D&D General WotC’s Official Announcement About Diversity, Races, and D&D

Following up on recent discussions on social media, WotC has made an official announcement about diversity and the treatment of ‘race’ in D&D. Notably, the word ‘race’ is not used; in its place are the words ‘people’ and 'folk'.

 PRESS RELEASE

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Dungeons & Dragons teaches that diversity is strength, for only a diverse group of adventurers can overcome the many challenges a D&D story presents. In that spirit, making D&D as welcoming and inclusive as possible has moved to the forefront of our priorities over the last six years. We’d like to share with you what we’ve been doing, and what we plan to do in the future to address legacy D&D content that does not reflect who we are today. We recognize that doing this isn’t about getting to a place where we can rest on our laurels but continuing to head in the right direction. We feel that being transparent about it is the best way to let our community help us to continue to calibrate our efforts.

One of the explicit design goals of 5th edition D&D is to depict humanity in all its beautiful diversity by depicting characters who represent an array of ethnicities, gender identities, sexual orientations, and beliefs. We want everyone to feel at home around the game table and to see positive reflections of themselves within our products. “Human” in D&D means everyone, not just fantasy versions of northern Europeans, and the D&D community is now more diverse than it’s ever been.

Throughout the 50-year history of D&D, some of the peoples in the game—orcs and drow being two of the prime examples—have been characterized as monstrous and evil, using descriptions that are painfully reminiscent of how real-world ethnic groups have been and continue to be denigrated. That’s just not right, and it’s not something we believe in. Despite our conscious efforts to the contrary, we have allowed some of those old descriptions to reappear in the game. We recognize that to live our values, we have to do an even better job in handling these issues. If we make mistakes, our priority is to make things right.

Here’s what we’re doing to improve:

• We present orcs and drow in a new light in two of our most recent books, Eberron: Rising from the Last War and Explorer's Guide to Wildemount. In those books, orcs and drow are just as morally and culturally complex as other peoples. We will continue that approach in future books, portraying all the peoples of D&D in relatable ways and making it clear that they are as free as humans to decide who they are and what they do.
• When every D&D book is reprinted, we have an opportunity to correct errors that we or the broader D&D community discovered in that book. Each year, we use those opportunities to fix a variety of things, including errors in judgment. In recent reprintings of Tomb of Annihilation and Curse of Strahd, for example, we changed text that was racially insensitive. Those reprints have already been printed and will be available in the months ahead. We will continue this process, reviewing each book as it comes up for a reprint and fixing such errors where they are present.
• Later this year, we will release a product (not yet announced) that offers a way for a player to customize their character’s origin, including the option to change the ability score increases that come from being an elf, a dwarf, or one of D&D's many other playable folk. This option emphasizes that each person in the game is an individual with capabilities all their own.
• Curse of Strahd included a people known as the Vistani and featured the Vistani heroine Ezmerelda. Regrettably, their depiction echoes some stereotypes associated with the Romani people in the real world. To rectify that, we’ve not only made changes to Curse of Strahd, but in two upcoming books, we will also show—working with a Romani consultant—the Vistani in a way that doesn’t rely on reductive tropes.
• We've received valuable insights from sensitivity readers on two of our recent books. We are incorporating sensitivity readers into our creative process, and we will continue to reach out to experts in various fields to help us identify our blind spots.
• We're proactively seeking new, diverse talent to join our staff and our pool of freelance writers and artists. We’ve brought in contributors who reflect the beautiful diversity of the D&D community to work on books coming out in 2021. We're going to invest even more in this approach and add a broad range of new voices to join the chorus of D&D storytelling.

And we will continue to listen to you all. We created 5th edition in conversation with the D&D community. It's a conversation that continues to this day. That's at the heart of our work—listening to the community, learning what brings you joy, and doing everything we can to provide it in every one of our books.

This part of our work will never end. We know that every day someone finds the courage to voice their truth, and we’re here to listen. We are eternally grateful for the ongoing dialog with the D&D community, and we look forward to continuing to improve D&D for generations to come.

 

[BookTenTiger]

The bloodthirsty, screaming, pillaging barbarian is a common human trope, it belongs to the entire human race. In fantasy literature, this trope ended up being personified in the orc race. That's hardly surprising: it's an image burned into our collective consciousness.

Of course, using this trope to describe any human group (race, culture whatever it is) is bad and wrong.
Using it to describe a fantasy, made-up race, however, isn't.

I'd like to push you a little further in this idea.

