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]

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".

But D&D does not link those things to real world race or cultural issues. Just because D&D has a race called dwarf, doesn't mean that the race is linked to real world dwarfism and all of the associated issues that come along with real world dwarfism. None of those issues apply to D&D dwarves. The other races are the same.

 

[Riley37]

What real life human culture is represented by dwarves...

In Tolkien and Tolkienesque descriptions, the consonant patterns of their language and names are a LOT like the consonant patterns of Hebrew, they're negatively stereotyped as stubborn hoarders of wealth, and consider the description of Bruenor's nose on 5E PHB p.18... and they're rarely tall... that doesn't ring a bell?

If you're about to interpret this as an accusation that JRRT was Juedophobic: whoah there, stick to what I'm actually saying, no more, no less. The Third Reich asked JRRT to certify the purity of his ancestry, for purposes of publishing a German edition of LOTR. His answer was properly defiant. (Well, "properly" to those who share my bias against the National Socialists.)

Some authors since Tolkien have brought a different spin to D&D dwarves. Sometimes that spin is psuedo-Scots. Durkon in "Order of the Stick" has everything but the gorram kilt and bagpipes.

I can't see a single demi-human race that corresponds to a real life human culture.

True: you can't see.

I think I'd better end this post right here, rather than say anything further.

 

[Aldarc]

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?

Potentially. As I have said before, it's a complicated series of issues to which the terminology of "race" participates. But use of the term "race" makes that problematic mapping more explicitly connected to racial/racism discourse. (Assuming "they" refers to "Paizo," Paizo has admitted "oops" to some of their portrayals of human cultures in Golarion. And I suspect that they will be making some minor setting changes to add more complexity to those portrayals.)

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.

You are not making a good argument here, and that is likely because you are hellbent on misconstruing their design purposes, intent, and implications for the sake of preserving the term "race." The final sentence in the quoted paragraph shows that they want the mechanics to divorce culture from biological notions of race such that they can create more grey areas, complexity, and racial-cultural fluidity, such as elves and humans having a mechanical benefit for coming from the same culture (e.g., elves raised in Varisia) or to distinguish between cultures within a same race. The option for mechanical benefits within the same race are likely to be things like weapon familiarity, such that cultures - which are distinct - can have means to express those distinctions. A lot of this variation exists, to a limited extent, already within Pathfinder 1 via the alternative racial traits. PF2 is expanding this by decoupling the cultural aspects attached to the various playable species and providing means for players to pick what their character acquired via their cultural background, nationality, upbringing, etc.

Of course they are going in the "wrong" direction with this! Haven't I been saying that the whole time.

Not really. You've mostly been flaring your nostrils and loudly stomping your feet in windy walls-of-text against any notion of changing the term "race" and using whatever justification you can find to resist it. The conversation would likely benefit if you were just honest about your intentions and the seed of your real discomfort about changing the term "race" in D&D. If "race" is the most appropriate term, then should you not be advocating for the term "race" in other game systems that do not use this term?

 

[Maxperson]

In Tolkien and Tolkienesque descriptions, the consonant patterns of their language and names are a LOT like the consonant patterns of Hebrew, they're negatively stereotyped as stubborn hoarders of wealth, and consider the description of Bruenor's nose on 5E PHB p.18... and they're rarely tall... that doesn't ring a bell?

ROFL Seriously?!?!? This is your proof? Tolkien took his dwarves from the Norse not the Jews, even to the point of taking some of his names exactly from dwarves in Norse mythology. (https://www.nordicnames.de/wiki/Dwarf). Norse dwarves also loved gold and wealth, or had your forgotten that. And when creating language, there are going to be similarities to other languages. It can't be helped. For God's sake, freaking Klingon also sounds Hebrew at times. As for Bruenor's nose, it's just a description and nothing more.

If you're about to interpret this as an accusation that JRRT was Juedophobic: whoah there, stick to what I'm actually saying, no more, no less. The Third Reich asked JRRT to certify the purity of his ancestry, for purposes of publishing a German edition of LOTR. His answer was properly defiant. (Well, "properly" to those who share my bias against the National Socialists.)

