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'.

 

[MGibster]

I could have a setting where the orcs to the south are a decent group of people but the orcs to the west are vicious bastards prone to belligerent behavior including throwing their young men and woman and neighboring kingdoms in an effort to conquer them. Is there anything I can write about them that wouldn't sound like propaganda used by people in real life against a group they demonized?

 

[GameOgre]

I disagree with most of the above. I don't find orcs racist at all.

I do find it bad to comb through the game remaking it to suit social justice.

I do think going down this road will be bad for D&D.

BUT.....this is a thread on a messageboard. I can see i'm not going to get through to any of you. You guys don't seem to be able to move me either.

We can agree to disagree.

WOTC agrees with you guys.

I hope you guys are 100% right and im 100% wrong.

I would be happy with that.

If it doesn't work out that way and Ten years from now D&D is gone well. It had a god run.

I just received a Warning for this post. For being Anti-inclusive.

This board is now not worth my time. I will not be coming back here.

Receiving warnings for not agreeing with the moderator's position is unacceptable.

Goodbye.

Edit: to anyone reading this, the warning was NOT issued for disagreing with a moderator’s position, but for violating ENWorld’s posted rules regarding the use of “social justice” in that post and other actions. Don’t believe the tripe.

 

[PsyzhranV2]

Reading 5e orcs I don't see any hate that would be associated with a real people. Gruumsh told orcs to destroy all the other races. They hate elves. They savagely invade nearby settlements. They like to kill.

Where is that similar to any real world culture?



This is the 5e description.

"Orcs are savage raiders and pillagers with stooped postures, low foreheads, and piggish faces with prominent lower canines that resemble tusks."

Viking pig people.

Thermian. Arguments. Do. Not. Address. Out-of-universe. Textual. Criticism. Golly gee whiz with extra dijon mustard on top.

So Gruumsh in the story commanded his orcs to go kill elves, which is why elves believe they are justified in killing them back and doing far worse. Great. But somebody on Earth wrote them that way. So rather than start a big nerd debate about trivia and minutiae, it is more productive to ask: "is this a good creative decision?"

And I don't know how many times it's been said already, but I'll say it again: orcs don't have a 1-1 resemblance with any existing Earth cultures? Great! That's not the problem.

The problem is the rhetoric of hate that was used in our human history against groups of people that were thought of as lesser is being appropriated to justify play-acting those injustices in fiction, and that the narrative framing of the game is doing everything it can to justify such.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

For morality to be objective, it would have to exist independently of humanity. Who made this morality?

I’ll simply point out that The Golden Rule* is a central tenet of most major world religions going back thousands of years, and is supported by many non-theistic philosophies as well.

IOW, it is a moral principle shared over a sizable slice of human history, cutting across cultural, ethnic and religious human constructs.





* commonly formulated as treat others as you would like to be treated

 

[Maxperson]

So Gruumsh in the story commanded his orcs to go kill elves, which is why elves believe they are justified in killing them back and doing far worse. Great. But somebody on Earth wrote them that way.

And your response just leads back to my question above.

"So any pretend race regardless of description cannot hate any other pretend races?"

Somebody on Earth would write all hate of other races in D&D. So yes, @Aldarc someone(more than one here) is arguing that.

The problem is the rhetoric of hate that was used in our human history against groups of people that were thought of as lesser is being appropriated to justify play-acting those injustices in fiction, and that the narrative framing of the game is doing everything it can to justify such.

So what write up of a pretend race hating another pretend race would be acceptable to you?

And why are you only presenting part of the story of Gruumsh? He didn't command orcs to go kill elves by the way. That statement above is wrong. He commanded them to go out and kill all other races. Orcs just hate elves more because of what the elven god did to Gruumsh.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Three culturally specific points in favour of the idea of orcs as vikings - axes*, berserkers*, and one-eyed Gruumsh as Odin.

I'm considering vikings here from the modern popular perspective - a Scandinavian people who lived in the middle ages, and had fearsome warriors who engaged in raiding and pillaging.

Against the notion:
Vikings are not a race. "Nordics" are, to use the language of race "science", but nordics are the most superior, civilised race in those theories so unlike vikings.
Don't have dark skin, whether brown as in 1e or grey/blue as in 5e.
They are not evil (though they are chaotic).
Don't have witch doctors, as orcs do in 1e.
Aren't strongly associated with shamanism, also 1e.
A half-viking/half-X isn't called a "mongrel".
90% of half-vikings are not effectively vikings, with only the superior 10% able to pass as non-viking.
They are not less intelligent than humans.
They don't outbreed non-vikings. They are a sexual threat, but that's not quite the same thing.
They aren't stronger than normal humans. They are physically capable but no more so than any other group of good fighters.
They don't engage in widespread cannibalism.
They don't worship demons or evil gods. Medieval Christians might've thought they did but this is being considered from the modern popular perspective.
They aren't primitive. Even in the popular imagination they are skilled seafarers, boat-builders and navigators. Their armour and weapons are equal to those of their opponents.
They are bloodthirsty and lack state societies but these traits are not biological and inherited.
They aren't part human, part beast.

Now it might be said, well the pig-man part supplies most of the rest - the beast traits, lack of intelligence, physical superiority and so forth. Firstly that still couldn't supply the dark skin, evil alignment, or the devil worship. Secondly this pig-man notion that we've created, and is doing most of the work, looks an awful lot like stereotypes of dark-skinned people.

*These both arrived in 3e, along with the chaotic alignment, and I think probably were an effort to make orcs more viking-like.

 

[Maxperson]

I’ll simply point out that The Golden Rule* is a central tenet of most major world religions going back thousands of years, and is supported by many non-theistic philosophies as well.

Many religions in human history engaged in human sacrifice, cannibalism of family and enemies, enslavement of enemies and many more activities that would be considered today to be immoral, but were not immoral to those societies.

IOW, it is a moral principle shared over a sizable slice of human history, cutting across cultural, ethnic and religious human constructs.

Sure, and by more and more cultures as time went on and we approached modern history. As more and more of them got the word out, sharing those ideas, morality changed. Even now in present time there are isolated cultures who see nothing wrong with cannibalism. Not just nothing wrong with it, but that it's moral and good to keep your ancestors with you by eating them. That it's moral and good to eat your enemies and gain their strength.

 

[PsyzhranV2]

So what write up of a pretend race hating another pretend race would be acceptable to you?

One that makes it clear that this hate is very much a bad thing and is in no way justified. One in which the root causes of that hate can be addressed, thus making reconciliation possible. One in which the metanarrative does not try to present genocide on the basis of ancestral and cultural difference as a good thing.

The example of The Witcher as a setting and story that deals with discrimination was brought up in the other thread. I'm not very familiar with The Witcher myself, I only really know the Geralt bathtub memes, but from my first impressions and from what others have said, the world of The Witcher is a world where racism and discrimination are present, but the story never tries to twist the audience into accepting such racism as good and just.

The difference is in the treatment. Presenting racism as a bad thing and using it as a way to point out how unlikable a character is (because they are a racist, and racism is bad) is entirely different from presenting racism as an unquestioned, unchallenged status quo.

 

[Umbran]

Thermian. Arguments. Do. Not. Address. Out-of-universe. Textual. Criticism. Golly gee whiz with extra dijon mustard on top.

Well put. I like the name "Thermian Argument".

 

[Umbran]

So what write up of a pretend race hating another pretend race would be acceptable to you?

Why do you need an entire race to hate another entire race?

In your narrative, why does it need to be absolute? What purpose in the narrative does this absolutism serve that is not served by it being a sub-group of the race/culture in question that hates?