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'.

 

[Cadence]

The nazi salute and the roman salute are one and the same. That bit of trivia may not be top of mind for the average person, but once you see the roman salute, there's no mistaking it. I doubt any artist would make that particular mistake (unless they're REALLY clueless, or a deliberate provocateur), but your overall point is sound.

The Wikipedia entries on Roman Salute and Nazi Salute have a long discussion of that, try to distinguish them, and assign their total conflation to their portrayal in late 1700s French art. As an aside, essentially the same salute was encouraged for use by the originator of the Pledge of Allegiance back in the 1890s (see Bellamy Salute for a classroom of American children doing it for the Pledge in 1941).

 

[TheSword]

It's also not a trait we should be encouraging or glorifying, but we do so anyway.

But D&D is both at once an escape from our modern world and a funhouse mirror reflection of it. To try to use the most blasé political example possible; we want our community protectors to keep us safe without resorting to force, especially lethal force. Nobody wants to live a society where police would have carte blanche to serve as judge, jury, and executioner to criminals, but in D&D our PC heroes often do just that; go out to find "evil", and put kill it, and get rewarded for it.

If a group of police broke into a crack den, killed everyone in it, and took all thier assets as payment, we'd be morally aghast at it. But a group of adventurers breaking into a goblin warren, killing them, and getting gold and magic swords for it? That's classic gameplay!

So yeah, violent media does not perpetuate real world violence, but it does raise a question on if it glorifies it.

Adventurers aren’t the police. They’re either vigilantes or quasi independent para-militaries that might sometimes receive limited authority from local institutions... they’re also generally in the Middle Ages where due process and organized police forces probably don’t exist. They’re the A-Team basically. If your party are doing things the local watch can do you should probably up the ante.

Avoiding death is one of the most powerful motivators in human existence. It drives a lot of our behavior.

It is not unusual that people should get enjoyment from role playing risk and hopefully avoidance of death. Or enjoy stories where that happens. Violent death is the most immediate, tense and visceral. Hence our love of action films, computer games, and Game of Thrones. An adventure without some violence is generally a game without death and therefore without jeopardy.

You can of course play d&d as a political thriller if you don’t want fighting, or like a Cadfael mystery, but there are probably better games for that.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

That’s a fascinating version of events you’ve written there my friend but it’s not really true to the tale.

SPOILER WARNING FOR DESCENT INTO AVERNUS

The flaming fist are an evil mercenary organization most of the officers we come across are evil...

Yes, never did I say that the Flaming Fists are supposed to be good guy. The whole town is a bleak place, with oppression and piracy. It's quite clear that most Flaming Fist are evil and Zodge is loyal evil (the first scene featuring them is them robbing and beating commoners, as I mentionned earlier). The question is: how on earth are PCs supposed to side with them as part of the beginning of the campaign? I don't read the option regarding PCs resisting orders ("he can have them executed on the spot for refusing to help, though he would rather they accept") as real alternatives. I am pretty sure the expected behaviour of the player at this point is "he's a wretched guy, but let's work for him, because we're playing a game, not having a morality debate"). No real moral considerations (or you end up dead).

You understand that the officer expressing unpleasant views is supposed to make the party dislike him?

I do. And I question the fact that (a) the PCs are expected to work with him (b) often assumes during the job that violence will be the default option.

The bandits are evil pirates that have expressly come to the tavern to find and take revenge on the contact, who is also evil. There are non-violent options as always.

Yes, and I don't see how you could see this scene as a setup for "the PC defuse the situation between the two opposing parties" like they would deal with regular people, even if they were bandits. Law enforcement isn't expected to kill them and take their stuff. Mention of the PCs trying to defuse the situation are written as bound to fail (the lead bandit being unreasonable in his ransom and refusing to consider his target to be worth enough to placate him...) The whole setup leads to an expect scene of fight. Of course, you can always improvise to allow your players to defuse it, but the setup of the scene doesn't seem written to favor that, as "peaceful options" are mentionned only to be make them more difficult by making the pirate leader more difficult to convince. It is not OK for LEO to kill people in a tavern, even if they are violent. And if they expected very few groups to hunt down the pirates, why bother mentionning it? Especially when proposing viable options for negociating and defusing the situation would help.

