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'.

 

[Helldritch]

Tolkien orcs were created from elven stock by Melkior (or whatever the name, too long ago) the equivalent of an evil God. These elves were twisted and deformed into the orcs. These orcs are irremediably evil but the elves still hopes that some of them will one day see the light. That is why the elves do let some escape but not all elves share this hope. The elves of the black forest slay any orcs that they come across. They do not pursue as orcs are known to lay ambushes along their escape routes. But otherwise, elves will slay orcs without remorse or second thoughts.

 

[Coroc]

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.

Since it actually does mean "bleak guy" , as explained to me by my ex wife who is form Latin America, it is absolutely the same and according to her also absolutely meant to be a stereotype insult.
I do not know where your lengthy explanation comes from, but I prefer to trust the words of a person who grew up there.

 

[Minigiant]

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

Lets not start on drow.

Menzoberranzan makes no sense.
A city state of always CE elves surrounded by enemies with physical frailty, societal mutilation, and a predisposition to backstab each other would not last 100 years.

 

[Orius]

What a mess.

The real problem here is viewing the word "race" as an obscenity (hell, it even has 4 letters!) or something and tacking all sorts of real world baggage onto it. Species is not a fit replacement, it's far too scientific and its use in a fantasy milieu is like hearing non-metric measurements in a sci-fi milieu -- nails on the chalkboard of my mind. Stuff like heritage, ancestry, whatever don't solve the issue either, since they're still filling the same role as race. Replacing the word race in the game does nothing useful where real world racial problems are concerned.

For the most part, in the core rules the game generally depicts humans as one single race. There's no human subraces (and a good thing too, because that would come far too close too saying subhuman), and no ability score changes. Now some settings may change that, but I homebrew, and I know better than that.

Where anything non-human is concerned, I'd rather avoid bringing real world problems into the mix. They're not human. I'm not trying to portray them as human, so I have no problems with ability score adjustments. People say, "I don't want to play with a penalty", but they don't have a problem with the bonuses, do they? The penalties are part of the price for the bonuses though. And these differences are what sets them apart from humans in the first place, otherwise you're just playing humans in funny suits.

There's no problem with orcs being evil to me or having an Int penalty. Full blooded orcs aren't a standard race option anyway. Sure there's half-orcs, but they're not required to be evil, at least in the editions I'm playing, and for the Int penalty, that's a balancing factor against that high Str you're getting. Min-maxers won't pick a half-orc for a role he's not suited to, and "real-roleplayers" like plying out those penalties, s why are they whining? And for alignment, PCs don't have to follow the race standard. You want a lawful good half-orc, I'm not going to comment.

I don't like mindless orc hordes, that's cliched and limited, but I'm not going to portray orcs as misunderstood either. Remember Intelligence reflects in part reasoning ability, and perhaps orcs are predisposed to violence because they can't be reasoned with like other races. Maybe they feel they're being tricked and they lash out instead. So in return, you have to meet the orc threat with force, and at least get things to the point where the orcs fear you enough that it keeps them in check.

Alignment has long had problems n D&D, largely from bad DMs who use it to screw players with powerful characters, particularly paladins. But D&D does NOT have full moral relativism, there is good, and there is evil, and they often do play an active role in the world. It's not a simple black and white, but it's there. You don't like alignment, you don't want it in your game, fine, but it's part of the core experience.

And what the hell is this with gnoll fiends? Yeah, sure Yeenoghu's been around since 1e, but that doesn't make gnolls little furry demons.

 

[Hexmage-EN]

Maybe this kind of discussion could be avoided if "orcs are born evil" was replaced with "orcs were specifically created by a god to kill all non-orcs". They are bio weapons designed to kill what their creators wanted them to and nothing short of magical intervention or disempowering/destroying their creator deity will stop it.

To put in terms that more left-leaning people might find palatable, evil fantasy races are like if Nazis were born Nazis rather than indoctrinated into it.

 

[CwrwCymru]

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.


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@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'.

When it comes to "race" and "racial features," I think it makes a lot of sense to use terms like 'species' or 'heritage/ancestry.' Personally, I like "species" or something similar when picking what kind of character you want to play (e.g. elf, halfling, etc) and then to set the "racial features" as "cultural features." Why are elves naturally proficient with long swords? Are they biologically more adept than others with long swords? Of course not. However, if we say this is a "cultural feature" or "cultural tradition," then elves aren't proficient with long swords because they're elves, it's because they were elves who were raised with a particular, cultural tradition that incorporates the use of certain weapons as part of their upbringing.

