D&D 5E WotC On Tasha, Race, Alignment: A Several-Year Plan

WotC spoke to the site Dicebreaker about D&D race and alignment, and their plans for the future.

• On of the motivations of the changes [character customization] in Tasha's Cauldron was to decouple race from class.
• The 'tightrope' between honouring legacy and freedom of character choice has not been effectively walked.
• Alignment is turning into a roleplaying tool, and will not be used to describe entire cultures.
• This work will take several years to fully implement.

 

[dwayne]

there is no evil, just misunderstood things and people we need to remember puppies and rainbows and talk things out ok people. And we all are what ever we want to be because science and facts don't matter only feelings and not stepping on any ones is the most important thing. I mean come on those orcs are a little rough but they are just misunderstood just like those elven drow fellows. It is not because their culture drives them to be brutal killers or sadistic masochistic surface haters. I mean come on people a few bad apples don't dictate how they all are right it is not like they are policing everyone now is it. Any way i really hope we all can come to gather in a fluffy safe space of coloring books and rainbow bunnies peace out.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Are you saying that fantasizing about genocide of a purely fictional people in a purely fiction setting gives you the same level of disgust as fantasizing about genocide of a real people in our reality? I am actually asking, and not inferring you do believe that.

No. But it is distasteful nevertheless.

 

[pukunui]

The problem, is that those faerun orcs are that and only that yet somehow they haven't collapsed & nobody has eradicated them. A lot of people think that's what the mongol army was & why I mentioned the mongols doing more, but the reality was very different as an advanced extremely professional army (by the standards of the time) that did a great deal to enable trade, spread knowledge, allow education, & advance civilization.. not only that they had motivations like making money & doing those things to make it.. the always evil style orcs of faerun do none of that and have no civilization capable of maintaining stability without descending into a self destructive chaos.

What's ironic is that WotC gave Faerûn's orcs their own civilization (the Kingdom of Many Arrows) during 4e, but in their rush to undo everything 4e in the transition to 5e, they threw the baby out with the bathwater and made that kingdom's destruction a big part of the Sundering storyline. So now along with everything else that got reverted to pre-4e times, Faerûn's orcs have gone back to being tribal savages with no real civilization.

 

[Warpiglet-7]

Well... what else do you call labelling people before you have proof of actual wrongdoing?

"We didn't see them do anything wrong, but we assumed they were bad and killed them," does not sound like a good way to treat sentient beings, does it?

So no evil dragons either? I just love to see where all this leads...so not rhetorical....genuinely curious where people draw the line.

really what a kick it would be to know all the changes that would be required for D&D to be OK and not too problematic.

like go line for line in the books to see what has to be changed and crossed out. Then when done we could really have a good sense if the game is worth it anymore instead of arguing about these incremental pushes

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

The way things are going? Seriously, watching the Washington/Dallas football game today, we had a discussion when Washington, D.C. would be renamed because it was named after a slave-owner.

I won't say anymore than that. It borders too much on political posting.

You're conflating "not praising" with "cancelling". Naming a place after someone is praising that person, and I have nothing against not praising a person who owned slaves. Cancelling is "the removing of support for public figures in response to their objectionable behavior or opinions", and I don't think that not having places named after someone is the same as cancelling.

Anyways, this is getting off topic and won't generate a positive or constructive conversation. If you want to continue this further, PM me.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

So no evil dragons either? I just love to see where all this leads...so not rhetorical....genuinely curious where people draw the line.

really what a kick it would be to know all the changes that would be required for D&D to be OK and not too problematic.

like go line for line in the books to see what has to be changed and crossed out. Then when done we could really have a good sense if the game is worth it anymore instead of arguing about these incremental pushes

Have you heard of Eberron? Dragons don't have to be evil there. That doesn't make them any less interesting, IMO.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

So no evil dragons either? I just love to see where all this leads...so not rhetorical....genuinely curious where people draw the line.

There have always been non-evil dragons. But being able to tell which ones are good and which ones are bad by the colour of their skin is rather uncomfortable...

 

[Charlaquin]

I'm going to steal some of this, if that's okay with you. In my world, Yeenoghu has died, making the gnolls break free of their demonic nature, making them be just as morally grey as any of the other humanoid races.

Of course! Always happy to have my ideas used in other campaigns.

 

[Iry]

The MPAA here in America would strongly disagree with you.

The MPAA were people with no credentials hiring people with credentials, then convincing them to adhere to the non-credential standards.

 

[Charlaquin]

Where do you draw the line? Ogres? Trolls? Minotaurs? Or is it bigoted to treat any fantasy creatures in a game as evil monsters to be slain?

Outsiders. Aberrations, elementals, demons, fae, fiends, undead, etc. do not come about naturally like the creatures of the World do. They are created, or corrupted from other created beings, and as such their alignment define their behavior, as opposed to sapient peoples, whose actions define their alignment.