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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...

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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.


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@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'.
 

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Aldarc

Legend
The number would not be anywhere close to 2 million, though. The scenario was 2 out of 10 black people, not 2 out of 10 players.

If anyone had a real issue with orcs in my game, I would change my game. I wouldn't expect Wizards to change it for everyone.
Then I misread on my cellphone.
 

Tallifer

Hero
But we don’t know how many racialized minority gamers find things like orcs and drow offensive. I’ve never seen a poll or a study on the subject.

What if 2 in 10 gamers of colour say they find depictions of orcs reinforce stereotypes and 8 in 10 say they don’t see it. How then should we characterize white gamers who express outrage on behalf of gamers of colour, and presume to speak on their behalf?

If it’s not the place of white gamers to decide if elements of D&D reinforce negative stereotypes, well that’s an argument that cuts both ways.

Indeed. I will not deny the feelings of thousands of others, but it is a big step for me to understand them since all the black gamers whom I have played with had no problem with orcs, playing half-orcs and slaughtering orcs. But that is just my personal experience, so it has nothing to add to or change the conversation.
 

Lem23

Adventurer
If roughly 9.5 million people play 5e (by some estimates), then 2 out of 10 people finding racist undertones in orcs problematic is still almost 2 million people. So it would not be an insignificant amount of people here.

And that's taking as read his very doubtful statistics. I onder what his reaction would be if the actual figures are 80% that recognose racism and 20% who don't? And that's still putting a large percentage in favour of bigotry as the audience for D&D, which I doubt (and hope not) is the case.
 




Eric V

Hero
Neuroscientists, sociologists, behavioural economists, philosophers, psychologists...all will agree that we experience things through the prism of our previous experiences. So, if I have never experienced racism personally, my 'racism detector' is going to be poor compared to someone with great experience with it.

More experience = more capability. If you don't agree with that, you don't agree with D&D! :)

Now, does this mean that sometimes, a person is hyper-vigilant and may see racism where there is none? Possibly...but it's far more likely that they are seeing a microaggression that the person using isn't even aware of. One doesn't have to be consciously racist to use (without malicious intent) racist microaggressions.
 


If offense is present in depictions of -> Vistani or orcs. How do the groups that are vilified to defend themselves. This can done with discussion with groups. Composed of them.
 

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