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'.

 

[Envisioner]

that's not what the data shows at all.........google is your friend. Study after study shows we are good, generally. And data about homicide rates, other violent and non-violent crimes, food we eat, how we eat, etc.......is clear. Humans tend to be good.

A study shows what the people funding the study want it to show. Nobody is accurately gathering all data about everything; all Google will show you is a bunch of propaganda funded by various think-tanks.

 

[Envisioner]

The obvious solution to the "stupid, evil orc" issue is to remove ability scores, alignment, and races from D&D.

Toss classes on the bonfire too to fix the "paladin and assassin" problem as well.

Better get rid of spells while you're at it; we can't have innocent children learning witchcraft after all!

Feats are probably fine, as long as they don't have "Master" in the name, that's obviously racist.

 

[Dire Bare]

I like having racial stereotypes in my games, because it provides opportunities for the players to examine their own prejudices when their characters find their stereotyping subverted by individuals that challenge the expected norm. I guess my fear here is that everything will be whitewashed (pardon the expression) in D&D, for the sake of presenting a system that is 100% open to interpretation without any guidance.

Reading the thread, I can see a valid argument for removing racial stat bonuses altogether, and replacing them with cultural ones. I can dig that. But I would hope to see guidelines on a setting-by-setting basis. So a book would say "pick any culture for your orc character. In the Forgotten Realms, most orc cultures tend towards evil, chaos, and strength, like cultures x, y, and z."

Make sure that the "standard" cultures for these races are preserved for DMs to build on if they wish, while allowing full freedom for characters who wish to depart from those cultures. The neat side effect would be an easy way for DMs to homebrew their own worlds and the cultures therein. You can build around cultures, which will already be codified with lots of examples.

You are conflating how different cultures in the fantasy world view each other and the actual differences between them.

In the real world, are folks from the Americas, Europe, Asia, and Africa all the same species? Does it make sense to give Africans a +2 to something and Asians a -1 to something else? Of course not! Do they all have very different cultures? Of course! Are any of those cultures inherently better or worse at anything than the others? No. But do many of those people have stereotyped and/or racist ideas about the folks from other places? Oh yeah!

Having your half-orc PC wrestle with how others view their race is good fodder for an RPG session . . . . but it doesn't require half-orcs in-game to get inherent stat adjustments at character creation. Cultural stereotypes can be described in the player's handbook, as long as they are presented as just that . . . stereotypes that don't necessarily hold true to any specific individual. It's also important to write these rulebook stereotypes as objectively as possible, so that players know that there is a stereotyped dislike between elves and dwarves, but that doesn't define either culture.

People in the real world often shy away from thinking too hard about racial stereotypes and racism. It's an uncomfortable subject and nobody likes to discover that they hold racist biases. (a lot of the responses in this thread are evidence of that) A good "race" system in the D&D rulebook will be aware of many gamers reluctance to even see these problematic concepts in the fantasy races we've been playing for decades, and try to craft a more progressive approach that steers folks in the right direction.

 

[Zaukrie]

Straw man (perhaps unintentionally). No one is talking about making each race or culture the same . . . . we're just talking about removing problematic racial thinking from how we view fantasy races.

In the real world, is a human from a European country the same as a person from an African country? In some ways, yes. In many ways, no. Are the differences between these two peoples interesting and worth exploring? Yes! But are these differences based in "race" (biological determinism) or culture (learned beliefs and behaviors)? Is one culture "better" at certain things than the other?

I would argue that applying attribute modifiers based on race in-game leads to racialized thinking, which is problematic. Any time you replace the words "orc" or "drow" with "black person", if the concept gets icky, then perhaps it needs to go. When "races" that aren't physically all that different from humans (elves, orcs, etc) get a +2 or -1 to something, it's very much like saying, "African Americans are naturally gifted athletes", which while positive (on the face of it), is untrue and problematic. Yes, we're talking fantasy races here, or maybe even fantasy species (the terms don't quite mean the same thing) . . . but as these fantasy races spring from the real world mythologies and follow the same problematic thinking that racism does IRL . . . .

Another discussed change is inherent personality traits tied to races, like "orcs are naturally evil". This effectively makes a race of people into not-quite-people who are okay to kill without remorse, thought, or regret. And this is VERY problematic. But even things like "Race X" is naturally savage, bestial, smart, wise, cannibalistic . . . . .

Trying to remove this problematic elements of fantasy race does not equate to "making all races the same", not even close. Just as trying to eliminate racist thinking IRL makes a European person the same in every way to an African person.

Make me smarter, because I don't agree......if we remove all species differences in terms of attributes, and only an individual's culture and upbringing makes them different (or having fur vs skin), how are they different? They are just humans that look different at that point, and aren't actually different species. If by the rules there are no differences other than teeth or eyes or skin......then isn't it just their appearance that is different, and aren't they humans then?

The orc thing confuses me, and I admit that might be my lens on life......but you seem to be arguing we can't have an inherently/generally evil species.

I guess if we can't have inherently evil two legged humanoids, why can we have inherently evil aberrations? Or devils? Or demons? Or giants?

