Exactly! IRL we don't use the term in that way, so it's usage immediately evokes "Animal and plant!" in the brain. Thats why it feels clunky and ill fitting to me.
I don't quite get the what is more specific on species than on folk or lineage though, as we've tackled in the thread extensively the specifics of what species can mean is just as vague, if not vaguer than Lineage- Or Type:Subtype which'd be the most specific of all.
But also isn't a bit of vagueness kind of a feature rather than a bug? Like Half-Elf doesn't fit neatly into species because it's a hybrid of two other species. But a term like Folk takes into account that they're also sorta their own subculture instead of just being a genetic hybrid.
I use it that way... However, I was raised in an academic environment.
Humans like to think of themselves as special, but we are animals. I'm doubling down on my appreciation for "species", if for no other reason than to encourage it's acceptance for use with humanoids. I also think we should use Celsius whenever referring to temperature.
I use it that way... However, I was raised in an academic environment.
Humans like to think of themselves as special, but we are animals. I'm doubling down on my appreciation for "species", if for no other reason than to encourage it's acceptance for use with humanoids. I also think we should use Celsius whenever referring to temperature.
Humans are special though, at least in Earth's ecosystem. There's a reason it's okay to keep dogs as pets but not humans. And while a few species blur the line, not a single one really crosses it completely. Any word that serves to reinforce the idea that humans and orcs are as different as humans and dogs is going to have the exact same problems that race has, if not worse ones.
And while we're at it, Fahrenheit is far more intuitive for human beings because its 0 and 100 points are the approximate limits of acceptable environmental temperature instead of something arbitrary and irrelevant to most human experience like the freezing and boiling points of water.
Humans are special though, at least in Earth's ecosystem. There's a reason it's okay to keep dogs as pets but not humans. And while a few species blur the line, not a single one really crosses it completely. Any word that serves to reinforce the idea that humans and orcs are as different as humans and dogs is going to have the exact same problems that race has, if not worse ones.
And while we're at it, Fahrenheit is far more intuitive for human beings because its 0 and 100 points are the approximate limits of acceptable environmental temperature instead of something arbitrary and irrelevant to most human experience like the freezing and boiling points of water.
Our differences are significant, but treating humans as separate from other life causes a lot of problems globally as well, such as the continued practice of skinning dogs alive and treating animal abuse as an unimportant issue. The word "species" does not imply that humans and orcs are as different as humans and dogs, if anything, taking ourselves off of a pedestal should help us relate better to the rest of life as a whole. [Insert commentary about slippery slope fallacies...]
When we narrow our focus to terms like "race", we search for "best" and "worst" within those bounds and guarantee division. By widening the scope, it becomes apparent how much more we have in common with one another compared to the rest of life, and all humanoids can coexist in the same tier. We naturally look to separate In-Groups from Out-Groups, and if we only look at ourselves, that's where we'll find them.
(I don't actually care about Farenheit versus Celsius. That was tongue in cheek. Switching to the metric system would be nice though.)
Edit: Awful people will find excuses to be awful, regardless of our best intentions. The term we choose to replace "race" with is much less important than act of replacing it itself.
I filled in the feedback form, but thought of this afterwards. As a more suitable replacement for "race" that allows for viable interbreeding, "ancestry" is about as perfect as you can get.
I filled in the feedback form, but thought of this afterwards. As a more suitable replacement for "race" that allows for viable interbreeding, "ancestry" is about as perfect as you can get.
species doesnt mean you cant have kids with eachother though, there are several places in this thread that is discussed and proven
I filled in the feedback form, but thought of this afterwards. As a more suitable replacement for "race" that allows for viable interbreeding, "ancestry" is about as perfect as you can get.
1. Ancestry is vague.
2. Ancestry sounds like it's about who you are descended from, which does not represent the way species work at all mechanically. Ancestry implies that it is relevant that you are descended from who you are descended from, but D&D really doesn't work that way; You pick one species and roll with that, and there won't be any half-species in 1DD, so there won't be much of a way to represent your ancestry at all.
If I say that I am a Goblin descended from Ogres, then the Ogre part of my ancestry should matter when picking my ancestry. I'm not saying half-species should return, because they shouldn't, but the word ancestry makes it a lot more confusing, because what species you are in D&D won't be picked any more by the various aspects of your ancestry. This might not be confusing for players who have dealt with this mechanically for years, but it's just... Weird. And it might confuse a lot of new players.