The attendants won’t give information voluntarily... that is not the same as willingly. There is no need to beat them up or torture them. They just won’t offer the information up front.

I didn't even thought of the PCs murdering the attendants, only the night guards. For the attendant, peaceful options are possible but more complicated that infiltration at night (and killing guards).

Noble prisoner says his family offers a reward for him being not a ransom. It is also a lie.

I have no problem with that, except that I would except law enforcement to release prisonners without claiming a reward for that. Giving the additional detail that it's a lie, with a few lines of explanation, is strange if they except very few groups to actually claim the reward. It's the same thing with the magic item hidden in the mummy: is it worth spending a few lines to detail an option I would except no sane group would EVER encounter?

The party don’t have to ally with the Mortlock. All he asks is that he is to be allowed to go in exchange for information. Though he can be persuaded to help further. Pretty standard stuff.

I'd say it's very strange to send the PC on a mission to "kill all the cultists" (which is morally wrong), finding that the cultists are really criminals (torturing and killing people...) and when they find the "lead guy", they are "letting him go" because the criminal has been betrayed by other criminals. I have no problem with this being an option, but it's literally the default option. My take is that a decent group would arrest him, a less decent group might kill him, and only the worst kind would consider letting him go (violating their mandate, so I maintain they taking his side).

I think you have read the section and made a lot of suppositions, including how the party will play things. I don’t think that is the expected behavior at all.

I consider the "default behaviour" to be the one explored in more details or the one that is not made nearly impossible. I really found the beginning of Avernus to expect the PCs to adopt without too much qualm the behaviour of their evil Flaming Fist employers (in Rome, do as Romans do?). I may have read it wrong, but I found that very odd as a premice for a campaign.

Or you could have had non-hostile orcs who were taking the cures back to give to their wives and children knowing they would probably die from the disease but willing to do that. You didn’t need to make them human. Though that kind of conundrum is more interesting even if they end up fighting.

I wasn't forced to make them human. It would have made no difference to have them be human-like orcs or human: the option to "just fight them" is not available if they are human or human-like orcs. Taking your proposed scenario, the only option is to let the the orcs go. (I hope nobody would consider killing them and taking their stuff in this scenario). If you have unquestionably evil orcs, you don't worry about orcs having children... My point was that having a "unidimensional evil" oppponent OPENS UP options (because you can have hack-n-slash scenarios AND more subtle scenarios because there are scores of intelligent creature with free will, like humans, elves, dwarves, half-orcs...) while REMOVING unquestionably evil opponents RESTRICTS options (only subtle scenario remains).

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I've come to this discussion late, and I really don't want to read 100 pages to see if it's been discussed, but I have a question: I absolutely understand what is insensitive about the portrayal of the Vistani, but I don't get the problem with orcs. Surely they are not based on any real-world peoples. Can someone explain to me what is the problem with orcs?

 

[GameOgre]

By ignoring points. By dismissing opinions. By repeated attempts to say people will keep finding offense at things. That is not wanting compromise. Especially as people have wanted balanced versions. My posts have made this clear. Up to you whether you want to engage with this. Or keep saying points that disagree with yours want complete agreement. That is misconstruing. That is lying about the positions of others

Can you explain why keeping orcs as they are without changes is not problematic.
Can you explain why keeping vistani are they are without changes is not problematic.

No one has been saying completely throw everything out. People want more balanced versions. They have been arguing for this throughout the thread.

They are not problematic at all.

Why do you not like orcs? Orcs are fine....good monster race to beat the crud out of and have do evil stuff.

