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D&D Looks To Cut Down On Racial Differences Going Forward
Races and classes have been the central aspects of character creation since the beginning of Dungeons & Dragons – well, not quite the beginning, since Elf used to be a class in original D&D. However, based on a twitter thread by D&D's Jeremy Crawford, it looks like Wizards of the Coast will be moving toward less drastic racial mechanics, especially in regard to races traditionally considered "monster races."
Crawford pointed out the differences between the orcs found in Volo's Guide to Monsters and those found in the Exandria and Eberron settings, saying that the latter reflects the direction that the D&D team is headed in regard to monsters. The Exandria and Eberron orcs lack the -2 penalty to Intelligence and the required evil alignment. This reflects the fact that in these settings orcs are mostly considered another type of people – with all the varieties in personality and temperament that come with that – rather than fodder for player characters to fight.
[...] It is worth noting that this comes on the heels of a Twitter discussion on the racist history of orcs, initially spawned by a screenshot of the description of orcs in Volo's Guide to Monsters. Tolkien initially portrayed orcs as caricatures of Mongolians, and orcs have been racial stereotypes of other races over and over (see World of Warcraft or Bright). Dungeons & Dragons is not immune to this – even outside of the orc issue, races like the Vistani appear as Romani stereotypes.
Diversity and Dungeons & Dragons
Throughout the 50-year history of D&D, some of the peoples in the game—orcs and drow being two of the prime examples—have been characterized as monstrous and evil, using descriptions that are painfully reminiscent of how real-world ethnic groups have been and continue to be denigrated. That's just not right, and it's not something we believe in. Despite our conscious efforts to the contrary, we have allowed some of those old descriptions to reappear in the game. We recognize that to live our values, we have to do an even better job in handling these issues. If we make mistakes, our priority is to make things right.
See also: Dungeons & Dragons Designers Clarify How Gnolls Differ From Other D&D Creatures
Related: Gender and Appearance Stereotypes Travel to World of Warcraft
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 20 2020, @11:15PM (3 children)
People at WOTC equate Orcs with Blacks and has for years and is suddenly afraid that their company will get cancelled so they are going to make Orcs the good guys?
I just assumed anybody who wanted to be themselves in DnD who was black and wanted to play as such would put "dark" under their skin tone at the top of the character sheet, or at least thats what the people I meet at convention do. Although in all fairness I came across few people who bothered to enter that information.
Is there something in DnD that stipulates that humans or elves or whatever have to be white? Ive read the books cover to cover for multiples of editions and never come across this. A good change to remedy the situation and be more inclusive would be to have human/whatever races pictures in the core rule books be different colors.
The changes suggested by the article would also require a complete rework of the alignment system. We should probably have atheist options added for clerics as well so that they can get their divine spells from their own empowerment.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by helel on Sunday June 21 2020, @06:19AM (2 children)
The artwork in most editions would certainly imply that the good races are all white. If fourth edition the artwork got a little more inclusive and the description of every single player race went out of it's way to say you could have whatever skin/hair/eye color you wanted.
As for the alignment system - I've always felt it was lacking. The Good vs Evil thing works fine for a Tolkien style adventure but it falls apart fast when racial alignment meets the existence of orc babies. You've got a heroic group of adventures who've defeated the orcs and gotten to the heart of their village to find the orc nursery full of orc children. Do you slaughter the defenseless younglings? That seems pretty evil no matter how you slice it but if you leave them alone they likely start to death and any that grow up will be a threat to your village in the future. On the other hand even if you try to raise and care for the orc children they will still turn out evil and be a menace to your people, as per rules as written.
Honestly, get rid of racial alignment and just replace "Good vs Evil" on the alignment with "Empathic vs Callus" and most things can remain the same while avoiding the orc baby problem. Even if the young orcs grow up "Callus" they can still be virtuous members of your village in a way that "Evil" orcs can't.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Sunday June 21 2020, @02:36PM
The artwork might have more to do with the setting of the game, it's no big secret that Forgotten Realms / Faerun and World of Greyhawk are more or less norther-european, sort of the classic fantasy world ala Tolkien if you wish -- you can probably even pick out the characters and find the equivalent in and from each setting -- Elminister is Gandalf (or pretty much any setting with a main mage, I guess he could also be like Merlin if you wish), settings so you would expect to see a lot of white people of any race really. While other settings such as say Dark Sun would have more or less no, or less, white people at all -- they would all be olive skinned since it's a harsh desert world. Ravenloft being mostly Dracula-fantasy so more white people there, this is also where you have the gypsy-issue then as mentioned in the original post. The oriental games would have more people looking like that and so on.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 21 2020, @06:31PM
It's an anime/manga that deals with EXACTLY this moral quandry and shows the full effects.
Basically the goblins in the fantasy world (which covers the full range of mythical beasts, although goblins are the primary villains) steal and rape human (and maybe demi-human) women in order to produce more goblins. No one has so far managed to keep a goblin good, and most of the people who tried found themselves murdered and the cause of a goblin army attacking the adjacent region.
The protagonist in this case was horribly scarred by watching his sister experience this firsthand in the process of saving him from the massacre of his village, and his sole tether to sanity is a childhood friend who narrowly avoided the same fate, ending up on her Uncles farm in a nearby village.
It's a little campy since it does some videogame style 'levelling' of some of the monsters, but the basic storyline premise is an excellent introspection into the fantasy genres ignored motivations of various monster groups and gives ways to refute people who claim they should be treated the same way as other demi-human races, despite their alien and violence fueled reproductive and lifecycles.