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'.

 

[3catcircus]

That's the distinction between classical fantasy and modern fantasy.

In classical fantasy the wilderness was the true threat. The destruction of civilization, which was the "good" was always looming. Monsters were symbolic of that, so Tolkiens orcs or Greek harpies were no different than dragons or forest fires.

In modern fantasy, the definition of evil is one person or group dehumanizing another group.

But you don't see orcs as being the racist ones because of this false and dangerous idea that racism requires power over another group.

But is portraying orcs differently because there is a different evil race in Eberron? Because that is almost always the case in any fantasy - there has to be some type of existential threat to the protagonists.

I would look to the portrayal of hobgoblins in Kingdoms of Kalamar because it is so much closer to real-world tendencies. Hobgoblins are organized, have cities, armies, trade, etc. Some humans are condescending, considering them little better than monsters. Some consider them better than monsters, but definitely not on the same level as humans - not because they are hobgoblins, but based on their having interacted with them (or not). Most demi-humans are decidedly not favorable towards hobgoblins. No mention of "good" or "evil." Varying degrees of "we tolerate each other. Unless they're invading us, in which case we really hate them."

 

[Helldritch]

Replace "orcs" with "muslims". The majority of the enemy terrorists are muslims, proposing peaceful solutions involving muslims is pure treason.



Ah, because he disagrees with you, clearly he knows nothing about the Greyhawk setting. Good argument.

Do not mix real life with a game. Leave the Muslims at peace and do not fall on real life bad and insulting stereotype. My Muslim friend suffers from this, so please, leave them be.

As for the second part, yep, not fully knowing a context or history behind some positions/stances can be enough. If you want a private explanation and an indepth discourse on the Marked Land and what forced a Lawful Good society to adopt such extreme measure, I will be happy to oblige. But first, buy the From the Ashes boxed set, Iuz the Eveil supplement and The Marked Lands before hand. Read them, analyzed what you see and if you still disagree, let's meet on Discord or a private post and discuss it.

 

[Helldritch]

Humans tend to be altruistic and compassionate to those in the in-group (typically around 300 people). However, attitudes to those in the out-group are very different. When human communities were struggling just to survive (so for most of our history), rates of intra-group violence were very high. And we were simply more violent all-around before the Enlightenment and modern society developed.

Non-state societies (hunter-gatherers and hunter-agriculturalists) have an average violent death rate of 15 per cent - that is 15 per cent of all deaths in the population are due to violence. The average annual death rate from warfare in non-state societies is 524 per 100,000. In the Aztec state, the annual death rate from warfare was 280 per 100,000. To put that in perspective, the annual death rate from warfare for Americans in the 20th century was 3.7 per 100,000.

The annual murder rate in 14th-century Oxford was 110 per 100,000. The annual rate in London today is less than 1 per 100,000.

Of course how much you want your fantasy world to reflect the brutality of pre-modern human societies vs the far more peaceful environment we have today is a matter of choice.

You, sir, are quite right. No matter what people say, we are still in an enlightened society. The violence we have today is nothing like what was going on in ancient times (or medieval, or even renaissance).

Violence was the answer to almost every problems. And it was usually the final type of answer that was used.

 

[toucanbuzz]

Dammit, I have to respond. Didn't get through all 21 pages since this blew up, but D&D can't be playing the racist game. "It's got 2 arms and 2 legs so it's humanoid, and every humanoid has the capacity to be beautiful on the inside and definitely not evil, and Drizz't. Drizz't!" But, if you're tagged a demon or have 4+ legs, then despite being intelligent and sentient, you're definitely evil, and there's no such thing as an intelligent beholder who sees the errors of its people's ways and turns good, and there's no such thing as a "good red dragon" because dammit, the color of your scales tells us whether you're good or evil.

Seriously, the color of your skin, for a dragon, let's us know if you're good or bad? As a sentient being, shouldn't every dragon be able to decide? Is this seriously where you want to go?

D&D isn't going to succeed at playing social arbiter. It's a game that people escape to, not that they seek their moral compass from. If you don't have your sense of right and wrong in place before you play D&D, it isn't going to come because some game designer removed the -1 penalty to Intelligence from an orc to convince you that orcs have redeeming values and free will. You're likely playing D&D because sometimes it's fun to escape the world you're in and enter a simpler one, where good overcomes evil despite overwhelming odds, and you work together as a team of diverse persons.

 

[Zaukrie]

Humans tend to be altruistic and compassionate to those in the in-group (typically around 300 people). However, attitudes to those in the out-group are very different. When human communities were struggling just to survive (so for most of our history), rates of intra-group violence were very high. And we were simply more violent all-around before the Enlightenment and modern society developed.

Non-state societies (hunter-gatherers and hunter-agriculturalists) have an average violent death rate of 15 per cent - that is 15 per cent of all deaths in the population are due to violence. The average annual death rate from warfare in non-state societies is 524 per 100,000. In the Aztec state, the annual death rate from warfare was 280 per 100,000. To put that in perspective, the annual death rate from warfare for Americans in the 20th century was 3.7 per 100,000.

The annual murder rate in 14th-century Oxford was 110 per 100,000. The annual rate in London today is less than 1 per 100,000.

