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.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

You may as well toss out Ancestry now, as it's going to also be problematic in a year or so tops. Witness the alt-right/white nationalist's obsession with their Ancestry.com results. It's already a dogwhistle. Guys like that are creepily obsessed with their bloodlines... do they hail from the RIGHT white countries? Any possible Roma in there?

Species is the most accurate, has the benefit of working across genres, and at least currently doesn't have the baggage.

 

[Celebrim]

Who knows, maybe the "half-elven race"?

I concede that it is not really fair to pemerton to get involved in your conversation, but just as a jumping off point and because I can't really resist Tolkien lore.

In Tolkien's legerdemain there really isn't anything that is "half-elven". Elrond is called "half-elven" as a title or nickname, but he is fully an elf. His brother is fully a human. Biologically in Tolkien elves and humans are identical enough that they are of the same species, and they differ only in there spiritual gifts. Elrond and Elros were given a choice of which people that they would belong to, and Elrond choose to be an elf.

This is a radically different conception than the one that prevails in D&D. Most D&D campaigns I'm aware of don't care much about dynastic concerns like, "If my character is a half-elf and has a child with a human, what stat block should I use for my child." But since I was once in such a dynastic campaign, I have in my head what rules (for my 3.X game) I would use in that case. The answer is that 50% of the kids would be mechanically Half-Elves and 50% would be mechanically Human with the homebrew Elven Blood trait.

Why use a long-winded awkward phrase that isn't even aptly descriptive instead of just saying "race" ?

I'd ask a slightly different question. Why would you use a different phrase when you need to explain explicitly that the new phrase really means the old phrase?

"People" is a very fluid, general term that could indicate a nation/tribe/clan, it could indicate racial relation, family relation, cultural relation, intellectual relation, political relation etc etc. It doesnt denote anything specific.

Again, you would have to specify in some fashion that by "people" you meant "race" precisely because of this vagueness in the term. For example, if you asked me IRL, "To what people do you belong?", I would probably not understand what you meant, and depending on my mood I might answer, "Nerds." (On the other hand, if you ask me, "To what race do you belong?", my response is always, "To what race do you think I belong?")

 

[Gradine]

Gradine, I appreciate the reply. I hope you'll accept this post as continuing a conversation.

Speaking purely from my own situation, based on the experiences I've had with the people I know, a game which begins by choosing a "race", with those choice still heavily steeped in Tolkienesque ideas, is not maximally welcoming to all people of colour.

Or to come at the same general point from a slightly different direction: people with whom I watched the LotR movies noticed that the only prominent people of colour on the screen were playing the orcs and uruk-hai.

I'm not saying that you're wrong. I'm trying to convey that I don't see these issues as completely disconnected.

I'm an academic. Among other things, I teach theoretical sociology. I am not a critical race theorist, but I work on the borders of that particular discipline and have been taken for one at conferences. I don't think "race" is per se an offensive term - it's a crucial although very challenging conceptual tool needed for analysing contemporary social formations.

But the way that "race" is used in fantasy RPGs is a different thing. It's not a tool of analysis. It's more like this enduring outpost of reactionary conceptualisations of human natures.

Again to come at this from the angle that is closest to my own experience (I'm not a convention goer): before my daughters get near a convention, they would need to get near RPGing.

Now maybe I'm out of touch (I'm a middle-aged man) but for me fantasy RPGing is heavily grounded, in its tropes and the way it is presented and advocated, in a certain genre tradition. JRRT, HPL, REH, ERB, etc are the canonical authors of this tradition. Until my girls are late teenagers, how would I even show them REH or HPL? What are they meant to make of writers whose racism is so virulent? JRRT isn't as bad, but the issue is still there, as the films bring out.

In the fantasy literature that I see as canonical there are exceptions - eg Ursula LeGuin - but even in LeGuin European tropes, if not skin colours, still predominate.

To come at it from yet another direction, maybe more remote: Gygax's MM tells us that dwarves are mostly brown-skinned, but when was the last time you saw an illustration of a non-white dwarf? (Again, maybe I'm out of touch - I haven't bought a D&D book for a few years - but I never saw such a picture in any of the 4e materials I purchased.)