Vistani? huh? These guys are cool.

I don't understand people who have issues with this stuff...

Faerun isn't earth! It doesn't have jack to do with real life and our world. If you want to say this thing in D&D bothers you cause they are evil and you think they represent some real world minority or something.......This is a issue with YOU. Not with the race.

Orcs are not all from West Virginia or whatever you crazy people seem to think.

Vistini don't actually make deals with vampires and travel by the mist into Walmart. They are made up! Sure, parts of them might come from someones imagination that were gleaned from something else..who cares?

Conan isn't cultural appropriation because he so obviously is based on someone from TN. He was made up,he isn't really us.

Orcs are evil cause.......we need orcs to be Evil. Their God made em that way cause.......we dont want to have to think deeply about killing them when we are so close to level!

It's a friggin game.

“Crazy” is not something you should be directing at other posters. Disagree without being disagreeable, thank you.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

That's like saying "samurai don't exist anymore, and there's no reason their descendants should get offended by Hobgoblins' depictions"

That's very clearly not what I meant. I've said multiple times that if they are depicted in an offensive way, they should be changed.

 

[jasper]

You guys do realize that trading one-liners saying "You're wrong! No you are!" is not particularly productive right?

You know your right. And this is a
2 22 22 2 2 22 2 2 22 2 liner.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

I've come to this discussion late, and I really don't want to read 100 pages to see if it's been discussed, but I have a question: I absolutely understand what is insensitive about the portrayal of the Vistani, but I don't get the problem with orcs. Surely they are not based on any real-world peoples. Can someone explain to me what is the problem with orcs?

That all orcs are evil. ALL orcs.
Also, Tolkein explicitly said orcs are based on Asian peoples.
And then D&D orcs are based on Tolkein.
So...

 

[Cadence]

I've come to this discussion late, and I really don't want to read 100 pages to see if it's been discussed, but I have a question: I absolutely understand what is insensitive about the portrayal of the Vistani, but I don't get the problem with orcs. Surely they are not based on any real-world peoples. Can someone explain to me what is the problem with orcs?

In short - The words used to describe evil humanoid races as groups are similar to the way real human groups have been othered throughout history. Intelligent humanoids should have some agency and not be monolithically evil groups who are ripe for being killed or herded off of their land.

That there are Half-orcs and Tolkien's inspiration for their descriptions is part of why Orcs get particular attention. Going through, the 100+ pages of the thread the Drow and Hobogoblins are also brought up in particular (the later have been widely depicted through the years in Japanese styled armor).

Two blog posts about it are at:

Orcs, Britons, and the Martial Race Myth, Part I: A Species Built for Racial Terror — James Mendez Hodes

This is the first installment of a two-article series about the racist origins, nature, and ramifications of orcs, a malevolent humanoid species from English author John Ronald Reuel Tolkien’s Middle-earth fantasy setting. I started researching this article with the hypothesis that a collection of n

jamesmendezhodes.com

Orcs, Britons, and the Martial Race Myth, Part II: They're Not Human — James Mendez Hodes

This is the complement to my previous article , “Orcs, Britons, and the Martial Race Myth, Part I: A Species Built for Racial Terror.” In the previous article, we learned how racist myths from the British academy and army fueled JRR Tolkien’s creation of orcs as an analogue for Asian people. Today

jamesmendezhodes.com

 

[GameOgre]

That all orcs are evil. ALL orcs.
Also, Tolkein explicitly said orcs are based on Asian peoples.
And then D&D orcs are based on Tolkein.
So...

Source? I chased that rabbit and never found anything there. From everything I have found there is nothing of any actual substance to those wishes. I say wishes because it was obvious many people desired it to be true.


*I did want to add that D&D actually does a good job of preserving it's creative roots. It's very easy to see the evolution of the orc from its very start as a pig faced pale skinned being to it's almost current representation. How anyone can say the orc is racist with any validity is beyond understanding.