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'.

 

[Minigiant]

But still, look at Chang. That is so bad that it's impossible to believe it hasn't kept some people from playing (and buying) D&D.

I must admit when my first DM introduced a drow squad to the group in 3e and gave their
appearance
society
culture
goddess
tactics
location
motifs
and
associations

I thought he was messing with me and said "this game dumb".

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

You can't even post a screenshot of Señor Chang on Community cosplaying as a drow for people who don't know what it is without grinding the conversation to a dead halt.

Things are slightly better in 5E in that they've moved them into the PHB, with the implicit message that they're not unplayable ridiculous villains.

But still, look at Chang. That is so bad that it's impossible to believe it hasn't kept some people from playing (and buying) D&D.

I don’t know if it has or hasn’t, but I will say that that style of Drow makeup differs significantly from the blackface we usually associate with racism.

 

[Haldrik]

If combating creatures that are sentient ( = able to be a player character), then nonlethal combat can be the norm.

D&D has the mechanics, yet for the most part lacks a culture of nonlethal combat.

When a creature reaches half hit points, make a morale check. If one opposing creature flees or goes down, then all opponents make morale checks. If no opponents remain, the encounter concludes.

Attempts to grapple to cuff, intimidate to surrender, or to pursue are also possible.

Often bringing a criminal into custody, can gain a bounty.

 

[Urriak Uruk]

I don’t know if it has or hasn’t, but I will say that that style of Drow makeup differs significantly from the blackface we usually associate with racism.

It looks pretty similar to some of those Jim Crow era plays to me. Other than the hair.

 

[Warren Ellis]

Wouldn't a grayish paint or ink or whatever be a better fit for drow skin tones anyways?

 

[doctorbadwolf]

And that, I believe, is as lame as removing/renaming demons and devils during the satanic panic.

You really can't see the difference?

Right, that also happened. Removing a card because it "destroys all black creatures". As if MtG mana colors ever had any correlation with ethnicities.

Only card I can kinda agree with them removing, is the one that had weird cultists with pointy hoods. That looked like an intentional and insensitive reference to a real life group.

Same card, IIRC. The Incite Prejudice card featured figures in pointed hoods, and stops the summoning of creatures whose color doesn't match a color of creatures you control. (so, not "destroys all black cards").

The other cards depict racial stereotypes in funny hats. There is no reason for them to stay in the game.


But a lot of folks in this thread seem to not understand why this stuff matters.

The main thing that has to be clear is, this is absolutely never, to any degree whatsoever, in any way related to people no knowing the difference between fictional races and real life peoples. Literally every single person understands that orcs aren't Black, Indigenous, Latin American, or any other group of real life people.

Now, that being said, the actual issue at hand is best exemplified by the orc discussion. The specific descriptions used in Volo's Guide uses the same language, ideas, and arguements that have been used against people of color for generations to justify their oppression. That is used to describe a people that the player might want to pretend to be. So, it is esseintally asking that player to roleplay being discriminated against justifiably, as if the terrible things people said about their people to dehumanize them were true. It's like asking them to roleplay a Black person in the Antebellum South and describing Black people in that setting using the terminology and ideas of the slave owners, rather than presenting Black people as fully realized people possessed of free will.

Not every nerd of color hates it, or agrees on it, but enough do that there is a public discussion about it, and wotc doesn't want to drive those individuals away from their game over it.

 

[kudolink]

Blah blah bla
I said it before: it's a game 33% about killing and your sensitivity goes to "let's fix a 2% mechanic that could hurt somebody's sensitivity"... if you really gave a f**k you would address that 33% of direct, clear, undebatable violence that is there in front of your faces, not such a small and useless part of it.

But no, you are all just trolling, surfing the issue PoC are trying to solve, for real, in the real world to try to sound right, because you can't be: it's fantasy - all your academic deductions and theories are worth nothing and you keep telling someone their fantasy is wrong based on a huge set of assumptions you all push there where nobody ever spent a second associating Drow to black people (and for sure not writing a game for that reason).

I don't believe any of you; you are not here to improve the impact this game have, or how this game affects the world, or improve the fun or to be paladins against racism and prejudice. You are just trolls doing what trolls do: find a useless battle to pull all of us into, showcase how much you can use Google to sound smart, and troll with us.

I wouldn't spend a second on this if WoTC for fear of the twitter trolls wasn't near to start ruining this game again.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

Blah blah bla
I said it before: it's a game 33% about killing and your sensitivity goes to "let's fix a 2% mechanic that could hurt somebody's sensitivity"... if you really gave a f**k you would address that 33% of direct, clear, undebatable violence that is there in front of your faces, not such a small and useless part of it.

But no, you are all just trolling, surfing the issue PoC are trying to solve, for real, in the real world to try to sound right, because you can't be: it's fantasy - all your academic deductions and theories are worth nothing and you keep telling someone their fantasy is wrong based on a huge set of assumptions you all push there where nobody ever spent a second associating Drow to black people (and for sure not writing a game for that reason).

I don't believe any of you; you are not here to improve the impact this game have, or how this game affects the world, or improve the fun or to be paladins against racism and prejudice. You are just trolls doing what trolls do: find a useless battle to pull all of us into, showcase how much you can use Google to sound smart, and troll with us.

I wouldn't spend a second on this if WoTC for fear of the twitter trolls wasn't near to start ruining this game again.

If you don't take them seriously, why should they take you seriously?

 

[Guest 6801328]

I do understand it. Way too much to my taste. Again, I do not apply real world to a game. It is looking beyond what is written and this is purely a personal point of view. You want to see it this way. It is not written, it is not implied in the text. But you can interpret it the way you do if you stretch it enough. I do not do such a thing.

Actually, the only conclusion I can draw from that paragraph is that you don't understand the problem. Every single sentence suggests a misunderstanding.

As I've said a couple of times, I actually agree with the following that you wrote:

Let me be clearer. I (and my players) prefer a black and white view of the gaming world. This removes a lot of the moral quandaries that are associated with grey areas.

I'm right there with you.

I wish that my preference didn't require a highly unrealistic simplification of the world, one that is probably rooted in human instinct, and that unfortunately parallels a real world simplification that has led to untold misery and suffering.

Regardless of what WotC and other game publishers do, I will personally probably run games in which orcs...and other such humanoids... are evil and should be killed (although I will check with the other players first.) Like you, I prefer games with that simplistic clarity.

However, I do hope that WotC and other publishers continue to rethink whether this should be the default narrative. Because I do believe that it ("it" being the narrative that some groups are just bad and it's ok to treat them worse than we treat cattle) perpetuates a myth rooted in an ugly and destrutive human instinct.

 

[Guest 6801328]

let's fix a 2% mechanic that could hurt somebody's sensitivity

And yet another one who thinks this is all about causing offense.

It's so discouraging.