I wasn't. Your example was sufficiently absurd for that not to even enter my mind. Also, we're discussing D&D here and not Tolkien. What Tolkien did or didn't do(didn't in this case) doesn't have any bearing on D&D dwarves. While Tolkien inspired much of D&D, D&D isn't Tolkien.

Some authors since Tolkien have brought a different spin to D&D dwarves. Sometimes that spin is psuedo-Scots. Durkon in "Order of the Stick" has everything but the gorram kilt and bagpipes.

What other authors do or do not do with dwarves also has no bearing on D&D dwarves. I've seen some DMs play them this way and others(most others) not.

I think I'd better end this post right here, rather than say anything further.

After seeing your first attempt, that's probably wise. The others would probably be similarly fatally flawed.

 

[Sunseeker]

Tanis???

Surely Elrond, and Arwen.......? The Half Elf existed in fantasy fiction (and also in D&D) long before Dragonlance.

I would argue the half elf depiction in most editions is closer to Tanis than Elrond, with the boyish, beardless "attractive youth" appearance. Also Arwen is a 3/4ths elf (which goes back to my point of if we're doing half breeds, it implies a lot more), and Elrond is something of an exception since he was kinda magically made into a full elf.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Two things.

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?)

I’m not turned off by it in the RPG context, but wouldn’t be surprised- and would fully understand- if some were.

Second, "keeping anyone away" is not, in my view, the test for what is desirable in a cultural artefact.

It’s a very amorphous metric, to be sure.

My preferred word is, and shall remain “Species.”

 

[Riley37]

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.

On one hand, I see that dynamic in play.

FWIW I don't think that shifting terminology from "race" to "ancestry" is a Win Button and Golden Hammer which will prevent a tension such as the one DannyAlcatraz described, from ever happening again at any D&D table. But... hey... I don't think Talien is that naive either. I'm *confident* that DannyAlcatraz isn't that naive, nor ShinHakkaider, nor Afrodyte.

On another hand, either we disagree deeply about whether both sides are mistaken in seeing actual racism among some of the other side, or we disagree deeply about whether those two are the only teams on the field. Or maybe I'm misunderstanding your terms; is "there's no racism here, there never has been, let's not talk about it" a classical liberal position, or a post-modernist position?

Hardball version of that question: do you categorize James Fields as a classical liberal, or as a post-modernist?

 

[Celebrim]

The conversation would likely benefit if you were just honest about your intentions and the seed of your real discomfort about changing the term "race" in D&D.

Please do tell me what my intentions and the seed of my real discomfort are.

 

[Riley37]

For God's sake, freaking Klingon also sounds Hebrew at times.

Indeed; I know a Paramount staffer who played a prank at a trade show, on that basis.

So now we can draw the links from Scottish to Dwarvish, because James Doohan was the initial author of the Klingon language. Scottish, to Klingon, to Hebrew, to Dwarvish!

But if you don't recognize Dunsany's influence on Tolkien, and the Hebrew phonetics in Dunsany's stories, then I have a wall to sell you.

 

[Celebrim]

On another hand, either we disagree deeply about whether both sides are mistaken in seeing actual racism among some of the other side, or we disagree deeply about whether those two are the only teams on the field.

I'm sure there are more than two teams on the field in the sense that there are probably actually as many opinions as participants. However, this argument has broken into largely conventional lines, as for example you could probably prove by looking at groupings of who predominately receives XP from whom.

Or maybe I'm misunderstanding your terms; is "there's no racism here, there never has been, let's not talk about it" a classical liberal position, or a post-modernist position?

Well, that seemed to have come out of left field. Is that your take away? To be honest, since the start of your flurry of posts a page or two back you've seemed a bit coy, like you were stabbing around your central idea without really hitting on it. Now this post seems a bit weird as well, and I'm not really sure what you are trying to get at. Maybe if you'd just come out with it.

Hardball version of that question: do you categorize James Fields as a classical liberal, or as a post-modernist?

Which James Fields? I can't say that the name rings a big bell for me. Is the name incredibly important to you? Once again, I feel like there is something going on in your head not coming out in your writing.