Thus is a really easy question answered by reading the very post you responded to.
Within the context of the game, the word “race” has been charged with the racism of Gary, Ernie, and the assorted TSR and Wizards writers who came up with various questionable products.
“Species” does not have that charge in the context of the game.
Really a pretty easy distinction to make - it is clearly worse for Wizards to use a word that their predecessors and themselves have used in a racist manner than it would be for them to use a word that has not been used problematically within the game.
Now, there are valid arguments against species - this thread is pretty clear that a large number associate the term with middle school science definitions and modernity (even though both arguments are inaccurate). But trying to ascribe older eugenicist views to the word itself (when the same argument can effectively be made for any word denoting classification) is a bit of a stretch.
How old do you reckon Ernie Gygax was when Gary ran games for him and his siblings back in the early 19-*******-70s? Conflating the man he would become with the child he then was and his father's endeavors with his own now is so profoundly devious I don't know how it is anyone here takes what you say on this matter seriously.
Thus is a really easy question answered by reading the very post you responded to.
Within the context of the game, the word “race” has been charged with the racism of Gary, Ernie, and the assorted TSR and Wizards writers who came up with various questionable products.
“Species” does not have that charge in the context of the game.
Really a pretty easy distinction to make - it is clearly worse for Wizards to use a word that their predecessors and themselves have used in a racist manner than it would be for them to use a word that has not been used problematically within the game.
Now, there are valid arguments against species - this thread is pretty clear that a large number associate the term with middle school science definitions and modernity (even though both arguments are inaccurate). But trying to ascribe older eugenicist views to the word itself (when the same argument can effectively be made for any word denoting classification) is a bit of a stretch.
How old do you reckon Ernie Gygax was when Gary ran games for him and his siblings back in the early 19-*******-70s? Conflating the man he would become with the child he then was and his father's endeavors with his own now is so profoundly devious I don't know how it is anyone here takes what you say on this matter seriously.
hes....not talking about ernest as a child at all though generally, hes talking about the man his father was, and the man he would become...both were/are very much flagrant racists for their times and one still very much is
I am not sure why anyone is still arguing this. DnD has made their stance clear. No logic, no pleading will change it. Why are people hell bent on tearing down Gygax?
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"You are a beginner once, but a student for life." - Firearm Instruction Adage.
Here in a thread where people are just allowed to claim Gygax Sr. was a racist. As if this is beyond any doubt.
The evidence is not being deleted and it is beyond any doubt. You’ll find plenty of evidence throughout the 30 pages and many folks who, upon hearing the evidence, acknowledged how incontrovertible it is, and that it changed their perspective on using terminology charged by his ideals.
To sum:
- He was proud to declare himself a long-time biological determinist - the PR name for a eugenicist. Eugenics, of course, being a field of study widely debunked before Gygax‘s time and which has formed the basis for some of the greatest evils perpetrated by humanity.
- He was very clear that he believed non-white cultures were morally inferior. This belief manifested in the game itself, with him ensuring that tribal societies were described as less intelligent and inherently evil (both hard coded into stat blocks), animalistic, and generally as culturally deficient. Furthermore, early books were full of “worldbuilding” that basically boiled down to “everyone who isn’t from the white main cities is somehow worse.”
- He did things like try to justify Lawful Good characters committing genocide by literally quoting word for word a racist man ordering the genocidal killing of unarmed women and children. Notably, he put these genocidal tendencies into the game itself - in one book, he specifically included stat blocks for the children of orc tribes so players would have stats for any genocide they might undertake. The white humans, of course, did not have such stat blocks.
The list could go on, with plenty of evidence building upon the above. That doesn’t mean that Gygax doesn’t have his supporters - for some reason folks love to defend the clearly racist man who thought women were biologically incapable of enjoying D&D, backstabbed the game’s other founders, and whose lack of business skill and impossible-to-work-with persona almost killed the game. A lot of that mistaken support falls on Gygax - when you force every one of your partners from the company, including the man who actually made D&D into D&D, you can create an uncontested myth about how great you are.
And, of course, the fact Gygax was a pretty darn bad person by every conceivable metric (even judging him by the standards of his own day), doesn’t mean the game he contributed to isn’t great.
It just means that Wizards is well within their rights to say “let’s keep the great things Gygax did, while taking a mulligan and using some new language unpolluted by the bad parts of Gygax, TSR, and even ourselves.”
While this thread has been full of good and vital discussion for the most part, it seems as of late to have drawn the attention of several bad actors with suspiciously new accounts. As such, if this continues we will be forced to lock the thread. Please remember to report any rules violating posts so the moderation team can avoid having to resort to thread locking.