3. Ancestry is already taken by Pathfinder. Yes, using the same term as another company doesn't mean that you are copying them. But that wouldn't stop tons of Pathfinder fans from reminding D&D players that the term they are using was taken from them, and big business leading companies worrying about looking like they're copying another smaller organization may seem silly, but it is actually a valid concern.
---
Oh, and by the way, species does "allow viable interbreeding". As has been explained numerous times, the extremely scientific definition for species is not the only definition out there. According to Oxford Languages, one of the things species means is "a kind or sort", and that definition says nothing about interbreeding. Not only that, but species is synonyms for several other candidates such as type and kind, and both of those two words don't have any sort of requirements related to breeding attached to them.
I know there are 25 pages on this thread, and it is unreasonable to expect someone to read all of them, but a search of key words or even just skimming a couple pages would have quickly explained to why and how ancestry isn't a "perfect" replacement. To future posters to this thread, I highly recommend looking around to see if anything you might want to mention has already been discussed or explained.
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... one of the things species means is "a kind or sort", and that definition says nothing about interbreeding. Not only that, but species is synonyms for several other candidates such as type and kind, and both of those two words don't have any sort of requirements related to breeding attached to them.
Going to remind people, this is an even more racist use of term than Race. As it was what was used to Justify the murder of my ancestors during the 1940s. After all My people were another species after-all.
... one of the things species means is "a kind or sort", and that definition says nothing about interbreeding. Not only that, but species is synonyms for several other candidates such as type and kind, and both of those two words don't have any sort of requirements related to breeding attached to them.
Going to remind people, this is an even more racist use of term than Race. As it was what was used to Justify the murder of my ancestors during the 1940s. After all My people were another species after-all.
Sounds like we have a similar family history. I'm fine with the term.
If we want to roll in a conversation about Nazism and global stresses, this is going to umbrella out into a much larger discussion, with far more ramifications than are being addressed here.
Words, like fire, have a power and association, but they are not independently problematic. We need to respond to issues as they arise, and reclaim them when it is prudent to do so. Otherwise, all we are doing is harming ourselves and yielding power to people and forces who are already rotting in their graves.
... one of the things species means is "a kind or sort", and that definition says nothing about interbreeding. Not only that, but species is synonyms for several other candidates such as type and kind, and both of those two words don't have any sort of requirements related to breeding attached to them.
Going to remind people, this is an even more racist use of term than Race. As it was what was used to Justify the murder of my ancestors during the 1940s. After all My people were another species after-all.
Sounds like we have a similar family history. I'm fine with the term.
If we want to roll in a conversation about Nazism and global stresses, this is going to umbrella out into a much larger discussion, with far more ramifications than are being addressed here.
Words, like fire, have a power and association, but they are not independently problematic. We need to respond to issues as they arise, and reclaim them when it is prudent to do so. Otherwise, all we are doing is harming ourselves and yielding power to people and forces who are already rotting in their graves.
"I'm fine with the term so you should get over it" doesn't feel like an appropriate response given the motivation for getting away from "race" in the first place.
... one of the things species means is "a kind or sort", and that definition says nothing about interbreeding. Not only that, but species is synonyms for several other candidates such as type and kind, and both of those two words don't have any sort of requirements related to breeding attached to them.
Going to remind people, this is an even more racist use of term than Race. As it was what was used to Justify the murder of my ancestors during the 1940s. After all My people were another species after-all.
Sounds like we have a similar family history. I'm fine with the term.
If we want to roll in a conversation about Nazism and global stresses, this is going to umbrella out into a much larger discussion, with far more ramifications than are being addressed here.
Words, like fire, have a power and association, but they are not independently problematic. We need to respond to issues as they arise, and reclaim them when it is prudent to do so. Otherwise, all we are doing is harming ourselves and yielding power to people and forces who are already rotting in their graves.
"I'm fine with the term so you should get over it" doesn't feel like an appropriate response given the motivation for getting away from "race" in the first place.
Then it's a good thing I didn't say that, and I know you wouldn't want to put words in my mouth.
