D&D 5E What races do you expect to see in the core books?

[delericho]

But even in Tolkien, the different Elven groups aren't like different races. They're just categorized by where they live, whether they've been West yet or not, their standing with the Valar, how much of a dick they are to mortals, and stuff like that.

Nonetheless, I'm pretty sure that's where D&D gets its distinctions - never mind that the differences can be summed up as "Legolas is a jock; Celeborn is a nerd."

 

[TrippyHippy]

The diversity of Elves is as old as D&D, starting with the 1e Monster Manual. The need for diversity persists because players disagree about what an ‘elf’ is. Different kinds of Elf explore conflictive archetypes.



There is only one (highly adaptable) Human race, because of a reallife need to disconfirm reallife racism.

The word ‘race’ means ‘species’. A reallife example of different Human species would be Homo sapiens (us Humans) versus Homo floriensis (surprisingly similar to Halflings).

So in D&D, you could create a setting where the Halfling and the Human are closely related races, similar to Goblin and Hobgoblin.

Actually, that is precisely what ‘race’ does not mean - and I take the note about not wanting to cause offence. ‘Race’ is a sociological definition - it refers to ethnicity. A ‘species’ on the other hand is a biological term that denotes that the individual can only genetically breed with members of its own species to produce offspring.

If Elf and Human were different species then we couldn’t have ‘half elves’ (unless we specify them as being infertile mules).

‘Race’ is a problematic term. Games like The One Ring and RuneQuest have realised this, and use ‘Culture’ instead. I’d have preferred if D&D did the same, and provided some actual examples of diversity and variety in Human cultures, rather than just bland mechanics and warm words.