Here in a thread where people are just allowed to claim Gygax Sr. was a racist. As if this is beyond any doubt.
The evidence is not being deleted and it is beyond any doubt. You’ll find plenty of evidence throughout the 30 pages and many folks who, upon hearing the evidence, acknowledged how incontrovertible it is, and that it changed their perspective on using terminology charged by his ideals.
To sum:
- He was proud to declare himself a long-time biological determinist - the PR name for a eugenicist. Eugenics, of course, being a field of study widely debunked before Gygax‘s time and which has formed the basis for some of the greatest evils perpetrated by humanity.
- He was very clear that he believed non-white cultures were morally inferior. This belief manifested in the game itself, with him ensuring that tribal societies were described as less intelligent and inherently evil (both hard coded into stat blocks), animalistic, and generally as culturally deficient. Furthermore, early books were full of “worldbuilding” that basically boiled down to “everyone who isn’t from the white main cities is somehow worse.”
- He did things like try to justify Lawful Good characters committing genocide by literally quoting word for word a racist man ordering the genocidal killing of unarmed women and children. Notably, he put these genocidal tendencies into the game itself - in one book, he specifically included stat blocks for the children of orc tribes so players would have stats for any genocide they might undertake. The white humans, of course, did not have such stat blocks.
The list could go on, with plenty of evidence building upon the above. That doesn’t mean that Gygax doesn’t have his supporters - for some reason folks love to defend the clearly racist man who thought women were biologically incapable of enjoying D&D, backstabbed the game’s other founders, and whose lack of business skill and impossible-to-work-with persona almost killed the game. A lot of that mistaken support falls on Gygax - when you force every one of your partners from the company, including the man who actually made D&D into D&D, you can create an uncontested myth about how great you are.
And, of course, the fact Gygax was a pretty darn bad person by every conceivable metric (even judging him by the standards of his own day), doesn’t mean the game he contributed to isn’t great.
It just means that Wizards is well within their rights to say “let’s keep the great things Gygax did, while taking a mulligan and using some new language unpolluted by the bad parts of Gygax, TSR, and even ourselves.”
I stand corrected, Sir. Yikes.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"You are a beginner once, but a student for life." - Firearm Instruction Adage.
A thought accrued to me, replacing the term race also means replacing the term subrace.
Would the term people be an acceptable replacement for race and the term ethnic as a replacement for subrace?
I do like ethnicity as a replacement for subrace. I really like it, actually.
I'm not such a big fan of people though. It doesn't have the right meaning and grammatically it's awkward. I wouldn't kick up a stink over it though.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
A thought accrued to me, replacing the term race also means replacing the term subrace.
Would the term people be an acceptable replacement for race and the term ethnic as a replacement for subrace?
I do like ethnicity as a replacement for subrace. I really like it, actually.
I'm not such a big fan of people though. It doesn't have the right meaning and grammatically it's awkward. I wouldn't kick up a stink over it though.
How about reversing that a bit?
Ethnicity for "race" and Heritage for "subrace"? One D&D UA makes it possible for any mixed ethnicity, and heritage can be the type of upbringing that guides abilities.
(Mixed ethnicity is purely cosmetic, though. One doesn't get to pick and choose different mechanics [gameplay] characteristics between two parents—all mechanics from one parent only with any appearance mixing from either. A Halfling Centaur [no idea] couldn't have Centaur abilities except with a Small size, but a Hafling Centaur could be a Small-sized Centaur with only Halfling abilities and no Centaur abilities. I'm guessing it's a balance thing to allow fuller RP without complicating game mechanics.)
EDIT: Still, I think it's already been decided by WotC to use Species which, imho, completely removes the social references for a taxonomic term.
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider. My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong. I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲 “It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
What about "Group" and "Subgroup" as possibilities? They are a bit generic and used in other ways, too, but this is a game where the word 'Level' is used in half a dozen different ways, likely more and people seem to be able to understand by context which meaning is being used.
I mean the poll had Type (Subtype) as an option, which is what I voted for.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Canto alla vita alla sua bellezza ad ogni sua ferita ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
Dude. You want dialog, in game dialog, to start pointing out that elves aren't even the same species as humans. Or, a human character telling an orc his species ain't welcome in this town?
You can do all of those things with the word "race" as well. Changing it to species isn't going to suddenly make that possible.
No but it makes it a lot worse. It is not only racist but now also dehumanizing.
