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'.

 

[Zaukrie]

We can.
They just should not be humaniods. They should have a "monster brain" and be a beast, fiend, or giant.

In one of my settings, gnolls are humans who worship the Hyena goddess. They act like humans and can be good or evil. The Blackspot gnolls are good. The Sandstripes are super evil.

In another of my settings, gnolls are created by evil magic and are all evil.

That's an interesting line to draw.......if Orcs were labeled as beasts, not humanoids, would people not find them offensive? I can't imagine changing that one line in the rule book would matter.

 

[Envisioner]

I do like removing alignment requirements, but I always ignore those in favor of story. Sure, have your lawful good orc, I love it. I might torture your character with it in towns, but that just makes for a good story. However, I can't get any of my players, with one exception, to play anything other than half elf, elf, or human. But, one of my players made a tortle for my next campaign! I don't know what I'm going to do with myself!

Your players are weird. I've been in groups which were like 3/4 Tieflings and Dragonborn.

(Disclaimer: This is an anecdote of my personal experience.)

 

[Hexmage-EN]

Really, you could easily run a D&D campaign where the "monstrous races" team up to deal with the invasion and colonization of their lands by humans, elves, dwarves, etc. Adventures could include driving out explorers, slaying "adventurers", and destroying settlements to keep the territory safe from the invaders. Hell, you could just take the premises of a lot of adventures and flip them so that the PCs are on the side of the "monsters".

I know there's a recently released game on Steam called "This Land is My Land" that is basically about this. That is, an indigenous warrior fighting to stem the European settler invasion. Just like is usually the case in D&D, the children of the enemy forces are conveniently safe somewhere far away.

 

[Zaukrie]

So I'll leave explaining the broader cultural topic that is the entire reason we're discussing this in the first place to someone else. But 3e and 4e had both gone to some lengths to broadening gnolls and their culture, and really broke them out of the "always evil slaughter fodder" niche. Some find it disappointing they've abandoned all that with 5e, and have seemingly gone out of their way to use the revised lore to avoid giving them a PC write-up.

Get rid of the gnoll part of the question. Why can't we have a species that in generally evil? Humans, despite all our issues, are generally good. Not perfectly so, certainly I'm not perfect, but generally? We seem to strive to being decent/good.

 

[Envisioner]

Humans, despite all our issues, are generally good.

Citation needed. Historical evidence would appear to disagree.

 

[Zaukrie]

I'm asking questions here, trying to learn, btw......because as James said in his writing, we all need to learn.

 

[Zaukrie]

Citation needed. Historical evidence would appear to disagree.

Of the billions of people, you think more are good or evil? And, despite all the horrible things we've done to each other over the millenia......we are smarter and wiser and healthier than we've ever been. Things are not ideal, not at all. But overall? The data is clear, humans are more educated, live longer, and are healthier than they've ever been.

 

[Warren Ellis]

Get rid of the gnoll part of the question. Why can't we have a species that in generally evil? Humans, despite all our issues, are generally good. Not perfectly so, certainly I'm not perfect, but generally? We seem to strive to being decent/good.

Aren't we more a generally neutral species whereas say elves and dwarves are more typically in the goodish side due to culture or whatever?

 

[Zaukrie]

Aren't we more a generally neutral species whereas say elves and dwarves are more typically in the goodish side due to culture or whatever?

I'm talking real life with that question.......and I'd guess that cultures in D&D average neutral, but most of the people in those cultures don't really care about what the leaders think/do, they just want to live and help their family and friends live.

 

[Envisioner]

Of the billions of people, you think more are good or evil? And, despite all the horrible things we've done to each other over the millenia......we are smarter and wiser and healthier than we've ever been. Things are not ideal, not at all. But overall? The data is clear, humans are more educated, live longer, and are healthier than they've ever been.

The evidence that I have compiled throughout my lifetime of experience suggests that human nature is inherently selfish, greedy, duplicitous, vain, shallow, narcissistic, hypocritical, and reflexively violent toward any perceived threat. People who have the capacity for forgiveness, humility, temperance, patience, and genuine compassion towards strangers are extremely rare as far as I can tell. Granted, my perception is probably skewed somewhat by the sort of media I have access to; I can never be sure, but IMO the evidence that human beings are inherently good would have to be overwhelming, before the evidence that they were not could be outweighed (it's one of those 2/11 ratio kinds of things; even if only a few of the M&Ms are poisoned, do you really want to grab a handful and take your chances?).