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.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Where do you see 'malleable' in that quote?

What he's saying is that God/Eru accepted their creation, so we can't say they are irredeemable in the sense that we can't say nothing good can come out of them. (See: problem of Evil). God allows evil to exist, so it must be part of his plan, and he can bring good out of it.

But that doesn't mean that evil isn't evil. He says the Orcs are 'naturally evil'. They are of an evil nature. They are evil.

I never said “malleable” was in the text. Please don’t put words in my mouth. Interferes with drinking the nice tea my wife just made for me.

you are adding all of the “problem of evil” stuff, of your own accord.

He is talking orcs, not about their place in the world. Naturally evil does not mean they can’t be anything but evil, but “not irredeemably evil” literally does mean...they aren’t stuck being evil. Like...explicitly.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

We were playing Keep on the Borderlands (Goodman version) and when our Tiefling Warlock hit 5th level and got fireball, he toasted an entire room of gnolls IIRC-- females and children included-- with his very first fireball. I tried to remind the players they would gain a bounty on the ones the captured and returned to the keep with, so they lost well over 100 gp because they fried all the gnolls. FWIW, the women and children would only have fought to protect themselves.

Don't frying them to sell as Slaves is not too much better...
For the gnolls maybe it id different in 5: they are basically Demons bound in humanoid form. So probably they don't really count, if the player characters know that.
That is basically the core of the issue:
If there are Races that are pure evil by default, and each individual with no exception is, then you basically can justify killing them all, because you know as a fact that they would exactly do the same to you.
The problem is: do you want humanoids that are basically humans with pointy ears or a little bit short?
Probably not.

I really liked the warcraft 3 depictation of Orcs: honourful people, and a lot of humans were not so much.
So they were all shades of grey/colorful instead of black and white.

When I rember back in the 90s, when we started playing, we had hefty discussion about our cleric even taking joy in torturing/killing goblin and orc children because he deemed them unrevokably evil, while the rest of the group protested heavily because they were humanoids and children nontheless.

 

[Maxperson]

He is talking orcs, not about their place in the world. Naturally evil does not mean they can’t be anything but evil, but “not irredeemably evil” literally does mean...they aren’t stuck being evil. Like...explicitly.

Because in Middle Earth nothing was irredeemably evil. Even Morgoth, the literal Satan of the story, was given multiple opportunities to repent and was capable of it. If he was redeemable, how could orcs not be?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

People like you ruin the game.

Disagreeing with another poster is fine, being disagreeable towards other posters is not. Do not make it personal.

 

[Zardnaar]

Funny about the tightrope comment. They have to either pick a side or realise real diversity is variety.

Sure make something that appeals to new players but also make something that appeals to old ones as well.

If they want to make a setting with hippie Druidic Orcs sure, just make one with ye olde CE or LE ones as well.

My world elves are major villains shrugs.

 

[The White Sorcerer]

So you take the gladiator statblock, rejigger the racial bonuses to match a dwarf, and voila, dwarf gladiator.

My point is, you don't need to do that for the "evil humanoids." I can just use orcs straight from the book and have them be distinct from goblins right out of the box, no extra hoops to jump through. This will result in DMs defaulting to certain races as enemies.

And if you're going to counter with "but you can change stuff" then you are completely missing my point.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

My point is, you don't need to do that for the "evil humanoids." I can just use orcs straight from the book and have them be distinct from goblins right out of the box, no extra hoops to jump through. This will result in DMs defaulting to certain races as enemies.

And if you're going to counter with "but you can change stuff" then you are completely missing my point.

Then make a setting specific stat block for that certain type of goblin, orc, or whatever it is. Make a different stat block for a Goblin Gladiator that has Nimble Escape and Fury of the Small features, a higher Dexterity and Constitution, a smaller hit dice, finesse weapons, and other features. They can have different stat blocks, but there shouldn't be stat blocks for "Orcs" or "Goblins", IMO.

Ghosts of Saltmarsh did this with Lizardfolk, having Lizardfolk Commoners. Tales from the Yawning Portal did this with the Duergar Spy.

It's not hard to do, and keeps the game open and simple.

 

[TheIdeaOfGood]

I am happy with the options (which they are, options, not mandatory changes), but there is this nugget from Crawford which raises my heckles.
"is also uncomfortably like some of the racist narratives in the real world."
Different. Species.
An orc is not a dwarf.
The idea of human " races" has been scientifically debunked but I do not see a similar thing happen to differences between dogs and elephants anytime soon.
Again. Different. Species.
I get behind not describing whole cultures as evil but I have been running my games like that for 10+ years, so no big changes for me. Except for demons, devils etc., creatures made from the very stuff of capital-E Evil.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

I am happy with the options (which they are, options, not mandatory changes), but there is this nugget from Crawford which raises my heckles.
"is also uncomfortably like some of the racist narratives in the real world."
Different. Species.
An orc is not a dwarf.
The idea of human " races" has been scientifically debunked but I do not see a similar thing happen to differences between dogs and elephants anytime soon.
Again. Different. Species.

All humanoid races speak, all of them are sentient and can make their own decisions, and many of them can breed with the others.

Also, it doesn't matter if they're different species or not (I personally think they are different species), you can be racist (by the definition of the word) to groups of people who aren't a different "race". The Nazis were racist against Jews, even though Judaism is a religion, not a race.

 

[Nilbog]

Sometimes I want a simpler game where we don't debate the complex individualities of some of the actors (specifically minions), though the main villain may have their own motivations. I would also want them to be intelligent enough to use tactics, set traps, etc. That is why I use evil orcs, kobolds, goblins, etc. To me it is a part of the game, like attack rolls, saving throws, etc. I don't depict them as analogues to real world stereotypes.
This is why in action movies we don't care when the Rebels blow up the Death Star, Legolas and Gimli make a game out of killing orcs, or when the Guardians of the Galaxy blow up Ronan's horde. And literally every successful video game franchise works this way.
Forcing the heroes into regular moral quandaries about who they're fighting is a disservice to certain kinds of play. And if you say that's "badwrongfun," you're in the absolute minority when it comes to the expectations of popular culture entertainment, regardless of its platform.
Yes, absolutely have exceptions. Have the Stormtrooper with a conscience (Finn). Have the Fellowship debate about the value of Gollum's life. But you can't have everything be an exception.

And for me this is the crux of the argument, the default positioning of DnD, in people's homebrew whatever you want goes, however how does the vanilla DnD present itself?

Is it like you say as an action movie where minions are just fodder for our heroes (is this even an acceptable stance these days?) Or do we give it moral depth?

I have enough stress in my life right now, my weekly game is my escape from that, I don't want stresses introduced into it, I don't want to walk away from a game agonizing if I should have killed that gnoll or not, and up to this point DnD supports that style of game, if in the future it moves away from that, well I'll look for an alternative or keep with what I have.

I think the easiest solution would be to remove alignment, it doesn't seem to serve much mechanical purpose these days and will allow people to present different creatures however they like.