What you still fail to understand - wilfully failing, I expect, since it has been explained to you a few times and it strains credulity to believe you are honestly missing the point - is that we are talking about Wizards’ usage of game terminology.
Species can be used in a way to promulgate racism; but that will be by racists, not Wizards—and one only has to look at these forums to know that racist D&D players are going to find a way to be racist no matter what the terminology might be. As a game term, it has no stigma attached to it.
Wizards cannot control what their players add to the words; they can control what they add or choose to delete, and that is what they are doing here.
Whether a word has been used problematically by wizards in the past or not has ZERO impact on whether they should start using it problematically now or not. They shouldn't. Full stop.
That's what you are failing to understand.
Implying that Humans and, say, Halflings for example, are different "Species"... is SUPER bigoted and discriminatory. To name one of but many problems by trying to call them all different species.
Calling Dwarves a different species? Super problematic. It's really not ok.
Why is calling halflings and dwarves a different species not ok?
There are irl examples of sapients which look very similar to humans but were not humans. H. neanderthalensis and H. denisova are famous examples.
They even had limited interbreeding with H. sapiens, which is why modern humans have genes from both species.
A thought accrued to me, replacing the term race also means replacing the term subrace.
Would the term people be an acceptable replacement for race and the term ethnic as a replacement for subrace?
"People" tends to be awkward linguistically. Remember that the primary use for this term is going to be 'label for box on character sheet', not something that's actually used much in ordinary speech.
"Ethnic" is an adjective, you want "ethnicity", and it refers to cultural background (so if "hill" is an ethnicity, you could have a hill dwarf, or a hill elf, or a hill halfling, or a hill human, or w/e). That's not actually a bad concept, but it's a big change to how subrace gets used in 5e.
I worry about using ethnicity as a replacement for race in game. IRL it feels as though society is more and more coming to adopt a view and language that race doesn't equal ethnicity and I fear adding that definition into the game would serve to muddy the waters again.
Here in a thread where people are just allowed to claim Gygax Sr. was a racist. As if this is beyond any doubt.
The evidence is not being deleted and it is beyond any doubt. You’ll find plenty of evidence throughout the 30 pages and many folks who, upon hearing the evidence, acknowledged how incontrovertible it is, and that it changed their perspective on using terminology charged by his ideals.
To sum:
- He was proud to declare himself a long-time biological determinist - the PR name for a eugenicist. Eugenics, of course, being a field of study widely debunked before Gygax‘s time and which has formed the basis for some of the greatest evils perpetrated by humanity.
- He was very clear that he believed non-white cultures were morally inferior. This belief manifested in the game itself, with him ensuring that tribal societies were described as less intelligent and inherently evil (both hard coded into stat blocks), animalistic, and generally as culturally deficient. Furthermore, early books were full of “worldbuilding” that basically boiled down to “everyone who isn’t from the white main cities is somehow worse.”
- He did things like try to justify Lawful Good characters committing genocide by literally quoting word for word a racist man ordering the genocidal killing of unarmed women and children. Notably, he put these genocidal tendencies into the game itself - in one book, he specifically included stat blocks for the children of orc tribes so players would have stats for any genocide they might undertake. The white humans, of course, did not have such stat blocks.
The list could go on, with plenty of evidence building upon the above. That doesn’t mean that Gygax doesn’t have his supporters - for some reason folks love to defend the clearly racist man who thought women were biologically incapable of enjoying D&D, backstabbed the game’s other founders, and whose lack of business skill and impossible-to-work-with persona almost killed the game. A lot of that mistaken support falls on Gygax - when you force every one of your partners from the company, including the man who actually made D&D into D&D, you can create an uncontested myth about how great you are.
And, of course, the fact Gygax was a pretty darn bad person by every conceivable metric (even judging him by the standards of his own day), doesn’t mean the game he contributed to isn’t great.
It just means that Wizards is well within their rights to say “let’s keep the great things Gygax did, while taking a mulligan and using some new language unpolluted by the bad parts of Gygax, TSR, and even ourselves.”
Biological determinism is not the PR term for eugenicist. Speaking as someone with a degree in anthropology, I can assure you that every biological anthropologist on the planet is to some degree a biological determinist. The open question isn't whether biology determines behavior, but to what degree.
"This belief manifested in the game itself, with him ensuring that tribal societies were described as less intelligent and inherently evil (both hard coded into stat blocks), animalistic, and generally as culturally deficient. " You mean like druids and bards (which required gaining levels as a druid)?
