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'.

 

[Zaukrie]

This idea of most minotaurs being stronger than the average human or halfling would get represented by the Monster Manual entries, rather than the Player's Handbook. After all... those are the statblocks that represent most of a particular species or ancestry. In any game you play there will be 10s to 100 times more MM minotaurs, humans, and halflings in a game than PC minotaurs, humans, and halflings. So since the PCs are all special representatives of their respective species or ancestries... they do not need to have the same "averages" added into their Ability Scores during character creation. Leave the "stronger" average minotaurs to the Monster Manual.

And as far as worrying about species seeming all the same if you were to remove ability score modifier bonuses... those numbers have absolutely no noticeable impact one the characters are created anyway ( UNLESS the stat has been maxed out.) If a minotaur PC has a STR 15... is that a 15 because the player bought a 15, or because they bought a 13 and added +2 due to an ability score modifier bonus? And does it even matter? Because once the game actually starts... all that ends up mattering is merely that the PC has a 15 STR. How or why they acquired that 15 means absolutely nothing. So it's not like having racial bonuses or not having racial bonuses to ability scores actually affects how these characters are played.

If we are only talking about changing PCs, and still having MM writeups that reflect "most", then I am cool with any change they make to PCs. But, the orcs of Wildemount and the gnolls of Eberron aren't just changes to the PCs....they literally make the entire species different in terms of origin and culture. That's neither good nor bad, imo. It's just different. Again, I'll point out, most games are about going into dungeons or whatever and fighting what the PCs consider bad guys. Not everyone wants the moral complexity of whether or not they are really bad guys........

Changing cultures is difficult. It's the diversity that makes things interesting, yet also troublesome. I don't envy designers trying to balance those two things.

 

[vpuigdoller]

well, this could easily signify a pseudo 5.5 edition where they "rectify" this stuff.

 

[DEFCON 1]

The other is the whole "If an orc is raised correctly they'll be good" is IMHO worse and smacks more of colonialism than a simple "Orcs are a different species and were created by an evil god for the purpose of being an instrument of that evil god's will. They simply don't think like humans." If alignment becomes just a reflection of culture ... I dunno. It just feels worse to me.

But why are they raised by an "evil" god? Why is their god "evil" then? It's only evil because we're using human morality to determine their placement on the line. By rights, if orcs are an entirely different species then they shouldn't have an alignment attributed to them at all, or at the very least it should be reflective of their own culture and not in relation to human culture.

If an orc leave their tribe and goes to live in a human city, they're the ones who should be considered Chaotic Evil from the orc's point of view. They are evil for having forsaken their own people and gone to live with the creatures who have been trying to kill them for millenia. And they've done something completely against their nature and moved off the reservation. That's not order there, that's chaos.

But we don't make those morality shifts when it comes to alignment though, instead everything is always reflected through the lens of humanity. But is that right? Is this methodology that we have always used for alignment for the last 40 years the actual way it should remain?

 

[Envisioner]

And as far as worrying about species seeming all the same if you were to remove ability score modifier bonuses... those numbers have absolutely no noticeable impact one the characters are created anyway ( UNLESS the stat has been maxed out.) If a minotaur PC has a STR 15... is that a 15 because the player bought a 15, or because they bought a 13 and added +2 due to an ability score modifier bonus? And does it even matter?

It absolutely does matter, because if the race has a +2, then you can buy a 15 and wind up with a total of 17, which is otherwise impossible under the PHB point-buy rules.

 

[Sunsword]

I think everyone involved in this discussion means well. But I'm pretty sure the people protesting right now have far bigger concerns besides the terminology in D&D. People of Color and Black People are getting murdered in the street by Police and the systemic racism that has impacted their daily lives for 400 years.

My personal opinion is that if you look at a fantasy race or heritage or ancestry and see a Human Ethnic Group you probably have some issues to work out.

And on the Gnoll thing, our rules lawyers upset that Gnolls are created by their god and a Ranger would get bonuses from it if they select Humanoid?

 

[jgsugden]

My solution would be:

Release a new book (that is available as a free pdf) that overwrites the description of all humanoids in the game from all official sources. It removes all assumptions about culture and disposition being tied to race. It removes problematic mechanical features of the races and replaces them with less 'charged' features. Essentially, we no longer generalize about who a humanoid type is - we just discuss the mechanical differences and make sure they are not evocative of insensitive racial stereotyping.

Make the hallmark of humanoids be their free will. While free will is not only available to all humanoids, all humanoids have it and can be whoever or whatever they want. We do not assume an orc is evil, an elf is arrogant, or a dwarf stubborn. A player may elect to have their PC be so, but it is not required or suggested.

Eliminate absolute definitions of alignment. Replace it with less problematic approaches. If you look at Detect Good and Evil, they already do this in some places.

Eliminate most racial ability score bonuses, especially those for charisma, intelligence and wisdom. Shift most of them to the backgrounds. There should be a significant and justified need before they apply a bonus or penalty to a race's ability scores.

Require that this new definition of each humanoid be used throughout all future D&D products on any WotC approved product or platform - including DM's guild.

Independently address how to approach cultures within a campaign setting. To be clear - these discussions should be entirely independent of race. Regardless, they should not encourage negative stereotyping for a culture.

However, they should recognize that individuals can make choices, and some of those individuals may make selfish choices, cruel choices and damaging choices. Individuals can be evil, but it should not be the assumption for an entire type of humanoids. Nor should good be assumed to apply for a type of humanoid.

As for existing lore, don't rewrite history. If we pretend nothing was wrong, we don't learn from situations. Instead, address the problems within the game. Fix the Realms by allowing it to struggle with the same issues we struggle with today. Grow out of the problem, don't bury it and hide it.

 

[Sunsword]

But why are they raised by an "evil" god? Why is their god "evil" then? It's only evil because we're using human morality to determine their placement on the line. By rights, if orcs are an entirely different species then they shouldn't have an alignment attributed to them at all, or at the very least it should be reflective of their own culture and not in relation to human culture.

WHY? Because its a game of make believe with rules and dice and math.

 

[DEFCON 1]

well, this could easily signify a pseudo 5.5 edition where they "rectify" this stuff.

The Variant Features UA was brought up... so it could be completely logical to think they could create Variant options for what they could now call species/ancestries/heritages that remove certain set tropes as part of PC options. But whether anyone bothers to call it "5.5" or whatever is kind of pointless.

 

[Envisioner]

Then again, I can certainly understand why there might be concerns with the traditional presentation in fantasy of those tropes; goodness is associated with white/light, and evil with darkness and black and other terms that have not ages well.

This isn't even an issue, because the habit of referring to the human races as "white" and "black" is ridiculous in the first place. They're pink and brown. Very few people have ever actually associated light-skinned people with light and purity, or dark-skinned people with darkness and corruption. And we have a word for the people who do.

 

[DEFCON 1]

WHY? Because its a game of make believe with rules and dice and math.

Your response doesn't actually answer my or your own question.