This is a reminder to everyone who makes the choice to participate in these discussions surrounding the One D&D changes to game language. You do so under the explicit assumption you will participate by the site rules.
I want to emphasises something; these changes are being made because people who play the game are experiencing harm at the language the game uses and have communicated this to Wizards of the Coast, who are taking action to continue to progress the game forwards to be as inclusive as it can be. The moderation team will not entertain the dismissal, invalidation, or margination of members of the community who have raised these valid concerns just because "I don't see a problem with the word". Privilege is a wonderful thing.
If you want to participate in this discussion without receiving warnings, infraction points, or bans, you will do so civilly, respectfully, and with kindness.
Lineage, ancestry, tribe, people just to name a few.
Lineage and Ancestry are even less accurate than Race or Species. Tribe is completely wrong, it's not even the right type of concept (it's equivalent to nationality). People is not terrible but tends to result in awkward constructions.
It has about the same meaning as lineage, which is a much too narrow term -- people in different families have different lineages or bloodlines. It also has some unfortunate historical associations such as the One Drop Rule.
"Folk" is about as reasonable as "people" (calling the fey the "fair folk" is a real medieval usage) but has similar problems with awkward constructions.
The core problem is that there's no real historical parallel to D&D 'species' and thus no-one ever came up with a word to cover the situation.
It has about the same meaning as lineage, which is a much too narrow term -- people in different families have different lineages or bloodlines.
"Folk" is about as reasonable as "people" (calling the fey the "fair folk" is a real medieval usage) but has similar problems with awkward constructions.
The core problem is that there's no real historical parallel to D&D 'species' and thus no-one ever came up with a word to cover the situation.
Yes they did, it was “race.” Like “the human race,” or “the neanderthal race.” But then people started using that word to describe something as stupid as skin color and now look at the mess we’re in.
I recommend "Peoples and Cultures" to replace "Races and Subraces" if needs must.
The problem with “People” - and with a number of other alternatives proposed on this thread - is that it feels grammatically strange within common contexts. Consider “Now it is time to choose your people” or “what people are you playing as?” Both are fairly common phrases that will appear not only throughout one’s D&D experience, but are going to be some of the first questions a novice player has to answer.
If people is defined as a term of art within the rules to mean what “race” does presently, the statements would be grammatically correct - but when practically viewed in light of the listener (particularly a new listener) it sounds like you are supposed to choose multiple “people” akin to starting a Baldur’s Gate game.
Species avoid that problem by being similar grammatically to Race. “Choose your species” is intuitive, using the word “species” in a manner congruent with the layperson definition of the word. You can instantly grasp, without knowing a single thing about D&D that “species” refers to the type of critter you are playing as. Few - if any - alternatives can match how intuitive “species” would be to a brand new player, and that intuitiveness is far more important than getting a word that pleases the hardcore fantasy fans.
Firstly, I wouldn't go so far as to say that trying to do better than a modern-feeling word is a concern limited to "hardcore fantasy fans."
That being said, I do acknowledge that using "Peoples" instead of "Races" or "Species" does require a not-always-easy grammatical shift, especially since that means it can't be used in an apples-to-apples substitution with the previously-existing terminology.
[A length of time passes as I yoink out my thesaurus and dictionary and try again.]
How's this one: Kindred
1. It's placed into the same slot as "Race" and "Species." ["Choose your character's Kindred." "What's your Kindred?" "The Kindreds of the Multiverse"] Grammar not an issue.
2. It doesn't feel so modern as "Species." "Kindred" dates easily to the Middle Ages. "Culture" in place of "Subspecies" still works with this, too.
3. A lot of other, similar words connote immediate family, or include the distant past family, or include the culture, or exclude the culture, etc., etc., whereas Kindred, so far as I know the word, merely implies inclusion of these things, without them being a part of the word itself. That places the choice of their involvement back onto the players and DM, where it should be.
Yes they did, it was “race.” Like “the human race,” or “the neanderthal race.” But then people started using that word to describe something as stupid as skin color and now look at the mess we’re in.
Nope, race was always used for cosmetic features such as skin color; usages like the "human race" are the anomaly.
