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'.

 

[darjr]

WotC has more to say on these topics.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I don't need to. I think it's pretty clear from my post what are the issues I'm attacking.

Right, because you've invented a strawman -- "play muh story game instead of D&D" -- and are arguing both sides of the issue.

Actually argue the people here instead of fictitious people. If your argument is as strong as it ought to be, it can handle being tried against real posters.

 

[Minigiant]

Back on topic!

Much discussion has been made of orcs and drow...but a smattering of other humanoids.

Do you think it's just those races called out that receive a background tweak or do you think it will carry over in general to all humanoids?

Goblins seem to me to be almost as accepted as orcs for potential PC choice. Do they get a similar change? If they do, do all the other goblinoids follow?

Well the stereotypical goblin wears no clothes and barely has any culture so they are fine.

Now are kobolds who constantly suck up to large monsters like dragons ok? I think so. Kobolds are just natural cowards and people go out there way to find and dominate them.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Here's the rest of WotC's post:

Dungeons & Dragons teaches that diversity is strength, for only a diverse group of adventurers can overcome the many challenges a D&D story presents. In that spirit, making D&D as welcoming and inclusive as possible has moved to the forefront of our priorities over the last six years. We’d like to share with you what we’ve been doing, and what we plan to do in the future to address legacy D&D content that does not reflect who we are today. We recognize that doing this isn’t about getting to a place where we can rest on our laurels but continuing to head in the right direction. We feel that being transparent about it is the best way to let our community help us to continue to calibrate our efforts.
One of the explicit design goals of 5th edition D&D is to depict humanity in all its beautiful diversity by depicting characters who represent an array of ethnicities, gender identities, sexual orientations, and beliefs. We want everyone to feel at home around the game table and to see positive reflections of themselves within our products. “Human” in D&D means everyone, not just fantasy versions of northern Europeans, and the D&D community is now more diverse than it’s ever been.
Throughout the 50-year history of D&D, some of the peoples in the game—orcs and drow being two of the prime examples—have been characterized as monstrous and evil, using descriptions that are painfully reminiscent of how real-world ethnic groups have been and continue to be denigrated. That’s just not right, and it’s not something we believe in. Despite our conscious efforts to the contrary, we have allowed some of those old descriptions to reappear in the game. We recognize that to live our values, we have to do an even better job in handling these issues. If we make mistakes, our priority is to make things right.
Here’s what we’re doing to improve:

• We present orcs and drow in a new light in two of our most recent books, Eberron: Rising from the Last War and Explorer's Guide to Wildemount. In those books, orcs and drow are just as morally and culturally complex as other peoples. We will continue that approach in future books, portraying all the peoples of D&D in relatable ways and making it clear that they are as free as humans to decide who they are and what they do.
  
• When every D&D book is reprinted, we have an opportunity to correct errors that we or the broader D&D community discovered in that book. Each year, we use those opportunities to fix a variety of things, including errors in judgment. In recent reprintings of Tomb of Annihilation and Curse of Strahd, for example, we changed text that was racially insensitive. Those reprints have already been printed and will be available in the months ahead. We will continue this process, reviewing each book as it comes up for a reprint and fixing such errors where they are present.
  
• Later this year, we will release a product (not yet announced) that offers a way for a player to customize their character’s origin, including the option to change the ability score increases that come from being an elf, a dwarf, or one of D&D's many other playable folk. This option emphasizes that each person in the game is an individual with capabilities all their own.
  
• Curse of Strahd included a people known as the Vistani and featured the Vistani heroine Ezmerelda. Regrettably, their depiction echoes some stereotypes associated with the Romani people in the real world. To rectify that, we’ve not only made changes to Curse of Strahd, but in two upcoming books, we will also show—working with a Romani consultant—the Vistani in a way that doesn’t rely on reductive tropes.
  
• We've received valuable insights from sensitivity readers on two of our recent books. We are incorporating sensitivity readers into our creative process, and we will continue to reach out to experts in various fields to help us identify our blind spots.
  
• We're proactively seeking new, diverse talent to join our staff and our pool of freelance writers and artists. We’ve brought in contributors who reflect the beautiful diversity of the D&D community to work on books coming out in 2021. We're going to invest even more in this approach and add a broad range of new voices to join the chorus of D&D storytelling.

And we will continue to listen to you all. We created 5th edition in conversation with the D&D community. It's a conversation that continues to this day. That's at the heart of our work—listening to the community, learning what brings you joy, and doing everything we can to provide it in every one of our books.
This part of our work will never end. We know that every day someone finds the courage to voice their truth, and we’re here to listen. We are eternally grateful for the ongoing dialog with the D&D community, and we look forward to continuing to improve D&D for generations to come.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Well, this feels like a Daily Double of an answer:

Later this year, we will release a product (not yet announced) that offers a way for a player to customize their character’s origin, including the option to change the ability score increases that come from being an elf, a dwarf, or one of D&D's many other playable folk. This option emphasizes that each person in the game is an individual with capabilities all their own.

 

[Cadence]

Goblins seem to me to be almost as accepted as orcs for potential PC choice. Do they get a similar change? If they do, do all the other goblinoids follow?

Making Goblinoids an alien thought process non-Humanoid, non PC stock has some appeal to me. But it feels like that ship has sailed (how Hobogoblins have been lined up with some real world groups for art, and how goblins can be popular to play). On the other hand, the only monster type ever played was a contemplative Bugbear. Bugbear's didn't eat people because they were evil, they are them because that is the nature of a Bugbear. Does eating deer make humans evil.

For Kobolds, in my son's first campaign he spared one to answer questions and it now follows along as a party member (good food and less dangerous than before).

Are there any non-outsider, non-abberation, non-undead intelligent monsters that don't seem redeemable in some circumstances?

 

[FireLance]

So, back to D&D...

I thought this is an issue where the dials and flexibility that were talked about in the development of 5e could be applied.

Don't want all orcs to be evil? Then it is only these specific orcs who are evil.

Don't want racial ability score modifiers? Then implement an alternative system of floating ability score modifiers instead of the standard.

And in the spirit of inclusiveness, can some of us stop saying that the warlord has no place in 5e?

 

[Haldrik]

Well the stereotypical goblin wears nor clothes and barely has any culture so they are fine.

Now are kobolds who constantly suck up to large monsters like dragons ok? I think so. Kobolds are just natural cowards and people go out there way to find and dominate them.

I feel the main concern is freewill.

If the creature truly lacks freewill, whether a fiend, beast, or monstrosity, then they lack the "person" creature type.

Then if they lack freewill, the DM needs to play them that way. Beasts operate by instinct.

Fiends and angels are ethical echoes of the party. If the party is behaving badly, then the fiend is especially dangerous (or the angel becomes corrupt), and if the party is ethically strong, the fiend can even be negotiable. Poetic justice is always a lovely touch.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

And in the spirit of inclusiveness, can some of us stop saying that the warlord has no place in 5e?

Sorry, warlords are all genetically evil.

 

[FireLance]

Sorry, warlords are all genetically evil.

Sorry, class based alignment restrictions is so 3E.