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.

 

[Maxperson]

Because real life human cultures are being mapped to demi-human races with different packages. That is "problematic."

What real life human culture is represented by dwarves, or wood elves, or high elves, or dark elves, or halflings, or gnomes, or...? I can't see a single demi-human race that corresponds to a real life human culture.

 

[Celebrim]

I care more about that divide - who agrees that those are legitimate topics in gaming, and who doesn't - than about who prefers "race" and who prefers "ancestry". The OP is about the latter topic, the terminology, but the thread seems to bring out a lot of disagreement on the former.

For example, the immediately following post asserts "The final word here is that your ignorant views on race and racism have nothing to do with a fictional game." (As opposed to... non-fictional games?)

I can't really tell you exactly what is going on in the head of the poster you are quoting, but I will tell you what is basically going on in the thread. There is a fight going on between classical liberals and post-modernists that buy into critical race theory. Sometimes that fight is explicit, and sometimes that fight is going on without the participants in the fight actually knowing what viewpoints motivate them or having the terminology to labels those things. And basically that fight comes down to the classical liberals calling the post-modernists racists, and the critical race theory proponents calling the classical liberals racists because each side believes the others plan to fix racism actually perpetuates racism. Heck, both sides believe that a certain segment of the other side is deliberately trying to perpetuate racism.

So that's what this thread is about. Consequently, through the biases that may be obvious by this point, what I read out of the sentence you quote is: "The final word here is that your [critical race theory] has nothing to with a fictional game." And I suspect the poster you quote might add, "And not a lot to do with the real world either."

As for fictional games, again I don't know what he means why don't you ask him instead of me, but it is possible to set a game in what is nominally the real world.

 

[Maxperson]

First, I thought that [MENTION=19675]Dannyalcatraz[/MENTION] posted to the contrary upthread, namely, that he had reason to believe there are some Black potential gamers (not him) who are turned off by use of the word "race". (Or did he just say that they don't like it but put up with it?)

People who bring real world issues into a game that doesn't have them are the problem, not the game.

Second, "keeping anyone away" is not, in my view, the test for what is desirable in a cultural artefact. [MENTION=6786839]Riley37[/MENTION] had a really good post about this not far upthread: the racism in LotR doesn't keep me away, but the novel might be even better without it (I'm not sure you can get rid of all of it and still have it be the story that it is, but the bit about the "half-goblin" Southerner clearly is not fundamental to the story being what it is).

There's no inherent racism in D&D. Some groups might play with it, and others might not.

As I've already mentioned in this thread, few of my family and friends are RPGers. I don't think they would play FRPGs if the treatment of "race" was changed; and if they wanted to play, I don't think the treatment of "race" would stop them. Nevertheless, I would prefer a game that doesn't require me to make apologies or acknowledge problematic elements to family and friends. And that I was more comfortable sharing with my children.

D&D is already a game that doesn't require people to make apologies or acknowledge problematic elements, at least not racial ones.

 

[Celebrim]

I joined a gaming group in which it was clear to me there was one person who didn’t care for my particular skin tone. He didn’t express this to the rest of the group. They had no clue.

But I didn’t let him drive me out- by that time I’d been gaming for @16 years, and had already developed a certain social armor against attitudes like his in other contexts. While he had a problem with me, nobody else did, and I didn’t reciprocate against him. After all, he was their friend before they ever met me. Zero percentages in making them choose between us.

Don’t know if my willingness to treat him like everyone else changed his attitude. Hopefully it did.

Thing is, I have no idea how someone like me but with a “thinner skin” might have handled the situation.

It would be great if life came with achievements like a video game. I know you aren't bragging, but you should get a medal for that. It's the little things like that that matter.

 

[Celebrim]

Because real life human cultures are being mapped to demi-human races with different packages. That is "problematic."

Sure, but it doesn't have anything to do with whether you use the term 'ancestry' or 'race'. If they change the term to 'ancestry' and they still map real life human cultures to demi-human ancestries with different packages, won't that be problematic as well?

I doubt that stats would be adjusted for humans. Other abilities possibly. It may be beneficial to read Paizo's statements that Morrus collected here on the design space that switching to the term "ancestries" opens up.