Here's how Orcs are describe in the Monster Manual:

Orc
Medium humanoid (orc), chaotic evil

...

Orcs are savage humanoids with stooped postures, piggish faces, and prominent teeth that resemble tusks. They gather in tribes that satisfy their bloodlust by slaying any humanoids that stand against them.

This entry supports the following ideas:

• all orcs are chaotic evil
• all orcs are savage
• all orcs have stooped postures, piggish faces, and tusks
• all orcs gather in bloodthirsty tribes who slay humanoids

Now let's say WotC changed it to something that didn't support the trope that an entire people is barbaric. Could it be something like...

Orc
Medium humanoid (orc), any alignment

...

Orcs are humanoids with stooped postures, piggish faces, and prominent teeth that resemble tusks. Travelers from afar tell of great orc empires that stretch across the horizon. Many adventurers, however, will encounter nomadic tribes of orcs. Keeps, farms, and villages on the periphery of civilization will sometimes suffer at the hands of orc raiders. The fearsome reputation of orcs has inspired many warlords to hire orc mercenaries for their armies.

This entry supports the following ideas:

• orcs can be any alignment
• all orcs have stooped postures, piggish faces, and tusks
• somewhere there are orc empires
• there are also tribes of orcs
• some orcs are raiders
• some orcs are mercenaries

I can't say my entry is perfect, but I dashed it out in around 5 minutes.

In removing the trope that all orcs are savage, evil barbarians, does that impact the game at all? Does it impact the stories we can tell with orcs?

I would argue that the best way to make these changes is to focus on the kinds of stories we want to tell with orcs and drow. How can we draft rules that support these stories without relying on lazy racist stereotypes?

 

[BookTenTiger]

Erm please explain to me where a person with normal cognitive ability draws the parallel to black people and Orcs? Wouldn't have ever occurred to me to draw that comparison by myself. From my personal point of view you have to do that on purpose in bad faith, doesn't matter which side you're on.
As mentioned in earlier posts, I can easily see the Viking/Norsemen parallels long before I can spot the language, imagery and tropes associated with other ethnicities. Haven't seen an single upset Scandinavians so far.

As pointed out this not exclusively what colonizers/oppressors/slaves (think you meant to say slavers?) do, this is what the human animal does to rally against the others, because we're as territorial and xenophobic as it gets compared to other animal life. It takes a massive effort to purge that from all aspects of our lives, because we're all but programmed to defend our group no matter how good or bad the guys we hang out with are.


WoTC's changes aren't going to amount to anything substantial. Good riddance alignment, a short paragraph rephrased here and there, it's not going to be a big statement. Chult is going to stay a Colonial nation where large amounts of natives probably got decimated by foreign illness on arrival.

The minor stuff that can be changed easy enough isn't what motivated a couple hundred of pages in discussion. Those pages come from a place I don't want any part of represented in the game's design.
Projecting IRL issues on any minor aspect of live, like games that might have not fleshed out every aspect of their fictional game world with enough care to withstand an angry Twitter mob out to get them is surely where Rosa Parks wanted our efforts to go.
Rather than idk.... Slavery not being a thing of the past. It's legal under the 13th amendment and in large scale active use in US prisons. The current form of slavery affects mostly the poor and unfortunate, which happen to have big overlap with demographics, violence and crime.
Convicts are also pretty much branded for live and discriminated against. Most are doing time for non violent crime and in large parts victims of systemical exploitation. A humanitarian tragedy, really.

But anyway we have internet strangers to troll so lets get on with this thread. This is what the media sells us as the next important thing after not dying to COV-19 and so we'll fight it wherever it blows up like moths drawn to light.
Generic higher entity forbid we direct the flow in a productive and reasonable manner into a purpose that means something.

Just to be clear, your arguments are:

1) you see orcs as representatives of certain kinds of cultures (even if you disagree on what kind they are)
2) humans are naturally territorial / xenophobic
3) if WotC changes the kind of language it uses to describe races, it will have no impact upon the world
4) you don't want real-life stuff getting into your game
5) discussing racist language in D&D is distracting us from actually making changes

With all that in mind... what is the harm if WotC removes lazy, racist tropes from D&D?

Theoretically, if done well, removing racist tropes would...
1) still allow you to have Scandinavian orcs
2) help humans playing the game be less territorial and xenophobic
3) have only a positive, if small, impact on the world
4) prevent more real-life racism from being in your game
5) free the rest of us up to continue to be activists and fight for real justice in the world

Did I misunderstand / misrepresent anything in your post? Based on my understanding, it sounds like you would actually support this effort.

