D&D General The New York Times on D&D

[mamba]

I think we are being willfully blind if we don't recognize that using the term species to describe people will not rise up and haunt us someday.

it’s what science has been using for a while now, if they need to eventually change that term, D&D can follow suit. Not sure what you envision would cause this however, and I certainly would not feel bad about using the commonly accepted term at the time.

 

[Remathilis]

That said, and as much as I think changing from race to species is a bad idea for D&D, it isn’t a problem in D&D for the same reason race wasn’t: humans are treated as belonging to the same species. I think it was better to have all humans be the same race. Worrying about fictional races or species seems pretty pointless to me

Consider this.

The Bible says humans were created by God and all are descendants of the first humans Adam and Eve. (And later, the offspring of Noah). Putting aside evolution for a minute and viewing this from the "Moradin created the dwarves" lens we can say per the Bible that humanity was created by one creator and all are blood related to one another if to go enough (and in some cases thousands) generations back.

That's our framework for the next part.

Would it then be fair to describe the sum and total of humanity (all that have and will walk the Earth) as a single race, species, ancestry, heritage or lineage? Which word connects, you, I and everyone that has ever been or will be?

When you decide what word describes us, you have your word to describe elves, gnomes and goblins.

 

[Imaro]

The hadoozee thing is a great example of this. That piece of art is not a racist and it's not insensitive. It is an example of overreach.

Simple yes or no question... are you a black American?

FYI: From your simplistic take on the hadozee art that you give above I'm betting no.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Consider this.

The Bible says humans were created by God and all are descendants of the first humans Adam and Eve. (And later, the offspring of Noah). Putting aside evolution for a minute and viewing this from the "Moradin created the dwarves" lens we can say per the Bible that humanity was created by one creator and all are blood related to one another if to go enough (and in some cases thousands) generations back.

I am not 100% sure what the point is, but I mean this can go either way. The biblical account of human origins was used to justify racism as well. But sure you can have a cosmology where a god create a people and they all belong to one race/species/kind

That's our framework for the next part.

Would it then be fair to describe the sum and total of humanity (all that have and will walk the Earth) as a single race, species, ancestry, heritage or lineage? Which word connects, you, I and everyone that has ever been or will be?

Sure, and in the real world I think this is true (not that we are descended from two people made from earth, but that there is one humanity.

When you decide what word describes us, you have your word to describe elves, gnomes and goblins.

Why though? Yes you can do that. You can describe gnomes and elves as belonging to the same group as humans. But the whole point of fantasy races is to imagine a world where you have these groups like you had in human history where we shared the world with something closer to subspecies who significantly different from us. I like the idea that elves are so different from humans they would have a fundamentally different way of seeing the world (because they are physically different, mentally different and extremely long lived). To me that is much more interesting than they are just the same as humans. But I do think this raises a point: is the objection here really about language or is it more about discomfort with imaging worlds where you have effectively different species of human (obviously species falls short when you bring magical origins into play but I think the meaning gets across).

 

[Remathilis]

I am not 100% sure what the point is, but I mean this can go either way. The biblical account of human origins was used to justify racism as well. But sure you can have a cosmology where a god create a people and they all belong to one race/species/kind



Sure, and in the real world I think this is true (not that we are descended from two people made from earth, but that there is one humanity.



Why though? Yes you can do that. You can describe gnomes and elves as belonging to the same group as humans. But the whole point of fantasy races is to imagine a world where you have these groups like you had in human history where we shared the world with something closer to subspecies who significantly different from us. I like the idea that elves are so different from humans they would have a fundamentally different way of seeing the world (because they are physically different, mentally different and extremely long lived). To me that is much more interesting than they are just the same as humans. But I do think this raises a point: is the objection here really about language or is it more about discomfort with imaging worlds where you have effectively different species of human (obviously species falls short when you bring magical origins into play but I think the meaning gets across).

You missed my point entirely.

I set up the premise where humanity in the real world has a classic "mythological" origin rather than an evolutionary origin. One where you and I are family if you trace our parents back far enough. I then gave you five words to describe how you and I and everyone on this planet are related. The word you would use to describe humanity is the word best used to describe all the different groups of creatures in D&D.

Race: are we all one race (IE the human race)?
Species: are we all one species?
Ancestry: are we all one shared ancestry? (One family, the children of Eve?)
Heritage: are we all one shared human heritage?
Lineage: do we all come from one human lineage?

You can then repeat the test for elves (are all elves one race, species, ancestry, heritage or lineage? Every elf type ever made) and so on for all the PC creature options in the game.

It's a linguistic test: the word you would use to decide every and all of the real world humans would be the word that we use to separate elves and humans in game.

 

[Bedrockgames]

You missed my point entirely.

I set up the premise where humanity in the real world has a classic "mythological" origin rather than an evolutionary origin. One where you and I are family if you trace our parents back far enough. I then gave you five words to describe how you and I and everyone on this planet are related. The word you would use to describe humanity is the word best used to describe all the different groups of creatures in D&D.

