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.

 

[Sunseeker]

On this note, it is completely beyond me why such terminology would be out of place in rulebooks for fantasy games, which are written for and read by modern players, not for and by fantasy characters.*

*using an imprecisely imagined pseudomedievalist lexicon, in many cases, any way!

This is basically the "crunch vs. flavor" debate. Me personally as an admitted fan of 4E and MTG, like my flavor and my crunch to the separate. A rulebook is for rules. A setting book is for flavor. I don't have any problem with more scientifically accurate terms like "species" (interbreeding aside) being used in place of race. I also would like to see half-elves and half-orcs removed as playable "races", because if most of the humanoid races can interbreed, they make the use of the term "race" worse, because we've just decided that bloodlines can be watered down, so naturally there must be 3/4ths elves, 1/8th orcs, and 7/16ths of both of them! And if humans and elves can breed and humans and orcs can breed, logically elves and orcs can breed so WTF do we do with that knowledge?

And why is half-dwarf so rarely accounted for? It seems like dwarves and humans would be far more likely to co-mingle than humans and elves. (from the viewpoint of humans & dwarves generally sharing their favored past-times of drinking, eating, killing and being dirty and hairy)

I know I know, we have half-elves as playable because of Tanis, but Tanis was explicitly stated to be rare. But nowadays half-elves are as common as anything else!

At least the "half-dragonborn" problem is resolved by saying they can't crossbreed (lizards with boobs or even psuedo-boobs aside....) and the problem is resolved with tieflings by saying that tieflings always create more tieflings, doesn't matter what the other half of the equation is.

Personally I'd be happy if crossbreeding just wasn't core by default.

 

[Hussar]

So, if "Race" is an unacceptable term to some people in Fantasy, is it also an unacceptable term in Science Fiction?

Is Race not an acceptable term to describe Klingons, Wookies, Green Martians, Vorlons or Daleks?

If not, what is the correct term?

And if it IS acceptable, then what's the distinction? Why Puppeteers but not Dwarves? Why Kryptonians but not Elves?

Actually in SF it’s almost always species and not race. But apparently we can’t use species in dnd because it’s too sf sounding. :/

 

[Hussar]

It is culturally offensive to me.

Are you being serious or just having a laugh?

And I do mean that as a question. I’ve never heard anyone having this particular issue with paladins before. What is there to get offended by?

 

[Gradine]

I'm not hugely familiar with Eberron, but in my game orcs don't exist and goblinoids are a PC race. That goblins are generally 'slaughterable' has more to do with the fact that they are generally bandits, cattle thieves, and raid surrounding lands for slaves (and meat, since cannibalism is held in high esteem). But in point of fact, we've had one hobgoblin PC in the campaign so far, the current party has a goblin NPC retainer (the party's cook), there was a plot line for a while about the discrimination that the hobgoblin experienced, and one of the few times they've actually decided to show mercy on a foe was a hobgoblin thug whom they interrogated and extracted a promise from that he'd never get in the parties way again.

But I have no intention of banishing the idea of monster from my game completely. Goblins are people, albeit people who appear monstrous and often live up to that appearance. Gnolls and Minotaurs are not people. They are always monstrous. They lack critical people defining traits like free will that goblins have. However, if in some world goblins aren't people, well that doesn't bother me very much in and of itself (though I can imagine scenarios where it would).

PS: I've got a reply to your longer post I've been stewing over, but I'm trying to make it less angry and more substantial.

Eberron does away with any racially-based auto-alignment expectations for anyone other than immortals. So like... celestials are all good by their very nature and fiends always evil, but most other things have free will to forge their own path. Orcs are re-flavored as very primal in nature (and the world's first druids); goblinoids are less evil and more very rigid and militaristic (which definitely lends itself in the LE direction), and there are plenty of examples of neutral (far fewer actually good) members of other "monstrous" races, from medusa to minotaurs to gnolls to harpies.

There's still plenty of "obvious evil" to vanquish, but it tends to be more based on associations (the Order of the Emerald Claw is the most often cited example, which have a strong Nazis-in-the-Indiana-Jones-movies vibe to them). And of course, there are always fiends and aberrations plotting and scheming. Always with the plotting and scheming.