This is going to drag the thread waaaaay off-topic if we really get into the weeds on it, but it's not that simple. The OK sign absolutely became an in-group signifier for far-right [PRE-REDACTED]s and white supremacists for a hot minute, even if only as a way to "ironically" let each other know they were "owning the libs" -- regardless of what anyone else thought it actually "meant". That was, in fact, the entire point, just as it's been the point when any other term or symbol got co-opted. See Pepe the Frog, Let's Go Brandon, and hundreds of other examples throughout history. They're trying to hide in plain sight and play innocent if they get called out. "Oh, it's just the OK sign/oh, it's just a joke." No, it's a way to recognize who's part of the club
No matter what term WOTC eventually lands on, it can be co-opted, even a brand new, made-up word with no etymological roots at all, as has been suggested earlier in the thread. The intent here is not to avoid a term that can be co-opted, because that's impossible. It's to avoid one that's already been co-opted and is currently causing harm
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I completely am against replacing the word 'Race'.
Frankly, I do not see how it can be offensive at all.
How people put it to use can be abused, but that is not on DnD.
The reason the term is getting changed is that the problematic use of the word "Race" within the game is, in fact, on D&D itself. D&D has an unfortunate history in how they have handled race, including early modules having a number of rather problematic racial descriptions (heck, even 5e had two modules that had to be changed due to some fairly flagrant racial insensitivity--one intentional and the other accidental).
Distancing themselves from the word "race"--a word charged by one of the game's founder's views on eugenics--is Wizards trying to distance themselves from their own abuse.
This is also why the folks arguing about "species has been used for racism" so we should not use that term either are wrong--the term species might have been historically used for racism but (a) it never developed racial baggage within D&D and (b) the word has not been used in a racially charged manner for over a half-century now (unlike "race") which is. This, of course, has been pointed out to these users a half-dozen times on this very thread, yet they both fail to respond to those points and keep raising the same arguments every time a new page is started--something that looks a lot more like concern trolling than actually wanting to advance the conversation.
[...] has been pointed out to these users a half-dozen times on this very thread, yet they both fail to respond to those points and keep raising the same arguments every time a new page is started--something that looks a lot more like concern trolling than actually wanting to advance the conversation.
Indeed. I've replied to three (four?) comments that just say to stick with "race", none of which the commenters seemed to have even read the title of the thread before commenting. It's awfully tiring.
I'm going to make a tentative suggestion to use perhaps “people” or something instead.
Do you come from the elven people?
Do you come from the dwarvish people?
Do you come from the Orcish people?
Do you come from the human people?
Stuff like that. That way, neither “race” nor “species” has to be used, and asking the question “which people do you come from?” reinforces the idea that wherever someone comes from, they are a “person”.
In cases where you have a half-elf, half-orc etc., the word “kin” could be used. Then you could still ask the question “which people do you come from” and the person could answer “I am elvenkin, orckin, humankin,” and so on. Allowing the person to choose which of their parents people they wish to associate themselves to while getting around the issue of calling them “half.”
For people like sentient humanoid rabbits, wolves, plants, insects, etc., the word “folk” could be used. I am unsure about this one. Perhaps it would be best to refer to them as people or kin as well.
Sorry for this post. I don't want to be rude to anyone who likes to play as one of my examples; I just wanted to make my suggestions for what words to use instead of the suggested “species”.
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I don't have a particular dog in this fight anymore, but I've just gotten used to saying stuff like "racial bonuses" or "racials" when talking about stat bumps or specific features. My observation here is whatever replaces the word / phrase should be just as short / succinct / punchy. Lineage kind of works. People I'm not sure about. Species is for an SF / science fantasy RPG.
Exactly! IRL we don't use the term in that way, so it's usage immediately evokes "Animal and plant!" in the brain. Thats why it feels clunky and ill fitting to me.
I don't quite get the what is more specific on species than on folk or lineage though, as we've tackled in the thread extensively the specifics of what species can mean is just as vague, if not vaguer than Lineage- Or Type:Subtype which'd be the most specific of all.
But also isn't a bit of vagueness kind of a feature rather than a bug? Like Half-Elf doesn't fit neatly into species because it's a hybrid of two other species. But a term like Folk takes into account that they're also sorta their own subculture instead of just being a genetic hybrid.