Lineage, ancestry, tribe, people just to name a few.
Lineage and Ancestry are even less accurate than Race or Species. Tribe is completely wrong, it's not even the right type of concept (it's equivalent to nationality). People is not terrible but tends to result in awkward constructions.
Species is the least accurate, as Elves, Humans, Dwarves, Orcs, Tieflings, kalashtar, and many others are all just types of Humans. As either they can have children who can also have children, or they are just humans with a bloodline curse, or a human with a spiritual entity as a cohabitation in the body.
Tribes also use to refer to the same thing as Nations, and "race" in old times, Ancestry is what Pathfinder used to replace Race, and it works well. for Peoples they would have to reword things, but then again, they should reword everything anyway.
Race was a useful word, but it has been used for evil and people have been harmed by it, to include my own family. Species is a problem as it breaks the immersion, and it is inaccurate for half the linage options.
World of Darkness has dibs on that one in a TTRPG context
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Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock) Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
Drow are indeed a badass race more so in earlier editions than in 5e. Yes their color is the result of a curse - except that it isn’t, at least in one published world ((Faerun) where they were already the southern dark skinned elves who had become evil already. Yes we are “people of sun and light”, or at least we like to think we are. However, that puts an extra onus on us to not use our cultural bias on groups in real life or in fiction that don’t (or in fiction do) deserve it to avoid stereotyping. Saying it’s OK in fiction is false - folks see themselves in the characters and can be harmed by such unconscious bias. (If you think it’s not all over go listen to Tom Lehrer’s song “National Brotherhood Week” from about 1963 - nothing has changed hugely in the intervening 60 years) Folks are right, elves don’t hate dwarves (the way they hate orcs or goblinoids) but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a “racial bias” against them, or against humans and even half elves. Heck, n Faerun sun elves don’t even really like moon elves and they are both high elves. These cultural biases are a form of prejudice and they are common all over our world and generally also the published worlds at least. Peoples and cultures doesn’t work since subspecies are not cultures they are just subspecies (yes those terms can also be used to hurt folks sadly - any term used to put others down will hurt).to my mind species and subspecies are best because we still (generally) see them as scientific terms not social terms. But I have no problems with other terms like bloodlines and lineages.
This ^^ .. My campaign is full of enemies that bank off the personalities of "racists" and "Bigots". Elves hate dwarves, dwarves hate elves, Orcs hate everyone... I don't think my intent in creating evil characters equates to creating "Evil" in the real world. We really got stop Lord Voldemort-ing words as if it's going to raise a racist from the dead. Having the ability does not mean you're being enabled. We all have choices, we need to stop taking away the opportunity for accountability and do the diligent and right thing.
It's being changed because the term race draws incorrect comparisons to real-world people. Orcs are not native American humans, for example - they're Orcs, and Elves are not white Europeans. Thus, a term other than "race" is needed.
How does using the term race create confusion that Orcs might be native American humans or that Elves, when listed as a "race", suddenly become lumped in with white europeans. Orcs are orcs and elves are elves. Native Americans the same, as are Europeans. Not sure how the label creates confusion that would cause me to disregard my character and principles and consider any real-world group as lesser, worse, wrong, or evil because of some imaginary group in a game.
It creates confusion because race in the real world applies mainly to people of none white-skin tone such as Africans or Asians
huh what? Therein lies a huge problem. Being confused about the definition of something that is (or at least was) well defined. Nothing about wikipedia, the dictionary, the diverse groups of people I grew up with and spent time with have ever thought or said that race applies mainly to Africans, Asians, or non-whites.
While I myself 100% agree with these changes and find inclusion extremely important, I do see how our global cultural development can cause anxiety and difficulty to adapt in a lot of people.
Heck, I struggle and sweat to keep up myself and I have a university degree in social sciences/services.
Why? Because change has never been so incredibly fast paced. The internet and social media has accelerated cultural change to what I would call an unhealthy speed.
The changes themselves are not unhealthy, just the speed. Prior to the 1800s and industrialization and urbanization, people's lives and culture changed very slowly. Then our lives started changing more rapidly, followed by cultural changes. But still this happened over a century. Then another major technological and cultural leap after the world wars. But still over the course of 50 years. People were already struggling to keep up at this point. We could already see quite a bit of alienation between generations here.
