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'.

 

[Var]

Please review the rules. Terms like “PC naughty word” are not acceptable here.

Would you mind rereading the rest of the post please?
I was presenting my point about the mechanical representation the least physical impressive small race against the the medium race described as most physically impressive.
Then got some interesting comment on how representing twice the height and 4 times the mass with ingame mechanics would somehow encourage racism.

I'm happy to concede my choice of words was impolite and I should have done better.
The spirit of that particular reply though? Am I supposed to humor an opinion like that?
How exactly would I be expected to respond to a comment that pulls the race card from nowhere at my purely mass and height based mechanical representation concerns?

Might be the case you're just doing you job as admin/moderator and might just have simply stopped reading after line one on page 50something forum thread a mere 2 days old. I get it, no hard feelings in any case, thanks for this pace btw.

 

[Helldritch]

Okay, but that's a simple preference. You very clearly presented it as if it logically followed and was a necessity, so I appreciate the clarification. Further, you talked about swords and sorcery, and you're now talking about "black and white". Sword and sorcery fiction does not, typically, present a "black and white" view of the world. It usually presents a grey and black view of the world. The heroes are rarely noble-spirited do-gooders in sword and sorcery, but motivated by selfish desire, whether for fame, wealth, love, glory or whatever. The villains are sometimes merely the same, yet clashing in objectives with the heroes. So indeed they're often more protagonist and antagonist than truly hero and villain. There are also, frequently, truly evil villains in sword and sorcery. People with despicable objectives, or simply alien/incomprehensible ones which still need to stopped so the protagonist can achieve his goal, or some cases, merely survive.

But the point is, it's grey and black. White is rarely seen, and tends not to last, because it's too good for that sort of world. It tends to either die, or transcend. This is true in the key sword and sorcery texts, like Conan, and Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser.

If you want black and white, you don't want sword and sorcery, and it's confusing to hear it invoked in that context. Black and white is post-sword-and-sorcery, it's Tolkienian. The tropes of such fantasy tend to be very different. It still doesn't actually require evil races, though. You can equally easily have people who are willing servants of evil. This is largely how The Deed of Paksenarrion approaches it, for example. Evil races at most tangential to the plot (even when it features actual Drow, because it's D&D-derived). The main and most frequent antagonists are men who choose to serve evil. There's simply no necessity for entire sentient, free-willed species to be "evil" in such a setting.

Ironically, Tolkien himself had a more nuanced and complex view of his own creation, but that's a whole other discussion (and indeed is easier to see in the Silmarillion, which is far greyer than LotR).

Ok, you mixed two post and only took what would prove your point. I perfectly know what sword and sorcery means and I know that you can make it full shades of grey as it is already in that area with a lot black for magic. The S&S was for those that do not want evil races. I even provided a file for them. You got mixed up

As for the necessity
"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. Back in the days, this could lead to endless debates of what is good or not. We, as a player community (and that was about 200 people back then) decided to end these endless debates with a black and white view of the game for our public games (and often, our private games). With clearly evil races with clear and evident motives, spectators watching us at our game store (or new players ) are not shocked by the actions taken at the table.

Yes we do fight vilains that come from "good" races. More often than not, death is not the solution as the vilains are usually taken back to prison or to the authorities. This is where our grey areas are. Most of the time (if not all the time), evil is clearly evil. I hope that I make more sense to you now. "

This is exactly why we cling so much to our black and white view of the world. Because we often have a lot spectators in our games. Grey raises questions, and some questions are not pleasant at all. The black and white view comes directly from the satanic panic of the 80's. It was our answer to the questions that were raised. And it is still the answer that we have for other questions that are often asked. This gave a degree of acceptance that is still walking a fine line in our area.

 

[Weiley31]

I've got homebrew stats for Kitsune if you'd like!

I would actually!

