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.

 

[Aldarc]

I am surprised that the name of the book, Monster Manual, with the most races in it has not been subject to mention because it calls them all “monsters”.

Many other systems use the term "Bestiary," including Paizo.

I don’t think that Paizo’s decision to use anscestry is opening up design space that is not already open in 5e D&D

Where?

 

[Maxperson]

Many other systems use the term "Bestiary," including Paizo.

Beasts. Monsters. It's all the same "insult".

Where?

Same place. Racial feats can be used to vary things culturally, and ancestrally as well. Race can be used to encompass more than just genetics. There is no new space opened up by a change in terms. OR, D&D can just add ancestry feats to races. Imagine that!

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

On a more constructive note. 1e talks about some half-orcs being superior to other half-orcs. That's entirely contained within a single race, which means that it cannot be racism. Racism requires that one race believe that it is superior to another race which is believed to be inferior. 1e doesn't meet the definition.

Which completely ignores the fact that real world racism exists entirely within one species, and that (as has been pointed out frequently in this thread) “race” is a sociological and not biological construction originally used to distinguish between who could be oppressed and wh got to do the oppressing.

Hell- read up on slavery in the Southern US, especially in my home state of Louisiana. My own people sorted themselves out along similar lines: who was light-skinned enough to “pass” for white or work in the house vs who was so dark they were best suited to be field hands and manual laborers. See also The Quadroon Ball, the paper bag test, “good hair”, etc.

And that stuff is going on today. One of my cousins was dating a marine. Real cool dude, @6’ tall, linebacker build, and dark as 80% cacao chocolates. When he got to meet the parents, during a quiet moment alone, her mom told him he was “too dark for her daughter.” (To the man’s credit, that did not deter him.)

Bob wasn’t the only dark guy to get vilified for his dark skin while dating a member of my family.

...which is precisely Riley37’s point. Gygax’s lifted the language in that passage right out of some ugly history. I don’t offhand recall anything like it in latter editions of the game, and I would not be surprised if that passage contributed to a lot of issues for minority gamers.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand why GG might have put it in there. It provides a worldbuilding hook, a social dynamic that could be played with. But presented in that manner, without narrative distance from the game designer, it could also come across as a peek behind the curtain at a racist game designer. It simply wasn’t clear which it was.

And that, to me, means the game is better off without that passage or ones like it.

 

[tomBitonti]

Before stepping too the meaning of race as meaning cultural upbringing, I’m thinking a re-emphasis of race in the meaning of creature type should be made. In a character description, knowing that a character is a human or a lizard man or an awakened stone golem is useful. Or should we de-emphasize that meaning? Should we keep a place in a character sheet for this detail (including significant game mechanic consequences) as a part of a chapter description?
Thx!
TomB

 

[Eltab]

Can you pass for white?

Not after I get a sunburn. Then I can pass for red-skinned. Until it peels.

re Holocaust:
Most* of the victims of the Holocaust were white, but/and "not the right kind" of white.
* maybe 'all', if you think of the Holocaust as aimed at civilians not soldiers

 

[Hriston]

Yes, I was thinking of 5e backgrounds when I made my post. I think that's the strongest mechanical innovation in 5e. 13th Age uses something similar. 4e struggled towards it with the "theme" idea part way through the life of the edition, but it's harder to do in 4e because everything in 4e has to be mechanically as well as narratively loaded (it's the way 4e works), and that means that desiging new elements is a chore. Whereas the 5e approach to both race and background is mechanically much ligther, and so makes it easier to come up with lists of interesting options.

It's entirely possible to deconstruct the 5e races into their components and assign point values to them for purchase at character creation. Due to some analysis I've done for an unrelated project, I happen to think the point value for a 5e race is 78 points, where a 1 point increase to an ability score is worth 12 points, and a language or tool proficiency is worth 3 points. The result of moving away from racial "packages", however, may be to inhibit ease of play, as a player would be faced with a long list of possible choices that may or may not interact in various ways. It may also open up the possibility of overly optimized combinations, not that I'm particularly concerned about that.

 

[Eltab]

Before stepping too the meaning of race as meaning cultural upbringing, I’m thinking a re-emphasis of race in the meaning of creature type should be made.

Maybe helpful to disentangle these two aspects:

"Race and Culture" (book) by Thomas Sowell looks at the IRL influences of both, tangled together and not-so-tangled.

