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.

 

[Zardnaar]

Given contemporary arguments, how is "deserve" defined?

Through the lens of modern real-world culture, it could be argued that there's never a reason for a creature to deserve to die. Asmodeus could be one chai latte and one heart-to-heart talk away from being redeemed.

From more of a meta-game view, it also could be argued (and has been in the past) that attaching an XP value to the lives of creatures -for the purposes of measuring advancement- promotes undesirable behavior among players of the game.

This if you're looking at being offended one would think this would be a trigger.

Eventually they're just gonna have to say don't like it don't buy it or put PG13 on it or something.

 

[Zardnaar]

A mindflayer is just trying to feed their family and support their community. They have tadpoles to look after.

In 6E they'll be eating tofu at this rate.

 

[Horwath]

So nothing changes for you. You can still play your dwarf against type.

As the DM will get decide the type and doesn't feel bound to old gimmicks.

So at one table, an offtype dwarf is a CN wizard. At another table, an off type dwarf is lawful deep mountain explorer.

isn't it better to have(in some settings) predefined cultures and their aptitude towards good or evil, with a sidenote that you can change that if it works better for your personal style of play.

If all humanoids in a setting are capable of any morality or alignment by default, we will just get whole bunch of different flavored description of human.

Here are humans, then pointy-ear human, short humans, tall humans, bulky humans, winged humans, "have some flavor of nine hells" humans, etc...

 

[MNblockhead]

When do we get to the part where people complain that "killing people and taking their stuff" in the real world is wrong, so we should take it out of D&D?

That was the original complaint against war gamers and TTRPGs. Before allegations of racism and sexism, before the satanic panic, the community was characterized as a bunch of warmongers who glorified violence.

The criticisms of violence in gaming never really went away, they just changed their focus to video games. There are influential international organizations calling for military-themed war games to adhere to international law. Inevitably, this will trickle down to TTRPGs. But unlike video games, there is little companies and governments can do to control what happens at your table. It is up the DM and players how these issues are handled in their games.

 

[Scott Christian]

As far as the characters in the setting know? Their gods certainly exist. Of course, different peoples have different myths, which are often mutually contradictory. Who’s right? Maybe no one. There’s no way to know for sure.

I like this, and for my homebrew world outside of D&D I use this. No real direct intervention, in fact some of the spells seem more empathic than deity oriented. Again, who knows. But for D&D, with its vast landscape of gods and all the permeations into the mortal world, it just seems off. Heck, even the last AP, Frostmaiden, is specifically about a god messing with common folks.

I’m not sure I understand the question. Yuan-ti are snake people, mind flatters are alien parasites, frost giants are elemental creations of the primordials, and orcs are a people who believe themselves to be descended from the one-eyed God Gruumsh.

Fair enough. If you don't get it, then you don't get it. You answer the question here anyway:

Pretty much.

If you say every sentient thing is morally gray, therefore everyone is basically neutral, and just happen to play on their interest, that's cool. It doesn't seem to play nice with the way D&D and its rule system is set up for me, but maybe I've just never had your experiences.

Because I find it distasteful?

This is the part I still don't understand. Do you find the table play distasteful? The people distasteful for accepting such play?

 

[DND_Reborn]

Wizards is actively doing that right now, so I'd encourage them to continue until this isn't a problem in published material.
If individuals at conventions or home tables keep trying to inject racist tropes into specific races, then we should call them on it, and let them know that it is racist.

Sorry if I was unclear but you misunderstand.

I meant about the people who see the racist tropes in a game where the races are fantasy. It goes back to how some people see themselves in races that are alien to humans. While you might identify with another race, you aren't them and they aren't you--it is fantasy--they don't exist. It is why I explained how I've never seen racist tropes in D&D because I don't identify with an alien race like elf, dwarf, half-orc, etc.

I don't know if that makes any more sense or not, but that's the distinction I'm talking about.

 

[Scott Christian]

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.

An extremely professional army that is organized has little to do with how evil they are. If they come in and take over, encourage road building through forced labor camps, take a bunch of teens as sex slaves, yet still pay the village for their goods - they are evil. The fact that good things are being done by them is a side effect. Their acts and intentions are evil, and anyone that tries to stop them from these acts will pay a price.

 

[DND_Reborn]

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.

(Emphasis mine)

Who the hell said ANYTHING about selling them as slaves? That is quite the leap you made there and shows me something about the assumptions you make. The reason they were being paid to bring them in alive was so the castle lord could get information from them (if any) about the upcoming invasion those races were part of. Jeez...

And if you read all of my posts on this issue you would know the player in question reflected on his choices, felt badly about them, and removed that PC from the game.

 

[MNblockhead]

I hate to break it to you, but “killing people and taking their stuff” hasn’t been what D&D is about for years.

I hate to break it to you, but it is certainly a large part of what D&D is about. I had a 25 year gaming gap. There are some major changes in how the game is played these days compared to the 80s, but mostly this has to do with cleaner mechanics, more modern sensibilities on sex and increasingly on race, and much stronger emphasis on story.

But every D&D game I've played in, whether at conventions, Adventurer's League, or private games have involved significant amounts of combat. And even with how AL rules control and abstract wealth and treasure, I don't recall any party going to turn in the shinnies to the local authority's lost-property office. Nor do I recall parties just leaving treasure where it lie. Maybe a McGuffin or two where the hook of the adventure was to recover something for some one, but those recovery operations tended to involve some baddies getting killed and non-McGuffin loot being taken.

The only D&D games I can think of that didn't involve some killing and looting were those I've run. But even in my home games, these tend to be mini campaigns or single-session affairs, because that's just not the kind of game most players expect and come to play. And I find this across races, sexes, and age groups.

I don't think it is just an observation colored by my cohort bubble. I see the same thing playing Roll20 games overseas where I'm the only American in the group. And, hell, look at the rules. There are a heck of a lot of rules for adjudicating killing. Look at the official (and most third-party adventures) adventures. Seems like you are expected, if not encourages, and certainly given ample opportunity to kill and loot.

Any impartial observer, even if they have never played D&D in their life, even if they have had no exposure to TTRPGs, can spend a few minutes browsing the core books or an adventure and see that it is a game that involves killing or looting.

We can debate whether that is good or bad. Whether the game should be fundamentally changed to discourage this play-style. But to say that the game hasn't been about this for a long time is a bit silly.

 

[Scott Christian]

(Though it is worth noting that the party bard is literally descended from a now-former succubus. She has come to love the mortal world for what it is, its fragile beauty. She only just realized that her long-dead husband is the one who gave her a new True Name, making her something....no longer demon, but not the celestial servant she was, either. Having passed her powers to said bard so he can use them for good, it is now possible for her to die a mortal death, which normally isn't something celestial-origin beings are capable of.)

I like this. Very cool.