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.

 

[Shadow Demon]

Language only works when the speaker and listener share a common understanding of what a word means. Your position is silly.

Cool. I can be silly in your eyes that works for me. The key is to avoid emotional attachments to words. Too many people have these attachments to historical events in which they never lived through.

In any event, I am happy to have a pdf copy of AD&D Oriental Adventures on my iPad. David “Zeb” Cook still runs these adventures at conventions. He will be running one at NTRPG Con in June.

 

[Celebrim]

It's the same word. How would that not be a reminder?

Experience. Multiple "people of color" (since that seems to be the preferred term in the thread) have played the game with me and never observed the connection. Ancedote. Several posters in the thread, including "people of color" since they appear to be given by you a privileged viewpoint, have never observed the connection. Logic. The word race in and of itself isn't objectionable and peppers our language in ways that are not problematic, and are sometimes even admirable. Consistency. The people calling for race to be banned here aren't offering a consistent moral or rational principle by which race would be universally banned from our thinking or conversation. Indeed, if their opinions belong to the consensus they seem to be representing they'll condemn "color blindness" and demand acknowledgement of race when it suits them. Thus, it feels to me more like they are concerned with something other than good manners.

The word 'race' has seven major meanings and more than a dozen different shades of meaning. Everyone I've ever met has been intelligent enough to deal with this complexity before without freaking out. It's not even a word I consider to be particularly difficult to understand in English. A really hard word is 'liberal' which has like six major different unrelated meanings, two of which are actual antonyms. The two most common meanings of identity are actually antonyms, and I've seen speakers move back and forth between them without even realizing.

You seem really wigged out by the fact that words are complex, and the same sound and spelling can indicate multiple different means. I've never had this problem before.

So, no, not at a reminder. It's a very strained connection that I imagine most people just shrug at. It takes a lot of mental twisting to the get to the point where you are in a twist about it.

I'm not going to bother to address your 'history' of the term race in great detail. I do want to get to this.

The actual idea of race was used to create and invent difference where there wasn't any.

That's bad etymology, sociology, anthropology, biology and history. The idea of race is as old as recorded human experience and is likely a fundamental evolved adaptation built into human biology. It's an extension of the primitive primate idea of a social group or family band, and it occurs in every single human culture. In its roots it simply means everyone who is direct descendent of a particular group founder, and was for most of its history used as a cognate for kin, nation, or ethnic group. These differences, whether socially constructed or biological, were real. At the very least they involved differences in language, culture, and physical appearance. It's a matter of difficult to overcome instinct to not self-identify with and extend greater empathy toward people who share your appearance. That's a deeply rooted biological instinct so no one 'invented' concept of race, least of all for a reason. For all of human history, humans have been divided by our shared simian instinct to defend the social band against neighboring social bands. In a sense, race was an idea that allowed humans to evolve social structures larger than that of the family band, extending the commune of the family band to persons who were not close relatives, although I think that narrative suggests far too much intentionality. Gradually, as human social structures evolved, humans began to develop ideas like empires and trans-national religions that could be used to unite social groups that were larger than just extended family bands. For example, ancient Greeks developed a transnational identity of being 'Greek' that united them as a people group. They were as racist as anything you could ever point out, but this xenophobia was a step less xenophobic than the "us against everyone from over the hill" level that preceded it.

The real issue here is not the word 'race', and again, if the problem is the word it's because of the idea that it points to. Changing the word without changing the meaning of what it points to is ridiculous and pointless.

The actual idea of race in fantasy rpgs is present in-game functional differences.

Those are two very different concepts. Can you see that for clarity we should use a different word?

For clarity, I sure wish we had a separate word for every shade of 'liberal', but that's not how the English language works. I consider every word that has been suggested as an alternative to 'race' to be less accurate and more problematic. Some are better choices than others, largely because they are near synonyms, but all are inferior. The suggestion that all humans belong to a single race is a strong and important one, and involves the ultimate extension of the family structure to include all of humanity - the shared inheritors of some ancient ape upon which was blown the breath of life and consciousness. Wording that idea less strongly doesn't appeal to me, and I continue to point out how many people in this thread have seized on the lesser strength of the word 'ancestry' (for example) to justify dividing up the fantasy humans into a bunch of races, marked by racial essentialism, and quite frankly reflecting simplistic trope takes on real world ethnic groups.

