Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
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I'm going to ask everyone to please remember this thread's topic and the rules for posting on our forums. Whilst the individuals posting may disagree, delving into back-and-forth arguments should not be done here.
Please be respectful of each other. Topics around race within a game like D&D will always have additional meaning for some community members. Attacking or discrediting those members will not be tolerated.
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Wary the wizard who focuses on homebrew, for he can create nightmares that you wouldn't even dream of
Humans and elves can reproduce so they are of the same species. Species is not an appropriate change.
What about ORIGIN ?
This has been discussed repeatedly, but maybe an internet link will help: https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelmarshalleurope/2018/08/28/a-long-busted-myth-its-not-true-that-animals-belonging-to-different-species-can-never-interbreed/
Also, "species" has more than one defition.
No.
Humans and dragons can also reproduce in this game. Does that make humans and dragons the same species? Or does it mean reproduction in D&D does not follow biological models and there's no point needlessly chasing pedantic scientific "accuracy" that misses the forest through the trees. This constant insistence on rejecting the word due to an incorrect assertion of its scientific meaning that no one uses outside this "debate" is infuriating.
You all know what species means. You all know the difference when someone says "human species", "dwarven species", "gnomish species ", and so forth. If you don't like species, go take the survey and rate it at the bottom. But stop insisting on a scientific definition that is neither scientific nor a proper definition in a game where a man and a ten ton lightning breathing magic flying dinosaur can produce viable offspring.
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A good chunk of this discussion has been about why Ancestry and Lineage might be a problem, and Kindred has had it's own argument going on since the 80s. Folk or People might work.
Your point is not valid. When a dragon and human reproduce it's because a dragon magically adopts the biological traits of a human.
But that is what makes it valid.
We've been using a system for a couple of years now that doesn't have race as a mechanical trait specifically. It was developed for a book that never got published, but it has a lot of advantages in terms of creativity, and it incidentally doesn't require race or an equivalent term on the sheet. The idea is simple; You have a set of starting traits to choose from, which include all the old race traits and a lot of other traits. The groups you would have called races previously have suggestions listed in their descriptions about which of those traits are typically associated with them. That section would just be called 'People's of the Multiverse'.
The mechanical benefit here is that you can easily swop traits that don't make sense for your character for something that does, like changing a language if your character didn't learn the one usually associated with their people, or not taking darkvision if the character is blind. It also allows you to have characters with mixed heritage, even if that mix is complicated (I'm 1/4 orc, 1/2 gnome and 1/4 dwarf...), and allows you to create new groups without creating fully new sets of rules.
This makes race about as nebulous as it is in real life.
If that was the case the offspring would not have draconic traits.
I was referring to the 10 tons remark. Remember a dragon is a magical creature and thus can transfer magical abilities to his off-springs using some kind of rituals.
Not necessarily. There are a number of examples of different species that can breed and produce viable young.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_genetic_hybrids
Those who produce fertile off-springs usually come from 2 subspecies that belong to the same species. As for the other cases they are most of the time sterile (or at least the male or the female being, the male most of the time) and they show or develop flaws.
Also, many species split and are isolated in different environments and evolve differently under different conditions. But when crossed together they can produce off-springs because they are still genetically very similar even though their appearance tells otherwise.
Knowing this, defining a species is not always easy. That is why the notion of species based on the morphological level is outdated with the latest genetic discoveries. Species that can produce off-springs are genetically close which mean they come from a common ancestor.
You're missing the forest through the trees again, Aglardae. You're so bound up in using scientific knowledge and facts to prove this whole thing that you're failing to realize that the world is magical. Stuff can schtup with other stuff and make new stuff and it doesn't have to be any more scientifically accurate than the ten ton lightning-breathing magic flying dinosaur is in the first place. The world itself can operate on different rules because it's our place to play cool fantasy games. Nobody's holding D&D to the standards of scientific rigor except for specific DMs who're doing a very homebrew world. For the rest of us, none of this matters. If a player wants a Draconic Bloodline sorcerer, D&D doesn't force them to invent a crazy backstory ritual to explain it. They can just be the child of a famous bard like most other Draconic Bloodline sorcerers.