I'm sure it shocks you to learn that I enjoy that structure of alignment and obvious villainy versus the traditional rampaging orcs/gnolls/etc. always-evil-based-on-race model.

 

[Riley37]

While we're at it, I find the term "class" offensive. It implies a difference between people based on occupation. It's doubly offensive to place these classes at "levels" that can be quantified at higher or lower ranks than their fellows. I looks forward to class, level, and race being abolished from RPGs, so all of what I prefer to call "adventuring comrades" can be truly equal and judgment-free.

In that case, I recommend you try any of the MANY games which don't list "class" or "level" as a necessary quality of a player character, such as Runequest, GURPs, or Fantasy Hero.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Hussar
What’s wrong with paladin?
------------------
Shasarak

It is culturally offensive to me.
-------------------------
Are you being serious or just having a laugh?

And I do mean that as a question. I’ve never heard anyone having this particular issue with paladins before. What is there to get offended by?

Paladins were the peers of Charlemagne's court and included Roland. The Song of Roland is ostensibly about the paladins fighting Moors in Spain, so if you're a Moor, that could be culturally offensive, I guess, though it's not clear exactly who the Moors actually were in relation to modern ethnicities - whether they were more African or more Middle-Eastern has been a point of debate, IDK, maybe it's been cleared up since the last time I looked, some decades ago. OTOH, some contend that the more probable inspiration for the Song of Roland was a battle between Franks and Basque in the Pyrinees, so maybe a Basque would find veneration of the Paladins culturally offensive.

'Shasarak' doesn't sound particularly Moorish nor Basque, though...


...so my guess would be that he's simply CE.

 

[Shasarak]

Are you being serious or just having a laugh?

And I do mean that as a question. I’ve never heard anyone having this particular issue with paladins before. What is there to get offended by?

It is a classic example of cultural misappropriation.

Now normally I would just remember that DnD is a game and on the other hand if we are fixing problematic terminology then yeah sorry Paladin just has to go.

 

[Riley37]

And by the way, you aren't given respect, you earn it.

When I take the train, I encounter hundreds of strangers. None of them (well, almost none) have personally earned my respect. I still *treat* them with respect, by default. I say "pardon me" when I need to get past people to reach the door at my destination. I offer my seat when someone clearly needs it more than I do, such as someone who's in advanced stages of pregnancy.

I make exceptions to this default principle, for those few individuals who specifically disqualify themselves, such as the ones who spread themselves across multiple seats even when the train is crowded.

If you only treat people with respect after you've decided that they've earned your respect, then you can give *your* respect, as you see fit. But you're mistaken about whether *my* respect is given, because it is, indeed, a given; my *disrespect* is individually earned.

Is this a tangent from ancestry into alignment? Or does it belong in meta?

 

[Aldarc]

It is a classic example of cultural misappropriation.

Now normally I would just remember that DnD is a game and on the other hand if we are fixing problematic terminology then yeah sorry Paladin just has to go.

Do you genuinely think that these two situations are comparable? Or is this false equivalence masked in fake outrage?

 

[LordNightwinter]

When I take the train, I encounter hundreds of strangers. None of them (well, almost none) have personally earned my respect. I still *treat* them with respect, by default. I say "pardon me" when I need to get past people to reach the door at my destination. I offer my seat when someone clearly needs it more than I do, such as someone who's in advanced stages of pregnancy.

I make exceptions to this default principle, for those few individuals who specifically disqualify themselves, such as the ones who spread themselves across multiple seats even when the train is crowded.

If you only treat people with respect after you've decided that they've earned your respect, then you can give *your* respect, as you see fit. But you're mistaken about whether *my* respect is given, because it is, indeed, a given; my *disrespect* is individually earned.

Is this a tangent from ancestry into alignment? Or does it belong in meta?

Respect and common courtesy are two different things. I show people courtesy, yes. Respect doesn't mean what you think it means.

Respect: A feeling of deep admiration for someone or something elicited by their abilities, qualities, or achievements.
Courtesy: The showing of politeness in one's attitude and behavior toward others.