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'.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

You know, with everything this is about, I'd love to see more to do with friendships and relationships in game, irrespective of who they are with. Not simply influencing spells, but about creating genuine friendships in game, swaying others through conviction or example of a different path, encouraging villains or rivals to go on a more nuanced development of character, things like that.

Waay back yesterday evening California time (and eons ago this-thread time), Ash Mantle posted this. I agree with this 100%. There are Bonds in the game, but they aren't bonds between PCs. And regardless, they have barely any mechanical heft.

the Dungeon World "Bonds" mechanic tried to address this, and it was ok; but challenging for players to come up with good bonds before play, especially ones who never had to think about that before.

I think more ideally, it would could be a good end of session procedure. That said, D&D has never formalized "end of session" procedures, and I think that is ripe green space for adding new cool things to this game.

All of the above being said, most likely will get lost in this massive thread. Maybe some day I'll create a new thread. But not today.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

No. But I don't see any other cultures being stereotyped that way lately either. Can you point to some examples in popular culture from the last 10 or 15 years?

Where's "pop culture" come from? I'm talking about racism, which tends to be spread and reinforced through alternative vectors these days. In pop culture, however, there are still routinely racist portrayals of black people, pretty much around the world. They're toned down from the insane stuff that used to be common, but still present. I mean, in Britain we've got people apologising for minstrel-y blackface acts that were running into the 2000s, for god's sake.

And why are we talking "10-15 years"? Decades after something stops, people still promote the ideas. The racist publications we saw earlier quoted are a great example of that. They were published in various forms up until the 1960s and in watered-down ways until a lot later (even into the 1990s), but in the US and other countries (including places as far away from the US, physically and culturally, as Russia and Japan) you see people repeating the ideas from them, acting as if they were true.

 

[Umbran]

Have they scheduled a time and date for the 2e book burning?

The sarcasm comes off as trolling. Please stop.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

As others have said, hobgoblins are pretty cool. What sucks about them is the default assumption (made in both the Monster Manual and Volo's Guide) that hobgoblins are evil, and defined by an evil religion and culture.

There are a lot of sub-threads in this massive thread (glad the Birthright subthread died down...). But the one about races all being monolithically one alignment - this post above sums it all up really common sensically.

Humanoid races are cool; default assumptions suck.

 

[Urriak Uruk]

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.

There kind of is; if the chief god of the pantheon of your race is evil, it makes sense most of your race will be evil.

In fact, every orc god in the Forgotten Realms is evil. So for an orc to worship a non-evil god, they'd have to worship a non-orc god. See the problem?

EDIT: I'll add that Wildemount addresses this issue head-on by adding the Luxon, an alternative thing that the non-evil monstrous races worship. Feels a lot more natural, and provides a better basis for the monstrous humanoids to be free-thinking.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

Hey, I'm a big fan of exploring the idea of narrowing dnd down to Body, Wits, and Will, or something like that. I've considered those three stats for my own game, since each stat is a pool of points you can draw from to fuel special abilities to fix flubbed rolls.

I wish this was a completely different thread, because it's really interesting to me. @doctorbadwolf it sounds like you are talking about a system more like Cypher system, with Might, Speed, and Intellect - especially your mention of pools and fueling abilities.

I'm playing in a Numenara game right now, and I haven't yet been able to articulate why I don't like the core mechanic. Maybe because it's fiddly and takes me out of the fiction just when the action is getting good; maybe because the "Effort" and "Edge" concepts don't really come out of the fiction itself (I don't describe what exactly the "effort" I am expending and how my Intellect "edge" supports that effort). Maybe that's it; maybe it's something else. It's sad, because the setting is awesome.

 

[Hoffmand]

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.

The separation of elves and fairies in d&d is what ticks me off the most. They are supposed to be the king of the fairies imho. Not a literal king. But the greatest.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

There kind of is; if the chief god of the pantheon of your race is evil, it makes sense most of your race will be evil.

In fact, every orc god in the Forgotten Realms is evil. So for an orc to worship a non-evil god, they'd have to worship a non-orc god. See the problem?

Yeah, that's indeed a problem. I wish that with the apotheosis of Obould and the deeper lore on Yurtus and Luthic, they would have at least gave us a neutral god! The dude ascended because he was the first orc functional enough to build a nation of peaceful orcs, but he's still a chaotic evil deity? That's bollock.

Then again, if the chief god of your race was evil AND a clear demonstration of success, I would understand the (possible) appeal. But it always struck me that, in the end, Grummsh is...well...a bit of a loser. He's the The Simpson's Nelson of the gods. I seems to me that an orc would see that their godly parental figures arent a big showcase for success.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Are you aware of the "revival" of roman culture that happened in Italy in the previous century, down to renaming the Italian Kingdom to Roman Empire for a while? Are you aware of who was responsible for that "revival"? Are you aware that those people were very much lawful evil, and in charge of my country?

Presumably you're talking about Mussolini? I was aware he enjoyed Roman iconography, and the Fasces and so on, but not really conscious that he actually renamed Italy to "The Roman Empire". That's absolutely bananas. I have to admit I'm more of an ancient history buff (A-level, degree), and whilst we covered WW2 in a lot of detail, Mussolini and his lot didn't get much. I'm looking at the wikipedia entry for the Kingdom of Italy though, and I can't see any actual renaming to "The Roman Empire", so is that true, or are you just referring to him acting like it was?

You're right to put "revival" in hate quotes though, it was absolute bollocks that was just iconography and not much else.

Do you have any idea how many times the name of the political party those people belong to was used to mock and insult me, and other italian citizens?

I genuinely don't. I'm surprised but sad to hear that happens. What nationalities use it to mock you? Because I'm going to go ahead and guess isn't British people. British people have super-racist terms for Italian (and Spanish) people, but none of them relate to what, the Fascists?

That's what we call Mussolini's party in English - The National Fascist Party - but almost no-one in Britain knows that. British people typically know that Mussolini lead "the fascists", but we associate that term with a multitude of parties across Europe. I you challenge random typical Brits to name Mussolini's party, most won't be able to, and the closest anyone who isn't a WW2 buff will likely get is "Ummmm maybe it has Fascist in the name?". It certainly doesn't have "Rome" or "Roman" in the name?

So I'm bit confused about what you deal is here. We don't call the Romans "fascists" (even though the fasces itself is a bit of Roman iconography - but most often seen all over US courts and buildings).

It is call an hyperbole, a rethoric figure to let a concept be more clear.

Resorting to hyperbole in a D&D rule discussion, to try and make a point, is a pretty reliable sign you don't have an actual argument.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

The separation of elves and fairies in d&d is what ticks me off the most. They are supposed to be the king of the fairies imho. Not a literal king. But the greatest.

Indeed. I think elves would benefit from being ''fey'', just like they did with Theros satyrs.

EDIT: Especially the Eladrin!