 

[Rygar]

Well, if Paizo tanks because all their customers DEMAND the word RACE, then WotC will pick up the market share. If not WotC, then Palladium or someone else. Worst case, Breitbart will get into the TRPG market and publish FATAL 2020, and you'll still be able to buy a game with your preferred vocabulary.

But yeah, you've clearly established why fantasy movies with what the leftists call "representation", such as "Wonder Woman" and "Black Panther", always fail at the box office. When will Hollywood learn from the failures of "Princess Mononoke" and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"?

Counter-example, though: The Call of Duty series has sold over 250 million copies, with gross revenue over US$15 billion. That's a very left-leaning game - it started as a WWII game, and there is absolutely *nothing* more Leftist than defeating the Third Reich. That united leftists all the way from George Orwell to FDR to gorram Stalin. The Wolfenstein series also did just fine, despite its political correctness.

Wonder Woman - Decades old established character, carried a TV Series decades ago in a very different culture climate, and was attacked by left wing political activists for its costume design before the movie's release.

Black Panther - Decades old established character, in a decades old established setting, was used as an example of how not to do certain cultures on this very site a couple of weeks a go.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Decades old character, created and completed long before the current political environment.

Princess Monoke - Really? A Japanese Anime? I think it's pretty safe to say that Japan has 0 interest in the west's politics. Especially in 1997, nearly twenty years before left wing politics started pushing.

I'm not seeing the connection here. Perhaps you can help me see where left wing politics was involved in the success of these properties that pre-date the present left wing politics? I'm also extremely confused about how these properties are examples of how left wing politics is a recipe for success when left wing politics has problems with them and had no involvement in their creation or establishment?

In fact, it looks to me like a list of how properties will succeed by avoiding politics and just sticking to making quality content.

 

[Maxperson]

Which completely ignores the fact that real world racism exists entirely within one species, and that (as has been pointed out frequently in this thread) “race” is a sociological and not biological construction originally used to distinguish between who could be oppressed and wh got to do the oppressing.

Hell- read up on slavery in the Southern US, especially in my home state of Louisiana. My own people sorted themselves out along similar lines: who was light-skinned enough to “pass” for white or work in the house vs who was so dark they were best suited to be field hands and manual laborers. See also The Quadroon Ball, the paper bag test, “good hair”, etc.

And that stuff is going on today. One of my cousins was dating a marine. Real cool dude, @6’ tall, linebacker build, and dark as 80% cacao chocolates. When he got to meet the parents, during a quiet moment alone, her mom told him he was “too dark for her daughter.” (To the man’s credit, that did not deter him.)

Bob wasn’t the only dark guy to get vilified for his dark skin while dating a member of my family.

Sure. We have done very ugly things to others of our species, which just makes this push to change race to species or the equivalent even more silly. If you believe that the real world somehow is impacted by and impacts race in the game, then it will do the same thing if you change it to species.

Gygax’s lifted the language in that passage right out of some ugly history. I don’t offhand recall anything like it in latter editions of the game, and I would not be surprised if that passage contributed to a lot of issues for minority gamers.

Regardless of similarity, we don't know that he lifted that passage out of history or came up with it on his own. Or for that matter, whether the more human half-orcs weren't genuinely physically and mentally superior to the less human looking ones. Perhaps the non-PC versions got many more penalties and it wasn't actually racist/speciesist to call the PC version superior. Regardless, though, it was gone by 1989 and so has no bearing on the game as it presently stands, or stood for the last 29 years.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand why GG might have put it in there. It provides a worldbuilding hook, a social dynamic that could be played with. But presented in that manner, without narrative distance from the game designer, it could also come across as a peek behind the curtain at a racist game designer. It simply wasn’t clear which it was.

I can agree with that. It doesn't sound great, which is probably why it's gone.

And that, to me, means the game is better off without that passage or ones like it.

I can agree with that as well. The word race, though, isn't a passage or term like that.

 

[Maxperson]

It's entirely possible to deconstruct the 5e races into their components and assign point values to them for purchase at character creation. Due to some analysis I've done for an unrelated project, I happen to think the point value for a 5e race is 78 points, where a 1 point increase to an ability score is worth 12 points, and a language or tool proficiency is worth 3 points. The result of moving away from racial "packages", however, may be to inhibit ease of play, as a player would be faced with a long list of possible choices that may or may not interact in various ways. It may also open up the possibility of overly optimized combinations, not that I'm particularly concerned about that.

While possible, it wouldn't be D&D if you did that. It would be a new game akin to GURPS. And really, why stop at race. If you're deconstructing things and making a new game, let's pull all the classes apart and allow you to just buy class abilities as you level.