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'.

 

[Haldrik]

Then there is Strahd himself who is presented as being bi-sexual. Pretty important character there.

Making villains gay is its own kind of problematic.

Killing off gay characters is similarly its own kind problematic.

It reminds me. I just watch a movie, where all of the black characters got killed off. The characters were sympathetically portrayed and heroic − but − you know − dead. I had to check when the movie was made. 2020! I cant believe movies like that are still being made.

 

[Dire Bare]

In case anyone is interested, I recently put out a product that tries to solve the issues with race in D&D without changing the character creation rules hardly at all. It was a successful Kickstarter and is now doing well on DriveThru — pick of the week this week and almost Gold in seven days.

I put the free preview at 30 pages, which is the entirety of the Rules section, and an intro essay that explains the purpose of the proposal. It’s also a part of the Black Lives Matter bundle. Take a look if you’re curious.

DriveThruRPG

www.drivethrurpg.com

I'm one of your Kickstarter backers, and your product is AMAZING.

For those who haven't checked this out yet, "Ancestry & Culture" doesn't just provide an alternative mechanical design, it also provides a discussion about pretty much everything we're tossing back and forth in this thread.

I'm not 100% sure you've nailed the perfect solution, but your work is phenomenal and the best I've seen so far. Another cool product is "Grazilaxx's Guide to Ancestry" on the DM's Guild. I prefer "Ancestry & Culture", but both are worth checking out (and I think both are part of the various BLM bundles currently running).

 

[Haldrik]

Heritage seems like it would be ok if it just referred to one persons immediate past. It doesn't seem more helpful than race or ethnicity if it goes back multiple generations and encompasses a large group of people who share it. Of course we don't have more people of that heritage working here, their values and traditions led them on other paths?

Personally, I want ethnic groups to be able to remain unique. Obviously all communities evolve. But homogeneity where nonconformity is frowned on, is its own kind of racism.

There are many different ways to be human. Each one is a valuable perspective.

 

[Flamestrike]

As they get +1 Dex in the 5e erea the real superpower would be the Brecht who were losely based on the Dutch.

And thats my problem with Birthright! The authors based the game cultures on real world cultures, then applied common real world stereotypes to those races and cultures.

Imagine being a Black guy, and you sit down at a table to play a Black hero from whatever the 'fantasy not Africa' exists in that game world, and your DM tells you that the 'fantasy not African people' have an 'inherent +1 to Strength, -1 to Intelligence and +5' movement speed, and your favoured class in Barbarian', based on that choice.

What is the author of that game telling you about their views on black people, African culture, and relative intelligence between the races?

Now imagine being a guy of Russian background that sits down at a table to play BIrthright and gets the same thing applying to him, because he wants to play a race and culture modelled after his own historical race and culture.

The 'fantasy not slavic peoples' of the Vos are 'barbaric, stupid and evil.' What is the author saying about the Slavic peoples they were expressly modelled on here? What real world stereotypes are being applied here?

I totally agree that penalties are not fun. I would not have penalties to scores in any modern game.

Giving a +1 Intelligence to a white race, is no different to giving a -1 penalty to the others and leaving the white race as standard. The end result is the white race is smarter.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Just to understand your position better, are you also one of the people who believe LotR is a veiled metaphor for the Cold War, or perhaps an outlet for JRR Tolkien to vent his supposed racist ideas?
Because, if so, we’ll just have to agree to disagree.

"Just to understand your position better, please allow me to construct a strawman to disagree with."

OK, dude.

My position is very simple, and is just four words:

ALL ART IS POLITICAL

"Not" having politics requires intentionally siding with a theoretical previous version of history where the issues weren't talked about.

Since you brought up LotR, Tolkien barely mentions women at all. He is not writing about a world without women, he is choosing to not write about them. (And we know he thought about them, because he worked out long involved lives for them in his appendices.)

When art doesn't mention a thing, that doesn't mean it's not present. It means the artist made that choice, whatever they tell themselves about that choice.

 

[Envisioner]

Imagine being a Black guy, and you sit down at a table to play a Black hero from whatever the 'fantasy not Africa' thre is in that game culture, and your DM tells you that the 'fantasy not African people' have an 'inherent +1 to Strength, -1 to Intelligence and +5' movement speed, and your favoured class in Barbarian', based on that choice.

Now imagine being a white guy (I'm not sure why you capitalized the race, but I'm not going to), and you're playing a white character, and your DM tells you that you have to give half of your starting GP to another player in your group who's playing a black character, for no other reason because the 'fantasy not Europe' people have historically had privilege and you owe the other character reparations. Are you going to tell me that's less problematic than your scenario?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

When I run a game....there is no sexuality to any character because sexy time isn't an option we explore.

Would you be a different person, in real life, if you were attracted to a different gender, an additional gender, or none at all? Would you be a different person at times you weren't having sex or trying to have sex?

I think you might be. Your sexual orientation and gender expression have far more consequences than just during naked fun times.

 

[DND_Reborn]

So then you have no problem if the NPC and his boyfriend are together, running their inn.