I denounce this as racist.

I'll go out on a limb here and say that your assertion is just like a an able bodied person saying that stairs aren't a barrier to someone with crutches. How would you know?

I have among other things an imagination, but I answered this question already.

Why wouldn't we want to use a different word?

I have done nothing but explain that since the beginning of this thread. And while we are on the subject, I have often observed that the people most eager to tell other people to check their own biases, are the least likely to question their own assumptions and take their own advice. They don't actually mean, "Check your biases", what they tend to actually mean is, "I don't like what you have to say, so shut up and agree with me."

So let's not use the wrong word for the wrong thing.

It's not the wrong word; it's quite the right word. Read a dictionary and confirm this.

No, what I see is people advocating for separating bonuses between creature type (origin, people, ancestry, "nature") and background (culture, training, life path, "nurture"). So you could have humans (same creature type, same stats) with different background packages (plains, sea-farers, etc.)

Well, yes, I've seen that too, but I don't think you are paying much attention. Besides, I experimented with that separation back around 2002, and it still doesn't avoid the problem of racial essentialism to have a tight linkage between ethnicity and a set of cultural modifiers. I abandoned it as a bad take on the issue.

If I saw that, I would argue against it.

Look closer.

Meanwhile, up-thread someone posted testimony from someone who moved to a position of white supremacy because of the use of racial divisions in DnD. I'll edit this post to show the link when I find it again.

You realized at some later point in the tread that this was slander, but upon actually finding the link it proved to be ridiculous. What you actually showed was that someone who was already a racist interpreted everything through the light of those preexisting principles. Big surprise that. What you actually showed is your dragging a huge agenda to EnWorld from some benighted place on the Internet I probably consider a moral cesspool akin to Storm Front. You became the first poster to actually quote someone from 'Storm Front' in the history of EnWorld, which to me made the whole thread seem just a bit ickier. How you suppose that that is going to convince anyone here of anything, I'm not sure, but you definitely found your 'vinegar' again later in this thread..

 

[JonnyP71]

As a Chinese-American friend once told me (paraphrasing), “Oriental” is fine for a culture, direction, artistic style or rug. It’s not to be used for people. She never had to remind me of that distinction.

The number one Chinese restaurant on Tripadvisor for my city is 'Wing Wah Oriental Cuisine'.

(just backing up your point btw - though there may be differences in acceptance, because I'm in the UK, and I've never heard of any issues with the term 'oriental' in the 46 years I've lived here, in fact it's a pretty standard UK English term meaning 'of the east')

 

[Gradine]

If making the hobby more inclusive and welcoming to people of color is not relevant to you, this post isn't for you. Your priorities are different, and that's fine. You do you and leave me alone.

For the people who do care about making the hobby more inclusive and welcoming to people of color, this thread and similar discussions raise a few concerns for me. Before someone gets it twisted and puts words in my mouth, I need to say that none of what follows is me accusing anyone of anything or judging anyone who feels differently than I do about the issue at hand. I'm just expressing concerns. If that's valuable information to you, great. If not, please ignore.

While I'm glad that there are white people who are advocating for a more inclusive and welcoming hobby, I do have concerns about:

1. white people deciding on behalf of people of color what race-related issues in the hobby should take priority at any given time (as opposed to asking people of color what would make us feel more included and welcome in the hobby)
2. white people emphasizing symbolic gestures made on behalf of people of color over addressing structural and behavioral issues that make people of color flat-out state make us feel excluded and unwelcome in the hobby
3. white people spending more time fighting white people who don't want to learn or change than listening to people of color and working out ways to make the hobby more inclusive and welcoming.

That's just where I'm at right now.

I think all three of these are things I have been in engaging in (and I am, in fact, white). I think I was coming to some of these realizations as I was writing my last response, and I think you're right to be concerned about those. I certainly have work to do be a better advocate (and, hopefully, ally) in helping make the hobby more inclusive and welcoming.

I think your third point is the most prescient, at least to me. I've started recently blocking obvious white supremacists but I've tried giving other white people the benefit of the doubt in spite of clearly not being interested in learning or changing or engaging fairly.

So I want to think you for posting this; I want you to know that I hear it, and that I'm reflecting on it.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

Because using him using the Bible as an example of a book that people want to alter in order to destroy may not have been a great example as there are alterations and many different versions of the Bible throuought history.