 

[CleverNickName]

Or, if we're doing that why not just remove bonuses altogether and rebalance point buy to account for the typical bonus amount?

(If you're a dice roller, well, hope your dice make up for the discrepancy)

It's not a bad idea; it's how we did it back in the day with my beloved BECMI rules system. But unfortunately, players have grown to love getting those bonuses so much nowadays that I bet there would be outrage among players if they were to be removed.

The more I think about this, the more I like it, though.

Perhaps at 1st level, your Background gives you a +1 to a particular ability score. And your Class would give you either a +2 to one score, or a +1 to two different scores. Large-sized or Small-sized creatures might have Advantage/Disadvantage on Athletics/Acrobatics against foes of a different size, but that would be as far as I would take "species adjustments." I'm not even sure that would be necessary.

So my dwarf archivist example would have the Sage background (+1 to Intelligence), and choose Fighter for a +1 Strength and +1 Constitution. Presto! An excellent rig for an Eldritch Knight.

 

[BookTenTiger]

Generally speaking, blacklisting media (speech, images, etc) to fight a wrong ideology that has, to some degree, appropriated that piece of media, is counterproductive.

I'm really curious on your definition of "blacklisting" and how this applies to what WotC plans on doing.

 

[generic]

I'm really curious on your definition of "blacklisting" and how this applies to what WotC plans on doing.

Changing some elements of Drow and Orcs, as well as Vistani, to add cultural depth, doesn't qualify as "blacklisting", for me, at least. And, I say this as someone who has not exactly been the most sensitive or culturally-conscious person on these forums.

 

[Remathilis]

It's not a bad idea; it's how we did it back in the day with my beloved BECMI rules system. But unfortunately, players have grown to love getting those bonuses so much nowadays that I bet there would be outrage among players if they were to be removed.

The more I think about this, the more I like it, though.

Perhaps at 1st level, your Background gives you a +1 to a particular ability score. And your Class would give you either a +2 to one score, or a +1 to two different scores.

So my dwarf archivist example would have the Sage background (+1 to Intelligence), and choose Fighter for a +1 Strength and +1 Constitution. Presto! An excellent rig for an Eldritch Knight.

I posted somewhere in these massive threads the idea of classes giving a net +2 bonus and race a minor +1 only, to give the taste of orcs being strong, elves being agile and dwarves being hardy. It might be a compromise if we want to keep some vestige of racial bumps.

 

[Nickolaidas]

In 1e, Lawful Good is pretty strict: "While as strict in their prosecution of law and order [as Lawful evil], characters of lawful good alignment follow these precepts to improve the common weal. Certain freedoms must, of course, be sacrificed in order to bring order; but truth is of highest value, and life and beauty of great importance. The benefits of this society are to be brought to all."

First of all, thank you for providing data (on the other poster's behalf), really appreciate it.

Now let's nitpick those rules:

First of all, there is absolutely no mention of good characters being penalized for granting mercy to evil humanoids who surrender - as I expected.

So it feels like it could very well come down to what the local law was as to whether the Paladin was allowed to show mercy, and that showing mercy might not be considered good by them if it led to more trouble for more people later. However, at worst, wouldn't showing mercy be a chaotic move (to not follow the law), and thus by RAW they could seek out a 7th level LG cleric and confess there sins. If it was evil they would lose their paladinhood.

Yes, but we're treading into homebrew campaign/house rules territory now, aren't we? There is no official mention of what the laws of a kingdom are - that is up to the DM of the specific campaign to decide. As a result, there is no official record or mention of a lawful good character sparing the life of a foe who surrenders as against the Law.

[One line in the DMG does seem to go against this, in the section above defining the nine alignments in particular - "Basically stated, the tenets of good are human rights, or in the case of AD&D, creature rights. Each creature is entitled to life, relative freedom, and the prospect of happiness."]

Well, I rest my case. Nothing to add here, this section says it all.

That said, I'm not saying there cannot be any moral conflict with a character who may think whether an action is true to his alignment or not (back when it mattered, anyway). But I fail to see a section in the rules which penalizes good characters for sparing bad ones.

 

[BookTenTiger]

I am just not riding the current "everything is racist" wave. The connection between orcs and real life racism is in my eyes imagined by an overzealous group of people who see racism everywhere and which is exploited by marketing.
And no, orcs are not clearly related to humans. Fantasy biology has nothing to do with relations. Half dragons are a thing (actually they aren't a thing, same as half orcs they are purely fictional) but no one (?) thinks that the description of dragons is racist towards jews because they also have been described as greedy in the past.