Yeah, let's look at that 'design space' again, because it is really beneficial. This is what they say: "Ditching "Race" in favor of "Ancestry" lets us slice-and-dice across, er... racial lines, so we could—for example—easily confer the same mechanical benefit to characters who came from the same place without regard to whether they're human or elf, or we could give different mechanical benefits to Azlanti and Shoanti even though they're both human."

In other words, they are changing from 'race' to 'ancestry' because they want even more freedom to map real life human cultures to demi-human ancestries with different packages and indeed because they want to start giving different human racial groups different mechanical packages. And you seem to think that this isn't going to be "problematic"? Why? You are putting conformity ahead of actual principles here.

 

[Celebrim]

As I mentioned earlier, the preview of the PF2 goblin has me worried they're actually going in the wrong direction with this, conflating biology with culture.

Of course they are going in the "wrong" direction with this! Haven't I been saying that the whole time. Heck, if you put down your rose colored glasses because they signaled what team they were on, you'll notice they have been very clear about the direction that they want to go. "Ancestry" opens up design space that they want to explore, namely mechanical racial variation between members of different human ethnic groups. Somehow though, people think that by calling it "ancestry" its not going to conflate biology with culture. But without a much more complex system of tweaking nature from nurture than they've outlined, how well is that really going to work? Besides which, trying to tweak nature from nuture in humans is a veritable minefield because we don't really know, but one thing I do know is that humans have a tendency to jump to conclusions about that really quickly.

 

[Mallus]

People who bring real world issues into a game that doesn't have them are the problem, not the game.

How can the game not have 'real world issues'? It's being played by real world people (in the real world, even).

 

[pemerton]

People who bring real world issues into a game that doesn't have them are the problem, not the game.

If you bring in race theory from outside the game rules, then the problem lies with you, not the game. The solution is to fix you, house rule the problem you brought into the game for your table only, or for you to endure the problem you brought into the game. Not to try and "fix" the game rules.

The notion that stories - cultural artefacts - do not reflect the broader cultures in which they were created is just silly. Fantasy stories are not distinctive in this regard.

D&D, in the fantasy that it puts forward, posits that biology, heredity, culture, capability, worth, and place in a hierarchy of peoples all go together. And it does this under the rubric of "race".

D&D didn't invent this as an element of the fantasy genre. It inherits it from the tradition. The tradition didn't pioneer it either - it inherits it from the nineteenth century.

D&D is already a game that doesn't require people to make apologies or acknowledge problematic elements, at least not racial ones.

Because you may be oblivious to the above, or not care about it, D&D may not require you to make apologies or acknowledge problematic elements.

I am not you, though.

 

[Riley37]

East of where?

East of Faerun. Which 5E often treats as the core of the Forgotten Realms. But if you start from Osse, then you don't generally travel to Kara-Tur by going eastwards. Referring to Kara-Tur as "Eastern" is a Faerun-centric perspective.

Do D&D books tend towards a Faerun-centric perspective, mainly insofar as Gygax and his immediate co-authors and successors started from a Euro-centric perspective? Signs point to yes.

Is a Euro-centric perspective a bad thing? I don't think so... as long as one does not treat one's *own* perspective as if it were *universal*, and arrogantly impose it on others. Considering how the British Empire imposed their perspective from the Falklands to Hong Kong, and established Greenwich Observatory as the central reference point for so many maps, that's a big "if".

See also, the division of the Roman Empire into the part ruled from Rome, and the part ruled from Constantinople. Compare that with the territory of the Roman Catholic church and the Eastern Orthodox church. Compare that with the area where people mostly write with the Roman alphabet versus the area where people mostly write with Cyrillic script or something closely related. Compare that with a map of NATO versus the Warsaw Pact nations in the 1960s through 1990s...

https://xkcd.com/503/

 

[Maxperson]

How can the game not have 'real world issues'? It's being played by real world people (in the real world, even).

So what. The game has it's own rules and definitions, and in the game race does not work like it does in the real world and has none of the real world stigmas. You can bring your personal issues into the game with you, but that's not the game's problem, it's yours. That the game is played in the real world by real people doesn't change that. If you want a fix for your personal issues with regard to the game, it's up to you to make those changes for your game. The game designers don't have an obligation to change things so that your personal issues are accounted for.