I use it that way... However, I was raised in an academic environment.
Humans like to think of themselves as special, but we are animals. I'm doubling down on my appreciation for "species", if for no other reason than to encourage it's acceptance for use with humanoids. I also think we should use Celsius whenever referring to temperature.
Humans are special though, at least in Earth's ecosystem. There's a reason it's okay to keep dogs as pets but not humans. And while a few species blur the line, not a single one really crosses it completely. Any word that serves to reinforce the idea that humans and orcs are as different as humans and dogs is going to have the exact same problems that race has, if not worse ones.
And while we're at it, Fahrenheit is far more intuitive for human beings because its 0 and 100 points are the approximate limits of acceptable environmental temperature instead of something arbitrary and irrelevant to most human experience like the freezing and boiling points of water.
Our differences are significant, but treating humans as separate from other life causes a lot of problems globally as well, such as the continued practice of skinning dogs alive and treating animal abuse as an unimportant issue. The word "species" does not imply that humans and orcs are as different as humans and dogs, if anything, taking ourselves off of a pedestal should help us relate better to the rest of life as a whole. [Insert commentary about slippery slope fallacies...]
When we narrow our focus to terms like "race", we search for "best" and "worst" within those bounds and guarantee division. By widening the scope, it becomes apparent how much more we have in common with one another compared to the rest of life, and all humanoids can coexist in the same tier. We naturally look to separate In-Groups from Out-Groups, and if we only look at ourselves, that's where we'll find them.
(I don't actually care about Farenheit versus Celsius. That was tongue in cheek. Switching to the metric system would be nice though.)
Edit: Awful people will find excuses to be awful, regardless of our best intentions. The term we choose to replace "race" with is much less important than act of replacing it itself.
I filled in the feedback form, but thought of this afterwards. As a more suitable replacement for "race" that allows for viable interbreeding, "ancestry" is about as perfect as you can get.
species doesnt mean you cant have kids with eachother though, there are several places in this thread that is discussed and proven
1. Ancestry is vague.
2. Ancestry sounds like it's about who you are descended from, which does not represent the way species work at all mechanically. Ancestry implies that it is relevant that you are descended from who you are descended from, but D&D really doesn't work that way; You pick one species and roll with that, and there won't be any half-species in 1DD, so there won't be much of a way to represent your ancestry at all.
If I say that I am a Goblin descended from Ogres, then the Ogre part of my ancestry should matter when picking my ancestry. I'm not saying half-species should return, because they shouldn't, but the word ancestry makes it a lot more confusing, because what species you are in D&D won't be picked any more by the various aspects of your ancestry. This might not be confusing for players who have dealt with this mechanically for years, but it's just... Weird. And it might confuse a lot of new players.
3. Ancestry is already taken by Pathfinder. Yes, using the same term as another company doesn't mean that you are copying them. But that wouldn't stop tons of Pathfinder fans from reminding D&D players that the term they are using was taken from them, and big business leading companies worrying about looking like they're copying another smaller organization may seem silly, but it is actually a valid concern.
---
Oh, and by the way, species does "allow viable interbreeding". As has been explained numerous times, the extremely scientific definition for species is not the only definition out there. According to Oxford Languages, one of the things species means is "a kind or sort", and that definition says nothing about interbreeding. Not only that, but species is synonyms for several other candidates such as type and kind, and both of those two words don't have any sort of requirements related to breeding attached to them.
I know there are 25 pages on this thread, and it is unreasonable to expect someone to read all of them, but a search of key words or even just skimming a couple pages would have quickly explained to why and how ancestry isn't a "perfect" replacement. To future posters to this thread, I highly recommend looking around to see if anything you might want to mention has already been discussed or explained.
BoringBard's long and tedious posts somehow manage to enrapture audiences. How? Because he used Charm Person, the #1 bard spell!
He/him pronouns. Call me Bard. PROUD NERD!
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HERE.Going to remind people, this is an even more racist use of term than Race. As it was what was used to Justify the murder of my ancestors during the 1940s. After all My people were another species after-all.
Sounds like we have a similar family history. I'm fine with the term.
If we want to roll in a conversation about Nazism and global stresses, this is going to umbrella out into a much larger discussion, with far more ramifications than are being addressed here.