"- He did things like try to justify Lawful Good characters committing genocide by literally quoting word for word a racist man ordering the genocidal killing of unarmed women and children." (of _monsters_, not humans, who were inherently evil?) I gotta say, anybody who can look at a kobold and think "that must be code for black people" is already showing what they, themselves think of black people.
"- He did things like try to justify Lawful Good characters committing genocide by literally quoting word for word a racist man ordering the genocidal killing of unarmed women and children." (of _monsters_, not humans, who were inherently evil?) I gotta say, anybody who can look at a kobold and think "that must be code for black people" is already showing what they, themselves think of black people.
Honestly, I always picked up more anti-Indian stuff than anti-Black. Keep on the Borderlands is right out of the Manifest Destiny textbook (incidentally, "nits make lice" was also about native american genocide).
A thought accrued to me, replacing the term race also means replacing the term subrace.
Would the term people be an acceptable replacement for race and the term ethnic as a replacement for subrace?
"People" tends to be awkward linguistically. Remember that the primary use for this term is going to be 'label for box on character sheet', not something that's actually used much in ordinary speech.
"Ethnic" is an adjective, you want "ethnicity", and it refers to cultural background (so if "hill" is an ethnicity, you could have a hill dwarf, or a hill elf, or a hill halfling, or a hill human, or w/e). That's not actually a bad concept, but it's a big change to how subrace gets used in 5e.
I came up with the idea for people to replace race, because selecting your character's race is answering the question "What is your character's race?" and changing the term race to people changes the question to "Who are your character's people?", if your character is a human and you are in your character's hometown your character could say, "These humans are me people. I came up with the idea for ethnic to replace subrace, because IRL we have different ethnic groups for humans.
I came up with the idea for people to replace race, because selecting your character's race is answering the question "What is your character's race?" and changing the term race to people changes the question to "Who are your character's people?", if your character is a human and you are in your character's hometown your character could say, "These humans are me people.
That makes it worse, because if you're from a mixed community, are you saying only the humans are your people.
I came up with the idea for people to replace race, because selecting your character's race is answering the question "What is your character's race?" and changing the term race to people changes the question to "Who are your character's people?", if your character is a human and you are in your character's hometown your character could say, "These humans are me people.
That makes it worse, because if you're from a mixed community, are you saying only the humans are your people.
Poor choice of words on my part. I think a half-elf would say in their hometown could say "These are my people". Is that better?
Lineage. Thank you Tasha and your guide to everything. Yes, I am hideously laughing in the background.
How old do you reckon Ernie Gygax was when Gary ran games for him and his siblings back in the early 19-*******-70s? Conflating the man he would become with the child he then was and his father's endeavors with his own now is so profoundly devious I don't know how it is anyone here takes what you say on this matter seriously.
hes....not talking about ernest as a child at all though generally, hes talking about the man his father was, and the man he would become...both were/are very much flagrant racists for their times and one still very much is
I am not sure why anyone is still arguing this. DnD has made their stance clear. No logic, no pleading will change it. Why are people hell bent on tearing down Gygax?
"You are a beginner once, but a student for life." - Firearm Instruction Adage.
A thought accrued to me, replacing the term race also means replacing the term subrace.
Would the term people be an acceptable replacement for race and the term ethnic as a replacement for subrace?
The evidence is not being deleted and it is beyond any doubt. You’ll find plenty of evidence throughout the 30 pages and many folks who, upon hearing the evidence, acknowledged how incontrovertible it is, and that it changed their perspective on using terminology charged by his ideals.
To sum:
- He was proud to declare himself a long-time biological determinist - the PR name for a eugenicist. Eugenics, of course, being a field of study widely debunked before Gygax‘s time and which has formed the basis for some of the greatest evils perpetrated by humanity.
- He was very clear that he believed non-white cultures were morally inferior. This belief manifested in the game itself, with him ensuring that tribal societies were described as less intelligent and inherently evil (both hard coded into stat blocks), animalistic, and generally as culturally deficient. Furthermore, early books were full of “worldbuilding” that basically boiled down to “everyone who isn’t from the white main cities is somehow worse.”
- He did things like try to justify Lawful Good characters committing genocide by literally quoting word for word a racist man ordering the genocidal killing of unarmed women and children. Notably, he put these genocidal tendencies into the game itself - in one book, he specifically included stat blocks for the children of orc tribes so players would have stats for any genocide they might undertake. The white humans, of course, did not have such stat blocks.
