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.

 

[Riley37]

The core regions of FR (Sword Coast) is very Euro-centric. If that as a lenses is considered to be bad...

In a question about "Orient" and Kara-Tur, I gave my position on that question. Having it as a lens, as a starting point, is not bad. Presenting it as the only valid perspective, or as an innately superior perspective, *that* is bad.

Tolkien draw a map of a fantasy world, in which the Good Guys have grey or blue eyes, and they face West when they pray before a meal, and they fight the swarthy, sallow, slant-eyed people who live southwards and eastwards. I think Tolkien, and Kipling before him, was a fundamentally decent person, but he grew up with the British Empire as the moral standard for how Europeans can and should treat people in Asia, and he did not question that moral standard to the same extent that his near-contemporary George Orwell did. The AD&D Player's Handbook has a literal chart on race relationships. It's a direct match for Tolkien's canon, right down to which Halfling sub-tribe gets along better with dwarves. And then other writers came along... so now Faerun, and the Forgotten Realms in general, is a LOT less driven by the perspective of the British Empire, than OD&D and 1E were. For my values, that's an improvement.

You've lived in Japan, and you've returned to the USA, right? So you are familiar with USA perspectives which start with a basis of fundamental respect for the billions of humans who live elsewhere and who live more or less differently; and perspectives which don't start with that basis. So far as I can tell, both WotC and Paizo are doing their best to practice the former.

 

[Parmandur]

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?



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.

Yeah, the weirdest part of the whole discussion, to me, is that Paizo is getting rid of the word race so that they can engage in weird race shennanigans.

 

[Parmandur]

Background would seem the logical place to put those. I mean, 5e doesn't do it that way, either, but...

You recommended I read that blog post to reassure me of PF2's direction. I have read it. I am quoting the specific passages that do the opposite of reassure me.

...which indicates that "ancestry" represents both.

Yeeeeeah, the more they talk about the "design space" opened up by the "ancestry" terminology change, the weirder it seems.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

No, humans get +1 to everything or +2 to distribute and a feat. Elves get a +2 to dexterity a few other traits like immune to sleep.

Since you have not played it, I guess you have not read Chapter 2 the 5e PHB? The intro uses race as a specific word and has thing like:

“Choosing a Race

Humans are the most common people in the worlds of D&D, but they live and work alongside dwarves, elves, halflings, and countless other fantastic species. Your character belongs to one of these peoples.”

If you don’t play it, and have not even read the chapter, then maybe you are latching onto the word “race”instead of how it is being used.

Like I’ve said multiple times, the use of “race” in FRPGs does not personally offend me. But I also recognize that some could be offended by it, so I have no particular reason to oppose its replacement with something like “species”.

 

[Riley37]

Now you are just being sexist. Females do not have racial packages.

Now you're being phylum-ist and mammal-centric. Two words: thri-kreen ovipositor.

(You also might be eliding the relationship between anatomical sex and social gender, in which case, any worshipper of Corellon Larethian can set you straight... so to speak.)

 

[Riley37]

Blood.

Blood is the word everyone is grasping for. We are talking about something to define "genetics" in a non-anachronistic sounding way.

The word "Ancestry" is almost already a dogwhistle for the word "Race" right now anyway.

Actually, no. I'm grasping for "Origin", as another person suggested, which also applies for Warforged, and for Ents, and for other possible characters which don't even HAVE blood.

Participants at "Unite the Right" last year chanted "Blood and Soil", along with... well... other slogans. That's not what *you* mean; but if we're looking for a term which hasn't been dog-whistled, "blood" is as tainted as any other. It's as if race supremacists had already been exploring this territory for centuries!

 

[Riley37]

Who's actually arguing this?

And why's there a big pile of straw on the floor?

https://nethackwiki.com/wiki/Straw_golem

 

[TheCosmicKid]

Nor is there anything particularly liberal about disregarding or denying this. Liberals aren't committed to denying that patterns of ideas can be a burden on autonomy.

Liberals are, however, pretty committed on the whole to the principle of innocent until proven guilty. Characterizing my position, at least, as "denying that patterns of ideas can be a burden on autonomy" would be like characterizing my skepticism about a particular criminal accusation as "denying that human beings can commit crimes". There's a few more dots you gotta connect before you get from the specific to the general, or vice versa.

 

[Riley37]

So does that make Dragons the "People of Halitosis"?

My main PC, Boris the Green, is a green dragonborn (poison breath weapon) and a green paladin (Oath of Ancients), in a party which also includes an adolescent goblin wild mage. We met with a giant, whose people had been all but exterminated by humans and elves, and had gone into hiding. The giant addressed the party as "Scion of Toxin and Child of Mischief." Took me a moment to figure out that the first phrase was addressing my PC and the goblin, because he would not even talk with the humans and the half-elf.

We managed to get him talking with all of us. We may have found an opening for truce between the Giants and one of the human nations. In the long run, maybe even a peace treaty, and reconciliation. (The Giants in this setting are reduced to one nation... if that; they are one tribe, in one village.)

Anyways, I prefer Scion of Toxin, to People of Halitosis; but there's also other breath weapons.

More seriously, I've put some thought into how dragonborn society might differ from humans and other mammals, just from the anatomical differences of hatching from eggs rather than live birth, and the lack of nursing in child-raising. I figure that any adult can keep the eggs warm, and any adult can feed any child, and in a village, they take turns; those too old to hunt, take extra turns; therefore the role of "motherhood" is fundamentally different, and is less tied to anatomical sex than with mammals. It's been fun, and I look for opportunities to play the odd-man-out of a dragonborn hero travelling with an otherwise all-mammal party. (Also, green scales are not shiny metallic scales, so people who recognize Boris as a folk hero and paladin, have a *very* different reaction from those who see someone with chromatic dragon ancestry, and who assume that he's on Team Tiamat.)

As Order of the Stick once said: "Dragons, color-coded for your convenience!" Boris is inconveniently chromatic and on Team Bahamut. Yeah, yeah, done to death with Drizzt knock-offs, I know. It's not easy, being green.

Wait, did I say chromatic dragon ancestry? I mean Origin... well, maybe his Origin is dragonborn, and then Green/Poison is one of the possible Ancestry variations for the dragonborn origin, just as Wood Elf or Moon Elf is an available Ancestry for the Elf origin.

 

[Riley37]

At a certain point, people are going to get offended at something. I draw the line based on my personal experience. If you think it needs changing, then my point of view says we both get to make our case but that Habro/WoTC makes the call.

I partially agree. I think Hasbro/WOTC gets to make the call for D&D, and Paizo gets to make the call for Pathfinder. Customers choose to buy one, or the other, or both, or some other game entirely. I see a significant difference between the situation with multiple publishers, versus the dynamics back when D&D was more or less the only game in town, so to speak.

Though that makes me curious whether Tunnels and Trolls (1975) handled races notably differently than D&D did. (quick research) T&T featured the "Peters-McAllister Chart For Creating Man-like Characters"! Not to mention the race rules in Bunnies & Burrows (1976), because AFAIK it had none. If you prefer an even more thinly veiled allegory than D&D, though, I recommend Shadowrun.

Anyways, I'm gonna go out on a limb here, and suggest that Paizo is gonna lose market share among Alt-Right customers, with some hope of gaining market share on the... well... if the usual phase is unwelcome on Enworld, then I'll just refer to them as the other side.