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'.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

This sums up my groups completely. When I was young and didn't know better, I ran games where all orcs were evil. I stopped back in the 1980s.

We fight evil aplenty, but evil people rather than evil peoples. When the players hunt down raiders, those raiders include orcs, hobgoblins, elves, humans, etc ....

When they apprehend the bad guys, they usually take them in for trial.

No need for othering entire ethnicities, races, species (whatever term you prefer).

Yeah, exactly. And our primary enemies tend to be other humanoids, and not in some kind of “defend the good folk of the town from the evil wilderness folk”, situation.

Other posters have said otherwise, in this very thread. A relevant poster said, and I quote:
"When you create a race that has too many points of similarity to how a group of real world people are also often depicted, then you do offend people

That isn’t in any way an example of someone seeing fictional races as irl races.

just re-read Volo's chapter on orcs. I didn't see what you appear to see. If I really stretch it, I see a vague resemblance between orc customs and how some ancient pagan Germanic tribes lived. Or rather, how the contemporary Romans and Greeks described them from their perspective.

There is a whole twitter discussion and a set of articles about what’s wrong with the Orc description. I’m not gonna rehash all that for you here. If you actually care about understanding the point, you can easily find them.

 

[Oofta]

That’s great.

But you are reading WAY too much into this.

Did you not notice the parallel between M&Ms and Skittles?

Maybe I am reading too much into it, to be honest I didn't remember the skittles thing. It came across as "you are just like X saying that people are evil".

But in any case while I understand where people are coming from, I doubt I can add anything more to this conversation.

 

[Grazzt]

Not that I want to get too deep into this (because I don't think there is or needs to be one "right" answer) but I have two issues with this.

First, if sentient means free will then I don't see why we stop at humanoids. IMHO if a gnoll has free will to change their alignment from their default then a succubus or a beholder should have the same option. The carrying case for the brain shouldn't matter.

Funny, you mention gnolls. They are being looked at and possibly gonna be reclassified as fiends or something when all is said and done...or so I read.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

You've never had adventures where the PCs defeat a dragon (other) to defend the dwarven town (in-group)?

Tend not to have “dwarven town” in my worlds, and when dragons are used they’re more interesting than that.

But I’d also argue that this example you’ve chosen doesn’t actually represent what you claim it does.

Also, unless the PCs are from the town, they aren’t in the same “in group”.

 

[Guest 6801328]

Yeah, you've really mastered the art of passive-aggressive snide remarks that add nothing to a conversation. Kudos.

Passive? Sorry, my mistake. I was trying to be more overt than that. Your own contributions to the thread suggest that you don’t think racism is a real enough problem to be worth the effort of making a couple of minor tweaks to a game. A GAME.

I find that disgusting.

 

[Xenonnonex]

It is true that people can, unfortunately, be monstrous. But I would never say that a group of people are monsters.

We should. Too many examples in the real world.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Orcs and other evil humanoids such as goblinoids are almost identical to humans apart from three differences.

1) They are evil.
2) They are slightly less intelligent than humans.
3) They are often either physically stronger, such as orcs, or weaker, such as goblins.

They are humanoid. They possess normal biological needs such as air, food, water, and shelter from the elements. They are mortal. They do not have inherent magical powers. They are born in the same way all mammals are. Their large heads indicate they must be cared for as infants or none would survive. They live in societies. They are social beings.

Compare with other human-shaped D&D monsters such as vampires and (some) demons which are highly magical and lack normal biological processes. Or the plethora of non-humanoid monsters such as dragons, beholders, and oozes. Seen in this context, orcs and their ilk are very human.

 

[Olrox17]

That isn’t in any way an example of someone seeing fictional races as irl races.

It is an example of someone claiming that there are races, in D&D, that are so similar to groups of real world people, to cause offense. Someone else, earlier in thread, expressed consternation because of a perceived similarity between goliaths and people of african descent. Needless to say, I highly disagree.

There is a whole twitter discussion and a set of articles about what’s wrong with the Orc description. I’m not gonna rehash all that for you here. If you actually care about understanding the point, you can easily find them.

A whole twitter discussion, and a set of articles (written by who? on what journal?). If that was an appeal to authority, it was a pretty weak one. Basically, what you're saying, is that there are some people out there, in the twitter space, that agree with you. Ok. I knew that before.

 

[Aldarc]

You know, the more i think of it, the more I realize that's the only possible answer they could have given. Anything less than that, at this very moment, would've caused a violent crapstorm.

I suspect that the real possibility that Jeremy Crawford was being genuine must frighten you. I also suspect that you don’t know much about Jeremy Crawford or his writing resume.

Both are the consequence of a strong popular response to a shocking event, leading to a demand for change of some sort. I'm not going to pretend they're the exact same thing (if anything, the current situation is more globally relevant), but there are similarities.

Has your head been buried in the sand for so long that you think that this call for change in D&D is just a new response to the current wave of BLM movement protests? God bless your sweet heart, child.

 

[Oofta]

Funny, you mention gnolls. They are being looked at and possibly gonna be reclassified as fiends or something when all is said and done...or so I read.

Personally I don't think it matters what classification they have, it's just changing a label. If they created a label something along the line of "Created" as in "creature created to serve a specific purpose" and applied that to orcs who were specifically created by Gruumsh to wage eternal war would it really change anything?

If the rule changed tomorrow that said "humanoid means having free will to choose alignment" I'd consider my options. Ignore it (most likely), change orcs to fiendish, get rid of orcs in my campaign. [edit: because they would no longer serve a real purpose and there are already too many humanoid species running around for my taste.]

We should. Too many examples in the real world.

I think groups of people do, or allow, horrible things at times. I just don't think that in general D&D's simplified alignment system as used for description of monsters applies very well in the real world.

P.S. I really need to stop responding to replies.