Wizards of the Coast is taking steps towards purging Dungeons & Dragons of racist content. In a statement published earlier this month, the game developer addressed “legacy D&D content that does not reflect who we are today,” including “monstrous and evil” races and characters based on reductive stereotypes against Romani people, while pledging to implement changes like more sensitivity readers and a more diverse staff.
“‘Human’ in D&D means everyone, not just fantasy versions of northern Europeans, and the D&D community is now more diverse than it’s ever been,” Wizards of the Coast said in the statement, adding that “one of the explicit design goals” of the game’s 5th edition is to showcase characters “who represent an array of ethnicities, gender identities, sexual orientations, and beliefs.”
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“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,” the statement continued. “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.”
Going forward, the game developer promised to make six specific changes. First, orcs and drow will now be portrayed “as morally and culturally complex” as other D&D races, “making it clear that they are as free as humans to decide who they are and what they do.” Second, books with “racially insensitive” and other problematic content will be changed before reprints. Third, an as-yet-unannounced new product will give players the option to “customize their character’s origin,” including ability scores, a change the developer says will “emphasize that each person in the game is an individual with capabilities all their own.” Fourth, Wizards of the Coast will be working with a Romani consultant to change how the game depicts the fictional Vistani people, starting with changes to Curse of Strahd. Fifth, the game will be working with sensitivity readers, and sixth, Wizards of the Coast will “proactively” seek “new, diverse” talent in both its in-house staff and freelance pool.
You can read the full statement here.
I think this is a really good move, and can hopefully lead to even better, more interesting, complex DnD stories going forward but I think it needs to be handled quite carefully. After all, you could replace the implication that some races are inherently evil with the implication that all races have free will, but some choose to overwhelmingly evil anyway, which isn’t a huge improvement, philosophically speaking.
@1 xanderwatts
Peer pressure is important. If you grow up in a society that has evil beliefs and does evil things, it’s a lot more likely that you’ll be evil than the guy who was raised in the nice village full of pacifists.
So you could have an overwhelmingly evil society of drow not because all drow are racially biased towards evil, but because they live in a dysfunctional theocracy where evil behavior is encouraged and rewarded.
It is worth noting that Glorantha (one of the oldest RPG worlds) had complex and sympathetic races from the very beginning—Trollpak is the best example from that world.
I don’t know, I like the simplicity of a world where elves are good and orcs are bad. It’s why WW2 history is so satisfying to read about as the Nazis are such obvious villains (yes, I know there is plenty of gray regarding WW2, but the Nazis not so much).
That being said, having the bad elves all have jet-black skin is more than a little problematic. That needs to go. Drow elves can be bad all the way down, but the badness should not be reflected in their skin coloring.
And I’m all for the occasional orc paladin that chooses her own path.
I doubt they are going to change the Drow skin color.
@2 dptullos- It’s a question of race vs culture, I think. In general there’s less of an objection if a particular group (I.E. Nazi Germany) is portrayed as uncomplicatedly evil if it’s not a question of race. Not necessarily no objection, especially if the culture in question comes off as a serial numbers filed-off pastiche of a real one, but less.
The easiest way to make this distinction that occurs to me is to make sure that your races aren’t monocultural. A city of evil, torture-loving, aggressively expansionist Drow ruled by demon-cults is mostly a problem if that’s all the Drow in the world- if there’s another city of, say, lawful neutral isolationist fungiculturist Drow ruled by the Chairwomen of the local University whose idea of a good evening out involves a couple of mushroom beers and a rousing debate about the utility of damming the underground river in the next cavern over. And still less of a problem if the players also run into a demon-cult led wandering tribe of Dwarven torture enthusiasts- all that makes it less “All these dark-skinned folks are evil,” and more “Here’s a specific bunch of jerks we have to deal with.”
So now they have to make everyone of every race equal. No more str bonus for half-orc, no more dex bonus for elf, etc.
Love to see this — I get that a lot of this has been around since the start of D&D, and I understand how people could be upset to see potentially significant changes to how the world they’ve been playing in works, but it’s just not worth it to keep perpetuating these kinds of tropes and stereotypes. I hope they put their money where their mouth is vis-a-vis seeking diverse new talent.
I don’t want to sound ignorant but are the Orcs and Drow the only intelligent races that are portrayed as evil? If I’m not mistaken Goblins, Kobolds, and such are inherently evil yet still form communities and towns. Are these too going to be un-evil-fied? And if not what makes them different. At what point do you simply take away evil as a subset of species? I am honestly curious and simply want to know.
But if they were Lawful, mild-mannered and peaceable how would you even be able to recognise them as Drow? (-;
In all seriousness one does agree that monocultures are the bane of Good Storytelling; I just hope future DnD writers can balance a more open-minded approach to things with an Adventurer’s need for foes to measure themselves against and Villains who can get (and keep) a plot moving With STYLE!