The list could go on, with plenty of evidence building upon the above. That doesn’t mean that Gygax doesn’t have his supporters - for some reason folks love to defend the clearly racist man who thought women were biologically incapable of enjoying D&D, backstabbed the game’s other founders, and whose lack of business skill and impossible-to-work-with persona almost killed the game. A lot of that mistaken support falls on Gygax - when you force every one of your partners from the company, including the man who actually made D&D into D&D, you can create an uncontested myth about how great you are.
And, of course, the fact Gygax was a pretty darn bad person by every conceivable metric (even judging him by the standards of his own day), doesn’t mean the game he contributed to isn’t great.
It just means that Wizards is well within their rights to say “let’s keep the great things Gygax did, while taking a mulligan and using some new language unpolluted by the bad parts of Gygax, TSR, and even ourselves.”
While this thread has been full of good and vital discussion for the most part, it seems as of late to have drawn the attention of several bad actors with suspiciously new accounts. As such, if this continues we will be forced to lock the thread. Please remember to report any rules violating posts so the moderation team can avoid having to resort to thread locking.
Find my D&D Beyond articles here
I stand corrected, Sir. Yikes.
"You are a beginner once, but a student for life." - Firearm Instruction Adage.
I do like ethnicity as a replacement for subrace. I really like it, actually.
I'm not such a big fan of people though. It doesn't have the right meaning and grammatically it's awkward. I wouldn't kick up a stink over it though.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
How about reversing that a bit?
Ethnicity for "race" and Heritage for "subrace"? One D&D UA makes it possible for any mixed ethnicity, and heritage can be the type of upbringing that guides abilities.
(Mixed ethnicity is purely cosmetic, though. One doesn't get to pick and choose different mechanics [gameplay] characteristics between two parents—all mechanics from one parent only with any appearance mixing from either. A Halfling Centaur [no idea] couldn't have Centaur abilities except with a Small size, but a Hafling Centaur could be a Small-sized Centaur with only Halfling abilities and no Centaur abilities. I'm guessing it's a balance thing to allow fuller RP without complicating game mechanics.)
EDIT: Still, I think it's already been decided by WotC to use Species which, imho, completely removes the social references for a taxonomic term.
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider.
My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong.
I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲
“It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
I mean the poll had Type (Subtype) as an option, which is what I voted for.
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
Why is calling halflings and dwarves a different species not ok?
There are irl examples of sapients which look very similar to humans but were not humans. H. neanderthalensis and H. denisova are famous examples.
They even had limited interbreeding with H. sapiens, which is why modern humans have genes from both species.
"People" tends to be awkward linguistically. Remember that the primary use for this term is going to be 'label for box on character sheet', not something that's actually used much in ordinary speech.
"Ethnic" is an adjective, you want "ethnicity", and it refers to cultural background (so if "hill" is an ethnicity, you could have a hill dwarf, or a hill elf, or a hill halfling, or a hill human, or w/e). That's not actually a bad concept, but it's a big change to how subrace gets used in 5e.
I worry about using ethnicity as a replacement for race in game. IRL it feels as though society is more and more coming to adopt a view and language that race doesn't equal ethnicity and I fear adding that definition into the game would serve to muddy the waters again.
Same thing
Biological determinism is not the PR term for eugenicist. Speaking as someone with a degree in anthropology, I can assure you that every biological anthropologist on the planet is to some degree a biological determinist. The open question isn't whether biology determines behavior, but to what degree.
"This belief manifested in the game itself, with him ensuring that tribal societies were described as less intelligent and inherently evil (both hard coded into stat blocks), animalistic, and generally as culturally deficient. " You mean like druids and bards (which required gaining levels as a druid)?
"- He did things like try to justify Lawful Good characters committing genocide by literally quoting word for word a racist man ordering the genocidal killing of unarmed women and children." (of _monsters_, not humans, who were inherently evil?) I gotta say, anybody who can look at a kobold and think "that must be code for black people" is already showing what they, themselves think of black people.
Honestly, I always picked up more anti-Indian stuff than anti-Black. Keep on the Borderlands is right out of the Manifest Destiny textbook (incidentally, "nits make lice" was also about native american genocide).
I came up with the idea for people to replace race, because selecting your character's race is answering the question "What is your character's race?" and changing the term race to people changes the question to "Who are your character's people?", if your character is a human and you are in your character's hometown your character could say, "These humans are me people.
I came up with the idea for ethnic to replace subrace, because IRL we have different ethnic groups for humans.
That makes it worse, because if you're from a mixed community, are you saying only the humans are your people.
Poor choice of words on my part.
I think a half-elf would say in their hometown could say "These are my people".
Is that better?