I think that fantasy RPGing has a problem here. It's approach to "race" is not all of it. Maybe it's not even most of it. I think it's part of it.

This is my thinking, but then I'm not a publisher. On the other hand, this thread (and ones like it) make me think the change is more important, not less.

Thank you for sharing your perspective. I cannot find myself disagreeing with, well, any of this. Maybe it's because I'm of a slightly younger generation, or that I came (back) to D&D at such a later age, that I was able to avoid a lot of the more negative connotations; our fantasy worlds were influenced less by Conan and more by Buffy (which was also not without its share of problems, don't get me wrong). But I recognize that the history of the fantasy genre which D&D spawned from is littered with negative tropes, several of which the gaming hobby is still struggling to shake off. And its approach to race is definitely one of them.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Species is the most accurate, has the benefit of working across genres, and at least currently doesn't have the baggage.

Agreed 100%.

But as stated before, I’m still OK with “race” in the FRPG context.

To come at it from yet another direction, maybe more remote: Gygax's MM tells us that dwarves are mostly brown-skinned, but when was the last time you saw an illustration of a non-white dwarf? (Again, maybe I'm out of touch - I haven't bought a D&D book for a few years - but I never saw such a picture in any of the 4e materials I purchased.)

The art in many RPGs has suffered from “whitewashing”, and D&D is no exception. It’s better than it was back in the 70s, but there’s still room for improvement.

 

[Aldarc]

I dont get whatt your hangup is with the real antiquated racial classifications.

We talk about fantasy, made up stuff here.

Then please go ahead and insert the "N word" into your "fantasy, made up stuff" as a term, since no one should have hangups about real world antiquated racial classifications, terms, or likewise.

You may as well toss out Ancestry now, as it's going to also be problematic in a year or so tops. Witness the alt-right/white nationalist's obsession with their Ancestry.com results. It's already a dogwhistle. Guys like that are creepily obsessed with their bloodlines... do they hail from the RIGHT white countries? Any possible Roma in there?

Actually that has been incredibly amusing in the news, since a number of those white nationalists have discovered non-white ancestry via Ancestry.com that suddenly resulted in them being shunned by their fellows, and gosh darn, suddenly racial prejudice does not become so exciting for those individuals any more. Who would have thought?

 

[Obryn]

Another way to solve this problem, of course, is to make Elf a class again.

 

[DM Magic]

Another way to solve this problem, of course, is to make Elf a class again.

"Make Elves a Class Again."

...

I'll get the red hats.

 

[Gradine]

2) It's been a long standing rule of the internet, than in any discourse you can tell who the racists are by the insistence that they have in learning the skin color or race or ethnicity of everyone in the conversation. This is because racists are so obsessed with racial identity that they literally cannot process a conversation without having skin color as a marker, and without it they feel discomforted. That played out again in this conversation, and I'm sure the next time we have a topic of this sort the usual suspects will once again clamor to know everyone's skin color again.

That is not what racism is or what the word "racist" means. I get that you want to live in a magical world where race doesn't matter to anyone, and I don't think anyone outside of actual racial supremacists would disagree that that sounds like a nice place to live. But it's not anything remotely close to the world we live in now, and recognizing that, and addressing how it actually affects and impacts people of different races, does not make anyone racist.

This whole "talking about race is the true racism!" shtick is a ridiculous argument made by so-called "color-blind" people who interpret "color-blindess" (either consciously or unconsciously) as "everyone should act more white".

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

"Make Elves a Class Again."

...

I'll get the red hats.

No, no, no, no, no!

GNOMES are the ones with red hats!
View attachment 95993

 

[DM Magic]

That is not what racism is or what the word "racist" means. I get that you want to live in a magical world where race doesn't matter to anyone, and I don't think anyone outside of actual racial supremacists would disagree that that sounds like a nice place to live. But it's not anything remotely close to the world we live in now, and and recognizing that, and addressing how it actually affects people of different races, does not make anyone racist.

This whole "talking about race is the true racism!" shtick is a ridiculous argument made by so-called "color-blind" people who interpret "color-blindess" (either consciously or unconsciously) as "everyone should act more white".

Well said.