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.

 

[Arilyn]

The term, race IS a social construct, and was created to group HUMANS into shared physical and/ or social constructs. Race is not a scientific term and is not based on any inherent physical or biological traits. Since it was created to group HUMANS, and inaccurately at that, it has no bearing whatsoever on fantasy beings. Many posters are defending the term race, for the accuracy if the term, when it's actually very inaccurate. Lots of rpgs have dropped the term, due to negative connotations AND the invalidity of the word. Since its losing out in both areas, time to let it go.

 

[the_redbeard]

But it´s the right word for the (right) thing

No. The use of the word race was used to invent false differences between groups of people - even to CREATE separations of groups of people. Even when it is used to study society today, it is used to describe the CREATED separations (ie, the social constructs) of people with no actual functional differences.

The use of the word race in fantasy rpgs is used to describe imagined actual functional differences.

It's a political word. I thought "you people" (joke) didn't want politics in your games.

 

[Hussar]

No, not at all. I started playing around 1982 and was DMing by 1985. My takes are takes that begin mostly in the late 1980's when I begin to try to organize my homebrew world in a more systematic way and ask big cosmological questions about how everything worked. In point of fact, the origin of my take on elves not having bow proficiency not as a result of nurture but as a result of nature was based on the write up of Elvish deities in 'Unearthed Arcana' were it was implied that each of the elvish deities had given the elvish people a particular gift. If it the ability to use bows and swords was a divine gift, then it was more biological than cultural. I ran with that ever since./snip

Precisely my point. You have internalized your own house rules to the point where you cannot even recognize the fact that these are house rules and not actually reflective of what the game states. Which, for your own home game is perfectly fine. But, to the argue that it's true for the GAME and not your particular table, is just strange.

Thank you for so eloquently showing my point.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

As an aside, let me say that Speak with Animals gets me into more trouble as a DM than any other ability in D&D, because one of my regular players is a former vet tech who honestly believes that animals have human-level intellect while I do not. The main advantage I have in that argument, other than being the DM, is that I can point to the Monster Manual and say, "In D&D, this dog has an Intelligence of 3, so it simply cannot retain or comprehend the same amount of information that you do with your Intelligence of 10."

Haha! Yeah, there's a lot of different ways to interpret speak with animals. For my talking animals thing, I reason that they can have human-like speech and personalities without being particularly bright. And of course, I'm the DM, so I can always ignore the Monster Manual and give them an Int of 6 or so if it matters.

The bees are Int 10, though.

Within the context of this discussion, though, if the bee-person is human enough to be relatable to human players, then the bee-person is probably more 'human with odd traits' than 'bee with some human traits', and in that sense, 'race' is not really descriptive of the difference between the bee-person and any other fantasy ethnicity.

Well, she's still a bee. Three segments, six legs, no hands, doesn't wear pants, can only survive when the party is on the go because they've got an alchemy jug locked on "honey". This one I wouldn't hesitate to describe as a "species"-level difference, notwithstanding the psychology.

 

[Celebrim]

Precisely my point. You have internalized your own house rules to the point where you cannot even recognize the fact that these are house rules and not actually reflective of what the game states. Which, for your own home game is perfectly fine. But, to the argue that it's true for the GAME and not your particular table, is just strange.

Thank you for so eloquently showing my point.

I have no idea what you are talking about now. I invite you to go back early in the thread and trace my discussion of elvish archery from the beginning. I have always made it clear that it was a personal choice whether to treat it as nature or nurture, and my point has always been simply that we cannot know whether it is nature or nuture based on whether it would be nature or nurture in humans. I don't see how that suggests anything about how I have internalized my house rules to the point that I don't recognize them as house rules, and it's worth noting further that 'the game' we are talking about is now more than 30 years old and there never was a single set of house rules or single RAW during all that time. Are you confusing "the game" with 5e D&D?

As for what the game actually states, the game states that regardless of the elves background, the elf gets this advantage. What does that suggest to you?

 

[Pauper]

Well, to be frank and pragmatic, for the purpose of the game it's a different race if I want to put a different stat block on it. That's the sense in which I use the term 'race'.

I think this is one place where we diverge in our opinions; I remember making a point earlier in the thread about how having orcs get +2 to Strength and elves +2 to Dexterity isn't sufficient to say that these two expressions of characters are distinct enough to comprise a 'racial' difference. But I suspect that if you don't call it 'race', then you wouldn't have as much of a problem statting out different human ethnicities this way; something as simple as a +2 to Wisdom (Survival) checks in a given terrain type would help to distinguish a human of Inuit-like ancestry from one of Yanomamo-like ancestry and each compared to a human raised in a technologically advanced society that doesn't rely on Survival checks for...err...survival.

Using actual characteristic bonuses, though, is problematic: I would not be comfortable with a rule that claimed that humans of Japanese or South Korean heritage gain +2 to Intelligence. It's very easy to use such mechanics to reinforce stereotypes about other ethnic human groups, and that's something I think we'd agree is not needed in a game's design (unless you're designing FATAL 2nd edition, for which a rule like this would just be a drop in the fetid bucket).