Then the internet came, followed by social media algorithms, rapid globalization.
Suddenly the world is changing faster than we can adapt. We are fixing problems of the past at a rate that can make our heads spin and cause trouble grasping all the new social rules, subtleties, norms etc.
And even if we can adapt to them, this pace makes it difficult to adopt the changes and process/integrate them into parts of our identity. Some people need more time to process things. It's not good or bad. Being too quick and eager to adopt new ways can lead to identity problems while being stuck in your old ways can be harmful too.
So yeah, I do understand why people are exhausted by these social changes and why they fight back. I don't think a lot of them are fighting to preserve prejudice, I think a lot of them are fighting the constant change altogether.
I think we need to calm down a bit. These are all incredibly important fixes to our problematic past, but I fear we are increasing polarization by going so fast.
We can't fight all the battles at once in a global world. There are just too many battles. We need to prioritize, but I don't know if that's possible and it kind of scares me.
This term change is a very small change and I welcome it. But it's another change for people already exhausted by changes.
I'm not okay with it. Screw all this virtue signaling BS. Great tools for ease of access, but ... I'm done with this garbage. Find me a real, normal person that was offended by this, who is an actual gamer and cares, for real, about D&D and TTRPGs, and they're likely to say the same. Division for the sake of division and change is pointless. WotC can burn.
what? theres been several people that have spoken up about this, theres even been articles on this, they didnt change it on a whim, actual people were hurt by this
Genotype is more applicable actually as it speaks to ancestry and genetics whereas as phenotype refers to appearance. Hence the reason we can now have beefed out halflings and wise goliaths.
Genotype is more applicable actually as it speaks to ancestry and genetics whereas as phenotype refers to appearance. Hence the reason we can now have beefed out halflings and wise goliaths.
The evidence for genetics even existing in D&D is pretty thin (and it's likely that a fair number of effects are magical influences rather than anything genetic), but there's no question that phenotype exists.
World of Darkness has dibs on that one in a TTRPG context
EDIT: Forgot to Quote.
Concerning "dibs": The word "Kindred" has been in use for centuries before tabletop roleplaying games existed. Nobody gets dibs on it, just as TSR/WotC/D&D has never cared if another RPG called them "races" in the past or will call them "species" in the future. There's a ton of terms that show up in multiple RPGs, and it's fine. If it's a specific mechanic like Sneak Attack was copied, that would be a better case, because that's an element of game design and as such intellectual property, whereas "kindred" is just a descriptive label.
Concerning: "in a TTRPG context": By this argument, Pathfinder can't call them "elves" or dwarves" because D&D was using them in a TTRPG context first. Or maybe there's bunch of terms D&D can't use, because Chainmail used them in a TTRPG context first. I mean, even looking up a Vampire: The Masquerade character sheet (assuming that's the WoD you mean; let me know if not), I see at least a handful of terms that D&D absolutely used in a TTRPG context long before WoD existed.
Whatever word we use, I think we don't need to worry, even if another RPG uses it.
World of Darkness has dibs on that one in a TTRPG context
EDIT: Forgot to Quote.
Concerning "dibs": The word "Kindred" has been in use for centuries before tabletop roleplaying games existed. Nobody gets dibs on it, just as TSR/WotC/D&D has never cared if another RPG called them "races" in the past or will call them "species" in the future. There's a ton of terms that show up in multiple RPGs, and it's fine. If it's a specific mechanic like Sneak Attack was copied, that would be a better case, because that's an element of game design and as such intellectual property, whereas "kindred" is just a descriptive label.
Concerning: "in a TTRPG context": By this argument, Pathfinder can't call them "elves" or dwarves" because D&D was using them in a TTRPG context first. Or maybe there's bunch of terms D&D can't use, because Chainmail used them in a TTRPG context first. I mean, even looking up a Vampire: The Masquerade character sheet (assuming that's the WoD you mean; let me know if not), I see at least a handful of terms that D&D absolutely used in a TTRPG context long before WoD existed.