Science is a suggestion, not a rule, in D&D. Overdoing it can harm the experience. Take it from a person who's had to DM for engineers and metallurgists and come up with reasons why all problems can't be solved with chemical reactions or earthworks.
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I just don't like the term Species for a replacement. I prefer literally anything else.
Even biology has moved away from the “species can’t interbreed” as we have learned more and more about them, genetics and speciation. The best really modern definition doesn’t talk about crossbreeding at all but rather about isolation and breeding true when inbreeding rather than about the viability of outbreeding. With magic to further enhance the outbreeding/crossbreeding viability chances it’s easy to get half orcs, half elves, Dwelves, half dragons, etc and just about any crossbreed you want to imagine.
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
Honestly, I am starting to like species less and less as a choice. Yes, it has non-biological definitions that are applicable to D&D (so the “but the biology definition” argument is nonsense). Yes, it is an ancient word dating to Middle English with Latin and Old French origins (so the “it sounds too scientific” argument is nonsense).
But so many lack a basic understanding of linguistics that, to many, those two arguments not sound like the nonsense they are. It is increasingly abundantly clear that racists will use those “objectively incorrect, but sounds correct to the ill-informed” arguments to try and stir up trouble in pursuit of their problematically-motivated opposition to Wizards’ attempts to excise the well-documented history of racism from their game.
Which, of course, isn’t to say everyone making those arguments is a racist - many might just fall into the “ignorant of the linguistics category. But many folks keep doubling down on those bad arguments, even after being informed why those arguments are bad. Simple ignorance is reasonable; ignorance that seems to persist even after the individual is made informed—and thus should no longer be ignorant—is hard to believe, and very likely betrays more sinister motivations.
Creature Subtype will work fine - its clinical and modern, but it builds on terminology (and terminology which is itself ancient and befitting a medieval fantasy) already existing in the game in a manner that does not break immersion and would be easy enough to understand. Plus, maybe a focus on Type-Subtype will encourage Wizards to branch out and create Subtypes for a wider-range of Types (ex. Earlier editions had Hamadryads, which would have a Plant Type).
Wizards of The Coast has been publishing D&D material since the third edition.
Why didn't they change the "race" 22 years ago. Why now?
because it wasnt brought to a better light until recently, though it has been discussed for awhile
The culmination of several factors, including: Their game having more widespread attention; an increasingly diverse staff that is less inclined to promulgate the racism from earlier editions (especially the TSR/Gygax editions Wizards inherited the legacy of); well publicised instances of 5e racism in Strahd and Spelljammer; a player base that is increasingly diverse and more conscious of the game’s awful history of race; and social movements making the issue of historic racism at the forefront of conversations.
And, as should be obvious to anyone with a modicum of common sense, ignoring a problem for 22 years does not mean there wasn’t a problem. The issues of racism in D&D, TSR, and with Gygax in particular have been known for decades - Wizards chose to ignore those issues rather than admit they might be part of the problem or admit to continuing to publish content inherently based in racism.
But better late than never, and Wizards is finally trying to remove racial politics from their game. Fortunately they are ignoring the vocal (and likely racist) minority engaging in censorship - a vocal minority trying to force Wizards, an independent entity, from exercising their rights to publish the game and exercise their speech in the manner they see fit.
I agree it does seem hopeless - the fact I feel inclined to change my opinion because so many folks are trying to deny Wizards’ freedom of expression and force censorship upon them and the fact so many accuse Wizards of “adding politics to the game” when they are decidedly removing politics from the game, does give reason to despair. Especially since the primary motivation seems to be the preservation of racism.
Still, in this case, the situation is far from hopeless - in fact, hope seems to be winning out. Wizards is standing up against censorship by the vocal minority and is choosing freedom of expression. Wizards is finally acknowledging something they had been keeping their head in the sand and ignoring - that their game was filled with its creator’s racist politics and that they needed to remove politics from the game.
The very fact that this thread exists stands testament to hope—Wizards is showing it has finally grown as a company and has grown the spine it has so long lacked when it comes to acknowledging and addressing their game’s less-than-savoury history. Someone admitting to their own mistakes and standing up against censorship to fix their own problems? That sounds fairly hopeful to me—it means that hope is shining through even the bleak crowd of regressive forces.