I've been thinking about this a lot since you posted it.

I consider myself culturally, though not religiously, Jewish

In my D&D group, we have been ascribing a lot of Jewish traditions to dwarves in our games, especially on the intellectual and dialectic approach some Jews have towards their faith. There are three of us playing dwarves (dwarven cousins, in fact) at the table, and I am the only player who identifies with Jewish culture.

I feel like your question of "where is the line?" is a genuine one, even if your presentation of that question often reads as disengenuous.

So where is the line for me? At what point would the presentation of dwarves as Jews go from an interesting narrative to derogatory?

In our game, the Jewish influence of the dwarves is not being used to denigrate dwarves. It is not being used to dehumanize dwarves. It is not being used to justify violence towards dwarves.

However, I would feel uncomfortable if Wizards of the Coast made clear efforts to tie dwarven culture to Jewish culture in their books. This is because for my group at the table, we are telling the story of a few dwarven holds in a big, vast world. Were Wizards of the Coast to start painting dwarves with the stereotypes of Jewish people, I would feel that they are using Jewish tropes to make dwarves more of an "other."

Do you see how there is no clear line? It's a fuzzy, shifting line!

So I feel that, rather than we in this thread deciding where the line is, WotC should be hiring a more diverse writing and creative and consultation staff to handle this stuff.

In your own D&D game, if you are interested in trying to avoid racist stereotypes, you can ask yourself "am I applying a trope to an entire race, or to a group within that race? Is the trope being used to dehumanize this race?"

There's not always a clear answer (as obviously proved by the 1,000+ replies in this thread and others). But the questioning of it, and the respectful dialogue surrounding it, is absolutely worth doing.

 

[Umbran]

Erm please explain to me where a person with normal cognitive ability draws the parallel to black people and Orcs?

Mod Note:
Enough with the insults. Arguments of the form, "You must be cognitively deficient (or stupid, crazy, or whatever) to disagree with me" are not acceptable.

No more of this thread for you. Please find a place to engage in which you treat folks with respect.

 

[Olrox17]

I'd like to push you a little further in this idea.

Here's how Orcs are describe in the Monster Manual:

This entry supports the following ideas:

• all orcs are chaotic evil
• all orcs are savage
• all orcs have stooped postures, piggish faces, and tusks
• all orcs gather in bloodthirsty tribes who slay humanoids

Now let's say WotC changed it to something that didn't support the trope that an entire people is barbaric. Could it be something like...

This entry supports the following ideas:

• orcs can be any alignment
• all orcs have stooped postures, piggish faces, and tusks
• somewhere there are orc empires
• there are also tribes of orcs
• some orcs are raiders
• some orcs are mercenaries

I can't say my entry is perfect, but I dashed it out in around 5 minutes.

In removing the trope that all orcs are savage, evil barbarians, does that impact the game at all? Does it impact the stories we can tell with orcs?

I would argue that the best way to make these changes is to focus on the kinds of stories we want to tell with orcs and drow. How can we draft rules that support these stories without relying on lazy racist stereotypes?

I see what you're trying to do with your description, and I don't necessarily disagree with your intent, but I have a complaint. Your description for the orc reminds me of the historical mongols more than the official one, which is something I think we are trying to avoid. I mean, "great orc empires that stretch across the horizon", accompanied by nomadic tribes of raiders? Sounds a lot like Temujin's empire, the Golden Horde and the Ilkhanate.

I'm really curious on your definition of "blacklisting" and how this applies to what WotC plans on doing.

Yes, well, what you quoted was the result of a moderately long discussion. To be brief:

• the way orcs are described (bloodthirsty savages) has been used in history to describe people of all colors and cultures (gauls, germans, huns, vandals, goths, saxons, berbers, africans, mongols, turks, it's a long list);
• because of that, I argued that description not to be racist, per se, but rather a common human trope for the "scary invader", nowadays used by idiot racists in idiotic ways;
• when applied to a fantasy race, that trope isn't offensive
• I believe that blacklisting something (in this case, the fantasy use of the "scary invader" trope), just because idiots are appropriating it and mishandling it, can be counterproductive.

See the "Pepe the frog" example, a harmless meme that ended up being banned because some extremists used it. The end result was widespread hate towards the censors, and a degree of undeserved sympathy towards the extremists.