Longer, even, since they lifted the “always evil” orcs from Tolkien. Jemisin’s 2013 essay on orcs is worth reading, if you haven’t already.
http://nkjemisin.com/2013/02/from-the-mailbag-the-unbearable-baggage-of-orcing/
In D&D a lot is subject to the worldbuilding and writing of individual DMs, but to the extent that the published materials encouraged simplistic views of different kinds of sapients, that seems overdue for a change.
ISTM that any species with minds complex enough to have alignments at all will also have minds variable and changeable enough that different members of the species will have different alignments.
I know I’m reasoning from a sample size of one (species, that is), but sapients just don’t do uniformity. At most, they do conformity, which involves a lot of performance and usually coercion and they’re *still* different on the inside, they just hide it to get by.
@8 There’s more to orcs than their strength bonus. Or elves to their dex bonuses. If anything those are the least important things about a race.
If you give a warforged a +2 to wisdom they’re still going to be quite different from an Orc you give +2 wisdom. Orcs don’t have the warforged’s construct traits – like being resistant to poison or needing to eat or breath. Meanwhile a Warforge doesn’t have dark vision or the ability to carry things one size larger than themselves.
@7 CuttlefishBenjamin
That is fair. If the story shows both evil and good groups within a species, then evil is a matter of choice and circumstances, not inherent nature.
This does raise the question of groups like devils and demons that are always inherently evil. I personally enjoy having some Absolute Baddie groups, though it’s good not to have them map too closely to real-world groups or stereotypes about groups. Do you think that there should be eldritch forces of total evil within D&D?
@10 Block
No, there are a good number of intelligent races that are portrayed as always or almost always evil, with only a handful of special exceptions.
It sounds like the conclusion they’ve reached is to simply take away evil as a species category and have evil determined by individual choice within the influence of a society. This means that we could have an evil dwarven empire allied with an evil drow warlord fighting to conquer a good drow city, which actually sounds pretty cool.
This tricky part is groups like Beholders, which are used as reliably evil dungeon monsters. I don’t know how they’ll handle things like Beholders and devils, but I’m not opposed to the change, even if it will be tricky to execute.
@5: One of the problems with having “good” and “evil” races is that you then end up with “heroes” from the good races committing genocide against the evil races, and being morally justified for that. At this point you have to question that definition of good and evil. And then it’s hard not to notice that such justifications are indeed very similar to those used to justify the atrocities committed during colonisation. If you take a less rigid definition of alignment, like what was suggested by @dptullos for instance, then you’re talking about different moral systems and you have to justify that your ethics are better than that of the other civilisations and does justify a fight to the death when conflict is inevitable (or you could switch side and betray your own blood if you find you’re actually in the wrong). I find that more interesting.
@7: Lolth has made sure that she was considered as the goddess of the drows, and reduced the influence of the other gods to a minimum: drows have basically no choice but to follow Lolth, and that come with certain behaviours being encouraged or rejected. So I do find it interesting to see what influence a goddess can have on the morality of a whole civilisation, or even a species (you could also consider the Githyanki, whose whole species and civilisation is the consequence of centuries of enslavement by the mind flayers. So they certainly are an evil race, but they’re also definitely victims). So that can work, although I can understand how the fact that they have black skin can be problematic in conjunction with the fact that they are necessarily an evil society. But at least, the focus should be about how the influence of their goddess makes them what they are and that it’s not their nature, rather than just have them be sources of XP for bloodthirsty adventurer (sorry, I meant ““righteous””). So for instance, something like 1984, as seen from the front between the two of the three remaining civilisations that are currently fighting (“we have always been at war with Eastasia”).
What really bothered me when I started looking into the lore back in second edition was that there were mentions of only two matriarchal societies, the drows and Dambrath, and both were evil to the core. There were really things that needed to change in the depiction of that universe.
What angers me is the sheer number of people who still whine that this is “just an evil SJW/liberal agenda~!”. That, somehow, if no longer having problematic trappings in a fantasy humanoid means the players can’t just freely Other them and grind them into XP paste without thinking anymore, it “ruins their fun!”
@@@@@ragnarredbeard
Seriously? Is that your take away from this? Drow, I believe, are not so much of a problem because it’s put it right at the beginning of the lore that 95% of them are members of an evil cult where they worship an evil goddess. It’s not so much that they are inherently evil, but that the society most of them grow up is evil and you don’t know better.
You even have Eilistraee as the Good Goddess for the drow.
