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'.

 

[Umbran]

Why would an intelligent, moral, free-willed worship the family from the Hills have Eyes?

The whole point is that morals are not a fixed point of the race.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

The whole point is that morals are not a fixed point of the race.

Exactly. This is my point: orcs can worship Grummsh and Co (dont know WHY they would, but they could) or they may chose any other god. There's no biological or magical impulse in them to follow Grummsh if they dont want to.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Of course Gruumsh isn't that much better - he was marginalized and all the other gods ignored him when he pointed out that there was no room left for his people. He created orcs to be a weapon because he was pissed.

As Pearl Jam might have put it: “Gruumsh One-Eye spoke in class today...”

 

[BookBarbarian]

As Pearl Jam might have put it: “Gruumsh One-Eye spoke in class today...”

Try to put it that way. It would come out as 'UUmmms wo-eyyye oke in aaass ooo-ayyyy"

Consonants were never grunge's strong point

 

[Hoffmand]

I’ll be honest, I just really strongly dislike making gods into demons and devils.

If Bane gets to be a god, Llolth and Tiamat and Gruumsh are gods, IMO.

And tbh in my games Asmodeus is a god.

I kinda agree. I see devils and demons as fallen angels or celestials. But I can see them as gods as well. I have often thought that all evil gods are also demons, devils, and whatever. Not that there aren’t other ways of doing it. It should be really open for individual DM creativity.

basically some gods are celestials, some devils, some demons, some elementals, etc. but everyone in the lower planes is fallen from grace for my settings.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

I kinda agree. I see devils and demons as fallen angels or celestials. But I can see them as gods as well. I have often thought that all evil gods are also demons, devils, and whatever. Not that there aren’t other ways of doing it. It should be really open for individual DM creativity.

I agree. In the end, they are all mostly the same thing: big powerful being with an attitude problem, no matter their alignment. I mostly use demon/fiend/god etc as descriptor to point where the specific Power reside, and call them Powers the rest of the time. Demons are the Powers in the Abyss, a Deity is a Power from the Astral sea etc.

So to me Lolth is Demon because she's in the abyss. If she bought a loft in Arvandor, I would probably called her an Archfey or something like this.

 

[Haldrik]

Dude, there are not that many pale-skinned, blonde green-eyed people from that part of Eurasia out there. Also, considering that’s the splash page introducing the Egyptian pantheon those probably are supposed to be gods...

Besides, considering the span of the Egyptian empire, why would you choose to visually depict the people OR gods after such an atypical demographic?

It would be akin to depicting “typical upper class Americans” as being nonwhite.

Regarding the worldview of ancient Egypt, the Egyptians color coded the ethnic groups to the south (Upper Egypt, Kush, etcetera) as black, the ethnic groups to the west (Libiya, etcetera) as white, the ethnic groups to the east (Arameans, Canaanites, etcetera) as yellow, and the Egyptians viewed themselves as red. The Egyptians used these corresponding pigments when painting these ethnic groups in murals.

 

[Haldrik]

Varies by time. Pantheon wasn't locked in stone for 3000 years.

Amon Ra was a composite of two gods iirc.

Yeah, Egyptian religion varies by city and era. When looking at Egypt broadly across history, it takes caution to keep track of.

 

[Urriak Uruk]

Sorry I missed your earlier post, tough to keep track, I have been sporadic, but yeah if you check out my later posts on this, I totally agree hence I proposed a solution. It may work or not.

Yeah changing the hobgoblin design (or having more designs drawing from other cultures) does work. I personally love the hobgoblin design, I'd just like to see more aspects of their culture that is less negative. Honorable combat being included in their culture would be great for example, and I don't find it too different from their lore. Being artists makes a lot of sense too, considering how intricate their armor is.

Already people are blushing that aside. And claiming prominent other cultural influences.

Yeah I'm hearing comparisons to Romans, and... I guess? If you have a very simplistic idea of Roman culture I suppose, but hobgoblins don't really have architecture evoking Rome at all, and I don't even think they show interest in stuff like gladiatorial games (which would be a great fit, I've just never seen them do it).

 

[Ruin Explorer]

And yet the Pax Romana was the best time to be alive - healthiest, most prosperous, least violent - that Europe and the Meditarrean would see for over a thousand years.

For who, exactly? This is nonsense as a generalisation. I mean, I can't take anyone who says stuff like "Pax Romana" entirely seriously, but that's an absolutely ludicrous and ahistorical perspective because it's so generalized. I mean, I'm not sure it was even true for most people who literally lived in Rome itself! Not given all the violence, criminality, regime changes and so on - and noting that 20% of people in Rome itself was slaves, but just as much "people" as everyone else, so their health, prosperity, freedom and so on must be equally considered to Roman aristos, equites and so on - which you clearly aren't. In some parts of the countryside around Rome it was as high as 40% slaves, often in much worse conditions than Rome too (these are somewhat conservative modern figures note, not the overblown figures of the 1970s and earlier, or the minimized figures of some earlier eras).

It's also full of ridiculous assumptions, like that the Romans arriving across-the-board "improved" the situation, rather than merely changing it. Britain is a good example. Prior to the Romans, the Britons used an elaborate and highly productive system of crop rotation, that was superior to Roman methods. After the Roman invasion, this was abandoned, and they used drastically inferior Roman farming methods.

Sure, baths, wine and so on are lovely, to modern sensibilities (though Britain was importing tons of wine pre-conquest, pre-Caesar's little jaunt, even), but just painting everything "Roman", totally mindlessly, completely failing to see where the locals did something better (unless, perhaps, it let them be better at killing people), just engaging in light syncretism to avoid religious warfare wasn't some kind of wonderful thing.

In many other places, literally all the Romans ever did was cause utter havoc (especially to the East of Rome), kill a lot of people, and take a lot of slaves.

You're also promoting the completely ahistorical idea (particularly undermined by archaeology) that without Rome or the like, there was "constant low-level warfare", and with Rome, all was calm. In many cases the presence of Rome had limited or no impact on "low-level warfare" (this is nonsense that the Romans themselves spread). In many more, it simply wasn't the case before the Romans arrived that was "constant low-level warfare". There's no evidence to support that assertion as a generalization. What next, you're going to tell me the Delian League was for the benefit of all Hellenes? Imagine repeating Roman (or Athenian) propaganda, thousands of years later, uncritically.

You're welcome to pick a specific place and claim the Romans improved it, but to talk generally about the "Pax Romana" being a huge improvement is ahistorical nonsense. In some cases the Romans massacred more people that we can even imagine being killed in "low-level warfare", even over decades (again Britain is one of these - there's no evidence of any warfare on remotely the scale the Romans engage in before they arrived, and no evidence of "constant" warfare - none - the evidence suggests it was irregular/sporadic and small-scale (not this overwrought, even romantic-Grimdark idea of people constantly fighting. This isn't the 41st Millenium, mate). The one massacre of Boudicca's rebels might well have killed more people than had died in decades or centuries of warfare in Britain before that, as what evidence of warfare we do have seems to suggest generally low casualty rates in the centuries before Rome).