Words, like fire, have a power and association, but they are not independently problematic. We need to respond to issues as they arise, and reclaim them when it is prudent to do so. Otherwise, all we are doing is harming ourselves and yielding power to people and forces who are already rotting in their graves.
"I'm fine with the term so you should get over it" doesn't feel like an appropriate response given the motivation for getting away from "race" in the first place.
Then it's a good thing I didn't say that, and I know you wouldn't want to put words in my mouth.
This is going to drag the thread waaaaay off-topic if we really get into the weeds on it, but it's not that simple. The OK sign absolutely became an in-group signifier for far-right [PRE-REDACTED]s and white supremacists for a hot minute, even if only as a way to "ironically" let each other know they were "owning the libs" -- regardless of what anyone else thought it actually "meant". That was, in fact, the entire point, just as it's been the point when any other term or symbol got co-opted. See Pepe the Frog, Let's Go Brandon, and hundreds of other examples throughout history. They're trying to hide in plain sight and play innocent if they get called out. "Oh, it's just the OK sign/oh, it's just a joke." No, it's a way to recognize who's part of the club
No matter what term WOTC eventually lands on, it can be co-opted, even a brand new, made-up word with no etymological roots at all, as has been suggested earlier in the thread. The intent here is not to avoid a term that can be co-opted, because that's impossible. It's to avoid one that's already been co-opted and is currently causing harm
Active characters:
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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)
I completely am against replacing the word 'Race'.
Frankly, I do not see how it can be offensive at all.
How people put it to use can be abused, but that is not on DnD.
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"Lineage"
Okay...I actually like that. I could live with that.
Check us out on Twitch, YouTube and the DISCORD!
The reason the term is getting changed is that the problematic use of the word "Race" within the game is, in fact, on D&D itself. D&D has an unfortunate history in how they have handled race, including early modules having a number of rather problematic racial descriptions (heck, even 5e had two modules that had to be changed due to some fairly flagrant racial insensitivity--one intentional and the other accidental).
Distancing themselves from the word "race"--a word charged by one of the game's founder's views on eugenics--is Wizards trying to distance themselves from their own abuse.
This is also why the folks arguing about "species has been used for racism" so we should not use that term either are wrong--the term species might have been historically used for racism but (a) it never developed racial baggage within D&D and (b) the word has not been used in a racially charged manner for over a half-century now (unlike "race") which is. This, of course, has been pointed out to these users a half-dozen times on this very thread, yet they both fail to respond to those points and keep raising the same arguments every time a new page is started--something that looks a lot more like concern trolling than actually wanting to advance the conversation.
Reading the thread you've just commented on would be a good start.
[REDACTED]
Indeed. I've replied to three (four?) comments that just say to stick with "race", none of which the commenters seemed to have even read the title of the thread before commenting. It's awfully tiring.
[REDACTED]
I'm going to make a tentative suggestion to use perhaps “people” or something instead.
Do you come from the elven people?
Do you come from the dwarvish people?
Do you come from the Orcish people?
Do you come from the human people?
Stuff like that. That way, neither “race” nor “species” has to be used, and asking the question “which people do you come from?” reinforces the idea that wherever someone comes from, they are a “person”.
In cases where you have a half-elf, half-orc etc., the word “kin” could be used. Then you could still ask the question “which people do you come from” and the person could answer “I am elvenkin, orckin, humankin,” and so on. Allowing the person to choose which of their parents people they wish to associate themselves to while getting around the issue of calling them “half.”
For people like sentient humanoid rabbits, wolves, plants, insects, etc., the word “folk” could be used. I am unsure about this one. Perhaps it would be best to refer to them as people or kin as well.
Sorry for this post. I don't want to be rude to anyone who likes to play as one of my examples; I just wanted to make my suggestions for what words to use instead of the suggested “species”.
A caffeinated nerd who has played TTRPGs or a number of years and is very much a fantasy adventure geek.
There's 26 pages as to why but to put it simply folk are being hurt by it
I don't have a particular dog in this fight anymore, but I've just gotten used to saying stuff like "racial bonuses" or "racials" when talking about stat bumps or specific features. My observation here is whatever replaces the word / phrase should be just as short / succinct / punchy. Lineage kind of works. People I'm not sure about. Species is for an SF / science fantasy RPG.
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