(Edit: I just realized I'm assuming you'll get the FATAL reference, since you put two spaces after your periods and therefore are probably an older gamer; if not, I apologize. FATAL is basically 'The Game' of RPGs; the only way to win is to not know that it exists.)

Although, I think you are underestimating the extent to which elven society is quite unlike any human society ever, I agree that however radical it is, it's still somewhat close kin to humanity.

I'll concede the point on elves, mainly because elves have been much more detailed as a non-human society, both via Tolkien's distillation of myth and lore as well as the incorporation of other types of folklore regarding 'fair folk', such as the Dunsanyan faeries. We have more material for elves and elf-like fictional societies, so it only makes sense that those societies feel more 'real' than, say, catfolk societies.

I've experimented with techniques for making magic more numinous in D&D and the problem is that those techniques shift too much burden on to the DM.

Reluctantly agree -- if you really want to go this way with your magic system, you probably want to play a more narrative/story-type game than D&D.

It wasn't really that so much as the call out that orcs had a keen sense of smell and the orcs belief that human faces were so expressive as to be basically transparent. The contrast between the orcs ability to detect emotion and his ability to make sense of it was a big part of the character. Fundamentally, the orc was a human imagined with certain canine traits - intense loyalty, pack structures, alpha males, keen nose, etc. The orc cop was that as a particular sort of yippy dog that is annoying as it is lovable, almost to the point of being a cartoon character.

That's a good point, and a nice way of incorporating biology into sociology; ultimately, though, the thing I remember about Bright is not so much the loyal orc cop sidekick, but the orc extras in do-rags. *sigh*

I think that that is true, but I return to my pragmatic definition - if you have to have a racial package of modifiers or abilities to represent it - then it's a race. (And if you feel the need to do that with different members of the human race, perhaps rethink the direction you are taking your mechanics.)

To throw a reference way back to early in the thread, you could have cultural mechanics that are distinct from any biological traits as noted by the AngryDM -- this lets you better represent weird cases like the halfling raised by elves, for instance, if the halfling character can take an 'elf cultural' package that contains mechanical benefits that accrue from living in elf society rather than simply being born an elf. (Cultural packages work especially well in Fifth Edition, where they can be constituted as variations on existing backgrounds. I think the Fifth Edition version of the One Ring setting already does this, IIRC.) Of course, as others have already pointed out, this then opens up argument over what counts as 'nature vs. nurture' for each 'race' to distinguish between what should be in the cultural package and what in the 'racial' package, and what might be reasonably taken by non-elves taking that package. (Example: elf proficiency with the longbow is sometimes explained by the long elvish lifespan; it takes a long time to become an expert archer, but elves have that time in spades, and so they embrace the art as well as the craft of archery. A shorter-lived race wouldn't have the same amount of time to learn true elvish archery, so shouldn't take the cultural package granting archery bonuses. Alternatively, others might argue that elvish proficiency in archery is granted by their deity as part of their very essence and doesn't belong in a cultural package at all; even an elf raised far away from other elves can still pick up a bow and fire it as if he was born to it, because he was. Which camp you fall into determine where you put the archery bonuses in your character creation rules.)

Even then, though, I think you could call the 'racial' package whatever you want (an 'elf-folk' package?) and most gamers probably wouldn't so much as raise an eyebrow.

--
Pauper

 

[Pauper]

At this point I'd like to propose Pauper's Extrapolation of Godwin's Law:

In any discussion of problematic mechanics or design in role-playing games, as the discussion thread grows longer, the probability of mentioning FATAL approaches one.

--
Pauper

 

[TheCosmicKid]

The term, race IS a social construct, and was created to group HUMANS into shared physical and/ or social constructs. Race is not a scientific term and is not based on any inherent physical or biological traits.

Firstly, you're repeating lines that exaggerate their theoretical underpinnings in order to be provocative, rather than explain and contextualize them in order to be productive. When Person A says stuff like this, Person B will often note that (e.g.) Barack Obama and Queen Elizabeth look physically different, and come to the conclusion that Person A is just nonsensically wrong. From that point, no conversation or education is possible, because trust in the reasonableness of the other party has been broken.

But secondly, even if the nature of race is... debatable, there are other categories that are uncontentiously and purely social constructs, like "nationality" and "religion". And yet we don't go around saying that nationality and religion do not exist or that it's problematic to even mention them in a tabletop roleplaying game. So what's going on here?

 

[TheCosmicKid]

(Edit: I just realized I'm assuming you'll get the FATAL reference, since you put two spaces after your periods and therefore are probably an older gamer; if not, I apologize. FATAL is basically 'The Game' of RPGs; the only way to win is to not know that it exists.)

Yeah, I'd gone at least a year without thinking about FATAL. So thanks for that.

 

[Brooding Paladin]

"Scion" perhaps ?

Ah, but then you've got the whole Scion Psion confusion...