Whatever word we use, I think we don't need to worry, even if another RPG uses it.
I used the word 'dibs' rather than something more serious because I doubt it would merit any kind of legal challenge, for all the reasons you listed
Nonetheless, when someone hears the word 'Kindred' in a TTRPG context, their first thought is going to be of VtM, not anything else, precisely because it's one of the few other games to actually break through into the wider pop culture arena. I mean, the television show based on that property was called Kindred: The Embraced, for pity's sake
Given that the term is in no way superior to some of the other alternatives, there's simply no reason for WOTC to go there
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Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock) Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
When I ever read/hear words like “progression”, “inclusivity”, and/or “Modernization” I worry about the future of the product that I have heavily invested in. As normal companies throwing around terminology like that always leads the product to the ground with no chance of recovery, I have seen it too many times.
I will be quite honest, if WotC wanted to “Help” the community, why wasn’t this subject brought up to the community. Why was there a Thread titled “WotC would like everyone’s input about if the word Race should be still used in D&D or be replaced with a new Word, Polls inside the Thread.”
now I will tell you that I have heard people use the word “species” before in bad taste, so for me if Race was changed to Species, then I would take a bit offense to it has its been used in vile and degrading situations more so then race.
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I will be quite honest, if WotC wanted to “Help” the community, why wasn’t this subject brought up to the community. Why was there a Thread titled “WotC would like everyone’s input about if the word Race should be still used in D&D or be replaced with a new Word, Polls inside the Thread.”
Probably because it would be an unproductive dumpster fire that would waste Wizards’ time. Every single thread about these kinds of decisions finds itself infested by folks who only come out of the woodworks to complain about Wizards’ decision - many of which seem to be alternate accounts or otherwise have suspiciously low post counts which seem to indicate they don’t actually care about the D&D community - they just only exist to complain about Wizards trying to expunge their game’s racist history. I am sure you know something about that, with your above being the first and only comment you have ever made.
Given what a mess these fan created threads are, there is absolutely no reason to think an open Wizards poll or survey would prove any more productive. It simply does not make sense for Wizards to waste its time and the time of their salaried employees reviewing countless comments, many of whom will be from the uninformed, ignorant, indifferent, or, as too common in fantasy communities, bigoted individuals.
That is why they have decided to consulted with actual experts, because someone with a degree and expertise is far more valuable than thousands laypeople who likely have little of value to contribute.
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This is a reminder to everyone who makes the choice to participate in these discussions surrounding the One D&D changes to game language. You do so under the explicit assumption you will participate by the site rules.
I want to emphasises something; these changes are being made because people who play the game are experiencing harm at the language the game uses and have communicated this to Wizards of the Coast, who are taking action to continue to progress the game forwards to be as inclusive as it can be. The moderation team will not entertain the dismissal, invalidation, or margination of members of the community who have raised these valid concerns just because "I don't see a problem with the word". Privilege is a wonderful thing.
If you want to participate in this discussion without receiving warnings, infraction points, or bans, you will do so civilly, respectfully, and with kindness.
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Lineage, ancestry, tribe, people just to name a few.
Lineage and Ancestry are even less accurate than Race or Species. Tribe is completely wrong, it's not even the right type of concept (it's equivalent to nationality). People is not terrible but tends to result in awkward constructions.
How about “Bloodlines?”
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It has about the same meaning as lineage, which is a much too narrow term -- people in different families have different lineages or bloodlines. It also has some unfortunate historical associations such as the One Drop Rule.
"Folk" is about as reasonable as "people" (calling the fey the "fair folk" is a real medieval usage) but has similar problems with awkward constructions.
The core problem is that there's no real historical parallel to D&D 'species' and thus no-one ever came up with a word to cover the situation.
Yes they did, it was “race.” Like “the human race,” or “the neanderthal race.” But then people started using that word to describe something as stupid as skin color and now look at the mess we’re in.
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Firstly, I wouldn't go so far as to say that trying to do better than a modern-feeling word is a concern limited to "hardcore fantasy fans."
That being said, I do acknowledge that using "Peoples" instead of "Races" or "Species" does require a not-always-easy grammatical shift, especially since that means it can't be used in an apples-to-apples substitution with the previously-existing terminology.