 

[Haldrik]

I am hoping to see more gay characters in D&D. Transgender characters are more visible because of clothing and ornament. Gay characters are only recognizable by their relationships, and only visible when a storyline takes place, making it very difficult for gay characters to be visible in D&D.

But for every 20 characters that exist in any world of D&D, two of these should be identifiably gay.

This is D&D!

I want more identifiably gay characters from WotC products.

It is appropriate in a thread about removing stereotypes. Including the stereotype that all D&D characters are straight!

 

[Jacqual]

The only issues I have is that in D&D the evil races are seen as evil due to the actions they have done, Orcs are evil as they raid smaller communities and steal food and maybe capture for slavery or just kill or harm outright, but then a PC Orc shows up in town and then is expected to be treated like any other person arriving in town that has issues with Orcs since the creation of said town. In the games I run PC's of said evil races can be of any alignment but they do face discrimination due to race and they have to prove to others they are not like every other member of the race they belong to. I myself have the strong belief that everyone should be judged by their action not the color of their skin or where they were born. So I do understand what we are discussing here, but I feel that a game isn't the place for it to be placed in. Like if for example a human child was taken by an Orcish tribe and raised by them as a slave and had to live and survive in that tribe I can see the +2 STR, +1 CON but adding Darkvision I don't see without a major revision to game rules.

 

[Zaukrie]

A study shows what the people funding the study want it to show. Nobody is accurately gathering all data about everything; all Google will show you is a bunch of propaganda funded by various think-tanks.

I'm sorry that you think all science is biased. If you won't believe the data or the science, then I guess all you are left with are anecdotes.

 

[Dire Bare]

that's not what the data shows at all.........google is your friend. Study after study shows we are good, generally. And data about homicide rates, other violent and non-violent crimes, food we eat, how we eat, etc.......is clear. Humans tend to be good.

Not exactly. "Good" is subjective, a better word would be "altruistic". Humans do have a tremendous capacity for altruism, but it is easily subverted by tribalism, especially when folks feel stress or fear. Most "evil" (or really, selfishness) derives from folks who have suffered trauma (real or perceived) and are lashing out in fear and anger . . . . although certainly some "evil" has its roots in psychopathy and mental illness.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

In my stories aligment isn't relative at all, but it's about coherence with the Natural Law. My house rule is adding allegiance, and spells and other powers with aligment key can enemies with same aligment but different allegiance (religion, race, tribe, brotherhood, country, family), for example an orc shaman as a drow cleric. I allow allegiances with opposite aligments, for example a chaotic sherif with law allegiance would break the rules everytime to keep the order (yes, it sounds a contradiction) or evil aligment with good allegiance would be a zealot who has forgotten the meaning of mercy.

Even the evil groups need a common allegiance to survive, and they will destroy themself. History in real life shows us examples of factions themself destroyed by the internal conflicts, like the fitna of Andalus, the end of the Omeya dinasty by fault a civil war among the Spanish Muslims. .

We could use some ideas from Pathfinder 2, for example the options to choose + 2 abilitie score A or B, or + 2 abilitie score A and B but -2 C.

And I like the concept of the racial traits to be replaced with an optional list of racial feats, to avoid PCs only good for a couple of things, for example gnomes for illusory magic or stealth classes.

* In lots of homebred settings lots of monster races aren't totally evil, but some communities tainted by some divine power.

* Today enternaiment industry worries because some fantasy races could be used for racist slang against other communities, or example "orc from Mordor" against some alien people.

* In my homebred version of 7th Sea Castilla are the good guys who build schools and universities in the New World for the natives, with all the rights and duties as new citizens of the expanding kingdom, and Avalon is the slavery traders who don't want to mix their "pure" blood with the people of other continents. And the queen of Avalon is a reptilian alien and the puppet of a secret lodge of vampires, demons and other unholy creatures who are conspirating against Castilla because we have the best vampire-hunters.

 

[LazarusKane]

In the context of the MCU, the Eddas are a human description of the historical past; there was a time when Thor and company genuinely did visit Earth and left an impression on the humans of the time, and since then they've gone elsewhere in the universe and did other stuff which Earth never heard about until now. The MCU version of the Beta Ray Bill incident could easily have taken place in 1500 AD, 400 years removed from either of Thor's visits to Earth, so he just never mentioned it to anyone in Norway nor New Mexico. (And, of course, the MCU often varies from comics continuity anyway.)

The best explanation for this particular gaffe is that Heimdall never left Asgard back in the day, and the Asgardians who visited Earth specifically described Heimdall to Snorri Sturllson or whoever as being "the whitest of the gods" as some sort of practical joke. Though you would think pranking a guy who routinely watches the entire multiverse would be a risky business; maybe Loki had to perform this act under cover of illusion in order to get away with it.

And the fact that in the Edda Laufey is the mother of Loki, but in the MCU Laufey is the father maybe shows why Loki is genderfluid
PS: I disliked Cate Blanchett as Hela - ok, I hated the whole "Hela is the daughter of Odin instead of Loki" idea - but as a female Loki IMHO she would have been ok ;-)