Race: are we all one race (IE the human race)?
Species: are we all one species?
Ancestry: are we all one shared ancestry? (One family, the children of Eve?)
Heritage: are we all one shared human heritage?
Lineage: do we all come from one human lineage?

You can then repeat the test for elves (are all elves one race, species, ancestry, heritage or lineage? Every elf type ever made) and so on for all the PC creature options in the game.

It's a linguistic test: the word you would use to decide every and all of the real world humans would be the word that we use to separate elves and humans in game.

Okay, I missed that.

Mythic origins create a lot of issues here though with that terminology. I would probably want to go with peoples or species, but the problem species presents for fantasy gaming is it sounds anachronistic (I think most people, even many of the folks who super), it actually has worse real world implications than race did in D&D (because now instead of all humans being one race, they are one species, which does open up the possibility of them having subspecies: which would be classic racism)*, it isn't accurate to real world uses because humans and demihumans can often have offspring (pretty sure different species can't interbreeding real life). But race can work here too. Especially if you are saying all humans are one race. The human race is a concept in real life that people invoke (rather than different human racial groups)

Again though, pretty much any term you can think of, species, peoples, lineage, ancestry, race, etc has been used to advance racism in the past, so there isn't likely to be one that is entirely free of the concerns people have.

*Obviously this is a pretty remote concern as it requires designers actually doing that but it is at least a logical inference some gamers could make

 

[AlViking]

"Species" is a scientific term that falls apart due to its lack of a real definition in real life, yet alone trying to use it for fantasy

Plus, well, it doesn't even encapsulate most of the races. Aasimar, tieflings and genasi aren't species, for example, and yet they're treated like one

Race is also a bad word for it because it once again fails the aasimar/tiefling/genasi check. I've stuck with ancestry being the most appropriate as it kind of just works

Ancestry is also bad because it's far too narrow. Unless you go back a few hundred thousand years or more, humans don't have the same ancestors. Ancestry can also be just as problematic as race because some people claim superiority because of their lineage.

Species is as good as it gets without using a made up word.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Ancestry is also bad because it's far too narrow. Unless you go back a few hundred thousand years or more, humans don't have the same ancestors. Ancestry can also be just as problematic as race because some people claim superiority because of their lineage.

I do think ancestry would be much worse than species for this reason

 

[PFranz1.5]

I'm glad that 5.5E has moved on from Race for all of the well articulated reasons that other have stated. I do have a bone to pick with Species though and it is mostly a "scientific" one.

With the caveat that there are certainly blurry lines/edge cases in biology - the simplest definition of Species is that "two members of the same species can mate and produce fertile offspring". This is why Horses and Donkeys are not considered the same species as Mules are sterile (well 99.9% sterile).

As far as we know, every Species in the Handbook is capable of mating with, and producing fertile offspring, with every other species which would make them the same Species by our modern understanding. This is why there is an ongoing disagreement in many circles whether Humans and Neanderthals are different species or whether they should be classified as different subspecies (there is strong evidence of Neanderthal genes in modern humans which suggest successful interbreeding at one point - a really interesting scholarly debate IMO).

Now, of course things get tricky when it comes to a world with magic and Species essentially being created by Gods on most worlds which makes using our scientific terms a dubious proposition. But that was true of Race as well. Since, IMO, both can lead to some crappy places regarding real world bigotry I would have preferred something akin to Lineage or Ancestry. But ultimately those would not be perfect either (as others have shown) and I do think Species is a step forward.

 

[Remathilis]

Okay, I missed that.

Mythic origins create a lot of issues here though with that terminology. I would probably want to go with peoples or species, but the problem species presents for fantasy gaming is it sounds anachronistic (I think most people, even many of the folks who super), it actually has worse real world implications than race did in D&D (because now instead of all humans being one race, they are one species, which does open up the possibility of them having subspecies: which would be classic racism)*, it isn't accurate to real world uses because humans and demihumans can often have offspring (pretty sure different species can't interbreeding real life). But race can work here too. Especially if you are saying all humans are one race. The human race is a concept in real life that people invoke (rather than different human racial groups)

Again though, pretty much any term you can think of, species, peoples, lineage, ancestry, race, etc has been used to advance racism in the past, so there isn't likely to be one that is entirely free of the concerns people have.

*Obviously this is a pretty remote concern as it requires designers actually doing that but it is at least a logical inference some gamers could make

You are correct that no word couldn't be used to "other" another group. Maybe when we make contact with aliens, we'll think of a better word. Then again, I don't think we'll ever be free of division across different groups of humans, so any word we create will inevitably be tainted by people who want to use it for evil.

I don't think species is as modernistic as people here think. Its roots are ancient Latin and its use in English dates back to the 14th century. If it's anachronistic because it's not medieval, so are a lot of words in D&D like rapier and galleon.