D&D 5E Unearthed Arcana: Gothic Lineages & New Race/Culture Distinction

The latest Unearthed Arcana contains the Dhampir, Reborn, and Hexblood races. The Dhampir is a half-vampire; the Hexblood is a character which has made a pact with a hag; and the Reborn is somebody brought back to life.

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Perhaps the bigger news is this declaration on how race is to be handled in future D&D books as it joins other games by stating that:

"...the race options in this article and in future D&D books lack the Ability Score Increase trait, the Language trait, the Alignment trait, and any other trait that is purely cultural. Racial traits henceforth reflect only the physical or magical realities of being a player character who’s a member of a particular lineage. Such traits include things like darkvision, a breath weapon (as in the dragonborn), or innate magical ability (as in the forest gnome). Such traits don’t include cultural characteristics, like language or training with a weapon or a tool, and the traits also don’t include an alignment suggestion, since alignment is a choice for each individual, not a characteristic shared by a lineage."

 

[Umbran]

No one thinks Tolkien set out to be racist.

We should note that "didn't set out to be racist" is... a really, really low bar. And it doesn't account for much of the actual racism in our cultures.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I think this is a key point. I certainly enjoy a lot of the content that is being criticized in these forums. As an American white male, I'm largely oblivious to the painful stereotypes that content reinforces.

At the same time, I think I could probably enjoy it just as much (or more?) if it had been written...or is re-written...to more respectfully address the cultures from which it obviously derives.

It seems likely to me that the kind of re-writing that would be needed, across the board for every non-European culture depicted, would be extremely difficult, time-consuming, and fraught with danger as public opinion is likely to call out every perceived slight. It is also quite possible that the results of that work may not be particularly profitable. Not everyone is interested in nuanced depictions of non-European cultures for D&D, or any depictions at all, for that matter, and WotC tries to have all their products occupy as broad a base as possible and cast the widest net they can.

While I don't think those are sufficient reasons not to do it, and would personally love to see what it would look like, I fear that the issues described above will instead lead to exceedingly bland products where the highest priority is to avoid offense. It would be the easiest path going forward. I hope that doesn't happen, and that WotC takes a little risk in this matter, trusting their writers and their audience.

Also, a lot of people in our community have been told recently that the way they've gamed for years is a problem, and that cultural touchstones that may have been formative in their lives are bad and they shouldn't like them. That can be a hard pill to swallow for anyone, even if the reasoning is sound. I think that's a perspective worth keeping in mind.

 

[Stefano Rinaldelli]

No one thinks Tolkien set out to be racist. But that doesn't prevent things being interpreted that way though modern eyes, as @Umbran relates. How things are seen in 2021 is what matters, not the original intent of the authors.

Interpreting or overinterpreting? You cannot prevent the second. It is a semiotic problem and it is not easy!

It's interesting that you are amused by the mafia jokes, even though there are some Italians who make a huge fuss about the stereotype. And I'm amused by Terry Pratchett's ginger, kilted feegles, and the English love "stiff upper lip" It's the difference between positive and negative stereotypes, but unless you are on the inside it's hard to tell which is which. And the relative vulnerability of the various cultures. Those people who often find themselves on the receiving end of prejudice are understandably more sensitive to how they are portrayed.

In Italy, the more enthusiast fan of Godfather are sicilian and southern people, you know? Try to tell them that they are wrong! They don't understand it! So we have many cases, as much as many as people on earth. 7 billion different nuances of interpretation about the same fiction. Can you afford to cope with it? We can try to avoid being offensive but if somebody wants to be offended or doesn't have the cultural instruments to understand where starts his/her personal over-interpretation, you cannot do anything about that. To declare to want to solve this problem is naive or hypocrite.
My six years old daughter has already seen as wrong the fact that in italian, gender undefined words are conjugate as masculine. Unfortunately there is not a neutral conjugation in Italian. Let's change Italian language? Maybe. In the meantime I've explained to her that this is the heritage of an ugly masculine culture.

 

[Guest 6801328]

According to your point of view, everything is black end in being afroamerican?

No. Please allow me to lay out the problem:

1. For centuries (millennia?) subjugation of other people has been rationalized through the same de-humanizing tropes and language: they are primitive, they are savage, they breed like rabbits, they are ugly, the are inherently evil, they can't control their emotions, etc. etc. etc. They are not really human, and thus it is ok to kill/enslave/exploit them.
2. Those associations have been used for so long that most of us don't see anything controversial about it.
3. Thus, when writers...whether we mean RPG writers or Tolkien...want to describe "the bad guys" the most effective way to convey that image is to use that language, possibly without fully understanding why that language works.
4. For the largest RPG audience, the ethnic group most associated with oppression will probably be africans, or african-americans. So when we talk about it, we're going to see that connection. But the same language has been used to justify subjugation and genocide against "more primitive" cultures around the world, not just against africans, and not just by western europeans/americans.

In other words, the strategy used to de-humanize mongols was...surprise!...the same strategy used to de-humanize africans. So when Tolkien was tapping into that subconscious bias when he was basing his orcs off of mongols, he was perpetuating the exact same insidious mythology that sits in peoples' subconscious when they say, "It's not systemic racism...those people really are more likely to commit crimes." Or whatever the claim is.

 

[Aldarc]

Interpreting or overinterpreting? You cannot prevent the second. It is a semiotic problem and it is not easy!

I don't think that declaring anything that ventures into harmful stereotypes or cultural associations should necessarily be declared as "overinterpreting" particularly when some of these associations are either fairly explicit or rooted in the transmission of recognizably racist tropes. For example, we can see a lot of contextualized Euro-American racism towards non-whites and colonialism in works like John Carter of Mars, which is an early 20 century sci-fi novella about alien civilizations on Mars. But behind the veil of these sci-fi stories are tropes rooted in the racism of Americans fighting American Indians in Westerns, colonial adventure stories set in Africa and Asia, "White Man's Burden," etc. These are the tropes that influenced sci-fi and fantasy, which D&D inherited, adopted, and uncritically used while also establishing some of its own nasty tropes.

 

[Scribe]

Right off the rails into a flaming dumpster with this thread...

 

[Remathilis]

Right off the rails into a flaming dumpster with this thread...

Tl; dr : D&D was a mistake.

 

[Aldarc]

Right off the rails into a flaming dumpster with this thread...

From what I can tell, the thread came off the rails by the first page.

 

[Faolyn]

Great. All power to them. However, that doesn't help them use their Rogue features (unless they are multiclassed with Hexblade).

Maybe not, but it really depends on what type of rogue they wanted to play. I'm playing a Swashbuckler, and Charisma is important to them (it adds to our Initiative). Plus, my character is a professional dualist, not a thief, so she hasn't invested much in those non-useful skills like Investigation for finding traps (plus Int is her dump stat). Which lead to a rather amusing incident involving an explosion and a city-wide riot...

 

[Faolyn]

I, and the Cha 16 rogue swashbuckler I'm currently making, beg to differ. : )

Cha 16 swashbuckler solidarity! <fist bump>