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'.

 

[Markh3rd]

I've never looked at Drow or Orcs and thought of them as representing our real world humans. I saw them as elves with dark skin ( but living underground always thought they should be albino like cave fish), or a monstrous creature from old fairy tales. Growing up I never heard of anyone referring to them as representing a real world human either. Has this been going on since Basic D&D or is this something that has been associated recently?

 

[Cadence]

RE: Humanoids vs. People, free will, and bonuses

I was thinking of Glen Cook's books for the other thread on inspirational reading. One of his series, the Garrett Chronicles, is mostly set in the city of TunFaire and the immediate surroundings. There are a lot of different groups that live in the city and surroundings just fine - from the usual human, elf, dwarf suspects to centaurs and all manner of cross-group like part giant/part troll and sorcerously created rat people. In the background are the issues of how they treat and think of each other, immigration, human rightists, and the like. But for the most part their all different flavors of people - even if they're decidedly not human. One of the main characters would have a mental stat way above their species reputation, others have the equivalent of clear modifiers based on size due to physical stats, and none of the races seems to have a fixed alignment --- and it all seems to work fine.

I feel like I need to go back and reread the first bunch of them, with this thread and D&D in mind and see how it feels.

 

[Charlaquin]

If I read his post correctly, he was saying that even if you make Orcs a race of deeply spiritual philosophers, people are still going to look at Orcs and say "Orcs are just like black people, except that they're deeply spiritual philosophers", and it would be better to change Orcs so that they are not even remotely like people of any variety whatsoever.

“ change Orcs so that they are not even remotely like people of any variety whatsoever” is not an achievable goal. As they are written by people, their characterization will always be a reflection of humanity.

 

[Mirtek]

Great point, although I’ll point out that Halfthor is vastly stronger than any village strongman in history. He, and the guys who compete with him, are probably stronger than anyone before this period of history.

But yes, a chimpanzee is just...so much stronger than a human can be that it’s hard to really get a handle on. It’s like grown strongman vs toddler level.

A +2 to strength isn’t close to that difference, and even powerful build isn’t quite there, IMO.

Halfthor Bjornson could beat moat Goliaths in a competition if strength, but the power lifters and strong man competitors that aren’t in his league? Gonna have a hard time keeping up with any Goliath considered strong amongst their own folk.

I really like that. IMO it makes Goliaths feel like they have little genetically in common with humans. They happen to look similar, but they aren’t related. They’re different species.

A little bit frightening, but you actually get a lot of results if you Google Halfthor vs Gorilla.

Gist of it is that his most impressive feats are about half of what an average gorilla can do.

He might be able to beat a chimp though if discounting fangs

 

[Sadras]

The only solution can be removing monolithic Evil if describing any human-like culture.

Hobgoblins (and I was referrring to Hobgoblins) as far as I know are not being described as any human like culture. The complaint raised was their depiction - the imagery.

 

[Markh3rd]

Hobgoblins (and I was referrring to Hobgoblins) as far as I know are not being described as any human like culture. The complaint raised was their depiction - the imagery.

What's wrong with the depiction?

 

[Minigiant]

Hobgoblins (and I was referrring to Hobgoblins) as far as I know are not being described as any human like culture. The complaint raised was their depiction - the imagery.

Depends. Once you look at their imagery, their military culture, focus on social status, use of other racial auxiliaries, and stigma against cowardice hints them toward bad stereotypes of Imperial Rome and WWII Japan. It's not direct as you'd have to think about it to notice it.

But once you do and realize that hobgoblins are the "always evil" smart humaniods...

Edit: And hobgoblins having hints of real world culture is not automatically. Bad. I'm personally thinking about changing the hobgoblins in my world to be more like fantasy Japan. Except they aren't all evil and it's more of warring noble warlords of various alignments.

 

[Hoffmand]

What's wrong with the depiction?

Nothing. Nothing at all.

 

[Sadras]

What's wrong with the depiction?

You need to scroll back some - but the armour, the top-knot and everything @Minigiant mentioned. To be honest it is not something I had picked up until this board. But then again I do not play in my imaginery elf game equating fantastical creatures with RW counterparts. I do not have time for that in my hobby.
But you know how people enjoy low-hanging fruit.

What I do notice is that Medusa is a name and Gorgon should have been the creature - things like that.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I know that hyperbole is a peculiarly raw rethoric figure. I reserve it for people that tends to use rethoric trick to escape from a struggle they not know how to win.

I used to be fond of it myself, long ago, but I recognised a decade or so back that it was doing more harm than good to my arguments, because it can make it actively harder to understand the real problem, or create separate arguments. With STR it's particularly unnecessary, because PCs are limited to 20 STR, period, in 5E (very unlike earlier editions), and most races have no bonus or penalty to STR (including small ones). Even some larger ones have no bonus (Loxodons - who are literally described as "strong") or just +1 (Firbolgs), whereas we have smaller-than-humans like the Locathah and Mountain Dwarves with +2 STR. Among size S races, only one has a penalty - Kobolds. Even a 3ft tall, 40lb Goblin (my god I could tuck under one arm) has the same STR range as a human for combat purposes. I should think the fact, rather than hyperbole, would put paid to any debate.

While I generally enjoy and agree with you comments in this thread, I take exception with the quote above.

Being racist against ancient ethnic groups is just as silly (ignorant) as being racist against contemporary ethnic groups.

I feel as a historian, you should know better.

(Despite the fact that I share your appallment with some of that Roman material.)

As silly/ignorant, sure, but as dangerous/harmful? No. Especially not compared to modern stuff which is impacting real people right now.

Also, Rome was a culture, not an ethnicity/race (from pretty early on they had multiple ethnic group involved - initially closely-related ones but it rapidly broadened out). It's impossible to be "Racist against Romans" - bigoted, sure, but they're not a race, and any prejudicial dislike is bigotry. Unless I guess it was specific to "Romans, actually from Rome specifically!" (even then it's more bigotry against a location though - the Romans themselves engaged in some fairly complicated bigotry based on ethnic stereotyping and perceived traits but nothing remarkable - they weren't outstanding racists for their era, though their formalized lists of ethnic traits perhaps acted as forerunners to later cultures formalized racism, just as they laid the foundation for so many other things).

I should also say I am not prejudiced on Rome. Prejudice is prejudgement. I don't automatically assume anything Roman sucks. But unlike a lot of Westerners, I also don't automatically assume it was "basically a good thing", because as I studied ancient history, it became clear it was a lot more complicated than that. But bring me an unfamiliar example of Roman conquest and I'm not going to automatically assume they wrecked the place - but nor will I assume it was a brief period of fighting followed by hundreds of years of lovely aqueducts and baths and wine, because very often that portrayal is the actually prejudiced one. It's possible to say they were remarkable and changed the world, but that they were pretty vile even by the standards of the time (they never shied away from a truly epic bloodbath, massacre, or torture session, nor incredible levels of mass enslavement).