[A length of time passes as I yoink out my thesaurus and dictionary and try again.]
How's this one: Kindred
1. It's placed into the same slot as "Race" and "Species." ["Choose your character's Kindred." "What's your Kindred?" "The Kindreds of the Multiverse"] Grammar not an issue.
2. It doesn't feel so modern as "Species." "Kindred" dates easily to the Middle Ages. "Culture" in place of "Subspecies" still works with this, too.
3. A lot of other, similar words connote immediate family, or include the distant past family, or include the culture, or exclude the culture, etc., etc., whereas Kindred, so far as I know the word, merely implies inclusion of these things, without them being a part of the word itself. That places the choice of their involvement back onto the players and DM, where it should be.
Nope, race was always used for cosmetic features such as skin color; usages like the "human race" are the anomaly.
Species is the least accurate, as Elves, Humans, Dwarves, Orcs, Tieflings, kalashtar, and many others are all just types of Humans. As either they can have children who can also have children, or they are just humans with a bloodline curse, or a human with a spiritual entity as a cohabitation in the body.
Tribes also use to refer to the same thing as Nations, and "race" in old times, Ancestry is what Pathfinder used to replace Race, and it works well. for Peoples they would have to reword things, but then again, they should reword everything anyway.
Race was a useful word, but it has been used for evil and people have been harmed by it, to include my own family. Species is a problem as it breaks the immersion, and it is inaccurate for half the linage options.
World of Darkness has dibs on that one in a TTRPG context
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
Drow are indeed a badass race more so in earlier editions than in 5e. Yes their color is the result of a curse - except that it isn’t, at least in one published world ((Faerun) where they were already the southern dark skinned elves who had become evil already. Yes we are “people of sun and light”, or at least we like to think we are. However, that puts an extra onus on us to not use our cultural bias on groups in real life or in fiction that don’t (or in fiction do) deserve it to avoid stereotyping. Saying it’s OK in fiction is false - folks see themselves in the characters and can be harmed by such unconscious bias. (If you think it’s not all over go listen to Tom Lehrer’s song “National Brotherhood Week” from about 1963 - nothing has changed hugely in the intervening 60 years)
Folks are right, elves don’t hate dwarves (the way they hate orcs or goblinoids) but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a “racial bias” against them, or against humans and even half elves. Heck, n Faerun sun elves don’t even really like moon elves and they are both high elves. These cultural biases are a form of prejudice and they are common all over our world and generally also the published worlds at least.
Peoples and cultures doesn’t work since subspecies are not cultures they are just subspecies (yes those terms can also be used to hurt folks sadly - any term used to put others down will hurt).to my mind species and subspecies are best because we still (generally) see them as scientific terms not social terms. But I have no problems with other terms like bloodlines and lineages.
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huh what? Therein lies a huge problem. Being confused about the definition of something that is (or at least was) well defined. Nothing about wikipedia, the dictionary, the diverse groups of people I grew up with and spent time with have ever thought or said that race applies mainly to Africans, Asians, or non-whites.
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While I myself 100% agree with these changes and find inclusion extremely important, I do see how our global cultural development can cause anxiety and difficulty to adapt in a lot of people.
Heck, I struggle and sweat to keep up myself and I have a university degree in social sciences/services.
Why? Because change has never been so incredibly fast paced. The internet and social media has accelerated cultural change to what I would call an unhealthy speed.
The changes themselves are not unhealthy, just the speed. Prior to the 1800s and industrialization and urbanization, people's lives and culture changed very slowly. Then our lives started changing more rapidly, followed by cultural changes. But still this happened over a century. Then another major technological and cultural leap after the world wars. But still over the course of 50 years. People were already struggling to keep up at this point. We could already see quite a bit of alienation between generations here.
Then the internet came, followed by social media algorithms, rapid globalization.
Suddenly the world is changing faster than we can adapt. We are fixing problems of the past at a rate that can make our heads spin and cause trouble grasping all the new social rules, subtleties, norms etc.
