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.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

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.

Some people call that game HERO System.

 

[Remathilis]

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”.

That is a real slippery slope...

While there are a few non-evil creatures in the MM, the term "monster" is generally reserved for antagonists to justify there killing and the taking of thier stuff. If you want to open the door as to whether orcs, dragons, or even ithilids are truly "monsters" (as in hopelessly evil and must be destroyed) you are fundementally changing a big part of the game.

Which is why the game best functions when the narrative is simple and divorced from real world concepts of race, morality, culture, religion, and other "hot button" concepts. Once you bring real-world politics and sociological thinking in, you can start to compare a group of adventures killing an orc and taking it's gold to a group of cops killing a minority suspect in self defense and using assest forfeiture to claim his car...

That's not a rabbit hole I want to go down.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

Perhaps you are seeing something else causing you misgivings that I don't. For me, this represents at least a move in the right direction. Cultural abilities were being hard-baked into species, which was often a massive pain when homebrewing around that. But Paizo appears to be relegating that to ancestry feats: i.e., the realm of exchangeable parts. That in itself is a move towards disentangling culture from species. That shift also makes it easier for GMs potentially homebrewing settings to say, "Ignore these ancestry feats, because they do not represent the culture of dwarves in my setting" or "These are the in-setting cultures than any species can potentially claim for their upbringing." This still runs the risk of mapping real life human cultures to fantasy species. I will not pretend otherwise. But it adds a greater degree of depth than was previously available in comparison with past mechanical portrayals of species, culture, etc. But more interestingly for me as a fan of Eberron, this opens up a tremendous amount of space to delve into the cultures and nations of Khorvaire, where national identity often has a greater emphasis than racial identity. This is not to say that Eberron does not explore racial identity, as it does in a number of places, particularly with species on the margins of society (e.g., warforged, kalashtar, shifters, etc.).

Overall, I think that this opens up design space for ancestral cultures rather than an ancestral monoculture than how it was before (e.g., all dwarves know how to fight giants and goblins, all dwarves have stonecunning, all elves know how to wield longswords and longbows, etc.). As Paizo expressed elsewhere, and included in what you quoted, it appears that there will be ways to reflect via ancestry feats being an Elf raised in Varisia or a human of one ethnicity raised in another culture to reflect that. Why should an elf raised in Magnimar city be able to automatically know how to wield a longsword or bow? Now players can opt out of that. But they may say that they do want to take a feat that represents growing up in Magnimar. I don't think that Paizo's change is perfect, but it seems like a step in the right direction, as it permits a cross-pollinating weaving of species and cultures that was not as feasible before.

Cultural traits are no longer hard-baked into biology (except for language proficiencies...), but they're still linked to it under this unified concept of "ancestry". Furthermore, Paizo could have done exactly the same thing with "race": all that you're describing is Paizo pulling the cultural bits out of the old race packages and turning them into racial feats alongside the loads of racial feats they already have. But what the terminological change does allow them to do, and what they have expressly stated they're interested in doing, is create different ancestries for different human ethnicities. Which looks to me like it's doubling down on the conflation of biology with culture, by equating "Varisian" with "elf" as concepts -- even if when you get to the ancestry feats you can mix and match.

Granted, all this is from early comments about a playtest game. We haven't actually seen any of the human ancestries yet. But from what we've seen so far, yeah, I have misgivings about their direction. Especially since I don't think the best solution to the problem is very complicated at all: culture is a part of background. In 5E terms, just put starting languages into backgrounds and maybe expand them with another, slightly more powerful benefit "slot" that can provide something like a weapon proficiency or giant-slaying.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

I have no idea how that bears upon this discussion, which has nothing to do with a criminal trial.

The parallels are instructive.

Who said that? You seem to be identifying as a liberal - and I posted that "[l]iberals aren't committed to denying that patterns of ideas can be a burden on autonomy."

In context, describing the nature of the disagreements in this thread, it appeared that the thrust of that sentence was "One side of the discussion is doing this denial thing, but they could stop doing that and still be liberal".

(Eg perhaps you are not recognising the way in which the rulebooks incorporate and promulgate patterns of ideas having that character.)

You keep using phrasing like "denying", "disregarding", "not recognizing". Try instead "remaining unconvinced due to a dearth of persuasive reasoning that the mere use of this one particular word constitutes an instance of the incorporation and promulgation of patterns of burdensome ideas". You, in fact, appear to be denying, disregarding, or not recognizing the disconnect between the general principle you're espousing, which is a good one, and the specific case that you're trying to apply it to.

 

[Aldarc]

Cultural traits are no longer hard-baked into biology (except for language proficiencies...), but they're still linked to it under this unified concept of "ancestry". Furthermore, Paizo could have done exactly the same thing with "race": all that you're describing is Paizo pulling the cultural bits out of the old race packages and turning them into racial feats alongside the loads of racial feats they already have. But what the terminological change does allow them to do, and what they have expressly stated they're interested in doing, is create different ancestries for different human ethnicities. Which looks to me like it's doubling down on the conflation of biology with culture, by equating "Varisian" with "elf" as concepts -- even if when you get to the ancestry feats you can mix and match.