 

[Minigiant]

They aren’t but many different monstrous races have been released in various supplements. I’m not sure why you think it’s one rule for PHB races and a different one for the additional races? Drow are described as defaulting to evil in the MM but are in the PHB. How is it it different for the monstrous races in Volos guide for instance? When you look at the text under alignment the phrase is “they tend towards” and “they are usually”.

I think it comes down to their different patron gods. I feel some evil gods and demons have different amount of "handsiness" on their child race.

MM Orcs were made stupid by Gruumsh and actively infect himself in the orc religion to the point you need his blessing to be smart and clever. One could say Orcs are incapable to be good or nuetral PCs. At best they would be Evil PCs. Even then there could be a question if orcs have enough personality and sense of self to pursue adventuring.

MM Drow on the other hand are intelligent, free willed, and have sense of self. Lolth is more hands off and really only interacts with those who come to her. The editions give her various attention spans, fickleness, and parental instinct of her people. Lolth "allows" drow to stray to other gods unlike Gruumsh.

Finally Maglubiyet plays no games. When a goblin dies,his butt heads to the astral battlefield. He tell goblins that and you either wet your pants and/or do what he says to get a good position. If you want slay dragons and jerk around without his permission, you better get another god to take your soul or you are getting the whip when you die.

 

[Morrus]

Would you mind rereading the rest of the post please?
I was presenting my point about the mechanical representation the least physical impressive small race against the the medium race described as most physically impressive.
Then got some interesting comment on how representing twice the height and 4 times the mass with ingame mechanics would somehow encourage racism.

I'm happy to concede my choice of words was impolite and I should have done better.
The spirit of that particular reply though? Am I supposed to humor an opinion like that?
How exactly would I be expected to respond to a comment that pulls the race card from nowhere at my purely mass and height based mechanical representation concerns?

Might be the case you're just doing you job as admin/moderator and might just have simply stopped reading after line one on page 50something forum thread a mere 2 days old. I get it, no hard feelings in any case, thanks for this pace btw.

Please re-read the rules again. Seems that first time didn’t do it. Please do not challenge moderation in-thread.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

This is exactly why we cling so much to our black and white view of the world. Because we often have a lot spectators in our games. Grey raises questions, and some questions are not pleasant at all. The black and white view comes directly from the satanic panic of the 80's. It was our answer to the questions that were raised. And it is still the answer that we have for other questions that are often asked. This gave a degree of acceptance that is still walking a fine line in our area.

This is fascinating. You're saying that black and white fantasy, for your "player community", whatever that might be, stemmed large from an attempt to avoid any kind of moral or ethical inclarity that might have got you labelled as "Satanists"?

 

[Minigiant]

This is fascinating. You're saying that black and white fantasy, for your "player community", whatever that might be, stemmed large from an attempt to avoid any kind of moral or ethical inclarity that might have got you labelled as "Satanists"?

Thats an teresting take too. Because if the enemies are so black to make their slaying okay, you shouldn't care if they loss the INT penalty or changed in look as PCs since you would never play them

 

[Kramodlog]

The word race seems to be a misnomer from a time when racialized people, nationality, ethnicity, religion, where all conflated together.

Species might be more accurate, but opens up another cane of worms.

 

[InnocentPope]

Will kinslaying mean genocide.

"Kinslaying" is just killing one or two relatives. Genocide, assuming it was targeting own species or a closely related one, would be more like "kinslaughter".

 

[Var]

The word race seems to be a misnomer from a time when racialized people, nationality, ethnicity, religion, where all conflated together.

Species might be more accurate, but opens up another cane of worms.

Pretty much everything in terms of playable stuff being able to procreate with each other makes finding "correct" terminology all the more confusing. For the most part it's not how biology should work, then again there is magic so we can explain any discrepancy through that.

Species tends to be used more in relation to the animal kingdom or in scientific literature, doesn't it? We reference ourselves as "the human race" in for the most part, for dogs, cats or homo sapiens we'd probably use species. Definitely looks like that can of worms you mention.