An approach like this could make "race" (or species, etc) have a less mechanical impact on the game, but still can add flavour. It also opens up the possibility of having a Drow with a really high Constitution score, for instance. So players can choose to play characters how they like without having to make compromises or pay service to tabletop RPG "traditions." I'd be happy if they set out that the settings are comprised of different 'species,' with those having well-crafted, rich descriptions and lore, but when it comes to mechanical features, like proficiencies, languages, and ability score increases, those were set apart from 'racial' discussions and were keyed to "cultures" or "traditions" or possibly even a background.

 

[Helldritch]

Lets not start on drow.

Menzoberranzan makes no sense.
A city state of always CE elves surrounded by enemies with physical frailty, societal mutilation, and a predisposition to backstab each other would not last 100 years.

That, sir, is the beauty of the drows. They should be dead and yet...
Maybe having such a rigid caste system is the key for a CE society to thrive. And yet, there is so much chaos in their city that they do not qualify as LE. Go figure....

 

[Hexmage-EN]

"And what the hell is this with gnoll fiends? Yeah, sure Yeenoghu's been around since 1e, but that doesn't make gnolls little furry demons."

4E at one point had an article about playing gnoll PCs and a description of a gnoll society that rejected Yeenoghu for an animistic religion.

5E threw that out and said that gnolls were created from hyenas eating demon flesh and reproduce by murder.

 

[Warren Ellis]

Default 5e gnolls sound like some sort of magical experiment gone wrong. Or possibly engineered terror weapons.

That, sir, is the beauty of the drows. They should be dead and yet...
Maybe having such a rigid caste system is the key for a CE society to thrive. And yet, there is so much chaos in their city that they do not qualify as LE. Go figure....

Doesn't their society literally only work due to Lolth?

 

[GreyLord]

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.

One of the things is that you are seeing something here that is also occurring in the world beyond D&D, the world of reality.

Originally, Gygax did NOT intend the 'races' to be races as we thought of them in reality. They were not simply humans with different colored skins. They were completely different creatures.

Orcs were as different from humans as a wolf was from a shark. They were completely different types of creatures, but they were both humanoid in that they could stand on two legs and had arms and an opposable thumb. Something in evolution or otherwise with magic had made it so that there was an abundance of creatures that had these features, but they were extremely different than simply what we call race (which isn't really race at all, but some call it that among our human species). They were monsters and foreign to each other. The very way they thought was alien to the other, it was so completely different that they wouldn't even act the same in their actions.

This explanation was one of those that Gygax used to explain WHY Elves, Dwarves, and others had level limits. They didn't think like humans did. Their entire psych was different. They were not just humans that were shorter, or with pointed ears, or with fangs...they were things that were absolutely NOT human. Because of this, they could only emulate humanity (aka, that which allowed humans to level up and advance in that fashion) to a certain degree. They were only mimicking human behavior, but as it was just a copycat attempt on their part, they could not accomplish entirely what a human could do.

This same idea also applied to monsters. These were monsters in every way and shape. They were as different from humans as a dinosaur is from a person. In fact, dinosaurs are some of the monsters that were included as monsters. These are not humans, they are not people with different forms, they are completely different animals and creatures that think, act, and behave differently.

Gygax tried to present this idea of creatures being different from humans in every way...and failed. Players took AD&D and played elves...like humans with pointy ears. They played Dwarves as humans that were short, stocky, and with beards. They basically played everything as a human, just with slightly different looks.

We see this idea that races in D&D are just different forms of humans as a persistent idea that gains FAR more traction in how it's presented until we come to 5e. It evolved like that in 2e, and took a GIANT leap towards them simply being humans in different forms with 3e. It became almost status quo for many of what used to be monsters to simply be played as humans with different skins. This continued until 5e very little differentiates how one plays...say a Drow from a human, or even a new race like the Dragonborn from humans. In almost all play, they are basically played the same way. Today, many of the D&D races and even many of the monsters are simply humans that look a little different. They are not monsters anymore, or even creatures that think and behave differently, they are simply just humans with different looks. It's how they advance, it's how they gain levels, and it's how they are basically equal (or better) than the stock humans in everything from advancement to multiclassing.

And that is problematic with what we see with racial relations today, especially in looking at the real world. If all race is in D&D are different looking humans, than portraying a race (such as Orks) as ugly or lesser simply because...has direct implications on how we see race in the real world as well. In light of HOW we play races and monsters today as PC's, perhaps it IS time for a change where we seriously consider what we are portraying, because if all they are in play are different looking humans, than we should focus more on the equality of representation of those different races and monsters rather than putting one or the other down or making them the enemy just because they look or act differently.