The problem, I believe, rests with the orcs. I can’t recall the orcs having any good gods. It’s always the fight of Gruumsh vs Corellon Larethian and the elves are always portrayed as good, so the orcs must be portrayed as evil. Even though dwarves and elves can have a rivalry but you don’t see them committing genocide against the other.
@17 Athreeren Thank you. I’m used to Pathfinder where the drow are considered evil because of their worship of the evil goddess Lolth, and all of the history that goes along with that. There is actually a decent series by R.A. Salvatore that has a drow protagonist who if I remember right left the society because he didn’t believe in the constant killing and murder that Lolth asked for.
Also I realize this is counter to the statement that Wizards is trying to make but aren’t the Duegar evil dwarves? I mean they have a somewhat complex society so probably not all evil but…
Mistinarperadnacles Hai Draco anyone? A red dragon convincingly portrayed as morally-complex rather than inherently evil, and a story made all-the-better for it.
@17- Good question- I’m a bit of a contrarian so my instinct is to say that if the Devils are all evil, then the most interesting story is about the one that’s trying to be better, but that really only works if you do have the background assumption that you can’t spell Devil without evil.
Now, I’m a Pathfinder guy, so I don’t know how the cosmology has tracked and changed throughout the history of D&D, but in Pathfinder, devils, demons, and daemons (the confusingly named Neutral-Evil fiends) all start out as the souls of evil mortals. You’re not born a devil, you become one- and only evil people do.
Now, if your devils reproduce biologically and are basically just humanoid aliens who happen to have horns and live in a dimension called Hell that’s a different matter.
@18- Well, of course there are lore reasons but, in terms of unfortunate implications “The dark-skinned elves are all demon worshippers,” is not much better than “They’re all just evil.” I do think it’s an interesting thought experiment to transpose the coloration of Drow and Surface Elves, while retaining all the rest of the cultural and religious traits associated with them. Would we be having this discussion if the Drow were fair skinned and golden haired?
D&D is based on tropes that simplify storytelling. Fantasy is based on tropes. Well, all fiction is based on tropes. If you do not like them you can write new ones. Changing the old ones is a bad idea, especially since this specific moral problem ends outside of the US border.
99% of Player Characters are not interested in morally ambiguous arguments at the table, just at bashing the skulls of evil orcs. Even in the old days you could drop an outsider NPC meant to mess with the player’s minds, but that was the exception, and turning this into the rule won’t help solving america’s problem with racism.
@17 dptullos
Well, one could argue that devils and demons were once angelic – and very “good” – creatures who chose long ago to be, and remain, “evil”….
@25:
Changing the old ones is a bad idea
Why? And what’s the difference between creating new tropes and changing the old ones anyways?
especially since this specific moral problem ends outside of the US border.
The problem of treating other groups and races as homogenous evil Others whom it is morally permissible to exploit and/or slaughter is unique to the United States? That is… a bold claim.
99% of Player Characters are not interested in morally ambiguous arguments at the table, just at bashing the skulls of evil orcs.
That has not been my experience at the table, but your mileage may vary. I think it’s unlikely that Wizards of the Coast intends to rewrite any of their books in such a way that prevents a morally uncomplicated hack and slash game, though.
Turning this into the rule won’t help solving america’s problem with racism.
I think the goal here is less “solve,” and more “stop exacerbating.”
@27
Changing the old ones is a bad idea
Why? And what’s the difference between creating new tropes and changing the old ones anyways?
Creating something new to add to the human knowledge base is always better than destroying something, even if deemed bad.
The other points are open todiscussion
Whilst I believe that the decision for this is up to Wizards of the Coast, I do not believe that it is a good decision. to change the canon of the game. However, I do believe that a section in the book stating that the tropes of the races in the game are not written in stone, and that DMs and players should interpret and reinterpret them as they see fit.
There is nothing wrong with changing the races within your game. Additionally, playing noble characters from a race that generally isn’t noble is the core of many great stories. After all isn’t Drizzt a noble member of an ignoble race, and isn’t that a great source of the attractiveness of a character.
To a degree, if you change them it will have no impact on me, as I have been playing for 40 years, and I constantly change them. In one of my campaigns, my best friend (irl) spent a few months trying to save the last Orc in the world. The Orcs had almost all been killed by a disease that had been engineered by the Dwarves. My friend was travelling with Prince Berriak, who was a very grey character. He was not a nice man, but was totally loyal to the Kingdom of Estria and when he found a huddle of Orcs hiding in a cave in the Dwarf Mountains he attacked them all. My friend only managed to save one and headed off to see if he could find more.
And… yes, the Dwarfs in my Blacksilver campaign were evil. When I was creating the world I asked “why do dwarves live underground” and I came to the conclusion that it was because they were vampires and couldn’t go out in the sun. So, Vampires are evil unless they are sparkly, but these ones were blood drinking creatures who could turn into bats and controlled dark magic.
