required to address the issue, which you raise as a possibility in the bold. Writers and publishers can switch to terms like "ancestry," "origin," or "heritage" with relative ease - at least at the outset of a ruleset establishing its terms - whereas the "greater problems in our hobby" tend to be more systemic and require changes on a much wider level. So changing the term "race" may not be as pressing as other issues, but it should be easy enough to address it when available.

 

[MacConnell]

@Aldarc
The original question to which you refer is too far back for me to find but to address your reiteration of "What would be lost?":

The answer is sovereignty.

Should the works of literature be altered in their vocabulary due to the propaganda of politically motivated societal manipulation? No.

A person who is actually offended will not read Twain or Dickens or Dostoevsky or Tolkien or Martin, but their works, or future works in the case of Martin, should not be altered. This creates a grander issue of promoting prejudice as written works such as Slaughterhouse Five, Lolita, The brothers Karmonov, The Bible, and The Quran have all, before, been targeted for destruction by those 'offended' by their existence.