Granted, all this is from early comments about a playtest game. We haven't actually seen any of the human ancestries yet. But from what we've seen so far, yeah, I have misgivings about their direction. Especially since I don't think the best solution to the problem is very complicated at all: culture is a part of background. In 5E terms, just put starting languages into backgrounds and maybe expand them with another, slightly more powerful benefit "slot" that can provide something like a weapon proficiency or giant-slaying.

It seems for me at least disingenuous to say that they are doubling down conflating biology with culture given how you originally quoted to me a statement from Paizo where they talk about the possibility Shoanti elves. That does not seem like doubling down on biology = culture. But perhaps we have different senses of "doubling down" or what this change signals.

In regards to bold, which appears to be an underlying assumption, I'm not entirely sure to the extent this will be the case. It remains to be seen, for example, whether elves and dwarves will also have multiple cultures of their own. One of the big problems, IME, is that Golarion is predominately human, with human nations being those that have the bulk of the lion's share of focus in the setting. (Also, based on the hints, background seems narrower in focus, much like it is in 5e, almost in terms of "profession" rather than culture.)

 

[Maxperson]

Some people call that game HERO System.

That, too. Those sorts of systems are fun, but D&D isn't one of those systems.

 

[Maxperson]

While there are a few non-evil creatures in the MM, the term "monster" is generally reserved for antagonists to justify there killing and the taking of thier stuff. If you want to open the door as to whether orcs, dragons, or even ithilids are truly "monsters" (as in hopelessly evil and must be destroyed) you are fundementally changing a big part of the game.

Orcs, chromatic dragons and illithids haven't been hopelessly evil in, oh, ever. All of them have included some percentage of the race that wasn't evil, or was even good. Even in those books where the alignment was "always evil", specifically had passages that said that some individuals of that race would be of alignments other than evil. It's just that the overwhelming number of them were evil. Even demons/devils, arguably the most rigidly evil races that exist, had a good individual in one of the Planescape mini-adventures that came with one of the boxed sets.

 

[Remathilis]

Orcs, chromatic dragons and illithids haven't been hopelessly evil in, oh, ever. All of them have included some percentage of the race that wasn't evil, or was even good. Even in those books where the alignment was "always evil", specifically had passages that said that some individuals of that race would be of alignments other than evil. It's just that the overwhelming number of them were evil. Even demons/devils, arguably the most rigidly evil races that exist, had a good individual in one of the Planescape mini-adventures that came with one of the boxed sets.

Which would then open the game to a moral relativism concerning fighting them and taking thier stuff. What justifies a group of PC's going into a dungeon, fighting and killing the inhabitants, and leaving with thier money and wealth? It can go even further; if you find an altar to an evil God or demon Lord, is it religious intolerance to destroy it?

See, the rabbit hole it moral relativism is deep, which is really why even in the deeper dives into monsters in Volo that they found ways to make most monsters slayable "guilt free", such demonic heritage or ties to evil gods. Because once you open up that orc lives matter, the game ends up about settling peace negotiations with tribes of orcs and leveling sanctions on evil creatures.

It loses something in the process.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

It seems for me at least disingenuous to say that they are doubling down conflating biology with culture given how you originally quoted to me a statement from Paizo where they talk about the possibility Shoanti elves. That does not seem like doubling down on biology = culture. But perhaps we have different senses of "doubling down" or what this change signals.

Can we not call each other "disingenuous"? That leads nowhere good.

In regards to bold, which appears to be an underlying assumption, I'm not entirely sure to the extent this will be the case. It remains to be seen, for example, whether elves and dwarves will also have multiple cultures of their own.

Again, we haven't seen the finished product, but that's not the impression I'm getting. They're just talking about "elf" and "dwarf" and "goblin" as mechanical packages in these blog posts so far.

 

[Parmandur]

Cultural traits are no longer hard-baked into biology (except for language proficiencies...), but they're still linked to it under this unified concept of "ancestry". Furthermore, Paizo could have done exactly the same thing with "race": all that you're describing is Paizo pulling the cultural bits out of the old race packages and turning them into racial feats alongside the loads of racial feats they already have. But what the terminological change does allow them to do, and what they have expressly stated they're interested in doing, is create different ancestries for different human ethnicities. Which looks to me like it's doubling down on the conflation of biology with culture, by equating "Varisian" with "elf" as concepts -- even if when you get to the ancestry feats you can mix and match.

Granted, all this is from early comments about a playtest game. We haven't actually seen any of the human ancestries yet. But from what we've seen so far, yeah, I have misgivings about their direction. Especially since I don't think the best solution to the problem is very complicated at all: culture is a part of background. In 5E terms, just put starting languages into backgrounds and maybe expand them with another, slightly more powerful benefit "slot" that can provide something like a weapon proficiency or giant-slaying.

I could see the game benefitting from a "Sub-Background" system, with broader culture being the main background, which opens up specific occupational "Sub-Backgrounds."