Of course how much you want your fantasy world to reflect the brutality of pre-modern human societies vs the far more peaceful environment we have today is a matter of choice.

which is what I said....we are getting less and less violent, and more and more altruistic beyond our tribe/friends.......that the trends, over time, are positive.

Maybe that is culture, maybe that is a combination of nature and nurture (most likely)......but overall, humans are good (you can say altruistic, but that distinction seems w/o merit to me....does anyone define altruistic as evil?).

I'm still waiting for an answer to my main question:

If there are no mechanical differences other than appearance, aren't all the humanoids just humans that look different?

 

[Weiley31]

I think "TRULY" evil Gnolls should only exist in Humblewood.

For everybody else, 5E Gnolls shouldn't be irredeemable monsters.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

But you don't see orcs as being the racist ones because of this false and dangerous idea that racism requires power over another group.

Oof.

 

[PsyzhranV2]

If there are no mechanical differences other than appearance, aren't all the humanoids just humans that look different?

I suppose so, yes. I don't think that's what people in the thread are advocating for, or if there are people advocating for such, they're a minority (at least where D&D is concerned, no comment on other games for this one).

I think the way 5e's racial traits outside of ability score increases are for the most part acceptable. Stuff like Tritons and Locathah breathing water and having a swim speed, Lizardfolk and Tabaxi having natural weapons, Tieflings and Aasimar having innate magic, Warforged not needing to eat and sleep, etc.; those are fine. Balanced? Questionably so in some cases, but the concept itself is fine at least.

Where people start raising their eyebrows when it isn't completely obvious if a racial trait is meant to be biological (innate) or cultural (learned). 5e RAW doesn't make a distinction between the two categories, so it's left to player and GM adjudication to decide. Hence there being a demand for DM's Guild supplements like Ancestry and Culture. But even with homebrew that majorly revamps the racial trait system, I've never seen a serious argument for jettisoning racial traits entirely. Even the combo platter mix and match systems don't go that far, last I checked.

The 5e Orc prior to Eberron and Wildemount had two main problems: the default lore, and the fact that it was one of two races to have a negative Ability modifier. Either one by itself still would have been bad, but the two combined made the Orc really stand out. The Orcs of Eberron and Wildemount losing that -2 Int and getting a more flexible skill selection was definitely a big improvement, and moves (some of) the discussion away from Orcs and back to 5e's racial ASIs and some of the unfortunate implications thereof. That doesn't mean the Orc is now 100% fixed though; D&D's presentation of them still has points to be argued against even outside of their mechanics.

Crawford also mentioned the Drow in his tweets, and outside of arguments about Darkvision, I don't think anybody has any major grievances with their stats? It's their culture and history as presented in the sourcebooks, and the out-of-universe themes and implications of such that people take issue with.

 

[Haldrik]

We are getting less and less violent, and more and more altruistic beyond our tribe/friends.......that the trends, over time, are positive.

Maybe that is culture, maybe that is a combination of nature and nurture (most likely)......but overall, humans are good.

I appreciate the hope.

I hope you are right.

Maybe humans are getting more altruistic in the longrun.

Caution is wise in the mean time. Via technology, we have so much more power, and more power to do more harm.

 

[PsyzhranV2]

You cannot respect some different perspectives, specifically those perspectives that perpetuate what you define as injustice. Here's the thing: what you define as injustice, is incredibly prevalent and common outside of the western world.
If you think America is bad, you must realize that 90% of the rest of the world is actually worse according to your moral standards. I'm sure I don't need to go into the details here, but there are places outside the US where VERY BAD things happen on a daily basis. Like killing people because of their sexual preference, or having laws against that.

So what's your opinion of those unjust countries, and of the people that live in there and live by those unjust rules? Your answer is very important, because depending on it, you might end up realizing you aren't that different than those colonizers you criticize.

Note: I'm not American, but I still am privileged to be living elsewhere in the Global North.

I'm perfectly aware of all that. I also know that there exist progressive, feminist, and LGBTQ+ advocacy movements in those countries, whether they be absolutely anemic or have popular support.

If you're asking me if I'm in favour of interventionism, then no. Military intervention into other states more often than not only results in destabilization of the region, the new regime becoming a puppet of their "liberators" (quotation marks emphasized), and very little progress being made into actually improving the material and social conditions of the common people in that country. My opinion is that it's impossible to excise problematic and reactionary elements from a culture not one's own by threat of force, at least not without completely shattering it. No, that kind of lasting change needs to come from the bottom up, from local grassroots organizations, and by the local people becoming more conscious of one another and their conditions. That is where I would lend my support - education and awareness. Showing people the door to change and justice. But in the end, I'd take a seat and let the actually concerned parties in that situation take the lead, go from there. That kind of social change is what sticks, while also respecting the cultural background and traditions of the local people.

I'm not going to go too deep into the nitty-gritty of my political and eocnomic views due to forum rules, so let's just say that I hope for a world where people can live together in a system of mutual aid and cooperation, without threat of force or bigotry. But I can't force people into that, no matter how hard I try. Nor do I have the right to. It's something every culture and people needs to grow into on their own.

Injustice is wrong regardless of culture. You'll note, if you're being honest about it, that each and every one of those countries has movements to end the injustices that you are referring to.

Also this.