Also, within a story, racism can be an important source of conflict. Glory is a great movie, To Kill a Mockingbird is a great book, and they are even greater because they draw attention to how stupid racism is.
In my new campaign, humans have severe “We are the best” problems. They particularly are racist to the Halflings who live among them. However, I take great enjoyment when a masked knight is registered in the jousting and when he turns up he is a halfling. I loved it when one of my groups cheered him enthusiastically. And, eventually, the whole theme of the campaign was built around bringing peace to the races (kind of like a precursor to Star Trek)
I believe that it is better for drawing in new players if the Tolkeinesque tropes are maintained as that is what they will relate to and their enjoyment of stories like this is what will pique their interest, but a section on how these attributes are not canon should be included in the rule book.
To me, I don’t really like the profusion of playable races in the game today. In Adventures League you generally find about half the players playing anthropomorphic creatures or Tieflings, and that seems unrealistic enough to me that it breaks immersion. But people should play the game they enjoy, so that is their choice. I feel that telling people that they should play the races in a certain way is taking away player (and DM) agency in the same way than if you said that nobody can play anthropomorphic creatures in their games any more would take away player agency would.
I must admit, I am completely on board with changing Dark Elves from Black because I don’t see any reason why they are. Surely a race that are an offshoot of elves would be the same colour as elves. In my Blacksilver campaign there are no Dark Elves, and in fact Elves have blue skin (just because I wanted them to seem alien and otherworldly, and that seemed the right colour). The fact that they are the only race that are black and they’re evil does look very suspicious to me. I have never actually used Dark Elves in any of my game (although my blue elves from Blacksilver are kind of evil,… or are they?) I understand that they are kind of cool, but if they don’t fit in the world then I don’t use them. In my Niravaa Campaign there are some Insane Elves afflicted by an evil insane god (called the Elfe Fou) but they look like all the other elves.
But, I believe that you should maintain some races as evil. I write a lot of my own stuff and it is often quite different, but I didn’t start like that. One of the reasons I have told you what I have done in some of my past is to demonstrate how with experience you develop your own stories. However, I stole my stories mercilessly when I started, but that is not a bad thing, it teaches you how to structure a world, and how to structure races, and how to structure the story. I truly believe that you should maintain the familiar so that people can learn how to tell stories. Seriously, I really, really stole other people’s stories to tell at the table.
Change the language used by the rules by all means. There is very good arguments for dropping the word race entirely due to the connotations it has in the real world. But really Orcs and Drow are not races, in the sense the word is normally used, rather they are separate species, which are fundamentally different from each other. If anything I think modern day D&D already makes them too similar in order to appease players who want play unusual ancestry/class combinations. It looks like what we will end up with a situation where ancestry becomes purely cosmetic and everyone gets to min/maxes their character in any way they like.
The thing is that Orcs and Drow don’t exist, they are entirely fictional. No real Orcs or Drow will face discrimination in the real world because of how they are portrayed in a game. The evil races of D&D are inspired by classic folklore and the earliest works of modern Fantasy, and these races where evil because of what they represented in these stories. They represented peoples fears of the unknown. The world they are depicted in is one of absolutes where every morality is objectively defined by alignment. This is true for everything from magical creatures through to deities. In this world it makes sense that orcs and Drow are inherently evil.
An inherently evil sentient species is bad theology, as Tolkien realized. It’s not great psychology either. Dissonant moralities on the other hand works.
An ancient Greek writer grasped this point. He told a story about a Persian ruler who asked some Greek emissaries how they’d feel about eating their honored dead instead of burning them. The Greeks were naturally repulsed. The Persian king then summoned some representatives of a people who practiced funerary cannibalism and asked them how they felt about burning the dead. They begged the king not to suggest such horrible things.
@36 Konrad Zielinski
“It looks like what we will end up with a situation where ancestry becomes purely cosmetic and everyone gets to min/maxes their character in any way they like.”
So we’ll end with a Dungeons and Dragons game where a group of rules lawyers cheerfully and enthusiastically games the system in the name of creating absurdly OP munchkins? I call that “Tuesday”.
Personally, I feel that “evil” is defined by choice. We don’t call hurricanes or earthquakes “evil”, so how could an orc or drow be evil if they never had a choice to be anything else?
@37 princessroxana
Tolkien spent a considerable amount of time and effort pushing back against admirers who viewed human species as “orcs”.
I don’t reject Always Chaotic Evil out of hand, but I feel that it is difficult to execute properly.
No denying humans can behave in very orclike ways. If they choose to do so. The point is they choose it isn’t hard wired giving them no choice.