And even if we can adapt to them, this pace makes it difficult to adopt the changes and process/integrate them into parts of our identity. Some people need more time to process things. It's not good or bad. Being too quick and eager to adopt new ways can lead to identity problems while being stuck in your old ways can be harmful too.
So yeah, I do understand why people are exhausted by these social changes and why they fight back. I don't think a lot of them are fighting to preserve prejudice, I think a lot of them are fighting the constant change altogether.
I think we need to calm down a bit. These are all incredibly important fixes to our problematic past, but I fear we are increasing polarization by going so fast.
We can't fight all the battles at once in a global world. There are just too many battles. We need to prioritize, but I don't know if that's possible and it kind of scares me.
This term change is a very small change and I welcome it. But it's another change for people already exhausted by changes.
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what? theres been several people that have spoken up about this, theres even been articles on this, they didnt change it on a whim, actual people were hurt by this
Genotype is more applicable actually as it speaks to ancestry and genetics whereas as phenotype refers to appearance. Hence the reason we can now have beefed out halflings and wise goliaths.
The evidence for genetics even existing in D&D is pretty thin (and it's likely that a fair number of effects are magical influences rather than anything genetic), but there's no question that phenotype exists.
EDIT: Forgot to Quote.
Concerning "dibs": The word "Kindred" has been in use for centuries before tabletop roleplaying games existed. Nobody gets dibs on it, just as TSR/WotC/D&D has never cared if another RPG called them "races" in the past or will call them "species" in the future. There's a ton of terms that show up in multiple RPGs, and it's fine. If it's a specific mechanic like Sneak Attack was copied, that would be a better case, because that's an element of game design and as such intellectual property, whereas "kindred" is just a descriptive label.
Concerning: "in a TTRPG context": By this argument, Pathfinder can't call them "elves" or dwarves" because D&D was using them in a TTRPG context first. Or maybe there's bunch of terms D&D can't use, because Chainmail used them in a TTRPG context first. I mean, even looking up a Vampire: The Masquerade character sheet (assuming that's the WoD you mean; let me know if not), I see at least a handful of terms that D&D absolutely used in a TTRPG context long before WoD existed.
Whatever word we use, I think we don't need to worry, even if another RPG uses it.
I used the word 'dibs' rather than something more serious because I doubt it would merit any kind of legal challenge, for all the reasons you listed
Nonetheless, when someone hears the word 'Kindred' in a TTRPG context, their first thought is going to be of VtM, not anything else, precisely because it's one of the few other games to actually break through into the wider pop culture arena. I mean, the television show based on that property was called Kindred: The Embraced, for pity's sake
Given that the term is in no way superior to some of the other alternatives, there's simply no reason for WOTC to go there
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
When I ever read/hear words like “progression”, “inclusivity”, and/or “Modernization” I worry about the future of the product that I have heavily invested in. As normal companies throwing around terminology like that always leads the product to the ground with no chance of recovery, I have seen it too many times.
I will be quite honest, if WotC wanted to “Help” the community, why wasn’t this subject brought up to the community. Why was there a Thread titled “WotC would like everyone’s input about if the word Race should be still used in D&D or be replaced with a new Word, Polls inside the Thread.”
now I will tell you that I have heard people use the word “species” before in bad taste, so for me if Race was changed to Species, then I would take a bit offense to it has its been used in vile and degrading situations more so then race.
Probably because it would be an unproductive dumpster fire that would waste Wizards’ time. Every single thread about these kinds of decisions finds itself infested by folks who only come out of the woodworks to complain about Wizards’ decision - many of which seem to be alternate accounts or otherwise have suspiciously low post counts which seem to indicate they don’t actually care about the D&D community - they just only exist to complain about Wizards trying to expunge their game’s racist history. I am sure you know something about that, with your above being the first and only comment you have ever made.
Given what a mess these fan created threads are, there is absolutely no reason to think an open Wizards poll or survey would prove any more productive. It simply does not make sense for Wizards to waste its time and the time of their salaried employees reviewing countless comments, many of whom will be from the uninformed, ignorant, indifferent, or, as too common in fantasy communities, bigoted individuals.
That is why they have decided to consulted with actual experts, because someone with a degree and expertise is far more valuable than thousands laypeople who likely have little of value to contribute.