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.

 

[CleverNickName]

Nobody in western civilization is currently engaging in slavery, colonialism, or genocide. Removing language that justifies it accomplishes nothing.

Both of these sentences are false.

 

[BookTenTiger]

Nobody in western civilization is currently engaging in slavery, colonialism, or genocide. Removing language that justifies it accomplishes nothing.

I'm back in the discussion!

Do you really feel it accomplished nothing? WotC obviously feels differently, hence their announcement.

I guess my question is: even if the benefits of not using racist language in D&D is debatable, what's the harm in removing it?

As far as I can tell, the harm that has been expressed so far is:

1) it impacts the "tradition" of the game
2) it makes it harder to justify killing monstrous humanoids

Please let me know if I have that incorrect, I am honestly not trying to build a strawman argument.

For point one, I agree that it impacts the tradition of the game. But D&D has already moved WAY past its Chainmail origins. Change is inevitable, and in the context of recent real-world events and discussions, change can be a way to help shift this game we love away from some of its more lazy tropes and stereotypes.

For point two, I think it's a good thing to require DMs and players to take a moment to think about why they are killing orcs. And how difficult is it for a DM or adventure writer to even come up with a justification? I am sure you could come up with a half dozen ideas right now without breaking a sweat.

 

[Krachek]

I hope they will do a good job with open bonus to stats.
if we have a scholar dwarf with +2 int and +1 cha, why he should have armor proficiency? He´s not strong, not tough, but he take time to master armor? Make no sense to me.
i would see the actual dwarf racial template converted into a military-industrial culture template.

 

[Guest 6801328]

Here's video of one of the founders of Black Lives Matter stating they are a Marxist organization. (Around 3 to 4 minute mark)

Uhhhh...relevance?

Or are suggesting that we can ignore any philosophy coming from a movement that has a founder with Marxist views?

If so, should we likewise dismiss everything America stands for because many of its founders were slaveholder?

Or are you suggesting Marxism is worse than slaveholding?

I’m very confused about what your point is.

 

[BookTenTiger]

Something I've been thinking about lately is this idea:

The rules of D&D influence the stories we tell at the table.

Which designer was it that discussed the way that, traditionally, the rules of D&D supported the story of "go to a dungeon, kill the monsters, take the treasure, go to town, buy new magic items, return to the dungeon, etc.)"?

I think everyone in this discussion agrees that giving different races different ability score bonuses (or penalties) helps tell a certain story that elves are different than dwarves, and so on.

I think everyone in this discussion agrees that painting an entire people as evil helps tell a certain story that characters can slay certain kinds of monstrous people on sight.

This is because the rules and language of D&D support these narratives. Now, they also support a lot of other narratives. Rogues get proficiency in Thieve's Tools, which supports the narrative that rogues pick locks. Sorcerers choose a "bloodline" which supports the narrative that their magic is in their blood, a different story than the one supported by a Wizard's spellbook.

Sometimes these narratives change dramatically between editions! In 4e, all the magic items had prices and tiers, supporting the narrative that characters at certain levels should be buying certain magic items. In 5e, magic items barely have a price, which supports the narrative that magic items are special and are found, not bought.

As many people have pointed out in this thread, just because the rules WotC provide tell a certain narrative, doesn't mean we all have to tell those stories at our table. You could easily give Wizards proficiency in Thieve's tools. You could play a Sorcerer that has studied magic from a spellbook. Whatever.

But I don't think anyone can disagree that the default rules are going to create the most common narrative used most commonly at most tables.

So. WotC is recognizing that some of the narratives that their rules support are harmful narrative because they repeat this idea that a group of people can all be assumed to be evil, lesser-than, savage, etc. This is a racist idea.

When all orcs are evil, what kinds of narratives does that inspire? It supports stories in which characters can kill a kind of person because they have green skin and tusks. It supports stories in which characters can assume that an elf with black skin is evil.

These narratives mirror real-life narratives of racism.

When we look at ways to improve our game, we look at ways we can change the rules to support different kinds of narratives. At my table, tortles who retreat into their shells are not prone, because when adjacent attackers got advantage it ruined our narrative.

WotC has decided that they do not want the basic narrative to support the idea that a group of people can all be defined as evil because of their appearance or culture. That old, archaic idea should be changed. It's a racist idea. We can tell better stories.

 

[Guest 6801328]

Both of these sentences are false.

And even if they weren’t demonstrably false, there are literally tens of millions of Americans who suffer every day because of the repercussions of slavery.

 

[CleverNickName]

I hope they will do a good job with open bonus to stats.
if we have a scholar dwarf with +2 int and +1 cha, why he should have armor proficiency? He´s not strong, not tough, but he take time to master armor? Make no sense to me.
i would see the actual dwarf racial template converted into a military-industrial culture template.

Personally, I'd like to see the ability score adjustments left to backgrounds and classes, and not tied to ancestry at all. A dwarf that spent all of his time in the archives, logging the veins of ore and tracking the properties of rare metals would be more likely to have a bonus to Intelligence, not Constitution.

 

[Var]

Yes, you nailed it. That is exactly what colonizers/oppressors/slaves do. That is precisely how white supremacists tried to justify slavery.



This is an illustrative example, actually. I had an orc character named Elfcrusher, which is why I used this name. It was actually a World of Warcraft character, but let's suppose it was a D&D character. And let's suppose this orc HATES ELVES with a blind, unreasoning hatred. He is, in many ways, a racist.

Nobody is saying you can't play a character like that. Or have an NPC like that. Nobody is even saying you can't make all orcs hate all elves in your campaign world, and vice versa.

All that is going on is that WotC is going to try to stop using the language, imagery, and tropes that have historically been used to justify slavery, colonialism, and genocide.

Please explain to me how anybody who understands that could be opposed to it.

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.

 

[Remathilis]

Personally, I'd like to see the ability score adjustments left to backgrounds and classes, and not tied to ancestry at all. A dwarf that spent all of his time in the archives, logging the veins of ore and tracking the properties of rare metals would be more likely to have a bonus to Intelligence, not Constitution.

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)

 

[Guest 6801328]

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

I almost spit my soup out laughing when I read that. Sorry, I didn't get to the rest of your post because I was laughing. And I had soup coming out of my nose.

I'll tell you what, go back and catalog every time in this thread...and there must be dozens...where we've refuted that mischaracterization of the argument, and then write me an essay (it can be brief, as short as three pages) on what our response has been, and then I will deign to continue discussing this with you.

Until then I can only assume you aren't actually reading anything that anybody is writing in response to this flawed understanding.