Nope, don't even give it a thought.

Yes, yes there absolutely is. Cockroaches are a different species, and I defy you to find anybody so fluffy-bunny that they balk at murdering cockroaches. Some other species are more dextrous than us (not so much wise, except in the sense that Wisdom governs perception). And some species - pretty much all species - are less intelligent than us, and some species are inherently savage and violent and aggressive and so forth. If orcs are a species instead of a "race", there is absolutely no problem with saying that they are absolute dyed-in-the-wool monsters deserving of no sympathy whatsoever.

FWIW, I don't kill cockroaches. I don't kill spiders, or wasps, or anything if I can help it (well, IRL anyway... I love killing PCs in the game. ). In fact, less than a few hours ago I caught a wasp and released it outside.

View attachment 122881

AWW! Can I adopt one???

Cool, but are you a 12 year old who's starting to have a tickle in the back of his mind that he may not be like the characters he sees depicted in fiction and is wondering if he's "wrong?"

Seeing himself in the media, including game worlds, tells him that he's not.

If it doesn't matter to you, then it can slide right past you, without you being inconvenienced at all.

No, I am not. And so, I don't give it a thought. Others might, but I've had enough friends and family members who are gay that to me they are just being themselves.

I can empathize with people who do struggle, I've seen those friends and family members do so themselves first-hand.

I disagree, spectacularly. The mere mention of D&D being inherently linked to current politics (or rather, current American politics. There’s a world outside the US) would be met with uproarious laughter by my gaming group.

The only politics we care about are what are those pesky zhentarims up to

I am an American-- and I hate American politics. I was fortunate enough to live abroad for over a year in a 3rd-world country (FYI, this does NOT mean "poor", it means neither aligned with NATO back in the day nor Communistic). It was an incredible experience and odds are when I retire I will go back. So, yeah, I get it... what are those pesky zhentarims up to anyway?

 

[Guest 6801328]

It's more about the words used than their actual meaning. As I said above, ancestry sounds like the kind of word that Conan would only get right the third time. But I'm no native speaker, always important to remember.

The Conan who learns new languages faster than your typical teenager learns new video games? That one?

 

[TheSword]

Its my favorite AD&D setting. I voted for it as 'the one setting I want back' in a recent thread.

I know it well.

Anuirians are objectively wiser and more civilised than the Vos ethnic group, who are dumber and stronger and more barbaric. This is literally reflected by in game bonuses to ability scores, and depictions and descriptions of the ethnic groups.

Anuirians are (expressly) modelled after real world Germanic peoples of the late Holy Roman Empire, and the Vos are expressly modelled after real world Slavic peoples of the Russ. In case it wasnt obvious from a glance at the depictions and illustrations in the game, the authors themselves conceded that as being the case.

What the author (and the game) is clearly leaning on here (In case you're missing it) is the real world stereotype that Slavic people are barbaric and stupid, and Germanic people are civilised and ordered.

Which is the exact stereotype that Hitler relied upon to justify his invasion of Poland (and the Soviet union), massacre 'inferior' Russian and Slavic peoples and create 'living space' for the 'culturally superior' German peoples.

I mean, Im not suggesting that the TSR authors of Birthright were Neo-Nazis. What I am suggesting (outright stating even) is that it is more than fair to label the inclusion of such real world stereotypes, applied to fantasy people who are themselves based on real world peoples, to be highly problematic, and indeed racist and to be repudiated.

I dont dispute the fact that the cultural regions are based on real areas of the world though it is a loose basis. A language, an aesthetic. However you are ignoring the wide variety of the world and its many positive cultural elements to focus on one area you don't agree with.

You're applying an old AD&D mechanic of penalties that existed 20 years but dont any more to assume all Vos are stupid. Aside from the fact that Intelligence is an abstract stat that can relate to classical education as much as anything else. Characters are free to create intelligent Vos as they are any character. High elves get +1 more Intelligence than Humans, are Human's stupid? Are Uthgardt stupid, as they are called out as barbaric. YAs I said I absolutely would ignore penalties to cultures now... as does 5e as a whole. This seems to be your only holdover that the setting is somehow unjust, projected assumptions about a rule mechanic that no longer exists in the game.

Regarding your poorly linked analogy with Hitler. The Anuireans never invaded Vosgaard. In fact the Anuireans were roundly defeated by every other culture they came into contact with and were left a squabbling, ineffectual mess of baronies. If you are going to equate the Anuireans with the Holy Roman Empire then fine, that works. You can't also equate them with the Third Reich. In the same way I don't equate the Longbow wielding, Robin Hood like Dales of the Forgotten Realms with the British Empire. There is Zero evidence that I have seen that equates the Anuirean Empire to Nazi Germany... I'm sorry to say you have gone full Godwin.

It is a shame that the Vos didnt receive more attention including the players books before the line came to an end. The Tribes of the Heartless Wastes did a good job of picturing a proud culture fighting monstrous enemies on all sides. Not unlike Warhammer's Kislev.