D&D 5E WotC's Jeremy Crawford on D&D Races Going Forward

On Twitter, Jeremy Crawford discussed the treatment of orcs, Vistani, drow and others in D&D, and how WotC plans to treat the idea of 'race' in D&D going forward. In recent products (Eberron and Wildemount), the mandatory evil alignment was dropped from orcs, as was the Intelligence penalty.

@ThinkingDM Look at the treatment orcs received in Eberron and Exandria. Dropped the Intelligence debuff and the evil alignment, with a more acceptable narrative. It's a start, but there's a fair argument for gutting the entire race system.

The orcs of Eberron and Wildemount reflect where our hearts are and indicate where we’re heading.

@vorpaldicepress I hate to be "that guy", but what about Drow, Vistani, and the other troublesome races and cultures in Forgotten Realms (like the Gur, another Roma-inspired race)? Things don't change over night, but are these on the radar?

The drow, Vistani, and many other folk in the game are on our radar. The same spirit that motivated our portrayal of orcs in Eberron is animating our work on all these peoples.

@MileyMan1066 Good. These problems need to be addressed. The variant features UA could have a sequel that includes notes that could rectify some of the problems and help move 5e in a better direction.

Addressing these issues is vital to us. Eberron and Wildemount are the first of multiple books that will face these issues head on and will do so from multiple angles.

@mbriddell I'm happy to hear that you are taking a serious look at this. Do you feel that you can achieve this within the context of Forgotten Realms, given how establised that world's lore is, or would you need to establish a new setting to do this?

Thankfully, the core setting of D&D is the multiverse, with its multitude of worlds. We can tell so many different stories, with different perspectives, in each world. And when we return to a world like FR, stories can evolve. In short, even the older worlds can improve.

@SlyFlourish I could see gnolls being treated differently in other worlds, particularly when they’re a playable race. The idea that they’re spawned hyenas who fed on demon-touched rotten meat feels like they’re in a different class than drow, orcs, goblins and the like. Same with minotaurs.

Internally, we feel that the gnolls in the MM are mistyped. Given their story, they should be fiends, not humanoids. In contrast, the gnolls of Eberron are humanoids, a people with moral and cultural expansiveness.

@MikeyMan1066 I agree. Any creature with the Humanoid type should have the full capacity to be any alignmnet, i.e., they should have free will and souls. Gnolls... the way they are described, do not. Having them be minor demons would clear a lot of this up.

You just described our team's perspective exactly.

As a side-note, the term 'race' is starting to fall out of favor in tabletop RPGs (Pathfinder has "ancestry", and other games use terms like "heritage"); while he doesn't comment on that specifically, he doesn't use the word 'race' and instead refers to 'folks' and 'peoples'.

 

[Haffrung]

Higher than the average person in general, but not higher than the average person online, I assume. We all have access to Wikipedia.

It was just because they wanted to capture the holy lands. The crusades were racist, horrific, and bad.

Here are just some of the historical conquerors of the Levant: Hittites, Egyptians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Crusaders, Turks. Every invasion brought slaughter and oppression. It's not as though the Arabs themselves were welcomed as peaceful liberators when they burst out of the Arabian peninsula in the 8th century and conquered the Byzantine Christian lands of the Eastern Mediterranean and North Africa.

And of course the crusaders were bigoted - as were the people they were fighting, and every other culture on the planet in the 13th century.

 

[Xenonnonex]

1e Fiend Folio: "Drow are black-skinned and pale-haired." FF 34.


5e PHB:
"Also called dark elves, the drow have skin that resembles charcoal or obsidian, as well as stark white or pale yellow hair." PHB 24.

While artists often take liberty for all sorts of reasons, I do not believe there is any textual reason to believe that drow are purple.

Not for religious adherence. Also hard to paint pure black.
Nowadays to move away from fictional fantastical racism.

 

[Xenonnonex]

A lot of ways the crusades are ongoing. Now we are using other methods.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

While I don't have a problem with purple (or gray) drow, in art it's normally for much the same reason that Superman's hair was blue. It's difficult to paint pure black and have any dimensionality to it.

That's very true, and anyone who has tried painting them would recognise this issue, but equally, it's easy to extend from that into making them actually grey and/or greyish-purple, and it kinda looks great. So it's probably a good idea to extend from that artistic need into an actual decision.

 

[auburn2]

I think what you mean is that they're "caucasian" in the sense of the large anthropological/archaeological group.

White is a purely social construct and it's very clear that whilst many Turkish people might be regarded as such, many Arabs are not, and traits are explicitly attributed to them as a "race", and have been for hundreds of years. So claiming you can't be racist towards Arabic people because they might technically count as "caucasian" is beyond ridiculous and into outright denying reality. Race is a construct, and the construct that is "white" disincludes Arabs, even thought that's genetically and anthropologically nonsensical. Hell, it disincludes a lot of people at different times. It's even disincluded the Irish on occasion.

