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'.

 

[Xenonnonex]

My orcs look like that.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

There are a couple of things that make this a bit problematic in the way we depict orcs right now, but I think enhancing the difference between them as species can help. For example, 1e orcs were almost like the Gamorrans that guard Jaba's palace in Return of the Jedi- they were green-skinned, with pig-like faces, two traits that were clearly not human at all. Since then, they've been increasingly humanized in appearance, which just helped to make them more like racist caricatures of the "savage other", especially when their skin got less green and more gray (which is a lot closer to black or brown, you know). I'm not saying that this completely solves the issue, but I think it helps. And especially, it removes much of the "evil Slav" (or whatever) vibe of them. Compare this to Klingons in Star Trek- in TOS they were clearly Oriental in appearance, but in TNG and later series, they are developed into less human but more complex and relatable types who are sometimes even heroic figures.

You may have put a finger on one source of the tension here. Different people are reading "orc" from different perspectives. If we come across a depiction of orcs in the classic "purpose-bred by evil creators to wage war and violence" mode, from a historical-political perspective, we might find that in some ways this resembles racist lies used to justify violence against real-world people. But from a speculative perspective, we might instead see this as posing unusual questions and conflicts to explore. Both camps are responding to the same fact -- that what is being presented in the fiction is not true in reality -- but coming to wildly different conclusions about it. Why?

One possible answer that springs to mind is that fantasy lies in a gray area between historical and speculative fiction. If we come across a SF story set in the distant future that presents us with a population of genetic super-soldiers purpose-bred by evil creators to wage war and violence, I think the speculative perspective on this is going to be the dominant one and the general reception is not going to be "problematic". On the other hand, if we come across a work of historical fiction that presents as true some racist lie about some real-world people, I don't think very many readers would find that acceptable even with an explanation like "It's just a what-if story!" And a fantasy world with orcs falls in between these two extremes. It resembles historical fiction enough that some readers read the orcs as stand-ins for real-world peoples, but it's also distinct enough from historical fiction that other readers read the orcs as speculative elements.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

My orcs look like that.

But they're still evil to the bone, because screw "beauty equals goodness", amirite?

 

[Xenonnonex]

But they're still evil to the bone, because screw "beauty equals goodness", amirite?

More might makes right. Can be taken to mean evil.

 

[Flamestrike]

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.

If a Lawful Good society was forced to embrace slaughter of POW's and genocide as tools, it ceases to be a Lawful Good society.

 

[Coroc]

You may have put a finger on one source of the tension here. Different people are reading "orc" from different perspectives. If we come across a depiction of orcs in the classic "purpose-bred by evil creators to wage war and violence" mode, from a historical-political perspective, we might find that in some ways this resembles racist lies used to justify violence against real-world people. But from a speculative perspective, we might instead see this as posing unusual questions and conflicts to explore. Both camps are responding to the same fact -- that what is being presented in the fiction is not true in reality -- but coming to wildly different conclusions about it. Why?

One possible answer that springs to mind is that fantasy lies in a gray area between historical and speculative fiction. If we come across a SF story set in the distant future that presents us with a population of genetic super-soldiers purpose-bred by evil creators to wage war and violence, I think the speculative perspective on this is going to be the dominant one and the general reception is not going to be "problematic". On the other hand, if we come across a work of historical fiction that presents as true some racist lie about some real-world people, I don't think very many readers would find that acceptable even with an explanation like "It's just a what-if story!" And a fantasy world with orcs falls in between these two extremes. It resembles historical fiction enough that some readers read the orcs as stand-ins for real-world peoples, but it's also distinct enough from historical fiction that other readers read the orcs as speculative elements.

The orcs in Tolkiens work, were they even born? I mean if you look at the scene where Saruman witnesses the "birth" of this Orog out of a bubble inside the earth (in the movie), is this applicable only to the magic process of creating an Orog, or does this "birth" method apply to all orcs in Middle earth? Do they even have females or young? I cannot recall that atm tbh.

If they are kind of "artificial living constructs" like your clone warriors, then a different perspective or even categorizing them with stereotype evil might be in order.

I read some thread long ago, I cannot remember if it was this forum or some blog, it was about a different in-game moral dilemma, but I think it fits perfectly into this discussion as well: What would your players do if they raided some Orc camp and encountered noncombatants aka females and young Orcs - eventually, but they could be combatants as well - but then what about Orc babies? Are the players going to exterminate these also?
In other words: Are these fantasy Orcs rather like "vermin" to the dwarves , elves and humans, or would a higher standard apply to them, because they are humanoids?

 

[Helldritch]

As I said in an other post, the setting determines the view point that should be adopted. In my Greyhawk campaign, all orcs (and humanoids described as evil in the MM of all editions) are evil to the core. An exception might come into play but it would not be viewed as something that could happen on a regular basis. On the other side of the spectrum, in my Eberron campaign, I had an orc paladin of the Silver Flame. Lawful good and viewed as a champion of goodness.

Many factors can change what is good and what is evil. Yes there are basic things that are accepted as defining for the concepts. But these quickly go down the drain when faced with annihilation.
Edit: correction and deletion of additional letters that appeared in some words...

 

[TheCosmicKid]

The orcs in Tolkiens work, were they even born? I mean if you look at the scene where Saruman witnesses the "birth" of this Orog out of a bubble inside the earth (in the movie), is this applicable only to the magic process of creating an Orog, or does this "birth" method apply to all orcs in Middle earth? Do they even have females or young? I cannot recall that atm tbh.

I believe that scene was added to the movie in an attempt to achieve precisely this effect of making the orcs more monster than human. Tolkien himself doesn't go into the details, partially because they are unavoidably squicky and he was very very anti-squick, and partially because he doesn't seem to have ever made up his mind about them, but he does say that orcs were "bred" by the various dark lords, which implies the normal reproduction process to me.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

think about how you might get called "gringo" in Latin America

Since the implicit message is "hey, guy who can't dance and probably can't handle spicy food, but who still represents the ruling coalition of the world," it's not quite the same.

 

[machineelf]

So ... We're trying to not offend orcs and drow? Making sure I have this right.