This still confuses me. How does that not make it an excellent example? When we're looking for an example of a problem, don't we look for places where the problem has in fact occurred? "Major League baseball is not a great example of doping in sports, because many baseball players actually were doping throughout its history." Huh?

EDIT: To his credit, the works of Twain was a better example. Altering the language in Huck Finn or Tom Sawyer does nothing but try to erase what was point of fact the language used at the time. But Those books ARE works of literature and SHOULD be left intact. Not so with RPG's.

I sort of see what you're saying. I wouldn't recommend you draw a hard line between "literature" and "not-literature", though, because RPGs are still a creative product and trying to sort creative products into some hierarchy of literariness never turns out well. You might instead point out that RPGs are iterative, and creating a new iteration does not erase the old one. It's not like altering the language in Huck Finn so much as writing a sequel.

Then I'd still disagree with you that making this particular change is a necessity or an improvement. But you're right that it's a different principle at play here than the bowdlerization of old novels.

(For that matter, I'd also disagree that a sequel to Huck Finn should use different language, because it would presumably still be set in 19th-Century America and examining the racial attitudes of the country head on... but I'd be overthinking this analogy at that point.)

 

[epithet]

I’m so freakin’ tired of having to argue and fight against racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and the like in D&D and gaming.
...

I'm certainly not going to suggest that those issues don't ever rear their ugly heads, or that it isn't entirely appropriate to fight against them when they do. I'm also not saying that you, in particular, go hunting for things to get offended by. I do think, though, that there are people who do. It seems like there's always someone looking to take a word or phrase out of context, or to infer malice where none was intended. There seems to be a great outpouring of outrage lately by people on behalf of other people who are presumed to need people to be outraged for them. Worst of all, it has become commonplace to take an accusation or allegation as proof of unacceptable behavior.

If you're tired of arguing and fighting, maybe--just maybe--it's because whenever there is a cry of "omg bigotry!" you run in to champion the downtrodden without taking a moment to consider the possibility that no one is, in fact, being trodden upon in the exchange in question. If you are always locked and loaded, looking for *ism to fight against, then you will surely find what you're looking for.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

The number one Chinese restaurant on Tripadvisor for my city is 'Wing Wah Oriental Cuisine'.

(just backing up your point btw - though there may be differences in acceptance, because I'm in the UK, and I've never heard of any issues with the term 'oriental' in the 46 years I've lived here, in fact it's a pretty standard UK English term meaning 'of the east')

Tangent off of that: there used to be a family-owned & operated Asian take-out restaurant- almost a literal hole in the wall- in NOLA’s French Quarters called “Takee Outee”. (Pretty good, too.)

 

[DM Magic]

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

Raises hand Puerto Rican/Cuban.

 

[DM Magic]

I’m so freakin’ tired of having to argue and fight against racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and the like in D&D and gaming.
We should be better. We know what it’s like to be marginalized. To be teased and bullied.

I’m lucky not to personally be affected by racism or sexism. But I listen to those who have been. And when they say they don’t like a term or find it problematic, I take them at their word. Because why wouldn’t I?
If just one otherwise reasonable person doesn’t like phrase or term, why would I spit on their opinion and feelings by continuing to use that term.

But, damn I am sick of this . I always make the mistake of engaging, because I think it’s worth doing. If I can change just one mind...
But it always ends up just killing my morale, sapping my appreciation for this community and gaming as a whole.

Nailed it.

 

[Aldarc]

This, I could agree with. The one I thought about was the Khoravar of Eberron, who form a distinct race -- though humans and elves will occasionally still get down to making first-gen half-elves. The setting is significantly more cosmopolitan, and it would make sense that true-breeding half-elves would have overcome the "bastard" prejudice of other settings.

But, the core D&D "implied setting" is, and always has been, that half-elves are somewhat rare (at least uncommon) and somewhat outcast by both sides of the family tree. While that could make a good justification for a particular PC to be fast-talking, diplomatic, and smooth, it's a pretty poor rationale for the entire race to be that way.

I cannot understate how influential Eberron has been to me as a setting. The Khoravar as a self-breeding population with its own distinct set of cultures as opposed to the usual individualized human-elf tragic backstories was a HUGE step forward in my appreciation of half-elves in D&D. In many of my homebrew settings, I have take a cue from Eberron's Khoravar or have designed my own PC half-elf in the same vein.