I have lived in Turkey and Saudi and I would call them white. They are certainly not another raceannd in North Africa Arabs call themselves "white" to separate themselves from non-Arab Africans. Another white person can be bigoted towards Arabic people for a number of reasons, including their skin tone, but that does not constitute racism any more than Hitler's bigotry towards slavs and Jews (both also white) constituted racism. Bigotry comes in many forms, racism is only one of them.

Irish people are also white.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Not for religious adherence. Also hard to paint pure black.
Nowadays to move away from fictional fantastical racism.

Well, I think the main reasons are for contrast (as you note, it's hard to make good drawings of obsidian drow, especially at night and in caves, or just to provide extra added spatial perceptions), I wouldn't mind changing them officially.

This is more about the limited palette of fantasy creatures. They don't all have to be our regular skin tones. More purple, blue, orange, and red.

 

[Umbran]

A lot of ways the crusades are ongoing. Now we are using other methods.

Mod Note:

Rhetorical question: With the various red text and warnings that have been given out in this thread, how did you come by the idea that this was an appropriate comment?

Use better sense, please.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I've made my position clear in this (admittedly huge) thread before. If people want a D&D setting that embraces a relatively recent political outlook on people and humanity, and WotC goes ahead and publishes such a setting, I'd be totally fine with that.

What I don't want, is WotC retconning Forgotten Realms drow, Greyhawk orcs, and such, because of PR worries. I'm fine with noble Eberron orcs. I'm fine with cannibalistic DS halflings.

I'm fine with a new spin on all humanoid races. Just don't murder existing canon and material, give this new stuff their own space, their own setting.

The problem here is, Faerun already has intelligent, reasonable, non-evil orcs. It's been something that happens in Faerun since at least 1990.

The same problem is the case with the Drow. WotC, as I pointed out earlier, are the ones who retcon'd them. In Faerun, Ed Greenwood and others had been making there be increasingly large numbers of non-Evil Drow and non-Evil or differently-Evil (i.e. not Lolth-worshiping matriarchies) for a long, long time. If you read the Drow stuff from the 1990s, you'll see this. Eilistraee was an increasingly big deal through 2E FR.

Then, when WotC took over, they retcon'd all that. They killed off Eilistraee, and generally "reverted" the FR Drow to basically all be Menzoberranzan Drow, because, I suspect, of the general push with 3E which was to revert to older tropes, hence bring back Greyhawk (even though it go nowhere) and so on.

So don't give me "retcon". You're rolling with a retcon, mate. 5E brough Eilistraee back already, so it's returning to the path 2E was taking, I suspect. It's a more interesting path than having Drow as a monolithic society anyway.

I don't feel comfortable delving into this specific topic any further. I don't want to break enworld rules.

Uh-huh, but I think the point is pretty clear. Believing in literal supernatural evil of the kind that can actually summon demons and curse people, and being terrified of it (with good reason if you actually believe it, I guess) is a bit different from wanting social change, regardless of how vehement you are.

 

[Haffrung]

Comparing the satanic panic and people pushing for less racism is also a bit rich, frankly. If you can't see a difference that extends far beyond "I agree with one, but not the other", you're being very silly. The satanic panic wasn't about morality or behaviour, it was about belief in literally supernatural forces influencing people. Saying "Drow are deeply problematic" is a fundamentally different category of statement to "D&D makes people into satanists, and satanism gives people magical powers and opens the door to occult evil!".

Do you think WotC's defence of demons and occult magic in D&D should be that people who believe in supernatural evil are dumb and wrong? Because most of the U.S. population (70 per cent) does indeed believe supernatural evil exists, including a lot of people in the populations WotC is trying to bring into the hobby. I would think a better defence of demons and occult magic in D&D would be that people are able to engage with supernaturally evil beings in a fictional game without being tainted by supernatural evil in the real world.

And the panic around D&D wasn't just about turning gamers into satanists - it was about impressionable children and youths immersing themselves in violent fantasy worlds, and being unable to distinguish those fantasy worlds from reality. Mazes & Monsters, the most prominent case of fear-mongering over D&D, didn't touch on satanism.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Do you think WotC's defence of demons and occult magic in D&D should be that people who believe in supernatural evil are dumb and wrong?

No. But people who demonize games and fictional representations that have supernatural evil are dumb and wrong.

There is nothing wrong with choosing not to partake in an activity because you don't like it, or because it violates your personal belief structure. That can be admirable. There is something very wrong (dumb and wrong) with burning books because you can't see the difference between fiction and reality, and feel the need to enforce your beliefs on the people around you. Moreso when you are claiming D&D causes Satanism, Rape, and Murder.

And the panic around D&D wasn't just about turning gamers into satanists - it was about impressionable children and youths immersing themselves in violent fantasy worlds, and being unable to distinguish those fantasy worlds from reality.

This is a misunderstanding of the 80s Satanic Panic that mischaracterize the atmosphere of the time and the absolute craziness of some misguided individuals, like Patricia Pulling*, who explicitly argued that D&D caused satanism.

*In fairness, losing a child is terrible.